SC Legacy Ep1 - Ashes of Freedom
StarCraft 1's Terran Campaign Re-Imagined
Overview
Ashes of Freedom is not a remake or port but in fact, a complete adaptation of the original StarCraft 1 Terran campaign "Rebel Yell" into a StarCraft 2 experience. The Legacy project is intended to capture the soul and feeling of the original game, while using Wings of Liberty's campaign as a benchmark for quality level design. As such, many levels will play out in a completely different way than their predecessors. There will also be the addition of new levels, as well as modifications to tech, units and the addition of new units.
- StarCraft 1's Terran campaign re-imagined
- Entirely new level designs
- Addition of new levels
- Bonus objectives with special upgrades
- New and modified units
- Adjusted Tech Trees
- Same beloved story, new exposition
Work in Progress
Ashes of Freedom is a new project, and as such is currently under development. At this moment the campaign includes the first mission "Wastelands." Please check back periodically for updates.
Download & Install
1. Place both .SC2Map files in the folder "Maps" in your StarCraft II folder, under Program Files.
- If you do not have a maps folder, create one inside of the StarCraft II folder, case sensitive: "Maps"
2. Place "Legacy.SC2Mod" into your "Mods" folder found in your root StarCraft II directory.
3. Create a shortcut for StarCraft II, go to the shortcut properties and in the Target field add: -run "Wastelands.SC2Map" -difficulty # or (depending on which level you wish to play) -run "Backwater Station.SC2Map" -difficulty # after the path to the .exe and the closing quotation. # should be 1-4 depending on the desired difficulty.
- Casual (New to RTS games)
- Normal (Somewhat familiar with RTS games)
- Hard (Confident StarCraft 2 player)
- Brutal (Very good StarCraft 2 player, looking for a challenge.)
4. Run StarCraft II via the new shortcut. Enjoy.
Note: Either map can be opened in the editor, however, playing the level through the editor lacks certain optimizations that may cause parts of the level to experience slowdown depending on your machine. Additionally, the map can be run by telling your computer to open the map with SC2.exe, however, it will default to normal difficulty, and cannot be altered. Blizzard support for custom campaigns is currently non-existant, so please bear with these simple instructions.
Media
Feedback
- Any feedback is absolutely appreciated
- Negative feedback is especially appreciated
- Please specify the difficulty you were playing
- Feedback here or in the forum thread is best
- Thank you very much!
Comments
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_ForgeUser6766876 Owner
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Posted Jul 11, 2011That's odd: such support was available for WC3. Ah well. :(
I agree with your ideas about difficulty, except that realistically players who find your maps are 99% going to have already finished Liberty at the very least. I guess I can maybe try introducing new players to the original story using your maps, though, whenever you finish. :P
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Posted Jul 10, 2011@Iecerint: Go
For me this is a personal project, actually, so the interest is great! I really started and continued the project for personal reasons. I plan to finish all 6 campaigns, how long that will take is the real question.
Good feedback and suggestions so thank you! There definitely is a problem with the actuator btw, you're not the first person to get lost trying to find it. (My girlfriend got lost as well haha.) And yeah, there's no support for a top level GUI or "hub" style map for campaigns currently. Or saving data as far as I'm aware. I'm hoping to see more single player campaign support in HotS, hoping very feverishly.
Oh, and regarding the difficulty, the campaign is meant to be able to be played by a new player. Expect the difficulty to ramp up though. Also, I'm planning to ramp up the difficulties on hard and brutal much quicker, so if you're looking to be challenged check those out. I feel that offering a campaign for players who may not be as skilled is absolutely important. I want people to be able to play through regardless of skill level.
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Posted Jul 10, 2011Are there tools with the editor to make a GUI from which whole campaigns can be selected? I'm guessing no, since the more literal Terran/Zerg campaign legacy project just has them chained together without a top-level GUI.
Anyway, I'm excited to play more. Can't wait to see how it all looks when it's finished. :)
Are you planning to go beyond the Terran campaign, or will you base it on interest upon the end of the Terran campaign, or...?
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Posted Jul 10, 20112. Immediately to the right of where the APC stops, there's a dig-site-looking spot with a little cave that you can't access. I thought this is what the dialogue was referring to by "dig site." I also walked all around the map and didn't find anything except for a Life +25. :P
I guess I just missed the path to the left...your ping idea after a minute would fix the problem, presuming you decide there is one (and given your idea about how the difficulty would be balanced, there probably is one).
5. I guess Normal may just seem too easy because I'm erroneously interpreting it as a finished campaign. Normal campaigns tend to become challenging by the end of each section, but not until the 8th or 9th mission, maybe some token difficult ones on the way. I guess this'll become easier to judge in the context of the rest of the campaign.
6. It's excellent that you've put so much thought into the continuity issue. When I got the Firebat scene, my interpretation was that the scene was purely gameplay-based. I agree with your feeling about Adjutant scans, too; I was just trying to suggest something manageable that would make the edit easy.
Maybe you could have the Firebats have some kind of exchange with Raynor when they're rescued? The player is probably expecting some kind of payoff at that point, anyway.
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Posted Jul 10, 2011@Iecerint: Go
Thanks for the feedback Iecerint! A few responses:
1. Not much to say here, thanks for the kind words.
2. You weren't able to find the actuator so you had to end the mission? Where did you end up looking? The actuator is actually about 10 yards from the stopped APC, there's a path to your left, if you take it you'll see a beacon marking the location. A lot of people seemed to have an issue at this part, I think I'll add some dialog and a map ping after a minute if the player doesn't find it...
3. Oops, I think I remember doing this and totally forgot to fix it, minor issue, I'll fix it for the next release.
4. Thanks, I'm aware of this issue, it will be fixed in the next release, you do indeed need to keep him alive.
5. Are you sure normal is the most appropriate difficulty level for you? Normal difficulty is intended for people who are relatively low skill players, but who are still somewhat familiar with the genre. When you played Wings of Liberty Mission 02, did you also roll over the enemy? The difficulty should be comparable, as in each case it's the first mission you're building a base and training units.
If you're looking for a challenge, try playing again on hard or brutal!
6. The firebats have been stationed at Backwater before your arrival, and they sent out a scouting group to find out what happened at the Confederate installation. So they're aware of where the zerg are located, and their defenses to some extent, and definitely aware of the geography since they were stationed there.
I wanted to avoid using the Adjutant too liberally because at some point it starts to get redundant that all of your information is coming from arbitrary scans that she can perform. The dust storms were also cutting off communication to the north, if the adjutant could scan there regardless, sending a group of units to find out what happened would be meaningless. There's some other explanations I could come up with as to why the installation itself couldn't be scanned...
I need to get more feedback on this, I definitely don't want people to feel like there are large plot holes, so I need to see how many people felt the way you do. I will consider changing it if it is in fact the majority of players.
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Posted Jul 9, 2011I've played through and have a few comments.
1. Overall, this is done very well. I especially like how you took the standard mission briefing in the first case and made a much more interesting mission by making it more literal.
2. In Wastelands, I had trouble figuring out how to find the actuator. I assumed I had to get into that mine-cave somehow, but I couldn't walk over. I went all over the area and couldn't find it. I ultimately gave up.
3. In the mission briefings, clicking the button a second time (say, by mistake) causes a second briefing to be superimposed over the first one rather than the briefing to restart. Should be easy to fix.
4. Mission objectives for BWS do not specify that Raynor must stay alive. I suppose I'm not certain he has to, but.
5. I played on Normal, and I think the difficulty is too easy. The Zerg attacked only once, and my bunker'd units handled it before I could click the map to see where they were. By the time I had the marine upgrades, I had 130 units...
6. Possibly continuity issue in BWS: how do the Firebats know about the location of the Zerg hive, or about its defenses? Maybe throwing in an Adjutant scan or something could clarify this narrative issue.
All in all, great map, especially given it's only in Beta. I'm excited to see what'll happen as you continue working. :)
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Posted Jul 9, 2011Ah, OK; I had the quotations messed up. Thank you. :)
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Posted Jul 9, 2011@Iecerint: Go
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Blizzard\StarCraft II\StarCraft II.exe" -run "Wastelands.SC2Map" -difficulty 2
The entire target window should look something like the above, give or take, depending on the location of your StarCraft II.exe, so, assuming you right click on the .exe and create a shortcut, then drag it wherever, just open the properties, and add the stuff after the closing quotes. -difficulty 2 will be normal difficulty, 1 is casual, 3 is hard and 4 is brutal as stated above.
If you're playing Mission 2, Backwater Station.SC2Map instead of Wastelands.SC2Map, let me know how it works. Sorry for the difficulties.
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Posted Jul 9, 2011I think I am mostly inept, but I don't know the final syntax for the instructions for editing the "target" field of the shortcut properties...when I simply append the -run instruction, I receive an error that the command is invalid as written, so I think I'm doing it wrong.
I'd just drop the map onto the unedited icon, but that just opens Starcraft II normally and prompts me to log in...
Sorry. Could you clarify the set-up for me, perhaps? :X
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Posted Jul 8, 2011Wastelands Beta Ver1.3 is finally up, lots of big changes!
Change Log
Additions
Changes
Bugs
I didn't have a chance to implement all of the adjustments I wanted to, but there has been a lot of adjustment and polish since 1.2. A lot of the changes are on the way the triggers are setup, a lot of optimization has been done, but it ended up taking a lot longer than I expected, so some features haven't made it in yet. All the major bugs of 1.2 are fixed though.
Also, congratulations to Alex06 for finding the Easter egg, it was the "Hatch" from Lost:
If you didn't have a chance to look yourself, keep checking back, more events like this will come down the road I'm sure.
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Posted Jul 7, 2011@Tyneara: Go
I may move the whole section, but it's more likely I'll just make sure to spawn the tumors in later, and make sure you can't select the rocks. In reality, they should then just look like debris and a doodad. The idea is that any new player wouldn't know that these rocks "should" be destructible when playing. It's a case of the meta game here, where you already know what destructible rocks look like. I'll also add more rocks that auto-destruct when the first bit are destroyed, that way it just looks like some sort of rock slide occurred and part of the canyon caved in, not somewhere to explore.
Excellent feedback though.
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Posted Jul 7, 2011I play on Hard or Brutal usually in WOL, hard is still my "for fun" difficulty level. Brutal is for adding challenge to missions that I already know how they're going to play out. (such as my 4th/5th playthroughs of the WOL campaign)
Regarding the tumor, I could see past the rocks and then tried to destroy them, upon realizing they were invulnerable I got a bit disappointed. Upon reflection, you might be able to improve upon this by moving the entrance so that its more off to the side, yet outside of that main base where your dudes will spend most their time roaming about and possibly back in a corner, that way you'll be more likely to miss it when you're striving to reach Backwater station.
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Posted Jul 7, 2011This wasn't really mentioned too much on this page yet, so I wanted to go ahead and mention it here for those who don't follow the forum thread. There's currently a contest to find a hidden Easter Egg in Mission 02 "Backwater Station." If you find it and post a pic (in game, please don't use the editor) you'll win something fun! (It's not a new car.)
Easter Egg Hint #1
It's not underneath creep! With this in mind, you now know you won't need to kill any Zerg bases to find it.
Easter Egg Hint #2
It's not in a place you can go, you can't touch it, but you can see it. So check high and check low.
Easter Egg Hint #3
It's a reference to a popular TV show, I can't be any more specific, for now!
Easter Egg Hint #4
You will find me among that which can make one man blind and another man see. What is nearby can make one building strong and another cease to be!
@Tyneara: Go
Thanks for the feedback Tyneara. Not being able to build bunkers was actually intentional, they're a feature that will largely be introduced in Mission 3, which is a holdout. There will be an achievement for keeping all of the bunkers alive during playthrough of this mission though, a suggestion I have to thank Alex06 for.
Thanks for catching the bug with Raynor, you do need to keep him alive, not sure why it didn't print, will take a look.
As far as the creep tumor goes, are you saying you explored the cliffs near your base and saw the tumor before the bonus objective was unlocked, thus the rocks were still invincible and so you couldn't get to the tumor? Good call, I'm thinking I may make the tumor spawn in after the objective starts to minimize confusion for people who explore more.
Glad you enjoyed the various choices on how to take out the orange zerg, that's reassuring to hear! I haven't had much feedback on that yet. I'm also happy to hear about the difficulty, is hard the level you normally play in WoL?
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Posted Jul 7, 2011Hey, I just ran through Backwater Station, as I've come to expect from you, very well polished, outstanding terrain, all the good things I've come to expect from your mission.
Ran into a few things that I'm not sure if they were bugs or if they were intentional, but I'll list them off anyway. -When you get to "Backwater Station" you gain a number of bunkers (some in silly places, not that they're needed) but you can't build any. Again, I'm not sure if this was intentional or not. -I'm assuming Raynor needs to survive the mission, but it's not listed in the objective tracker. -Creep spawns under the rocks and you can see the creep tumor (and in my case want to destroy it) but the invulnerable rocks feel a bit... cliched. I'm not sure if there's a really good fix though.
I particularly enjoyed the three choices to handle the orange zerg, along with the side mission to save the firebats, both were quite enjoyable.
I played the mission on hard and had little difficultly with it, frankly it felt just about right for where this mission is placed in the campaign though, so I'd say you're good there.
Just some thoughts, hope they help as you make this mission better and better.
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Posted Jul 2, 2011@lolzguy: Go
To clarify, you'll absolutely have choices in the future, even choices between bonus objectives, just not choices between rewards on a single objective. Example:
You may be offered bonus objective A. "Save the Princess" and B. "Save the Toad" and each will have a reward, and only one can be completed (either because the other will go away, or doing both would merely be too difficult.)
But there won't be a case where you'll complete a single objective and have a choice of upgrades, not, at least, for the Terran campaign. Look forward to different ways to upgrade in Zerg and Protoss campaigns, but I won't release those details yet, there are some fun plans in store though!
There are plenty of missions to come! As for the main entrance to the Zerg hive, that's intentional, they have a well defended position there, that's why there's two other choices (go around and avoid it entirely, or use the back entrance.) If you're attacking from the front, try move/stopping until your units are in position then full attack, that will prevent any bottlenecks. That's a general SC2 hint though, nothing specific to this mission. :)
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Posted Jul 2, 2011Aww ... :( was hoping to have choices in your missions. Anyway the path that was referring to was the path to the Orange Hive. I found it hard to get all of my men and Raynor to the spine crawlers to attack which was quite annoying.
Still hoping to see more maps in the future :)
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Posted Jul 2, 2011@Debe2233: Go
Hey Debe, thanks for the feedback! Glad you enjoyed it! Now down to brass tacks!
1) Yeah, I had this complaint from my girlfriend during early alpha (lol.) I... Am not sure what to do about it yet, as it was sort of imperative that the red Zerg be able to attack your main base directly, but I have some ideas!! They're going to require some reworking of the terrain and dialog if I decide to go with them, so it may not be until 1.2 or 1.3 that they're implemented.
2) This seems like another case of my terrain unfortunately failing to communicate. The reason the top half of the map is actually so barren is that as you're moving up the map you're getting into more barren territory, where there is high dust storm activity. The harsh environment wouldn't allow for trees, and would blow over or whittle away jagged rocks and small debris. One thing I realized though is I never ran a foliage filter, but some of the top half of the map will probably have foliage turned off. I tried to add little details like the dead marines on the cliffside etc, and some cacti, but the reality is, adding too much stuff looks awkward when you consider the nature of the area. (If you look off to the sides there are sand dunes, etc.) But I will definitely take this feedback to heart.
@lolzguy: Go
Thanks for the feedback lolzguy! ... I wish! Unfortunately I am not being payed to make SC2 levels. Maybe in the future... hah! Anyway: When you talk about the fork, do you mean taking the left path, or do you mean attacking them head on is too narrow? The left path should definitely be more narrow, though if it's really tedious I will look into it. The main path shouldn't be too narrow, but if it is I may need to adjust that, just not sure which path you're speaking about.
The coolant tower having the reticle put on it without being visible is absolutely a product of this just being in very early beta. Mission 1 was released in mid beta, and has since been further polished. I wanted to get this map in people's hands earlier, the result is, it's very incomplete, but hopefully people know that going in! I know some people would like the chance to play sooner, but I hope everyone realizes it's not a finished map. (Keep the feedback coming though! Even if it's something I already planned to add, there's always great insight!) Expect to see a lot of polish features like revealers, map pings, cutscenes etc. make it in for 1.2 and 1.3
Yeah, the tower looks a little bland at the moment, I'll be adding more details in. I don't want to go too crazy though, as the coolant tower needs to be not too clogged up for it to have a big impact on the reactor.
Regarding the bonus mission! There will definitely be something on the user interface to indicate and show you the upgrade you'll receive by completing the bonus objective (currently, you can see if you mouse over the objective.) I'll be adding something placeholder, and eventually whenever I get around to constructing the user interface for the custom menus, I'll be adding a fully fledged pop out panel where you can view what the upgrade will do in depth etc.
As far as choosing between two upgrades, while a good suggestion, I will unfortunately not be taking this route. I do want to make sure players are aware of the upgrade they're going after, so if it's something you're not going to use (like you don't care much about armor) you won't go after it. But there are no plans to give any choices, you will see offensive upgrades for firebats as soon as Mission 05 "The Jacob's Installation" though. (Yes I said 05, look forward to an entirely new mission between "Desperate Alliances" and "The Jacob's Installation!")
More on why there is not a choice: You'll be forced in later missions to sometimes choose between two bonus objectives, either literally, or because it may be too difficult to complete both. This will be two separate objectives though, not deciding via a menu. I want to keep the bonus objectives and campaign upgrades standardized on a per race basis. I promise you'll have the opportunity to make choices on which objective you complete in later missions, and as far as upgrades expect Zerg and Protoss upgrades to be totally different!
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Posted Jul 2, 2011Again a brilliant map designerdougm :) Really polished and a lot of fun. The mission objectives were nice and clear and the briefing was really well done. Only three things let it down slightly and these are minor things really. They in no way really detract from how good the map is as a whole.
1)The Firebat Rescue mission. It seems like a long way to slog it all the way back to your main base to get into that area. I realise this is probably not really fixable now but rather than have the entrance there it might have been better to do that half way between your starting base and the broken bridge.
2) The Terrain starts off great. The first base you rescue looks brilliant and the whole area to rescue the firebats is really well done, but then around the broken bridge area and up it loses its steam. Maybe this is because it’s not quite finished yet but the end Zerg base and the back route all look very empty.
Other than that really enjoyed it and looking forward to the next one :)
-Debe
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Posted Jul 2, 2011Are you sure you are not a Blizzard employee ... cause I on to you -.- .................... Jokes :) I have to say that your maps are extremely good, polished and are very unique by adding other concepts to the mission (Defending a truck for mission 1, rescuing firebats for armor on mission 2). However I do have some suggestions for your second mission.
- The Fork in the road seems too narrow, making it hard and tedious to get all of your units to destroy the Hive, expanding the land we have to walk on can prevent this.
- When the coolant tower is pinged the coolant tower is not visible, I would like the coolant tower to be visible to the player otherwise it will be uncomfortable to look at (hard to explain why but I think you know why it feels uncomfortable to look at).
- Still on the coolant tower. You can add the infested home doodad on the coolant tower to make it look infested by the Zerg as when we look at it, it is just a coolant tower with an orange paint job .....
- For the bonus mission, you can add a choice bar to whether have Stimpacks for the firebats, or have the armor for the firebats. It will be great if you can add that, cause some people prefer Stimpacks over armor and others prefer armor over Stimpacks
I have encountered no bugs yet. So I will leave it there.
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Posted Jul 1, 2011@Denop: Go
Hey Denop, sorry for the confusion, but you'll need to install the Legacy.SC2Mod found in the .Zip file! Just follow the instructions in the README, or drop the file into your "Mods" folder in the root StarCraft II directory. Unfortunately, the game will allow you to boot the mission without the mod installed, but as Raynor is a Legacy unit, this will cause unfortunate errors. Try again with the mod installed! I will look into creating an error message and canceling the game if the proper mod is not installed in order to avoid this.
Also, a newer version is available with a few hotfixes, still pending approval but you can download here.