Lorham
Jul 12 2016, 5:36 am
By: Valadorn  

Jul 12 2016, 5:36 am Valadorn Post #1



Hey guys , I did my best to try and create a multiplayer campaign , altough it is my first campaign , it can have multiple players , like 4 or more that are in the same team, and ofc 1 extra place for those who would like to be against the team :) , some feedback would be appreciated :D


(Zerg Mission 6 is for atleast 2 players, 2 players are recomanded for all maps actually, but most can be done solo )


- Download Link Part 1(Terran): http://www.staredit.net/sc1db/file/3501/

- Download Link Part 2(Zerg) : http://www.staredit.net/sc1db/file/3515/

- Download Link Part 3(Protoss) : http://www.staredit.net/sc1db/file/3516/



-I would advise a minimum of 2 players
-The map is about Human colonies that colonized a planet called Lorham
-It is a full campaign not only with Destroy the enemy
-The Plot is about one of the colonies rising to power and later finding a hidden Zerg passage
-Gameplay is mostly simple ,I would rate is as a Medium Difficulty for 2 players

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Jul 12 2016, 8:45 am by Valadorn.



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Jul 12 2016, 11:50 pm noobscrub Post #2



----------

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 20 2023, 11:46 am by noobscrub.



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Jul 13 2016, 7:34 am Valadorn Post #3



well , um . . . nope , but why are they awfull ? :(

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 13 2016, 10:44 am by Valadorn.



None.

Jul 13 2016, 4:02 pm Dem0n Post #4

ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

Only played through the first two missions. I assume this is your first campaign, so I'll try not to be too tough, but there are some serious issues with this. I suggest you mirror your missions off of Blizzard's missions when first starting out, and then try different things as you gain more experience in making campaigns. I took some notes while playing the first two missions.

MISSION 1

- Briefing tells nothing
- Use talking portrait to indicate someone is talking
- Wav that plays at start of mission is completely random and pointless
- Objective is bad. We don't need to play a "Bootcamp" mission in which we learn how to build SCVs
- Mineral placement is terrible. Minerals should always be close to CCs. First thing I did was lift my CC and bring it closer to the minerals, which is a waste of time.
- Why am I building 15 SCVs? Where are the enemies? What's the actual story?
- Is this a Civilization map or a Starcraft map? Why are we acting like it's the Ice Age and colonies of people are learning how to survive? This takes place in the future, right? The settlers shouldn't have to start from scratch to create a colony.
- Map is 128x128 for no reason. We never leave the starting area. If there's not much to do in a map, make it 64x64 so there's not so much useless space.

MISSION 2

- Same problems as mission 1
- Objective is pointless. Why am I building a Barracks and Bunker? How does that help me? There are no enemies to fight.
- Again, what's with the random wavs? They're literally useless to the map.
- As with mission 1, map is big for no reason. Make it smaller.


As you can see, there are a lot of fundamental flaws in the maps. First and foremost, there's no point to them. If there are no enemies, why am I playing? You have to remember that this is a real time strategy game; if you want to make a campaign, there needs to be fighting and, well, strategy. The first two missions are just building random units/buildings, and it adds nothing to the story. Also, you need to spell check the messages you put in the map. One of the biggest problems with campaigns, in my opinion, is bad writing and spelling. If you're not sure how to do the gameplay yet, at least write well and try to make a decent story. I suggest writing out all the text in a program with spell checker like Microsoft Word, and fixing any spelling errors before putting them in your maps.

And seriously, your mineral placement is just bad. I already said it, but minerals should never be like 20 tiles away from the Command Center. Again, take a look at Blizzard's maps and see how they place minerals.




Jul 14 2016, 1:56 am Pr0nogo Post #5








Jul 14 2016, 8:25 am Valadorn Post #6



well , fair enough :s it is true that i tryed to make like 4 tutorial ish missions :s , but maybe from the 4th one , the others arent that bad :s any yes , for the first campaign at the beggining I was well , not so good at anything xD , but on later missions I think it might have Improved , Zerg Campaign is almost fully Voice Acted including briefings and protoss is fully Voiced , on the terran part , the briefings are the only thing that are not voiceacted :s



Oh, and about the story , I am well aware of the fact that it is in the future, but when Humans colonise a new planet, they need to start from the basics, without knowing what can be eaten or what is where :ermm: in my oppinion atleast

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jul 14 2016, 1:05 pm by Valadorn.



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Jul 14 2016, 1:36 pm DarkenedFantasies Post #7

Roy's Secret Service

The first five missions could have been merged into a single one: Building your base, searching for the "discoveries", and eliminating the enemy. The way you spread them out felt like unnecessary padding, and very repetitive.

As stated before, the resources placement was irritating. When I got to the "gather 10,000 minerals" mission, with all the spread out minerals, I just lost all patience. :(

As for the campaign's difficulty, it isn't challenging at all; fighting an army of hero firebats or breaking through 3 layers of densely packed missile turrets is only tedious. Terrain design can make a big difference in a mission's difficulty, along with fewer but more clever enemy unit/building placement.


You claimed the missions were more than just "destroy the enemy", but it certainly felt that way, only we had more specific objects to destroy rather than the whole base (e.g. destroy siege tank). Or we had to destroy a base even if it wasn't directly the objective (e.g. find and build on the island).

The "River Outpost" mission could have been a more interesting one in that regard, for example. It begins with the Zerg attacking our outlying structures, and gives a sense of urgency to leave for the island. However they never chase the player beyond their starting location, and we're left with tediously clearing the island full of turrets and bunkers.
What could have been done is pressure the player by having the Zerg harass them with waves of defensible attacks. The island doesn't need to be heavy guarded either; it should look like an attractive location to move to, with a fair amount of resources on it, not just two vespene geysers. Instead you could have Zerg air units guarding/patrolling around the island to incite the player to stay and build up forces instead of lifting off straight away to escape the Zerg. Also make use of the "Fog of War" layer in the editor to show players where they need to go.

I'm not saying "destroy the enemy base" types of missions need to be completely avoided, though. Just to make that clear. :)


Judging by the overall quality, I assume it's your first attempt at a campaign? I'm glad people are still picking up StarCraft and have the interest to make new maps, so I hope you don't give up after this—It's probably not much worse than my own first attempts. Pr0nogo makes good points in his video response, it will be useful if you listen and remember what he says, if you haven't already. ^^
I will check out your Zerg and Protoss episodes some time later to see if there's improvement as you say.




Jul 14 2016, 2:16 pm Valadorn Post #8



I have to agree, but the mission with 10.000 Minerals was intended for multiple players, like, even if there were 2 it would be 5000each , or with more players even less resources needed/player , but thank you for your comment and I will do my best to Improve on my next Campaign :D, even tough that will be single player :P , let me know about the Zerg and Protoss Campaign too pls :)



None.

Jul 14 2016, 2:49 pm JCarrill0 Post #9



Most of the reviews here pretty much covered anything i wanted to say about it. Pr0nogo nailed it completely.

I like making campaigns with the basic editor first, then moving on to SCMDraft 2 when I started out map making, my best advice for you is get SCMDraft 2, play around with that. the sc1files section here at SEN can give you a basic idea of what maps can be fun, and what you can use to learn new ideas.

certain maps use RPG style, I recommend some of OH_Man's Creations (he got some kick ass maps) others like Pr0nogo really know how to put DETAIL in his maps.

if you really looking for co-op campaign, there is some around. Pr0nogo made the original vanilla SC co-op, and there is others who also have done the same (I even have some as well).

most of my design are basic, re-edits and nothing to REALLY brag about, so enjoy making maps for sc1, SEN is the BEST community for both honest and positive feedback, just don't take everything so serious and you'll enjoy it.




Jul 14 2016, 2:50 pm Dem0n Post #10

ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

Quote from Valadorn
I have to agree, but the mission with 10.000 Minerals was intended for multiple players, like, even if there were 2 it would be 5000each , or with more players even less resources needed/player , but thank you for your comment and I will do my best to Improve on my next Campaign :D, even tough that will be single player :P , let me know about the Zerg and Protoss Campaign too pls :)
Here's the thing: the triggers you wrote don't check if force 1 collectively gets 10,000 minerals. Your trigger's condition is "Player 1 accumulates at least 10,000 ore." That means that player 1, and only player 1, can trigger the victory by getting 10,000 minerals. Putting it under Force 1 doesn't really mean anything; that's just the same as putting the trigger under each player in Force 1. You should take some time to review your triggers and make sure that everything works because I played through like 7 or 8 missions yesterday with 2 others, and we found a lot of broken stuff. For instance, in the "Crusade" map where we have to destroy the enemy siege tank, your trigger was "Force 1 kills at least 1 Terran Siege Tank." That doesn't mean that we have to kill the enemy's siege tank. The person I was playing with made a tank, and I killed it, and we won. The trigger should be "Player 6 suffers at least 1 death of Terran Siege Tank."

Not to mention, that "Resources" map is just boring. You put a lot of enemies on the map, but they don't attack because you ran the Area Town AI script and they're on islands for some reason. I was player 1 and all I did was mine for like 15 straight minutes without any opposition until I got 10,000 minerals. Hell, I got so bored once I got like 9,000 minerals that I decided to spend like 4,000 minerals on building Battlecruisers to destroy the enemies that weren't doing anything. After I did that, I just went back to mining at my own pace until I hit 10,000 minerals. That really isn't good gameplay, especially when the enemies don't do anything. Like Pr0nogo said in his video, you should take a look at other (basic) campaigns to see how they did things.




Jul 14 2016, 3:32 pm Valadorn Post #11



Thank you Demon, fixing them :D

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 14 2016, 3:42 pm by Valadorn.



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Jul 14 2016, 6:27 pm Pr0nogo Post #12



I would have left a small writeup with my video, but I was pressed for time.

Welcome to SEN, Valadorn! Hopefully you've found the community here welcoming enough to stay for a while.

I would like to reiterate a couple of key points from my video. The more 'simplistic' custom campaigns like Life of a Marine can be incredibly helpful as learning tools. The skills necessary to create them are much easier to train than the skills necessary to make mods or trigger more advanced sequences, although nothing in Brood War is particularly 'hard' - you just need to learn the fundamentals before attempting some of these things. I recommend you think cerebrally about the campaigns you play - that is, ask yourself why they made design decisions about every little thing. It will help you in the long run, because while at first other people's work may seem like a universal upgrade to yours, eventually you'll be familiar enough with the fundamentals that you can start to think critically about other people's design choices. Creating something like Life of a Marine is certainly not out of your reach, and once you understand how Gemini accomplished it, and look at what it took to create it, you'll be that much closer to being able to leveling yourself up, in that sense. Don't just play the campaigns - open up the maps, turn on the locations layer, pore through the triggers, and really dissect what makes a campaign a campaign. After you accomplish that, your knowledge base will be in a much better spot.

Hopefully, we've been helpful enough to let you know that, while this campaign has innumerable flaws, your skills can always improve. Best of luck, Valadorn! And just as a suggestion, you might even want to try developing a different story than Lorhan's after you play some of the other campaigns, and return to this one later on. Creating entirely new maps could be easier than trying to highlight and fix all of the individual problems in the pre-existing ones.




Jul 14 2016, 7:14 pm Valadorn Post #13



Thank you alot :) , will try better on the next one :D



None.

Jul 14 2016, 8:52 pm Moose Post #14

We live in a society.

I played a few of the Terran maps with Dem0n and Inferno yesterday. Plenty of people have described how your resource placement is neither functional nor aesthetically pleasing, so I'll try not to pick on that.

We reached mission H before we finally got something that didn't feel like a "training" mission. Most people will have played Blizzard's campaigns and come to understand the RTS that it is. Of course, you want to teach players about things specific to your map or campaign, but if there aren't any, you can safely assume a basic understanding of SCBW. If you really want building or resource objectives, put some pressure on the players with the computer players. You can have your build 15 SCVs or get 10000 minerals missions if you do them right and use a better design. A better execution would have pressure to spend on other things. Imagine if I had to make defenses or fight something, wouldn't that be more exciting and challenging? What if I had to choose between spending towards the goal and risking losing a fight or putting off the goal to stay alive? Doesn't that provide more engagement and more choices? What the campaign gives us instead is a boring grindy mess to make SCVs and get minerals and build whatever that goes on six more missions than it needs to.

Mission H also has terrible balance among the players. Mission H. Player 1 gets a sizeable army, 4 SCVs, plenty of supply, and a base. Player 2 gets no units, but a ton of supply. Player 3 gets 10 supply filled by Marines, no SCVs, and can't even build until at least one Marine dies. Player 4 gets a CC and a Starport and nothing else.

To be honest, I don't think you would benefit from fixing these maps according to our suggestions as much as you would from playing more maps. As I played your maps, I saw only two possibilities that made sense: You either didn't put much effort into this at all and/or you have no idea what you're doing. You can fumble around (which we had to do collectively for years before nice things were created) and maybe you'll get something great eventually, (a broken clock is right twice a day), but you would greatly improve your chances of making better maps by playing more maps. Try to study what makes good maps good, what makes popular maps popular, and what makes bad maps bad. Basically, it's easier to create a good map if you know what a good map is. Honestly, these maps feel similar to someone trying to make a movie without even having seen one.




Jul 14 2016, 9:19 pm Valadorn Post #15



Thank you Mini, actually, to be honest, the first map of the Campaign was my first map created, I will try to Improve on the next one :) , I will take this as a no one had the nerve to play it to the end :c , but oh well, i will try to make the next one more pressurefull :)


- I started working on a new campaign, I know, I know you probably hate me already xD , just give it a quick check and tell me if this is what u mean, ofc this is only a Beta and i will try to work on it to make it more pleasant , but I will post it here, this is what I gathered so far from the rewievs :s

- This is the first map of the new campaign I started/try working on, hope this is a better first mission :)

Attachments:
1-Rise.scx
Hits: 6 Size: 110.6kb

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jul 14 2016, 9:31 pm by Valadorn.



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Jul 15 2016, 3:39 pm DarkenedFantasies Post #16

Roy's Secret Service

I believe it is a little better, although your resources placement is still flawed. I've attached a little modification of your map where I've changed the human player's resources placement, to show you how basically you'd want to place them.

• Typically you want between 6 to 8 mineral fields, depending on how quickly you want the player to build up. 5 is when it becomes too scarce, and 9-10 is a rich spot. Try to give them a somewhat jagged placement, to give them a more natural feel. However you should see that they remain very close to the Command Center's proximity limit. You can do that by placing the Command Center first, and then placing the mineral fields (and gas) around it, using the Command Center as a sort of reverse canvas. You can delete the Command Center afterwards if it's not a starting base.

You will notice I haven't given the player's expansion any vespene geyser. That's because I'm taking the player's objectives into consideration: They need to build a number of bunkers and turrets to achieve victory, and they don't need gas for that. So there's no use in giving them a second geyser. They might not have the time to use a second expansion anyways, let alone additional gas.


• Speaking of objectives, you don't need to specify "Defend against the Attacks" as an objective; the briefing already informs the player that attacks are imminent. Listing it as an objective (especially at the bottom) might also imply that your opponents will be launching a significant assault after you've accomplished your previous objectives, which is not the case.


• Another small change I've done is added rocky ground by the bridges, on the player's side. This is mainly an example about using the terrain to adjust a mission's difficulty. The rocky ground prevents the player from using the bridges as chokepoints, which might make it too easy to defend. :P

I've also removed the player's starting Factory since I believe giving them immediate access to vultures will make it extremely easy to defend against the campaign AI. You might also want to change which units and buildings are available to be built. Typically you don't allow the player to build battlecruisers and tanks, or upgrade to level 3 armor/weapons, early in the campaign. Introduce more advanced units/upgrades gradually.

Those are just examples, rather than me trying to tell you how exactly you should design your mission. How hard you want a mission to be is entirely up to you. :)

EDIT: By the way, I don't know what the flags were for. Maybe you can explain that to me. :bleh:


Quote from Valadorn
I will take this as a no one had the nerve to play it to the end :c
I still intend to check out the rest of your first campaign and give you a review and hints. ^^ I hope you don't become discouraged, though. The path to being a Jedi StarEdit Master is a long one.

Attachments:
1-Riseedit.scx
Hits: 1 Size: 113.65kb

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 15 2016, 3:53 pm by DarkenedFantasies.




Jul 15 2016, 4:04 pm Valadorn Post #17



The Flags were mostly to indicate your area, like where you could build Missile Turrets maybe, and story wise, since you only recently formed, it indicates your Territory which you want to protect , AND THANK YOU ALOT :D Reworking my second map, Hope it will turn out nicer :D



None.

Jul 15 2016, 4:35 pm DarkenedFantasies Post #18

Roy's Secret Service

Oh I see. Well, you could use the Fog of War layer for that, I think. ^^ At the top of the editor window, there should be your drop-down list of layers. Choose Fog of War Layer, and select Player 2. Then you can paint over the player's island and part of the river so that blue will have his island/borders scouted.

Also, for example, if the objective was to destroy the Psi Disrupter, you can paint a rectangle over the building only. That way the player won't have to scout the entire map to know where the objective is. :D Unless you want them to search for it, of course.




Jul 15 2016, 4:51 pm Valadorn Post #19



I never used the Fog of War layer, but sounds simple and seems like a great idea, will try it and thank you alot :D



None.

Jul 15 2016, 8:21 pm Moose Post #20

We live in a society.

Quote from Valadorn
Thank you Mini, actually, to be honest, the first map of the Campaign was my first map created, I will try to Improve on the next one :) , I will take this as a no one had the nerve to play it to the end :c , but oh well, i will try to make the next one more pressurefull :)


- I started working on a new campaign, I know, I know you probably hate me already xD , just give it a quick check and tell me if this is what u mean, ofc this is only a Beta and i will try to work on it to make it more pleasant , but I will post it here, this is what I gathered so far from the rewievs :s

- This is the first map of the new campaign I started/try working on, hope this is a better first mission :)
I didn't play it, but I did look in the editor. It looks like more of the same but with slightly more visual appeal through doodad variation. So, you're either not putting much time and effort into things or you just have no idea what you're doing. Assuming you are honestly putting forth a good effort in faith with this, I can only recommend that you spend less time in StarEdit.exe and more time in StarCraft.exe before you continue.




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