UPDATE - 29 Dec 2020

All Missions:
- Some terrain blends that looked excessively blocky in SC:R have been removed.

Mission 3:
- Fixed a bug that could clear the screen during a transmission.

Mission 5:
- The White Zerg are slightly more aggressive.

Mission 6:
- The available resources have been reduced.
- The easter egg has been removed because it was poorly conceived.

UPDATE - 31 Jan 2021

Mission 1:
- Fixed a bug that caused the two rescuable Dragoons to be invincible.
- Fixed a glitch in the micro section that allowed the player to bring the Probes outside of the intended mining area.

Many thanks to David Kang (aka DK aka DaMnUFo0) whose playthrough allowed me to spot these problems.

UPDATE - 21 Feb 2021

Mission 2:
- All unnecessary units are now correctly removed before the boss fight, including Probes inside Assimilators.

Mission 4:
- Fixed a random bug related to the rescued Siege Tank, which could remain invincible until it was put into siege mode.

Once again, thanks to David Kang (aka DK aka DaMnUFo0) for spotting these problems.

UPDATE - 17 Mar 2021

Mission 5:
- The Red Protoss have additional triggers that determine their behavior. As a result, they now protect the starting location more efficiently.
- The White Zerg are slightly more aggressive.

Mission 6:
- Minimal changes to the map.

I just finished playing this, I have to say it is quite refreshing to play a good quality campaign like this after playing the jumpstart campaigns. I mean JumpStart clearly has the talent to make a good campaign, he's just so damn lazy, especially with spelling and triggers.

Anyway, I was quite surprised to see you took the gameplay design in a new direction instead of your usual frugal design where every single bit of vespene and mineral counts. I think the change worked out for the better even if the difficulty became lower than usual in the first 4 missions. The fifth and the sixth missions had your trademark veteran difficulty though, with the fifth mission gaining difficulty through the use of an insane protoss AI and the sixth mission basically having the gameplay that you intended (but failed to have) for mission 5 of Tales of Halcyon. I have to say, using jenkins to slowly wittle down the zerg and open passages was a lot of fun. I really think the design of mission 6 shows how much you've learned about gameplay, trigger, and map design since the release of your first campaign back in 2015.

Unfortunately, the campaign isn't without flaws, namely The writing in mission 4 and the gameplay in mission 5. The writing for mission 4 is pretty problematic with grammar mistakes all over the place and a mission briefing that tries but fails to connect to Tales of Halcyon in a way that the player can understand. In fact, it wasn't until I opened up my old save files for tales of halcyon and read the mission briefing for some of the missions in Tales of Halcyon that I finally understood what you were trying to convey to the player in mission 4. Here's an improved mission briefing for you to use:

Briefing("Player 2"){
Show Portrait("Galivan", 0);
Show Portrait("Armiras", 3);
Wait(750);
Display Speaking Portrait(0, 8000);
Play WAV("staredit\\wav\\ComBeep0.wav", 403);
Text Message("GALIVAN\r\n\r\nPraetor Armiras, we are on our way to Artesia Prime to rescue you. Tell me, how exactly did you end up there?", 8000);
Wait(9000);
Display Speaking Portrait(3, 14500);
Text Message("ARMIRAS\r\n\r\nWe were in pursuit of a Terran criminal named Alan Schezar. We almost reached him but he unleashed an electro-magnetic pulse that disabled our ships. As a result, we crash-landed on this planet.", 14500);
Wait(15500);
Display Speaking Portrait(0, 21000);
Text Message("GALIVAN\r\n\r\nSchezar? You know of him? He is a terran who invaded Aiur. Our brethren were able defeat his forces though. However, soon afterward the Zerg discovered Aiur as well and invaded it. Indeed, as soon as we rescue you we must return to Aiur to help our people. But, Armiras, I see that there are some humans with you.", 21000);
Wait(13500);
Show Portrait("Marcus Jenkins", 2);
Wait(8500);
Display Speaking Portrait(2, 22000);
Play WAV("staredit\\wav\\ComBeep0.wav", 403);
Text Message("JENKINS\r\n\r\nGreetings, my name is Marcus Jenkins. Immediately after the Battle of Arkham, during which Schezar narrowly escaped, I was ordered to assist Armiras and a few other Delta Squadron members. To further assist him, we were given several tactical nuclear warheads that--", 22000);
Wait(22500);
Display Speaking Portrait(0, 22000);
Text Message("GALIVAN\r\n\r\nI have heard about these nuclear devices, human. Undoubtedly, your crude technology has allowed you to develop some truly outstanding weapons. However, given the kind of attitude that your species shows, it won't take long before your people decide to use them to exterminate each other.", 22000);
Wait(23800);
Display Speaking Portrait(2, 32000);
Text Message("JENKINS\r\n\r\n...Anyway. The warheads were lost in the crash. We tried to recover them, but the Dominion soldiers were quicker than us, and handed the warheads over to the local Governor, Vincent Garibaldi. Paranoid, sadistic and sycophant, Garibaldi is the last man to be given access to nuclear weapons. Indeed, he is not only one of Mengsk's most devote goose steppers, in some ways he is even worse than him, considering how much oppressive his rule over this world is.", 32000);
Wait(33000);
Display Speaking Portrait(2, 26000);
Text Message("You said that Schezar has been defeated, so technically my original mission is complete. However, the Confederacy is no more. Me and my comrades have no place to go, and we would gladly follow you wherever you are going, with your permission of course. However, we need to recover the stolen warheads since they are still under my responsibility. This will likely require eliminating Garibaldi who probably won't be missed by anyone.", 26000);
Wait(27000);
Display Speaking Portrait(3, 24000);
Text Message("ARMIRAS\r\n\r\nGalivan, you must approach Artesia Prime with caution. Guarding this planet's orbit is a powerful defense system the Terrans refer to as the Big Gun. This weapon can detect and destroy any ship that does not belong to the Dominion, so you should hide behind one of the moons of Artesia Prime until we manage to disable it.", 24000);
Wait(25000);
Display Speaking Portrait(0, 13000);
Text Message("GALIVAN\r\n\r\nUnderstood. We shall follow your advice, Armiras, but be quick: we must reach Aiur as soon as possible and join our brethren in the war against the Zerg.", 13000);
Wait(14000);
Hide Portrait(0);
Wait(500);
Display Speaking Portrait(3, 15000);
Text Message("ARMIRAS\r\n\r\nI cannot believe that we finally have a chance to leave this distressing, polluted world. However, making our way through the Dominion forces patrolling the city shall not be an easy task.", 15000);
Wait(16000);
Display Speaking Portrait(2, 20000);
Text Message("JENKINS\r\n\r\nI couldn't agree more, old friend. For this purpose, I've arranged a secret meeting with a representative of the clandestine syndicate of the Antigan minority. They are mostly miners, so they can't give us military assistance, but I'm sure they can help us in other ways...", 20000);
Wait(21000);
Hide Portrait(2);
Hide Portrait(3);
Text Message("\r\n\r\n\x013End of Briefing.", 5000);

There are lots of grammar mistakes in the mission itself besides the briefing but it's hard for me to search for and show the mistakes on a forum

As for mission 5, the gameplay suffers a bit. I understand you tried to use insane AI balanced out with zerg opponents that will attack the AI but in the end the result is a mission that can only be won via a suicidal rush to the arbiter tribunal with as many scouts as the supply limit allows and done as fast as possible... or the player has to cheese the mission by sending the two scouts to attack the insane protoss AI, drawing the red protoss away from the base and then dropping the probes and other units back in the same base that was being attack earlier and making the base there. That way an army can be built there to eventually attack and destroy the red protoss and the insane protoss AI nexus that they are guarding. If you're going to use insane AI you have to balance it out with the removal of abilities, such as psionic storm or the removal of arbiters or something.

Still, despite these two minor problems the campaign was very enjoyable and a definite recommendation for anyone. It scores 83%, making this your highest-rated campaign and the highest-rated non-modded starcraft campaign ever made by anyone. Congratulations!

fittingly, this is the last remaining unmodded campaign left on my list. There are just 7 more campaigns left to go before I am done with starcraft for good and they're all modded.


Remember how you said everyone has brood war? Well, Andrea Rosa is the Lone exception. He only had Starcraft. As such, it is very difficult for him to test SCX maps. Still. You have a point. Andrea Rosa, It is possible to use SCMDraft to disable brood war units for manufacturing by the player and keep the map in SCM format. As long as no brood war units are placed on the map, it will work. You do not need to disable it for the enemy AI by the way, as long as you use a starcraft AI instead of a broodwar AI they won't make broodwar units (using a broodwar AI will of course disallow SCM format).

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on May 25 2021, 4:55 pm by Zincoshine.

Hello,

I'm going to download the campaign. However, are there other campaigns to play before playing this one ?

check "Level Design Workshop" by Andrea Rosa

That's a viable strategy I suppose, but not the best one. That map is clearly designed with Carriers in mind, given the story and the amount of available resources. Of course, many Scouts are required to fend off the enemy attackers, but once you have stolen enough resources from the Zerg and you have built a large group of Carriers you are basically ready to go
Needless to say, I love this mission, it's one of the best island maps ever.

Yes, absolutely. You need to play tales of halcyon first or else mission 4 is going to make little sense.

I also recommend playing andrea rosa's remastered version of the enslavers campaign as both campaigns are related to it.

I just finished playing Legacy of the phoenix by Da reaper and the quality of that campaign has made me miss Champions of khandia so much. God, why aren't there more amazing protoss campaigns like Champions of khandia...


Carriers? Bruh, the insane protoss AI will already have a fleet of 15 carriers and 10 scouts or something ready to completely destroy my base before I'm able to make enough carriers. That's what happened to me the first time. That AI is a ticking time bomb.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 29 2021, 7:50 pm by Zincoshine.

accidental double post. sorry

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on May 29 2021, 7:51 pm by Zincoshine.

Ciao Chris/Zincoshine, glad to meet you again on the boards! Thanks for playing Champions of Khandia, and thanks for your comments!




She's right, Carriers are the answer. Build many Photon Cannons along your coastline, and use your Scouts to individually attack the enemy Carriers one at a time, so they won't be distracted by Interceptors. Psionic Storm works great against massed Carriers, so make sure to have some High Templar ready to intervene. I find it strange that at some point you had to face 15 Carriers, since the Yellow Protoss are limited to 8 Carriers and 2 Arbiters at any given time, and Hallucination is also disabled... I guess maybe you were exaggerating a bit?



Many thanks for the compliment! I'm also interested in knowing what you think about the 3rd mission, it's the seminal concept from which the whole campaign originated.



Are they really so numerous? Sorry to hear that. What if I sent you a text file with all the dialogues of the 4th mission? You could send it back (when it suits you best) with your proposed changes and corrections. By the way, thanks for your suggestions on how to improve the briefing.



Well, that's definitely not meant to happen, looks like I'll have to fix this. Thank you very much for bringing this exploit to my attention!



Which brings me to ask a question: is your spreadsheet still available somewhere? I tried to access it some months ago, looking for inspiration and some hidden gems to play, but the file didn't exist anymore.




I can never stress this enough: if I disable Brood War units and technologies, the map will work in the Original Mode of Brood War, but NOT with the original StarCraft, regardless of the patch, because there are some subtle differences between the two products (similarly, there is a special dark green sprite, often used to simulate gas outbursts, that will correctly show up in the Original Mode of Brood War, but will crash the game in the original StarCraft). I have both games on two different computers and I've done several experiments, so you've got to trust me.

As for the SCM/SCX trite diatribe, at the risk of being repetitive: this is a StarCraft campaign which takes place during Episode III, therefore people are naturally supposed to play it without Brood War technologies, as much as they would do when playing Precursor or any other pre-BW campaign. If they really want to break the lore and use Dark Templars before they even returned to Aiur, they are free to do it.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 7 2021, 12:53 pm by Andrea Rosa.

This mission was pretty much perfect, I can't see how it could be better.



Sure just send it to me and I'll proofread it


haha. I had a look at it in SCMDraft. It looks like it would be really hard to fix because you basically need to make an inactive trigger covering the initial base and then somehow design a good moment when the trigger should be active and work like the triggers over the other expansion spots.



The spreadsheet still exists, I made it semi-private last summer and quit playing for a long time. There are a number of reasons why involving my partial ban from campaigncreations, a desire to go through my pile of shame on steam and finish all the games I bought over the years before the pandemic, my failure to fix the corrupted iscript in vision of the future 3's mpq mod file and finally the death of iskatumesks's cat. That cat was definitely the biggest reason. After all the flaming between me and Iskatumesk earlier I actually found out he was a really great guy and so the death of his cat just utterly demotivated me from continuing to play starcraft.

My plan was to keep the spreadsheet just for myself and no longer update it... but to my surprise I found people regularly asking for permission to access it. Then in April I finally finished almost all of my games on steam and at the same time some french guy called fabiano or something like that finally pushed me over the edge and made me continue my work... and so I did. All of the foreign language campaigns except for two german campaigns have been uploaded among other updates. Since then I've played through all the campaigns discovered or made between now and last year and there are now only 5 campaigns left to review. Reaver menace, visions of the future, legacy of the confederation, huncraft, and finally inconsummate. I'll be making it public again when I finish the reaver menace which should be really soon. I also plan to get rid of the tier system almost entirely and have categories such as "analysed campaigns", "missing campaigns" and so on. Only F tier will remain, although it will be merged for all languages. I'll probably have one sheet where they are arranged by date and another one where they are arranged by score and perhaps a legacy sheet that still has the tiers.

Unfortunately, after it goes public again I am almost certainly going to have to stop playing again for a while. As we exit the pandemic my life is going to enter a very uncertain period. I might change jobs, change girlfriends, and/or change apartment, and with the next steam sale coming in less than three weeks I'll have more non-starcraft games to play soon as well. I sure hope I can eventually get around to playing through the vision of the future series because I may have a really nice surprise for people here dreaming of being able to play that properly with the missing command buttons in 1.16.1

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jun 9 2021, 10:47 pm by Zincoshine.

I will change the Red Protoss behavior, so that they will return to the starting base if a new Nexus is built in that location. Others conditions will have to be met, but I think that it will work fine.



Thanks, I'll send a PM in a few days.



I'm very sorry to hear that, I can relate so much... I lost my beloved 14-year-old cat on easter evening, after he was killed on the road in front of my house in the most unlikely circumstances (it's a quiet, narrow street with bumps and very low traffic, and that day we were in lockdown, so almost no traffic at all, which makes me suspect that it was done deliberately by a neighbour who wanted to hurt me in the most painful way). I went outside to call him and found him dead. Biggest shock in my life, fur sure. Don't get me wrong, I had lost several pets, friends and relatives before, but I never felt so devastated, and I still am to a degree. The fact that I also have two young 3-years-old female cats does little to help: of course I love them, but they are not as high-spirited and affectionate as he was, and they still look around for him, making things even more depressing. Better times will come, hopefully.

I'm so sorry for your loss, Andrea. People are such bastards

UPDATE - 30 Jun 2021

Mission 4:
- Revised mission briefing and dialogues (thanks to Chris aka Zincoshine for the valuable help).
- Added an handful of enemies and floor traps.
- Minimal changes to the map.

Mission 5:
- The player now starts with 1500 minerals instead of 1000.
- A minimap ping centered on the Fleet Beacon now constantly flashes until the player reaches that location: hopefully, this should avoid any confusion as to where the player has to go when the mission starts.
- The Red Protoss (Mandelius' Guards) make use of additional triggers that help them defend both the starting base and the Yellow Nexus.

Mission 6:
- Area Town scripts have been removed for the White Zerg, since in some cases they could freeze the main AI.
- The Hermit Archon no longer heads toward the player's base.
- Minimal changes to the map.

Greetings, Andrea.
Have you thought about video making?

Ten years ago I took the idea into consideration: I wanted to record the longplays of my favorite video games from the 80s and 90s (MAME, Commodore 64, Amiga, Neo Geo, etc) but the idea never gained ground, mostly because there's plenty of similar channels, one more wouldn't make any difference.

Mission 1 - "These Unruly Lands": I played this mission twice. The first time I lost the Protoss Caterpillar in the entrance of the white Zerg base. It was strange the amount of units protecting that entrance, as if they were spawning all the time. Must have been coincidence, but every time I tried to warp a Photon Cannon a group of red Zerglings (maybe white too) came to sabotage it. Anyways, the seconde time I played I forgot rescuing the Protoss Reaver and the blacksmith couldn't help me LOL. I maxed to 200/200 Psi and attacked that base, there wasn't any problem there. As for the story, fits perfectly well for the Protoss.

Mission 2 - "The House Of Shadows": Starts with a slow pacing, but it's OK as this mission offers some game mechanics that are different from what's usual in custom campaigns. The sound effects for the earthquakes and lava eruptions are great. There's a limitation on Modify Unit Hit/Shield Points, since you can only set these points to a fixed vaule, but since it's fixed to a low percentage in this case, this limitation is barely noticeable. It's very helpful indeed to click on the Assimilator before the lava eruptions, however I also managed to save the Probes without using that trick by just moving them carefully (I even had two Dragoons in the lava because of the Mutalisks). Sometimes I lost Probes. White Zerg had many Drones resting near the Hive so I used Psi Storm there. I used Hallucination in the battle against Bursenangur (sounds German). Wonder.wav sounds like an edited version of the sound for wonder selection in Age of Empires, probably is the same sound but I can't be sure because there's been long time since I played that game.

Mission 3 - "High Hopes": I've noticed the resemblance to "Drawing of the Web". This is an excellent mission too. Meditation.wav must be some sound for priests in Age of Empires, but I can't recall for what it was used. The two starting geysers are very helpful to warp High Templars. I merged lots of Archons. Brown Zerg was chill sometimes, taking their main base wasn't much difficult. Even without gathering resources, brown Zerg was still morphing lots of units. I'm not sure if Shuttles were disabled just to prevent the player from attacking the red Zerg (taking that base with Scouts is surely impossible). The final chant was amazing. I thought there were many .wav files playing, but it makes sense being one single sound file instead.

Mission 4 - "Iron Reich": Garibaldi is a name I read somewhere before, so I googled it. Giuseppe Garibaldi . Good job with the anthem and the sound effects. This maps really gives you the feeling you're assaulting into some crude dictatorial military regime, ruled by a despot. That "deactivated" after killing Garibaldi was hilarious, I know it is supposed to tell you that Jenkins opened the exit, but for me the timing was great. The layout reminded me a map from "Life of a Marine" that I saw in a playthrough from Pr0nogo, but I haven't played it. Difficulty decreased in this map compared to the previous missions. I haven't used all my minerals, I had around 170 when escaping. I did some upgrades. I used all the powerups and the Siege Tank. There are connections with "Tales of Halcyon" but I didn't remember the name of the special Ghost unit becuase it's been long. By the way, I haven't noticed a single Dark Templar in this map, which is great, I see that they are really useful.

Mission 5 - "Tears Of Kna-Tari": The beginning is a bit like the first mission against the Conclave (Protoss 7 in Episode III). For this mission I attacked to brown Zerg with six Shuttles full of units, and the yellow Protoss with eight (also full), including Scouts in both cases, and also Carriers against yellow Protoss. I had lots of available resources in the white Zerg base because the yellow Protoss did the job for me clearing the Zerg Hive that was meant for extraction. While I didn't have much trouble eliminating the yellow base on the high ground, the AI kept its Carriers well inside the base behind Photon Cannons, making them difficult to kill with my Scouts or Dragoons.

Mission 6 - "Days Of Sorrow": Just like in "Tales of Halcyon" and "Voices of the Swarm", the last target can be reached only after going through more than one enemy base. All these long final missions were really fun, advancing little by little in the map. The Zerg Nydus Network was on high ground. My main concern was getting rid of the enemy Reavers. Only after eliminating the brown Zerg I bothered on making a Recall on the last purple Zerg base, inaccessible by ground. I used nukes sometimes for the static defense of the brown Zerg. A visible counter for the number of healings available would have been cool. Utnabanezar was on the bottom white base. Dark Swarm was a huge problem. I had to attack with maxed Psi, because on 100/200 it never worked out. I even tried attacking down there after attempting to kill the Hives in the top (forcing the AI to move many of its units in response, clearing the other side for a new attack). It was the last enemy Zerg, so it didn't make sense to leave units protecting my expansions and main base. Terran infantry is good per se against the Zerg, so level 5 was a must to gain huge advantage. So after I restarted this mission, and loading game a few times I could finish it.

Overall this is a really fun campaign, the best of the three I have played. From what I see you were improving, because in my opinion this campaign was better than "Voices of the Swarm", and "Voices of the Swarm" was better than "Tales of Halcyon".

Thank you very much for your detailed review, mate. I am very pleased to know that you enjoyed this campaign!



The aggressiveness of the White Zerg is likely due to the short distance between your base and theirs, but I may be wrong. The best way to engage them is to attack them from two directions simultaneously.



If you meet the blacksmith before you find the Reaver, you can still obtain the Caterpillar, the dialogues will just be different.



Yup, you are correct. The sound effect was edited to increase volume.



Priest unit ready sound, again edited to increase volume.



Yes, Shuttles were disabled for that very reason, and also to prevent the player from easily dropping the Probes and High Templars at their destinations. For the same reasons, Recall has been disabled.



It is amazing indeed! I was extremely lucky in finding it, as it fitted perfectly for what I had in mind. Unfortunately I don't remember where I downloaded it from, so I can't credit the original author.



Perfect strategy. This mission will prove to be quite hard for many players due to the Insane AI, but it is manageable if you focus on air superiority, which you correctly did. I also guess that you quicly claimed the little island with the Brown Sunken Colonies with your two starting Scouts.



Bad luck. There are four potential locations for the Nydus Network, and that one is definitely the worst, even though Broodlings swarms are a minor nuisance compared to the dreadful Reavers.

I think the distance has a big influence, maybe you get to see more enemy units for being closer to enemy factories. I never noticed there was another path to the white base from the right.


I lost my Scouts in the beginning xD
But that expansion in the little island was the first one I claimed.

I forgot to say something. Did you have any issue with the Sound Editor from StarEdit? I'm also using StarEdit and ScmDraft 2. But when I'm alternating programs, sometimes my maps break and become unreadable. I think that deleting sound files to replace them for the translated ones makes the map to crash. It is a serious issue, since this is forcing me to save different versions of the same map, while still losing time when restarting from an older version.