Hammer of Dusk Campaign
Mission 3 Released!
Story: It is the year 2615, humanity on the outskirts of the Koprulu sector struggle to fight a renegade Zerg swarm, controlled only by a queen known as "The Mother". As the battle between Terran and Zerg continues, a military group, named "The Hand of Dawn" is humanity's last hope at crushing the Zerg-Infested threat. Recently however, the Hand of Dawn has been hard-pressed to find any solution to dealing with the presence of the Mother's Brood, and because of this, Dawn technicians and strategists have been pushed to develop a brand-new combat AI, which, if implemented, should greatly enhance all of the existing mech's combat systems, and prove a worthy and much-needed asset to the war effort. Unfortunately, the Zerg seem to have noticed this prioritized effort, and have been bombarding the local planet (Naar) with numerous forces, causing planet-wide terror and distress. Commander Cain Monahue; a well-respected commander and war veteran, has been appointed to deal with the Zerg threat on Naar, and ensure that the new combat AI is safe, secure, delivered, and implemented. Whether or not the Commander can face this task, that is up to you. With the thousands of innocent people dying on Naar and throughout nearby colonies, time is running short and failure is not an option. For more details on the story, click here
Mission List
Episode I :: Old Enemies
- Homecoming
- Child of Honor
- The Widow's Aid
- Crossroads (In Development)
- Dawn's Edge (Planned)
- Our Finest Hour (Planned)
In order to play, you will have to do these things first.
1) Download and unzip the two Hammer of Dusk Mods, you can download them here
2) Move the two mods into your Starcraft II/Mods folder
3) Download the map(s) which you can find here, just download any mission you want to play.
4) Open the map in the editor and test the document. Play it and please give feedback.
As mentioned, please give feedback and report any bugs, I am constantly trying to improve my skills within the editor so every comment helps. Thanks again.
@belacadmin13: Go
@TaintedDreams: Go
Again, thanks for the feedback so quickly after the release of the second mission.
I did actually try to make mission 2 a bit harder than mission 1 as I learned that mission 1 was waay to easy even on its hardest difficulty, so yeah. I believe there is sort of a 'hint' in the beginning that Commander Monahue tells you to build defenses and units before turning in the 2K minerals, plus I wanted the Zerg attacks to be a bit heavier to encourage the player to build units before turning in the minerals.
I agree that the cutscene skip function was needed. It was also in the first mission, but it was only implemented for testing but I figured to keep it in for mission 2 and let players skip cutscenes, since after all, not everyone wants to watch cinematics or see the same cinematics several times after replaying the map. I wasn't able to determine what bug you said you found with the skip cinematic feature though, when I tested it, it seemed fine, but that might have been because I did change up the triggers a bit in the version I have. I'll update it soon to be sure.
Thanks for finding those typos :D I fixed them.
Yes, all units' stats are increased based on percent values, so you're right about the Archon, though I will give him a slight buff with shield armor and possibly some life, you make a good point there. With the Namien buff, trigger-wise everything seems fine, but I will test ingame to make sure and see if there is an issue with the difficulty buffs being applied. Namien Devotees were actually supposed to be weak, they were more or less distractions for the siege tanks while other units could get in a hit or two. Stalkers have been buffed a bit since the last version, and Zealots I think were fine.
When you say the map was easier after the Zerg, I kind of see what you mean. I had plans to make the Void Crystals a bit of a tougher objective while the last and final attack seemed easier than the Zerg's constant onslaught, especially with Swarm Mothers if you played on hard. So a buff is in order I believe. On a last note, the air units were there to distract marines, and hopefully force some marines out of bunkers to kill them. The air wasn't meant to be overly difficult itself however. I suppose the Void Rays could use a buff but I will run more tests and see.
Tried the second mission, there was quite a big difference in difficulty. Although that might just be because I turned in the 2k minerals earlier then I was meant to. Might wanna have a note pop up warning the player not to turn the minerals in until they were confident in their army.
P.S. I've noticed you added a cutscene skip function. Very nice job on that, that's the main problem with campaigns, the unskippable cutscenes which can become extremely tedious, but you've solved that problem quite nicely.
Edit: I've noticed a bug with that though, if you skip the first cut scene, then the dialogue right after that displays twice, including the Siege Tank help button. The dialogue after that works correctly though.
Second Edit: Found two typos. "The Namiel's won't allow us" or something like that, should be "Namiels" since it shows plural rather than posession. And "the lives of my men are at steak" should be "at stake".
Third Edit:
@jhepesci: Go
Not sure what your question is, sir.
download map??
@Terhonator: Go
wooIs there any chance for u 2 guys working together or something corporation?I hope there is one big solo campaign in the way. Hand of Humanity is awesome too, long long ago I already post in your comments haha~
@belacadmin13: Go
This is truly another Awesome solo campaign I've played, As a solo loved player, please take the thx with all my respect and support. Everything in the map is fine and Be made professional, Just looking forward to more maps in this series!
I think you forgot to upload the new mod files, you did take down the old ones though it seems.
@TaintedDreams
I like the idea. One thing i'm certainly going to do in future missions, and in mission 2 is add more 'mini-bosses' that should do basically the same thing. Since mission 1 was only a pilot, i'll be using it and the next mission I release to see where i'm going to go as far as how i'm going to structure the campaign as a whole.
Don't know if there's much more to do on mission 1 besides that, and I think I got most of the bugs and issues that people mentioned. Hoping to get more feedback before I finally release the next mission, which is almost done.
Well for the Ultralisk thing, if you have enough marines then yea, the Ultralisks do tend to get mowed down before they can do much damage (Only lost like 3-4 marines through all of Outpost 4 even though I had all my troops packed together like Sardines against Banelings and Ultralisks). I don't think it's matter of them being blocked so much as their meatshields (Zerglings for the most part) are faster, so they run in, they get killed, then there's nothing stopping you from picking the ultralisks off one at a time. {Assuming you have a decent amount of Marines before doing this, and were smart enough to bring Medics).
And an idea for the ending, maybe make the platform for the communications tower bigger, and placing a small/medium sized Zerg base on it? Or if you're going on the idea of there being special zerg breeds outside of the normal zerg (such as Brutalisk), having an extra strong zerg use that area as it's den. Small pack of Devouring Ones from Starcraft 1 possibly? (Zergling with 120 HP and 10 damage). Could probably sneak away with just using normal Zergling and maybe giving it to a separate AI so it shows up as a different color from the normal Zerg.
@DEFILERRULEZ
Thank you :)
@TaintedDreams
Changed some of those story issues you mentioned, was half asleep when I made Outpost 6 so I sort of overlooked that detail :D
You bring up an interesting point about the ending, which was suddenly changed before I made the map to compliment the next mission a little better, i'll see what I can do about it.
@Wacclian321
I will look into the mineral line issue, thanks for mentioning it.
For the Marauder upgrade, it was enabled at the start because you do unlock Marauders after you defend Outpost 4. I'll make it so that the upgrade isn't unlocked until then though, I see where someone would be confused.
I didn't originally plan for Commander Monahue to benefit from upgrades, though it makes sense that he should, in future missions I will try to change this.
As for the Ultralisk problem, not sure if you mean the Ultralisks were useless because they were slowed by other units, or if because they never got there (Somehow?) I'll replay the map myself and see what you mean.
Terrain isn't my strong suit, sorry. I'm working on making my terrain better so I know it may be lacking, good to know the lighting was fine though heh.
As TaintedDreams said, the Outpost 4 part was the hardest part of the game I believe, which sort of takes away from what a typical mission might be structured like. What I mean is, the mission basically went from (harder to easier) rather than the expected (easier to harder). I'm surprised that you say the Hard difficulty was too easy, since I seem to struggle on hard. I guess i'm just worse than you (Lol)
I have more missions planned that don't follow the typical scheme of what a Wings of Liberty Mission might follow. This first mission was just a pilot but hopefully everyone will find the future missions a bit more unique and enjoyable.
My review of your campaign:
Bugs I noticed:
● The mineral line is quiet buggy. One of the mineral fields has been misplaced, which causes some of the SCV's to bug out.
● A marauder upgrade research-able. It doesn't affect the gameplay or the map at all, but it's still a bit weird that you can research "Marauder Slow" and not train the unit.
● When researching "Terran Ground Armor" and "Terran Ground Weapons" it seems that Commander Monahue doesn't benefit from any of them.
● While defending the Outpost 4, I noticed that the Ultralisks had a hard time reaching your units. Whether they were blocked by the terrain or their own allies, they were completely useless.
Terrain
I think the terrain was over-all dull and very boring. It repeated itself constantly and it looked like any other "Mar Sara" map. Eventually, I think the lighting was awesome.
Did I have fun, while playing it?
I must admit, I had fun! However, pnce I reached the Outpost 4 Objective "Defend until reinforcements arrive" I sighed loudly. Rest of the map was cool. I played on (Hard) difficulty and it wasn't really a challenge - But again... I massed up, micro'ed abit, even though I sucked and beat it.
My expectations for your future projects
I don't know if it's only me, but I've been fed up with the Wings of Liberty campaign, which makes you (the player) bunker up, lock up your base with siege tanks or/and just turtle-like-a-baws - I hope your campaign won't have ANY of these missions, because they are stripped of creative, dull, boring, cheesy, easy etc. etc. etc. <.<
If you want me to be impressed you need to think different. Go look at the Wings of Liberty campaign - Study the missions well - Make something creative. Force the player to play more aggressive instead of Blizzard's famous "Protect your base for 15 minutes" and "Go get some artifact (3-5 minutes depending on your macro)"
"Good job"
3/5 :)
Tested it out, I found it really fun actually (big improvement from your previous maps, especially with the zooming out with map for more content. Was a bit worried when I first started and saw how small the map was.) Aside from story issues (Why is a Sergeant in command of like 100+ troops? Same with the Specialist but on a lower scale), wasn't too much wrong. The ending was really anti-climatic though. Two Spine Crawlers? The first Outpost fight was way harder with the banelings at the end. Even the random side quest with the Engineers on the road was harder.
Good Job :)
@Terhonator: Go
Hey thanks for the feedback so soon, it's good to see someone likes the campaign already. Few things about what you said. The two mods were actually an error. Originally there was only going to be one, but I made a good portion of the map before the 1st mod was completely done, and well, things got messed up. In the future i'm only going to use 1 mod for the rest of the maps, but the first mission only requires 2 mods. (I'm still new to using mods in general.)
Hello. I played first mission.
You have nice beginning for your campaign. I hope you make more missions. Few things: