Brood
Only hours after the Queen of Blades had been neutralised as an immediate threat the various Broodmothers of the Zerg Swarm were suddenly without a unifying force.
Some simply disappeared to fulfil their own agenda, others turned on their kin to determine who was the stronger.
As with all conflicts there were winners, and losers.
Az’Khar is the Brood Mother of a small Brood with a specific purpose, the cultivation and protection of a small number of eggs that house the developing embryos of the monstrous Leviathans, who serve the swarm as vast carriers. Allowing them to extend their reach across the sector
With the Queen of Blades gone Az’Khar stood little chance against rival Broodmothers who desired her charges as their own.
Reduced to but a handful of Zerg left under her control and with her overriding directive of protecting the Leviathan eggs now impossible to fulfil, Az’Khar is now left with only one option, to run.
But to do this means to somehow escape Char. Otherwise she will be caught between her sisters and their belief she is too weak to be allowed to live or the Terrans who will destroy all Zerg indiscriminately.
This mapmaker is a genius. The terrain is so detailed i would say even the sc2 team couldn't compete.The story is very simple but its also very good. I wish the mapmaker made more of this excellent campaign. Maybe blizzard took him from us :P
very good custom campaign i enjoyed it and the terrain was very well done i wish there were more missions to this
I've skimmed through the this some, and I think it's fair to say it's the best custom campaign I've seen yet on SC2. I'm disappointed I haven't seen more. I like that you pay attention to terrain; so many of the custom maps (both campaign and not) feel so fast-assembled in this area. Map-makers in general seem to be in control of making cool functions and mods, but aesthetically, there's a long way to go.
I like that you try to do a Zerg campaign, which cannot be easy. I am making my own 10-mission campaign (which hopefully will live up to the standard I am proclaiming here), and seeing the work of fellow campaigners is encouraging.
I have some pointers, though. Read if you want, or skip if you don't. Mind you, I've tried all the missions, but not completed any of them yet.
- Although the terrain is good, some of it is a bit hard to navigate through. This is very evident in the first mission. You use a lot of giant rocks, which Overlords can fly through, which looks odd. It's also a bit hard to see the main outlines. Lastly, the space is so cramped. Maybe that's on purpose, but I feel that my gameplay options are limited because of it.
Look at the following picture. It's almost impossible to see there are two levels there (even with the creep cleared). Part of that is because you make your maps horizontal when they should be diagonal.
Let's look at a Blizzard example. Here everything is a bit simpler, and by adhering to a diagonal principle, it looks more professional. It's also easier to see the outline.
That being said, terrain is hard to right! But in general, creating "diagonal" maps is a good start. Try to make them easier to navigate through too. You want the challenge to be micro and macro, not trying to get an overview of the where the hell you are. Studying Blizzard maps is the best lesson, IMO, as they generally look good. You're lucky too, because creaing a Char map means there are three blueprints to follow in the campaign.
Still, you have ambition and effort, which I applaud. There are some grammar mistakes, but my main compliment with text is that a lot of the sentences are too long, some even not using comma (I think a sentence in the second mission's loading screen is a paragraph long).
Hey, just played missions 1 to 3. I like them. I machine gunned transfuse on mission 2 with my 8 queens guarding the leviathan. Made the last portion of the map last about 10 seconds.
I didn't discover any bugs or exploits playing through once. I look forward to more.
There's a bug on the first mission with Az'Khar, even normally, there seems to be a problem with the name. I forget the exact chain, but instead of just Az'Khar, it says something along the lines of Units/Zerg/Custom/Brood Mother/Az'Khar. Also, if you burrow Az'Khar at all, when you unburrow her, she becomes a regular Brood Mother. Also, you might wanna make it more obvious that there's a path leading directly to the Egg Chamber, I had such a hard time trying to beat this level at first because I thought you had to go through the South Eastern Zerg Base.
@lolzguy: Go
Probably the campaign will continue on summer,is the perfect period for creating maps :)
Sigh, I wonder if there is still hope that he/she will continued with this map :(
Very good work,but i have some counsels. For the first mission u could do an Az'Khar more powerful,with a more powerful attacks<sub>more attck range,more dps,and carapace,and a hero screen so i can see it,because she is an hero effectively. For the other missions nothing to say is all near to perfection</sub>
Hi Debe2233 :)
I played mission3 few days ago and well... it was good. No bugs, it looks good, nice storyline continues...
Just waiting for additional missions. Keep up the good work!
Are you planning to create a mod file for your campaign? I just made mod for my own. Especially if you are you going to use Lurkers and Scourges in next missions. Those require some data editing - I added those for my next map.
Thanks Moz :) Yeah I’m still trying to nail down a lot of the text, while i tend to have an idea (say for example terrans control Zerg player destroys control towers to free zerg) i then need to convey that message across to the player and that’s bloody hard... mostly because as a Zerg campaign you have to have Zerg communicating their objectives and Zerg are as alien as they come.
I probably wrote myself into a corner with only having a single character at the beginning, in hindsight some better setup at the beginning would have saved me a great deal of pain later on :p I apologise to those waiting for updates im actually getting married on the 20th so i haven’t had a great deal of free time as of late but my social diary shall be much more empty at the end of the month so I’m hoping to get the third map finished and the forth started!
Also I’ve been playing around with databanks and dialog boxes to create a way to collect research points during a mission and then spend them in a between mission area before moving onto the next. I don’t think that I could retrospectively add that into this campaign but it’s something i certainly have in mind for my next :)
-Debe
I just played through all three levels of your campaign Debe, and I like it a lot. The balance was good, levels were well designed and interesting to play through and the story is compelling as well. Main comments would be;
it is necessary to load the map twice to start. It loads once, and get back to the loading screen.
I have noticed that... i think the map file might be slightly corrupted. It kept losing the dependencies unless i loaded another map first. Weird. Unfortunately copying the map didnt seem to fix the problem so it has remained :/
-Debe
Really well done! The work you put into terraining paid off.
Fantastic work. All maps have been very creative so far, hopefully there is more :D Only one thing I noticed, it may be silly but I noticed ... on Map 2 - Duty of Care, all enemy units on the map are a level with upgrades(Level 1 Armor/Weapon), except the Firebat and Medic, which makes no sense because Terran infantry are already evolved. Well i am playing now the map 3 =D Keep the good job man! Edit: I just play the third phase. I enjoyed all missions, especially the third I found very interesting and funny(well i love zergs together). It only remains to have a cinematic video at the end hehehe. Another thing that caught my attention in Phase 3 was a bug - it is necessary to load the map twice to start. It loads once, and get back to the loading screen. (ps.: sorry my bad english, hope you understand)
Great Campaign so far!!
The terrain is really well done, and the story is starting to look interesting.
Waiting for the final version of mission 3, and for next missions ;).
Some feedback on mission 3 that I noticed thus far.
-First cutscene has several moments where I'm staring at a black background, I realize it's not 100% yet, just so you are aware.
-Lurker ability is still on the Hydra command card
-Had a group of Zerg units spawn allied to me, but were trying to attack my guys... could just be a side effect of attack wave triggers
-Side Zerg unit groups remain hostile, even with the elimination of the nearby Hive Mind Emulator
-The allied AI attack waves seem to get really lost once they've broken through the outer part of the terran base. (A possible solution is to use waypoints to force them to follow a certain path, if you used different paths for each base then it would still look fairly random)
Other than that I didn't run into any trigger errors. Terrain as usual is gorgeous.
Thanks for the feedback guys :)
There is no ending cinematic at the present time... thats something that im working on now along with the re-writing the text and doing the opening cinematic.
Personally i'd say if your 50 minutes into a game then your probarbly starting to want an end so the fact you can dart in and pick off a tower isnt a major problem... maybe it needs a little more health but generally as long as you cant take them all out within 10 minutes of the start im ok with it :)
The darkness... well all i did was use the Zhaka'das(sp?) tileset and lightning so... there is no change from what Blizzard uses other than all the smog which i tend to keep to the edges so you shouldnt experience it all that much in areas where your actually fighting. I'll try to lighten it a tad to make it less eye hurty tho :)
The purpose of the mission is to destroy the beacon, if you can do that without help then good on ya, but its obvious getting the Zerg Hives to give you a hand is the optimal way to do this. I see it as a "Destroy the towers and watch the fireworks and maybe join in a bit if you want" kind of thing. But maybe the Beacon would be better left to be destroyed by the player alone?
I think some of the building placement is off a bit so the buildings dont get rebuilt... not a major problem as it tends to give some indication that the Zerg are making progress even with only one tower. That said once all three are destroyed then the overwhelming Zerg forces dont give the Terran a chance to rebuild... but thats kinda the point :p
-Debe
Lolzguy: Well, in my opinion the darkness and the problem with navigation is an essence of this terrain. :) I agree with the AI problem but not with the HME - because I destroyed all HME's with mutalisks and I think that is normal in the all Starcraft maps (for example in Starcraft I if you have mission with objectives "bring someone to somewhere" usually you can drop "someone" to "somewhere" from a dropship which is escorted to "somewhere" by 4 other dropships which function is only to concentrating the attacks on it - so you don't have to destroying the oponent base). And also the sudden ending - in my campaign that i'm working at I always have a cut scene on the ending but the original SC2 missions usually doesn't have it so I think it isn't error. I was little supraised because the bacon was destroyed by the ally ultralisk so I don't know about it but... why not? :)
MISSION -3
Well because it is still in Beta, I will only talk about the mechanics and not the sudden ending that really shocked and confused me.
Terrain
- First I like to say that this is a VERY DARK MAP and is very smoggy! I had a bit of trouble navigating through the beautiful terrain. It adds more difficulty to the map but after a few minutes of playing, it wasn't really that fun as my eyes where aching.
AI
- AI now the AI is very wierd because it seems like that they are not repairing the buildings at all when the allied hive clusters steam rolled the base. I am not sure if this is intentional, to have the AI do the damage and to have you to do destroy the HMEs.
Missile Turrets and HMEs
- For the third HME, located at the upper map section, I found it easy to destroy with a handful of mutas, quick jumping and sniping the HME. Still I don't know if that is intention or not as it was about 50 minutes into the game when I had the chance to do that. However if it is not intention, I heavily suggest increasing the health of the HME and have workers to fix it (Having lots of Missile Turrets does not stop the Zerg :) )
Overall - Beta
No other Remarks to say but that this is a great map overall. The darkness should be kept for the difficulty. The map is very well designed (as it is in Mission 1 and 2) and I have to say, great job with your missions.
PS - Sorry for the Wall of Text
Well. You need to give an "information" to a map because it saving like a "Another Starcraft II Map". And the second - after destroying the beacon the creatures run across the building - so i think the "pathing" will be a good idea. :) And I must say that I'm a big fan of this campaign. The terrain is delicous, the idea is great and I'm seeing here a lot of conections with the Homer's "Odyssey". You're very inteligent, true map maker. Thanks for fun. :)