Hi everyone!

I am new to this forum and I want to introduce my first campaign work:


THE STORY
This campaign takes place in the same timeline of the Zerg expansion campaign, more precisely from just before Mission 1 ("Vile Destruction") to Mission 4 ("The liberation of Korhal"). While Kerrigan plans to destroy the Psi Disrupter owned by the UED and regain control of the Zerg Broods, some of her old enemies (Jim Raynor, Arcturus Mengsk and Fenix) come unexpectedly to her aid, unaware of the Queen of Blades' real intentions...

FEATURES
- Brood War expansion set is required to play (all the campaign maps are in the *.scx format);
- The campaign consists of six missions with variable difficulty, depending whether you are able to discover some "tricks" or not;
- Both Protoss and Terran technologies are used in every mission (with a "surprise" in the last one...);
- Special AI scripts (also from the original campaign missions) are used to give the Computer players a more specific behavior.

Attached you can find the ZIP archive containing all the maps and a "readme" file with more information.
I would be happy to know your impressions about this campaign once you have tried to play it.

Here are also some screenshots from the campaign missions as a little preview.



Download link: https://www.mediafire.com/file/a6kd0uxuiarltop/Unlikely_Allies_v0.5.zip/file

Enjoy!

Post has been edited 27 time(s), last time on Aug 10 2022, 4:44 pm by Omen.

*BREAKING NEWS*

* A new version of the campaign (v0.5) has been released, with the following changes:

Mission 1:

- The 'patrol' order issued to the brown and orange Zerg before the end of the mission has been changed in a 'send all units on suicide mission' AI script: in this way, the enemy units won't stop their attack until all Raynor and Kerrigan's units are dead.
- The three purple Lurkers have been replaced with Ultrakisks, as well as the two Mutalisks have been removed, adding two more Hydralisks instead. I noticed computer players got confused by the hidden Lurkers' and Mutalisks' attack, stopping their assault to the purple Hive.
- The Nydus channels triggers have been revised to ensure no Zergling is spawned after they have been destroyed.

Mission 3:
- The third orange Zerg wave now works properly (trigger condition has been changed from "current player brings at least 1 men to <location>" to "Player 1 brings at least 1 men to <location>", for the trigger was originally referred to Player 1 and then changed to Player 5.
- The tech tree has been modified, so that Terran buildings are unavailable when selecting an SCV (it doesn't make sense to leave buildings available in an installation map).

Mission 4:
- Corrected some slight grammar mistakes in mission briefing.

Mission 7:
- Added "Fenix must survive" as a mission objective (as Fenix's death is a defeat condition).

Thanks to DaMnUFo0 (aka DK) for showing missions gameplay in his YouTube videos, making me realize there were still some bugs. Hopefully, this time everything will run correctly.

Post has been edited 22 time(s), last time on Dec 26 2021, 6:11 pm by Omen.

Two projects announced, one released, and now another one released, all in less than 2 months. Is this a mini golden age or what guys?

I'll play this when I finish with the steam summer sale and the games I have bought during it. I have to say, the story sounds really interesting. I can't wait to play this.

Perhaps you should make your own Custom Campaign logo, screenshots (No small miniping which contain spoiler), and also some better description for each characters.

To support what Rawflesh said, something like this for your thread goes a long way towards increasing the curb appeal of your map. I recommend imgur for image hosting these days.

Thank you for your tips, I'll take them into account for my (possible) next campaign work.

A warm welcome to you Omen, it's great to have a new member introducing himself with a finished project!

I will surely play this campaign in the near future, it looks promising. I only took a glimpse at the maps in the editor, but I soon noticed a good amount of variety and some nice terrain work. Bravo!

Hello Omen. Welcome!
I am practically new to this forum too, I came here some weeks ago.

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Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 15 2021, 7:27 pm by Omen.

Now that looks promising. Always good to see newcomers. Will showcase your campaign on my channel eventually.

Well done with the campaign logo.
Andrea Rosa's campaigns have letters with StarCraft backgrounds.
I still don't have one... I should create a campaign logo. I'm not good at it. Need a program also.

I got some inspiration from Andrea's campaigns after playing them.
For my logo I simply used a Wordart in PowerPoint...

Greetings Omen, do you need a tester?
Your campaign seems to me promising.

I've played the first two missions, and my first good impression was definitely confirmed. Indeed, as a first-time effort, this campaign represents a step in the right direction. Here are some considerations:

Mission 1

Pretty good introductory mission. It's very linear and a bit on the easy side, but that's fine for an opener. My large force had some trouble navigating the narrow northernmost path, but aside from that the layout was good. I noticed a problem with the final attack wave though, as the Orange Zerg failed to send all of their units to the Hive I was protecting: when the attack wave finished, there were still a couple of Ultralisks stuck in their base, so I had to hunt them down in order to trigger the victory condition. You should probably widen the location where these Zerg are spawned, and maybe use the 'patrol' command instead of the 'attack' one, as it generally works better for this kind of triggers.

Mission 2

No complaints here, this mission is very good. It was a bit weird to see the Antigans posing as the Morians, but since you needed the Teal color for your heroes, you had no other choice (unless you use SCMDraft 2, which allows to use the same color for multiple players). I found the difficulty level to be just perfect, it's challenging but not frustrating. Excellent layout with reasoned use of elevation. Map design is very good too, with varied terrain and well-placed doodads (they are used in a natural way, and not just to fill the empty spaces). Speaking of doodads, you could probably use some more bushes and bones just to add a bit more detail, but that's up to your taste, depending on the kind of environment you want to depict. Gameplay-wise, the level does its job. It quickly becomes clear that there are two paths to the installation entrance, and one is preferable. As a side note, it is generally a good habit to remove Beacons once they have served their purpose, but since the mission ends as soon as the Beacon is reached, this is not a big problem.

As for the story and dialogues, I liked them, especially the back and forth between Raynor and Mengsk, who is forcibly put to sleep. I'm not a native English speaker, so other people will be more helpful under this aspect, but for what I could see the writing is as curated as the map design. By the way, always remember to check the 'always display' option for your transmissions, or they won't be displayed if a user has the subtitles disabled on his game configuration.

Expect more from me as I find the time to play the remaining maps. Ciao!

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 3 2021, 8:40 pm by Andrea Rosa.

I was planning something different, but not sure if I can do it. Thanks.

Thanks for your feedback Andrea. I tested the maps again with the modifications you suggested me and everything seems to work better (especially with the "patrol" order, instead of the "attack" one, for the enemy units).
I'm looking forward for some feedback about the remaining missions (from you or someone else); then I'll try to release an updated version of the maps with all these bugs fixed.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jul 5 2021, 6:49 pm by Omen.

*UPDATED VERSION RELEASED*

v0.1 Release notes:

- Mission 1: improved terrain to make the units run across a wider path; improved AI scripts: enemy units are now forced to patrol instead of attacking the target location, so that no unit remains stuck in the starting place (the same for Mission 3).
- Mission 6: Omegalisk damage reduced from 70 to 50.

See first post for downloading (I updated the attached ZIP archive). Enjoy!

OK I have played the first mission

It was quite enjoyable! I liked it a lot, the characters and the English is pretty good.... but then at the very end things take a turn for the worse. Namely, you have the objective change to protecting kerrigan's hive and send some zerg on suicide missions... but then after that? Nothing happens. The mission doesn't end and the player is not told what to do. As ut turns out, I needed to destroy every last orange zerg unit, which is a bad win condition.

Here's what I would do to fix this:
- Add a dialogue mentioning it would be a good idea or something to destroy the zerg base surrounding kerrigan's hive
- Make the win condition the destruction of all hatcheries/lairs/hives instead of all units... or at the very least "destroy all enemy buildings". Seriously, never ever use the "destroy all enemy units" win condition.

edit:

I have now also played the second and third mission

The second mission was OK aside from very minor grammar mistakes

The third mission has a considerable amount of grammar mistakes, you might want to go over the dialogue for this mission a bit. Also, I'm not quite sure how I'm, supposed to escape the installation with so many zerg bearing down on my small group of remaining troops, nor can I understand where these zerg invading it could be coming from since any zerg outside the installation should have been destroyed by tassadar a long time ago.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 14 2021, 9:41 pm by Zincoshine.

Mission 3

Standard but well-executed installation map. The Dark Templar was rather useless, given the presence of Overlords, but the High Templar was definitely handy (indeed, I don't know if this mission can be beaten without him). The intro felt somewhat strange to me: we see Raynor and Fenix entering the base (which is coherent with the outcome of Mission 2) but there are already many player-controlled units inside; maybe it would be more logical to start with the two heroes into the base, and the other units following them... This is just a minor nitpick though. The map manages to convey tension, since the player must face sizeable attack waves, and some skill is required to properly cast Psionic Storm without hitting our units in the process. I have one suggestion about the map design: while the layout is pretty good, this abandoned installation looks a bit too much pristine; you could use more shattered doodads and also add some Marine corpses here and there - these little details enhance immersion.

Mission 4

The Insane AI used by the Brown Terrans is intimidating at first, but once the player figures out where they come from and fortifies his base in the right spots, it's only a matter of pushing through the Yellow forces. There's no time to waste though, because the resources are scarce and must be managed wisely before Brown gets out of control (I liked this aspect). I don't know if this was intentional, but I could by-pass the final Yellow defenses by circumventing their outpost, which was somewhat anticlimatic after such a well-balanced mission. Finally, I noticed the unusual way you set up your location for Bunkers: as far as my experience goes, it's always better to use individual locations for each Bunker, regardless if 'preserve trigger' is used or not (you didn't use it, for this reason most of the Yellow Bunkers were empty when I attacked them). If you want to prevent infantry units from abandoning their Bunkers, you should use 'preserve trigger', but at that point the use of individual locations is mandatory, or else the AI will go crazy trying to manage multiple Bunkers contained in a single, large location. Some designers also advise to use modified hero units (Jim Raynor and Gui Montag) for Bunkers, because these units are ignored by the AI, thus making 'preserve trigger' superfluous, but personally I've always used standard infantry units without any problem.

So far I'm enjoying this campaign and I can't wait to see what the remaining two missions have in store for me. Unfortunately I'm busy these days, so it may take a while for me to get back to you, but have faith.

Thank you for your feedback. In the first mission the computer should send all the Zerg units to attack Kerrigan's Hive; for some reason the "attack" order doesn't work very well, so I modified the triggers and used a "patrol" order instead; in this way, no unit remains stuck at the Zerg bases, and the victory condition is verified by killing all units.

In the third mission a High Templar is given, so you are able to use psionic storms to decimate the waves of Zerg units. I agree with you about the orange Zerg coming suddenly from outside the installation; the reason is that the map was originally part of another project and I re-adapted it somehow in order to use it for this campaign. Now I have an idea to explain where these Zerg come from; I'm going to include it in the next version of the campaign.

I'm sorry if there are some grammar mistakes, I'm not a native English speaker. I'll have a little look also on this.