Thank you Ilya! That's intriguing, because I had suspected that the issue could be solved in that way, but the big question is: how do you transfer a value from a score counter to the death counter? The only way that comes to my mind is to have a very long series of triggers, something like this:

Enemy Player custom score is at most 1 --> Modify death counts for Enemy player: set 1 for men
Enemy Player custom score is at most 2 --> Modify death counts for Enemy player: set 2 for men
Enemy Player custom score is at most 3 --> Modify death counts for Enemy player: set 3 for men

...And so on and on, for at least 200 times (or more, since there isn't a fixed number of units that you can kill in this mission). Am I right?

Well, no, you could borrow from the kills-to-cash system in that you would subtract more than 1 score / adding more than 1 death at once. See what I did in one of my own missions:
1.
Trigger("Player 1"){
Conditions:
Switch("Finale Failsafe", Set);
Score("Current Player", Custom, At least, 128);

Actions:
Set Score("Current Player", Subtract, 128, Custom);
Set Deaths("Current Player", "Any unit", Add, 128);
Preserve Trigger();
Comment("Final reinstate death count: 128.");
}
2.
Trigger("Player 1"){
Conditions:
Switch("Finale Failsafe", Set);
Score("Current Player", Custom, At least, 64);
Score("Current Player", Custom, At most, 127);

Actions:
Set Score("Current Player", Subtract, 64, Custom);
Set Deaths("Current Player", "Any unit", Add, 64);
Preserve Trigger();
Comment("Final reinstate death count: 64.");
}
...
add that for - say - 128; 64; 32; 16; 8; 4; 2; 1 score and you'll have a reasonable chance of reinstating the count accurately, especially if you give it a little bit of time to run (if there's an ending cutscene, have it run concurrently to it), or turn on a hyper trigger for that period (nobody says the hypers have to run during the entire mission, innit). I have 3 enemy players in that mission and each has a set of similar triggers, which is no big deal to create by copying/pasting.

No idea how many units are realistically going to be killed during your mission; I made that in a build-and-destroy one where hundreds of casualties are expected, but if yours is a mission with static forces (say, a micro, infiltration one), you may not need to do so many, and starting off at 64 is reasonable.

To wit, if the enemy has a small set of troops available, you may even implement separate counters for each type of unit, but I have not experimented much with such things to determine whether not keeping accurate count of exact unit types would wreck the scoring. I guess that however many death counts you may have subtracted, it does not influence the actual kills score.

Now can anyone find a flaw in my reasoning?

Oh, I see what you mean. I'm not sure if this is compatible with the triggers that I used, so I'll have to experiment on it. It's not a big issue anyway, since it does not affect gameplay. It could even be justified by saying that it's an attempt by the Dominion to cover up the events by claiming that they did not suffer any casualty LOL.

By the way, I have checked all my maps, and it turned out that they are already saved as hybrid scm (simply because I regularly use the Issue Order trigger, initially a BW prerogative which was extended to StarCraft starting from patch 1.04).

UPDATE - 13 Nov 2020 (Another one already? Yes, indeed)

Mission 6: Fixed a nasty bug (that I thought I had already fixed during early testing) related to the appearance of Nydus Worms. On some occasions, the "unit unplaceable" error message was displayed. I think the bug has been fixed for good now, and should no longer resurface.

Well done on creating a comprehensive campaign. I haven't had the time to test it yet but from the screenshots it certainly looks like you spend a lot of time working on this. I'll leave a review whenever I finish playing it!

Hey Milestone, I take the opportunity to congratulate you for the amazing "Spark of Ean'lu". Unfortunately I can't play it because I don't have StarCraft Remastered, but I've watched the whole playthrough, and I loved every part of it. Apart from the groundbreaking ideas and clever puzzles, what impressed me is that it feels much bigger than it actually is, and that is always a great achievement in level design, whether it be real time strategy, 3D mapping, 2D arcade, or any other genre. My most sincere compliments.

As for my campaign, make sure to re-download it before playing it, because I have fixed a couple of elusive but significant bugs.

Thanks for the very kind words! Will make sure to get the latest version when I test Champions of Khandia!

UPDATE - 16 Nov 2020

- Mission 2: Fixed typo in the dialogues (thanks to StalwartGhostess for reporting it to me).

- Mission 5: Adjusted the text scrolling speed in mission briefing.

- Mission 6: The pathfinding of the rogue Reavers has been improved. They will also come in close formation most of the times, although they will still spread if they cross a group of Zerg units along their tortuous path.

UPDATE - 18 Nov 2020

Mission 1:
- Fixed visual anomaly (misplaced tile).
- Minimal changes to the map.

Mission 4:
- Informative messages ("health restored", "energy recharged", "teleporting", etc) no longer clear the screen when they overlap with a transmission.
- Added some new triggered attacks.
- Minimal changes to the map.
- Fixed typo in mission briefing.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Upon revising the triggers of Mission 6, I've discovered that the bug fixed with the update of November 13 could also lead to the impossibility to win the mission. Therefore, if you have downloaded the campaign before November 13, then you should really re-download it. My sincere apologies for the inconvenience.

Finished! I ended up playing the last two massive maps in one evening, and now I'm ready to review this brilliant campaign. I have many things to say, so I will break my review and my score in the fields of Presentation, Gameplay, Story, Map Design and Originality (I'll adopt this method for my future reviews as well). I will try to give as few spoilers as possible, since this campaign has just been released and most people haven't played it yet.


PRESENTATION: B

The campaign is presented nicely, with an informative documentation and an inspiring backstory. Evocative titles have been chosen for every mission, and right from the first briefing you get that authentic, nostalgic, classic SC feeling, which is a trademark in all of Andrea's campaigns and something I appreciate very much. Too bad for the lack of voice acting, but we must take into consideration the obvious disadvantage of him being a non-native English speaker. Every other aspect is very polished. Excellent choice of sound effects.


GAMEPLAY: B

The first scenario begins with an adventure section to test your tactical skill, then transfers smoothly into a limited tech tree B&D where your actions in the early stages will decide whether you will be successful or not. This is a great opener which foreshadows what's to come: a varied mix of gameplay styles, in which each scenario offers a different challenge and adds a new chapter to the brilliant story. Throughout the campaign you will be facing all kinds of odds, even environmental ones, and some maps have randomized elements that enhance replayability. The fantastic map design (see below) makes it more fun thinking about the tactics and movement rather than making a huge army, but that's still a viable option as the resources are always adequate. The difficulty ramps up quickly, and even experienced players need to pay close attention: I lost several times, but the game always left me with a desire to go back and try a different approach. Default campaign scripts work in unison with scripts adapted from the original episodes, resulting in unusual (and often devastating) attack waves: all of this without resorting to any modding, which is truly commendable. In a couple of circumstances, toward the end, things became really too much hectic for my taste, and that's what prevented me from giving a perfect score to the gameplay.


MAP DESIGN: A+

This is more like art. Don't get me wrong, there are several campaigns that sport elaborate custom terrain and goregous blends (Inconsumate immediately comes to mind), but none of them can convey the feeling of realism and naturalness that can be seen here. Andrea had already shown great attention to map design in his previous projects, but those were made with Staredit - now he has embraced Scmdraft and the results speak for themselves. The detail is everywhere, on the cliffs, in the water, even under the creep. Every little spot is painted in a way that I had never seen before: it's not only very detailed, it looks realistic as well, without being glaring or distracting. I really felt like I was living in the maps, not just playing them, and this tells a lot about how good the map design in this campaign is. Finally, not only Andrea has used all the best custom doodads stored in the various brush libraries, but he has also come up with dozens of new ones for everybody to copy and paste in their own maps! What more could you possibly ask for?


STORY: A

The project is heavily researched, and the conversion to playable maps and objectives matches the story so well. The story itself is well structured and well written, giving you a good understanding of what you're doing and why. Briefings and dialogues are concise thanks to Andrea's ability to synthesize, and it’s surprising how much detail he packs into often just one paragraph, where others would probably write much more stuff and undermine the player's attention. The overall mood is dark, with almost no hint of comic relief. The characters are well portrayed and not excessively stereotyped - the Hermit Archon stands above all, geez that guy always has some weird deep sh*t to say! There's even a bit of character development, which is remarkable for a relatively short campaign.


ORIGINALITY: A

Champions of Khandia scores high in this area too. The first thing you'll notice is the awesome map design, then you'll be greeted by its nice scripted events, like the flawlessly executed volcanic eruptions in the second mission (great stuff!) or the devastating psionic attack at the end of the third one, or pretty much everything that happens during the final battle. We've already seen similar things in the past, but expanding on old tricks is a sign of creativity too. What I had never seen is an underground map made with the ash tileset, since people normally use jungle/badlands cliffs to represent caves. This rendition is extremely convincing, to the point that you really feel like you are in a large underground chamber and not on Char. The same is valid for the fourth mission (my fav btw), in which the space tileset was used profitably to represent a dystopian metropolis.


Not much else to say. What amazes me is the huge leap forward Andrea makes every time he releases new content: Tales of Halcyon was Good, Voices of the Swarm was Very Good, Champions of Khandia is downright Excellent. The only problem with this campaign would simply be the fact that it ended too soon... I wanted it to go on and on and on.


Well done Andrea. As DaMnUFo0 said, I really hope this isn't your last release. However, if this is the case, then it's a great way to say goodbye...

Thank you very much for the review StalwartGhostess!

UPDATE - 30 Nov 2020


All Missions:
- The duration of all transmissions has been adjusted (some of them stayed on screen really for too long).


Mission 1:
- Fixed a bug that could cause the two rescuable Dragoons to end up stuck in the secret cave.


Mission 3:
- The player's initial amount of minerals has been increased from 300 to 400. Gas has been increased from 150 to 200.


Mission 5:
- Minimal changes to the map.


Mission 6:
- The player's initial amount of minerals has been increased from 750 to 1000.
- Minimal changes to the map.


...Sadly, still no news about the bug in Mission 4 that causes the incorrect number of deaths displayed in the aftermath screen. Unfortunately, Ilya's suggested method turned out to be incompatible with my triggers, mainly because they combine the amount of deaths of foes to turn them into Credits. I'll keep working on this, and probably I'll have to completely rethink my triggers, but since this bug doesn't affect the gameplay it will take low priority.

Why don't you use kill score to convert to cash, then, not death count. In the classic kills-to-cash system first seen in New Avalon II, the kills score was used, and it allows to assign different "bounty" for different kinds of enemy units. It's also easily editable.

The "at most" condition checks are unnecessary. You only need the "at least" conditions.

Give Player 2's kills-to-cash triggers to Player 7, and adjust the conditions and actions, changing all instances of Current Player to Player 2, and instances of Foes to Current Player or Player 7.
Add an action to add Custom Score to Current Player/Player 7. You don't need to have a trigger for every number, just go with 8, 4, 2, and 1; these will be able to subtract up to 15 kills per trigger cycle. You can add a trigger that handles 16 deaths if you think the player is likely to manage more than 15 kills within 2 seconds (since you're not using hypers).

I don't see the purpose of the use of Switch 2, and the trigger that sets it and kills to 0. I think you can get rid of those to begin with, but the switch conditions in the kills-to-cash triggers definitely need to be removed as they are counterproductive.

Finally, add triggers for Player 7 with the conditions of Switch 18 being Set, and if Current Player/Player 7 has at least [256, 128, 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1] Custom Score. Trigger actions are to subtract Custom Score and add Deaths of [men] for Current Player/Player 7, for an amount equal to that checked in their respective conditions, and preserve triggers.

If you think it's possible to get more than 511 kills and you want to be sure all kills are accounted for in a single trigger cycle in case the player skips the ending cutscene, you may continue adding triggers for 512, 1024, and so on.

No they are not necessary if the triggers run in perfect order but they won't hurt to be on the safe side.

The triggers always run in perfect order. I have no idea what you're safeguarding for.

Alright. So does that do anything wrong?

Thank you very much DarkenedFantasies, both for the help and for explaining your method very clearly. First of all, you are right about switch 2 and the trigger that sets the player's kills to 0: they are useless, indeed they are a vestige of a previous attempt at creating the kills-to-cash system (guiltily, I did not look at how other people handled this thing in the past, because I was determined to find out if I could do it all by myself). When I'll get back to this, I will surely follow your directions (I will have to implement the same triggers also for Player 1, because the red Bounty Hunters give Credits as well). For the sake of consistency, the death counters for Player 1 and 7 should be replenished also in case of defeat (and in this case I should add a brief delay before triggering the defeat, in order to compensate for the lack of a defeat cutscene).



Thanks for the suggestion Ilya, however I'm not interested in having different values for different units killed, I want all kills to be worth 1 Credit. Maybe your idea will come in handy for a future map...!

In most cases, no (aside from pointlessly making the CPU work infinitesimally harder). However, for example, if you happen to have a score that is at least 3 times larger than your highest checked value (e.g. a score of 384 while checking for at least 128 at the maximum), it will require 3 trigger cycles to process the total score/deaths as only the "at least 128" trigger will run for the first two cycles. On the other hand, if you remove the "at most" checks, it will take 2 cycles as every trigger will always be able to contribute. It might be an edge case depending on the map's scope but I'm all for efficiency, however meager it may be.