The Premise for Cerebral Horror:
This scenario takes place in an alternate lore-universe, where Kerrigan has enslaved the Zerg Cerebrate Daggoth and is forcing it to use its energies to reincarinate her fallen soldiers on the battlefield. A massive hive cluster protects Daggoth, and it's up to a team of three allies to destroy the cluster and eliminate the Cerebrate before the Revenant Brood becomes too large to be stopped. Mighty heroes accompany each force to aid in the destruction of Daggoth and put an end to Kerrigan's nefarious scheme.

How it's Played:
This map is designed for play over Battle.net or other multiplayer connections with the latest version of SC: BW. Three human players can select their race as in a melee game, but still begin the scenario with a rudimentary base complex. The map is small, and your starting base winds up being something of a mess, but it's the best I could do with limited intelligence. Anyway, each player begins the game with a few heroes appropriate to the chosen race which can be used in any fashion deemed appropriate by the players. Heroes with energy-based abilities will not run out of energy, so Tassadar, for example, can spam Psionic Storm to his heart's content.

The objective is to destroy the Zerg Cerebrate Daggoth, which will end the scenario in Victory for the allied players. This is harder than it sounds, and must be accomplished quickly, or the Revenant Brood will grow too large to be stopped. If you find that the Revenants are getting out of hand, it's possible to cull their numbers by destroying the tech buildings belonging to the red zerg on which a given unit depends. Doing so will immediately kill all units of that type, everywhere on the map and prevent them from respawning.

Other Notes:
To make army-building and resource management a little easier, each time one of the human players kills a zerg unit, 1/3 of that unit's gas and mineral cost are awarded to each of the players.

This is the first map in which I have invested the time, energy, and play-testing necessary to consider it ready for "release" into the community, so any feedback would be appreciated. In particular, players who wind up in the SE and SW corners of the map are encouraged to post about their experiences, as I have only been able to extensively review the map-layout for the center position in single player testing.

Finally, I'd be interested to know if the map is too easy, too hard, and most importantly, is it any fun to play? I would love to see some replays if anyone would care to create one.

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Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Mar 24 2008, 5:44 pm by Bonegrit.

I have updated the attachment in my OP with a slighty more tuned version of the scenario. It doesn't seem to matter, given the lack of interest I'm experiencing here. Maybe some of you more experienced community mappers can lend your insight; personally, I think this map is a lot of fun to play and I can't figure out what's wrong with it. While I didn't anticipate an immediate, ejaculatory response, I had hoped someone would have something to say about it.

Anyhoo, I was wondering if anyone would like to volunteer to host this map for me at a prearranged time on US East so I can experience the map in one of the positions other than that reserved for the 1st player. Just post here if you're interested. Thanks

-B

Well, I'm not able to host, but I'm willing the be the 3rd player of that arranged game, when you find someone to host it.

Anyway, you probably aren't getting much response here because this game is mostly melee. As far as I know, there aren't many people here who enjoy melee style UMS over other styles of UMS games.

Also, if you want to play the map alone OFFLINE in a different player slot, start up Starcraft, go to multiplayer, and select the last multiplayer option Local Area Network(UDP). Then make a user name, and host the map. Then simply move down to a different slot and start the game.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Mar 20 2008, 7:29 pm by Oyen.

Well, I decided to try the map out. I played by myself, and I choose to be purple(bottom left) and protoss. I'm not particularly skilled in melee, so I lasted no longer than 15 minutes. It appears to be quite challenging, although due to gaining money from kills, a player could just build tons of static defense(cannons/sunkens/spores/turrents/tanks/bunkers) and let the enemies rush in and get themselves killed, while the player gets tons of cash as a reward. Of course, since you said in your 1st post that they come in stronger and stronger waves, players can't just spend all their time turtling if they want to win. Out of curiosity, how long do you generally expect a full game to last? How long do you think it would take 3 players to kill all the enemy zerg?

Here's a replay of my game, so you can examine it closely.

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Hey, thanks for taking a look. I wasn't aware that people are more interested in modding than meleeing these days; personally I don't enjoy the RPs and Defense maps, but that's probably because I'm abnormal. I only recently started playing SC again after a few years hiatus, out of excitement for the upcoming sequel.

Anyhoo, I'd forgotten that replays don't work when AI is involved in the map, but I did notice that I apparently gave the purple protoss Extrators instead of Assimilators. Oops. I fixed it in the version that's up now.

To answer your question, I anticipate that a 3-player game should be completed in under 25 game minutes. If you go any longer than that, I'd say it is probably not winnable without some fantastic wizardry on the part of the players. You're right about turtling, you can block the choke point on the map and defend against attacks for a very long time, however the forces you'll have to face in order to crack into the zerg base will be insurrmountable. In addition, a failed attempt at raiding the zerg can be disastrous even early on due to the number of defending zerg that you'll kill and ultimately switch over to the attacking force.

Thanks for your offer to play-test in a 3-player game, I'll let you know if I find an additional willing participant. All my friends who play SC are long since out of touch.

Also, Artanis(the hero scout) was pretty weak in my opinion. He hardly helped me at all against hydras and mutas, and he died fairly quick. Warbringer(the hero reaver) was ALOT more useful, thanks to its awesome splash. It also endured quite a few attacks before going down. Perhaps make Artanis slightly more durable?
I'll test the heroes of the other races and give you my opinions on them as well.

EDIT: I tested out Terran and Zerg. I think the minerals at the bottom right need some rearranging.
Terran: Their heroes(tank+science vessel) are pretty useful and durable(especially with repair), but terran start with no defenses. I suggest 2-4 bunkers for terran, plus some rines to fill the bunkers.
Zerg: Their heroes(6 hydras+defiler) are very good and useful. The zerg start with 4 sunkens, which is good.
Protoss: I think the protoss could use 1 or 2 photon cannons at the start. Their reaver covers most ground enemies fairly well though.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 21 2008, 4:17 pm by Oyen.

I made a few updates to this scenario with your feedback in mind. I looked over the heroes and their stats and realized that I had left them in an unfinished state and never got around to balancing them out the way I wanted. I revamped the heroes such that the more useless heroes are gone (Artanis for example is now an Archon). Heroes will now scale as you purchase upgrades to remain useful in the late game. Specifically, the amount of damage they deal is greatly increased by weapon upgrades, rather than the standard 1-3.

As far as base defenses go, remember that the game is designed to be played in concert with others, so the additional heroes and players will balance out the lack of initial defense. Additionally, the infinite energy available to heroes allows for some advanced trickery that can seriously alter the outcome of even worst case battles. For example, your science vessel can blanket an entire army in defensive matrix, as well as irradiating the attacking force. By encasing the attackers in stasis fields, the hero arbiter can turn the tide of a battle by buying precious time. The zerg matriarch hero is able to wreak havoc with broodling spam. Each race combo has some advantage which can be utilized by skilled players. A favorite tactic of mine when playing Terran in the center position is to irradiate my hero tank and let the initial waves of zerglings dissolve themselves whilst trying to hit him.

Additionally, please note that the heroes assigned to each race are not the same in each position in order to prevent overlap and provide variety in strategy and tactics.

Final Note: Can I please ask a moderator to move this thread out of the Show-case and into "Production" whilst I continue to test and adjust according to feedback? Thanks.

Since this is your first map, if there is any specific special features you want to trigger into the map, but don't know how, I'd be happy to help you with it.

very cool map idea. I downloaded it and have begun playing it. I'll let you know what I think. So far everything seems really smooth.

And yeah, interestingly, maps where you have to build, melee style, don't seem to be very popular among mappers.

I was looking through the map triggers, and noticed that killing kerrigan also kills every unit around her. Afterward, she respawns and goes on raids. Killing her continues to kill enemy units around her. This is a pretty neat effect. Good job.

I've added another updated addition of this map to my OP. The core game-play remains unchanged, however I've made some alteratrions to the victory/defeat triggers such that each game can have only one victor, and you don't have to win in order to win. In this version, the player with the highest number of kills will always be victorius, even if all players are completely wiped out by the Zerg. You can still beat the Zerg in the same fashion as before, however it is no longer the only condition for victory. Additionally, I've added some flavor to the triggered Zerg attack waves in the form of an audio warning when they are incoming.

Please let me know what you think of these changes. Also, I am still looking for someone to host this map for me and one other player, as I am unable to host games for some strange reason. Whenever I attempt to host a map, other players get "latency is too high" even though I can play their games without a hint of lag. It's very frustrating.

-B

Yeah, I thought the Kerrigan kill zone was a nice touch, thanks for noticing! Of course, if you're rooting through the map in an editor, you've no doubt observed an abundance of unused artifacts from previous versions, like locations and switches that serve no purpose... Oh well, perhaps I'll contrive to clean it out one day.

Your choice of sounds seems pretty odd. I sort of expected Zerg sounds for invading zerg rather than Protoss sounds. Any particular reason for this?

I'm not using Protoss sounds, those are Infested Terrans, which will now attack along with the Revenant Swarm in ever-increasing numbers. I can't imagine how your copy of the map would play Protoss sounds, unless something weird is going on...

Oh sorry, when I listened to them, I thought they were protoss sounds. My mistake.