Hello to everyone, I'm new to these forums. I have released a new campaign for Starcraft, "Tales of Halcyon". It is both a standalone campaign and an unofficial prequel to "Enslavers", I hope you will like it.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/skpwi66h339j4bh/Tales_of_Halcyon.zip (3.16 MB)

The events portrayed in this campaign take place during the Terran timeline of the Great War, precisely between "Revolution" and "The Big Push". You act as the Colonial Governor of Halcyon, a Confederate fringe world facing the early stages of the Zerg invasion. Being mainly an agricultural world with very limited military capability, Halcyon finds itself unequipped to deal with the situation, and with the Confederacy in a state of chaos following the Antigan Revolt, any help from Tarsonis seems unlikely. Your daily routine consists of allocating the scarce mineral resources, monitoring Zerg activity and calming scared colonists and worried landowners. All of this suddenly changes when a mysterious wealthy man comes up with an elaborate plan to tame the alien creatures, so to prevent them from overrunning the planet.

"Tales of Halcyon" is meant to be an intermediate level campaign with a moderate difficulty. Hardcore players will either breeze through it or get bored, all the others should get a decent challenge. Please note that this campaign was designed to be played with Starcraft patched at least to version 1.04 (it will not work with the retail version). While it is technically possible to play this campaign with Broodwar, this is considered cheating, since the extra units and technologies would severely alter the gameplay, making all of the missions entirely too easy. If you have Broodwar, please play "Tales of Halcyon" in Starcraft mode, at least on the first run.

I�d love to hear feedback on whether or not you liked these maps, and why, thus comments will be highly appreciated. Also, let me know if you have problem accessing Mediafire from your country, I will upload the campaign on a different server. Cheers!

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 23 2019, 4:38 pm by Andrea Rosa.

You can just disable the units in the map editor. Scenario -> Unit Settings.

Also you should probably have used a hero tank instead of the regular one, so he would be considered a hero (like Alan Schezar) as well as giving the player access to regular Siege Tanks. You can pretty easily modify the portrait and sound set if you wanted Larsson's to be that of the regular tank's, too.

Just from playing the first map I can see that attention to detail was paid when it came to designing the gameplay (Zerg will drop units behind the player, attack with air and ground, etc.), but in my opinion the attacks aren't very difficult once you put in stationary defences (Bunkers and Missile Turrets). Perhaps scripting some additional attacks would make the player a bit more cautious when it comes to taking Larsson out of the base (since he's great at anti-ground defence but also excels at sieging the Zerg clusters). As of right now the meta of the mission defaults to nothing but Goliaths since Medics aren't allowed, so it's a bit of a one-trick pony that just forces the player to mass a single kind of unit and a-move until they win.

Haven't had the time nor will to play the remainder of the campaign but I do recommend you add some more dialogue as well, since there's really no story to invest in unless you read the readme (even then, it's not really reflected in the actual map).

You can add me on Skype (Pr0nogo) or email me (pronogo@hotmail.com) if you want some more assistance or comments, but thanks very much for submitting your creation and best of luck on your future campaigns/maps! I hope to see more from you in the future.

Hi Pr0nogo. First of all, thank you for your feedback. I will try to edit the maps with Broodwar's StarEdit (I have Starcraft and Broodwar on two different machines), disable the expansion units & technologies and see if the maps can still be saved as .scm files. This is essential, because the campaign must be playable with the original Starcraft.


Yes, technically Larsson is not a true hero, but this does not affect gameplay, aside from the lack of an highlighted unit wireframe, and there is no risk of having him killed via Spawn Broodlings. Besides, having access to regular Tanks would made the first scenario too easy (Tanks become available only in the 3rd level, but you are playing as Schezar by that point. It is somehow implied that Larsson's Tank is the only one existing on Halcyon)


I guess this does involve modding and/or use of an advanced editor, of which I have no experience. I'm willing to try this in the future, but I wanted to make an old-style campaign, something that could be made by using only StarEdit.


This is a good idea, I'll surely implement it if I will update the campaign.


I've long considered about adding a prologue text before the briefing, but in the end I decided against it for a variety of reasons. However, it could be a good idea. Concerning the story not reflected in the map, well, it's only the first map. Later in the campaign, some more informations about Halcyon are revealed, including hints on its agriculture-based economy. In any case I'm not a good story writer, plus English is not my native language, so I will gladly accept any advice on how to improve the story.

Why cannot work on starcraft patch 1161?

It works on every patch from 1.04 onward.

This campaign reminds me Precursor and Enslavers.

Why can't yo use scmdraft 2? Because there are some errors with the trigedit.

Hello RawFlesh0615. Please, can you be more specific about the errors you've found? Did some trigger fail to work?

I am going to play this campaign on Friday Oct 30.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Oct 26 2015, 1:35 am by Rawflesh0615.

i'm gonna play this now.

This took much more time than I had planned, however I've finally updated the campaign. Nothing exceptional, just a few additions and some fine-tuning. Most of the changes were made following users' feedback, and I want to thank everyone who gave me useful suggestions that helped me greatly in this process.

The download link is the same as before: http://www.mediafire.com/download/skpwi66h339j4bh/Tales_of_Halcyon.zip (3.16 MB)


LIST OF CHANGES:


MISSION 1: "DEUS EX MACHINA"
- In-game dialogues have been expanded.
- Added a Vespene Geyser.


MISSION 2: "BAD MOON RISING"
- Minor changes to the terrain.


MISSION 3: "UNNATURAL SELECTION"
- In-game dialogues have been expanded.
- Added some sparse resources.
- Minor changes to the terrain.
- Players can now build Nydus Canals.
- Fixed typo.


MISSION 4: "THE STAND"
- Player's starting units and resources have been slightly increased.
- The number of Zerg spawned has been slightly reduced.
- Infested Terrans no longer attack from the eastern gate.
- Infested Terrans now deal 200 damage (previously 250).


MISSION 5: "TURNING THE TIDE"
- Added a Vespene Geyser.
- Minor changes to the terrain.


MISSION 6: "ORBITAL DELIRIUM"
- Added some sparse resources.
- Minor changes to the terrain.
- Enhanced scripted attacks.
- Stasis Cells now have 400 Hit Points (previously 500) and can no longer withstand a direct nuclear strike.
- The Hit Points and Shields of the Pylons surrounding Schezar's Command Center have been increased to 600.
- Added a trigger that automatically destroys all Missile Turrets located around a couple of isolated enemy buildings.

While I'm gathering ideas for a new Starcraft campaign, I have released an updated version of Tales of Halcyon. The new version fixes a problem that could occur in levels 1 and 5, where the AI could freeze after prolonged play (basically, at some point, the enemy ceased to train new units). Apparently, this was related to the use of the Zerg Area Town scripts, as I have removed them and now the problem is gone. Also in level 5, the number of Civilians that must be rescued has been reduced from 20 to 16. Finally, some minor changes have been made to all maps.

The updated version of Tales of Halcyon can be downloaded here:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/skpwi66h339j4bh/Tales_of_Halcyon.zip

The problem is actually related to u having disabled units and buildings for AI while running AI which requiers them.
In mission 1 you use Zerg Campaign Easy, which is basically identical copy of Zerg Campaign Hard. This script at certain point of existance requests creation of Defiler Mound, at least three Defilers, Greater Spire and periodically tries to send Guardians in attack waves. Because of you disabling them, AI will not be able to produce any of this, but he will constantly try. Unfulfilled request for Defiler Mound and GS with their level of priority (80 btw) will cause AI to never research upgrades after this point and also struggle with some other activities. Without ability to add Guardians to attack waves, each attack wave which is supposed to contain Guardians will start late by 3 minutes. The reason why removing areatowns helped is because this AI also has request for 2 Hives with priority 150, which forces him to cease all activity until 2 Hives are set up, and at the same time AI cannot access Hatcheries located in the area towns. It may appear to work propely now, but it's far from that state.
On mission 5 AI tries to research disabled tech and probably had same problem with amount of Hatcheries avaliable (it also has 2 Hives with priority 150)
Also, use "patrol" for triggered attacks instead of "attack". Units with "attack" triggered order behave differently from one to another, but most of them will rush to target, not attacking till being hit. "Patrol" makes them move with a-click, though will send back at destination.

quick note, zerg campaign easy-hard want to "build" defilers/queens instead of training which makes them hang up and broken. use campaign scripts instead like Z4D or something

Thank you very much for these valuable pieces of information, UEDCommader. Once in a while I get REAL technical help, instead of being dragged along on endless discussions on the adherence to StarCraft canon (this happened on other forums, not here).

Unfortunately I have no knowledge on how to create StarCraft AI scripts, so I had to settle for the ones provided with the game (other games I have been designing for, such as Age of Empires, make it much easier to handle this aspect, while Blizzard gave no explanation on how to create AI scripts, they just threw at us a bunch of default scripts and said "here, just use these"). As far as i know, these campaign scripts were designed specifically for Enslavers, so they work good for full tech tree scenarios. However, I wanted the game progression in TOH to be similar to the original Blizzard campaigns, so I had to work around this by disabling certain units, buildings and technologies, both for the player and the computer opponents. For example, in the first mission I didn't absolutely want the computer to train Defilers, Guardians and Queens, but only Zerglings, Hydralisks, Mutalisks and Ultralisks with almost no upgrades. I see what you mean when you say "It may appear to work properly now, but it's far from that state", however it works for the kind of mission I had in mind (the only remaining quirk I've noticed is that the Drones stop to gather resources after a while, but this doesn't represent a problem, since they can't really run out of them).

Do you know any good online resource on how to create AI scripts from scratch and how to use them? That would be greatly helpful. Thanks in advance man!



Thanks Nekron, but TOH is a campaign designed for the original StarCraft, not for BroodWar: I fear I can't use your scripts.

Pr0nogo discord server is the quickiest way to access information you requiere to work with them. However, you may also consider using scripts from basic six episodes of campaigns - much of them are using restricted tech tree and will not try to build some kinds of stuff even if you allow it in map settings.

You can always disable BW technologies in map settings and use AI scripts which do not use BW tech either. As examples, only UED AI's are using expansion terran tech, while Dominion and Raynor scripts are sticking to default techtree even while still being BW scripts by nature. Same works for Protoss (only Nerazim scripts from BW Zerg 7, BW Zerg 9 and BW Zerg 10 will untilize expansion tech, Fenix & Aldaris forces will not) and Zerg (though only several scripts like BW Protoss 2 and BW Terran 3 will stick to default tech since advanced Zerg units are not bound to any specific faction).

Interesting. How do I import AI scripts into a map? Do I simply have to save the triggers containing them and then load the saved triggers into my map?

Only way to import fully custom AI scripts is to mod the game itself. Running certain scripts is more easy, you just select the name of script you want to run for player instead of "Protoss Campaign Insane", SCMDraft has them all. Search for "SCBW Mapping: Implementing campaign AI" in google for more info.

This list compiled by Nekron may also be of some use: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g5s0_tk7pcnVBqDiCgLWNgnuoNVu8TatXtROrWZ2JGU/

I have just realized that I forgot to update this post with the list of changes in the latest version of Tales of Halcyon, which was released on September 30, 2019. So here it is:


MISSION 1: "DEUS EX MACHINA"
- The Zerg now research all basic upgrades (previously they only upgraded flying units).
- All the dialogues of the hero Tank (John Larsson) have been duplicated, so his transmissions now work properly either when he is in normal or siege mode.
- Added new sound effects.


MISSION 2: "BAD MOON RISING"
- The Protoss are slightly more aggressive.
- New triggered attacks.


MISSION 3: "UNNATURAL SELECTION"
- The Morians now start with fully upgraded armor for their Dropships.


MISSION 4: "THE STAND"
- Added a new sound effect, a WW2 style air raid siren that precedes the Zerg attack waves (this feature was meant to be present right from the first release in 2015, however I couldn't find a suitable free sound effect back then).


MISSION 5: "TURNING THE TIDE"
- The resources have been rebalanced, so to encourage the player to create more expansions.
- New triggered attacks.
- Minor changes to the terrain.


MISSION 6: "ORBITAL DELIRIUM"
- Added an extra CPU player that, after 15 minutes, will constantly try to nuke your peripheral defenses.
- Fixed a bug that prevented Schezar's Scavengers from fully upgrading their units.
- Schezar's Scavengers now produce more Tanks and Ghosts and are generally more aggressive. They also use Spider Mines now.
- The Hit Points and Shields of the Pylons surrounding Schezar's Command Center have been increased to 1000.
- The final confrontation with the Torrasque is now harder, since he is accompanied by a wave of Zerglings (that will distract your units) and Overlords (that will nullify the cloaking field provided by rescued Protoss Arbiters).


Meanwhile, Tales of Halcyon has reached 2000 downloads on my MediaFire account, so I take the opportunity to warmly thank everyone who spent some of their time playing it (and giving advice on how to improve it) during the past four years.