SC2Mapster

OH yeah and my drones ganked a bunch of vikings like a boss too :D

I captured the last organ piece with a mass overlord/drone exodus like a boss only to find out that I had to protect the leviathan with my last 3 queens and spine and spore crawlers :( . But I'm a boss so I beat the map on the first try.

The thing I like about your campaign maps is that you have to strategize and not mass up units to kill the enemies base because basically its impossible. All of my mutas were merced so to capture the last piece I had to send like 30 overlords filled with drones to capture the organ...

some criticism...

subtitles during the cinematics. I mean some people might not be able to grasp what they should do through the lengthy and random clips.... also there is a trigger error after you collect all of the organs. It was a good idea having the heal the leviathan objective. Good job. When I am done with my melee mob we can do a collab and you can use my swarm guardian and swarm host zerg units and some of the new game play mechanics I am adding in my mod :D

Hey what actors did you use for the kerrigan egg hatch... I can not figure out how to get the leviathan to hatch from it properly.

Redid the first mission... truly a terror now. All the bugs I reported I can report are quite safely squashed, good work. Given that it's the first mission in a campaign, I'd possibly consider lightening the attack waves up a bit, they're fine to start off with, but once you move down to the area near the Hives (even after destroying one) the zerg attacks seem almost limitless. This is possibly due to the campaign AI's natural tendency to rebuild its stuff. Otherwise still a good solid mission here, still fun the second time around.

Mission 2, brilliant concept, really teaches the use of the transfusion ability in the Queens. I encountered no bugs on my playthrough, just a few small things unrelated to bugs more balance in my opinion.

The middle area with all the bunkers, missiles turrets, and tanks is a real terror to take down. Given that you are trying to encourage the use of mutalisks, I'd consider dropping at least a few turrets, or maybe a few tanks. It felt a bit rough, even with my 150+ supply army knocking on the door (hydra, roaches, mutas) The terran base is a real terror as well, given all the tanks... all the turrets... but I'm guessing you didn't intend for me to wipe the floor with them... oh well, I like a challenge so feel free to leave it as it is.

The mutas really shined in helping to break down the wall of spline crawlers that you like to add at the front of your AI zerg bases, excellent work there. But continuing on, I flattened that base so there was nothing left on the map.

When the Leviathan started regenerating, the cutscenes you had there felt really really awkward (one because they didn't drop into cinematic mode, yet they forced my camera to stare at a stationary leviathan (really boring)) Either remove the locked camera, or add a bit of cinematic flare to it and I think it'll improve wonderfully, leading up to your absolutely wonderful end cutscene.

Finally, last but not least, your terrain... wonderfully well decorated and built. Fantastic work. Overall, you are off to a terrific start with this campaign and I eagerly await mission 3.

You get out of triggers what you put into triggers. I'm no fan of scripting, but the reality is, take the time to make sure they're clean and optimized, and the whole experience of working on your map is going to be that much more enjoyable. Especially if you intend to go back and continue modifying it.

As for the cocoon issue. I recommend using an item that doesn't generate a mini map ping automatically, if there is no version of the item you want to use that already does not generate a ping, make one in the data editor. Since it's just a pick-up it shouldn't be too much of a headache. Then just manually create the pings using the zerg ping icon, and have them deleted whenever the corresponding item is picked up.

You could easily make it an item that must be harvested by a drone as well, if you want to avoid cheese strategies of picking up the item easily while not explicitly saying "you can't use changelings." (A handful of burrowed roaches could probably cheese pretty well too with an overlord drop, but it may be a strategy you don't mind people using.)

If you're not familiar with the data editor, and want to know where to start, just take a look at the Terrazine Canister, you can even duplicate it and then change the actor model to your cocoon. My one major tip that will help you get started with the data editor is, when you duplicate something, don't duplicate all the components, only things you want to change, and the primary actor, the actor must be duplicated.

Hey Debe! I just had the chance to play both of your maps, I had a lot of fun with both of them. The overall concept for the campaign is pretty solid, and the maps themselves are fun, with clear, comprehensible objectives.

I'm working on my own campaign so I understand that these maps are still in development, as such I won't hold back and will try to provide as much critical feedback as possible in order to help you out! My feedback is all for Mission 02, I'll try to take some time to give you Feedback on Mission 01 later, but for now I'm sure Mission 02 feedback will be most useful as you've just now released it.

Presentation Feedback

• The last line of dialog in the opening cinematic passes too quickly, it's difficult to read.
• Consider using music cues to enhance the experience.
• Cutscenes can be skipped with any key, not just escape. I'm going to save you a lot of headaches and extra scripting, I took a look at your triggers and can offer you a solution that not only will make your life easier, it will solve this issue! Use the Allow Trigger to be Skipped action instead of writing a custom trigger. Be warned, wall of text incoming.

You will have to change a few things to accommodate for this, but it's very easy, and will help you keep your cutscenes nice and neat. The action, Allow Trigger to be Skipped, to clarify, makes it so that any time after that action has been called, to the time that the trigger is over, the pressing the escape key will cause the trigger to skip all remaining actions.

Place this in your cutscene after any setup has occurred. (Ideally right as you're fading in.) Make sure you disable cinematic mode and restore the player's camera in another trigger however, as putting them at the end of the trigger you allow to be skipped, will result in the player being stuck in cinematic mode. If you're interested in best practices, I would recommend creating a queue trigger for every cutscene, when you want to start the cutscene fire that trigger, and that trigger should have an action queue that executes setup, the cinematic, and cleanup. Cleanup includes restoring the game view, etc. Put the skip action in the cinematic trigger, so that if the player skips it, cleanup still runs.

You can also check whether a cutscene was skipped or not by creating a boolean, and setting it to true at the end of your cinematic trigger. During cleanup you can check that trigger to find out if the player skipped, you can use this to change the rate at which the camera is restored, and to perform any actions you may need to perform, like moving/killing/spawning units that may have occurred during the cutscene that need to remain afterwards.

Bugs

• There's an issue where the minimap pings for organic matter disappear before being collected. I can't be certain what the cause was, as I didn't have time to try to reproduce it.
• The player is allowed to build an Ultralisk Cavern and an Infestation Pit, but Ultralisks and Infestors are not allowed. (I'm guessing the structures are not supposed to be there.)
• The player has the option to build a Hive (I believe, I may be wrong on this one.) but I don't believe they have access to any Hive level tech.
• The player has access to Nydus Canal/Nydus Worms, is this intentional? It seems like this should be left for later if so, as this level focuses on air combat.
• The player can obtain organic matter very easily using changelings, consider forcing the player to return the organic matter to the Leviathan via a drone pick-up, or merely don't allow changelings to pick up organic matter.

Gameplay Feedback

• Consider adding some sort of additional feedback mechanisms regarding the Leviathan. This is really only for polish, but a notification that the Leviathan is under attack, or a notification that the Leviathan's health has reached a certain threshold would be a great way to make sure the player is alert. You can include a mini-map ping, dialog etc.

Trigger Feedback

• I wish I could give more feedback on this subject, and I may in the future, but some general feedback is to compartmentalize some things, and condense others. More folders, and breaking some of your triggers down into smaller triggers may help to keep things organized, but only compartmentalize when necessary.
• My only specific feedback is regarding your attack wave triggers: unless you have a compelling reason to do so, it would probably be more legible and easier to manage if you merged your attack waves for each AI into a single trigger. You can use comments to keep each wave separated.

Nothing of the sort, but when a huge zerg blob invades your base... I consider that being nuked.

Cheers though mate, from the sounds of it, you've got an awesome campaign in the making. Keep striving... (and don't make it too hard... :P make it fun)

nuked? sounds like someone cheated and put some ghosts in the map

First, thanks for a fun Zerg campaign map. (Zerg still being my favorite race and certainly in the minority)

Let talk about Terrain first... well... to be honest, I can be summed up easily, your terrain is phenomenal. It did feel a bit cramped in places, but provided that was the intention then it's perfect. It really complimented the feeling of being inside a Hive, surrounded by other nasty zergies.

Difficulty wise, I felt it was fairly solid. Certainly not a walk in the park, especially when it came to laying into the Zerg bases, which leads me to a question on that front.

I nuked the zerg base on the bottom left and almost immediately the attack waves stopped entirely. I proceeded to plunder the minerals and put a pretty big dent into the other zerg base, before realizing I probably didn't have the resources to go that route, so I secured the eggs and send my Brood Mother (aka Az'Khar) over to it. The timer started... saying I was going to be attack (had a big force ready...) but nothing ever happened. There wasn't even an attack wave from when I destroyed the zerg base in the bottom left. Also the scenario ended in defeat for me after the egg hatched... (minor considering its over one way or another, but probably indicating a bug of some sort)

Some other associated bugs I noticed (usually minor) When the other zerg was talking, the label for its name was off, it displaced something like it was search for a variable and failing. Also, your Brood Mother unit's basic attack abilities say things like Talon Claws Copy. Also, you've got tech tree glitches, such as the Roach's have the fast regen upgrade from the start, and upgrading it at the roach warren is redundant... but it does give them the cool glowing spines. Also, when you went to morph units... everything showed up, tempting me only to be disappointed when my drones couldn't morph the structures. I would consider removing the buttons for units that you can't and won't build on this mission.

But let's talk about story!

This was your best accomplishment in my book. From the moment the map started its clear that you had a purpose. While talking zerg are a bit silly... how else are you gonna get your story across, so good job there. The names fit, the setup fit. Best of all, the limitations on the base (only being able to get up to a lair and being stuck on the ground) fit perfectly with what you conveyed in your story. I'm interested to see more of this Brood Mother's story.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I wanted to give you some quality feedback. Oh and I didn't have to restart once... not sure which difficulty I was playing on though, my editor is set to default to hard though.

Good job. :( I was kind of disappointed that I didn't get to whale on the other brood with the leviathan. I liked how you actually had to use some strategy to win.... not just oh no fight countless waves. I used the spine crawler wall burrowed roach blob tactic. The A.i. gets confused and targets my roaches as the spine crawlers poke away. When you surround roaches they can't use their acid attack so the roaches in the back of the blob ate away at them with their acid spit. You basically have to secure the main nest then move the queen with a transport because she can't burrow. As I scouted around with changlings I noticed there was really no way to defeat her and even if you tried to destroy her base by base it would eat up your resources significantly.

You need some sub titles to go along with the opening sequence but god job. I can't wait to play part 2.