StarCraft II: Annihilation Campaign
Russian Translation:
A russian team has taken the liberty of translating the campaign to Russian! Download it here!
On their website you can find more Russian translations of custom campaigns. For a full list of available campaigns in russian, click here!
Introduction:
This is my first serious map project for StarCraft II. I've always enjoyed the campaign aspect of StarCraft and have played through both the Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm campaigns several times, along with a multitude of different campaigns made by the public. I therefore decided it was time to create my own.
"Annihilation" is a 24 mission campaign with three different story perspectives that will intertwine into one final conclusion. Featuring high-quality terrain, lots of different characters as well as a wide variety of mission scenarios, this campaign, featuring 4 difficulty levels, will hopefully create an enjoyable experience for players of every skill level.
Link to the official Map Feedback thread can be found here.
Features:
- Three seperate storylines intersecting and coming together into one final conclusion.
- Play as both Terran, Zerg and Protoss.
- Heavy focus on quality terrain and environments.
- Custom soundtracks and several interesting Hero units.
- 24 missions pitting you up against many different challenges and mission scenarios.
- A total of 14 boss battles pitting you up against a variety of different tacticts and strategies.
Story:
It all starts with Investigator Maxwell Reeves of the Spec-Ops: Infiltration Program, who sets surface on the planet Callithus IV to assist the Terran settlers with what initially appears to be a minor Zerg problem. However, they soon realize that events has been set in motion that will potentially change the fate of the universe, and it will be up to the different clans to work together against stopping this threat.
Installation Guideline:
Note: When playing the maps, avoid using the Resume from Replay function, as this may break aspects of the maps. Instead, use the Save/Load function.
- Download the Annihilation zip file, extract them and put all the files inside the Maps folder in your StarCraft II directory. The file path should be something like "StarCraft II/Maps/Annihilation". If the Maps folder does not exist, create it yourself.
- Open the "AnnihilationLauncher.SC2Map" file through the editor. To open the editor, either drag and drop the map file to the SC2 Editor icon, or open the editor, and use the File -> Open function on your taskbar.
- Once the Campaign Launcher is successfully opened, launch the game through the editor by heading into File -> Test Document on your taskbar.
NOTE: Do NOT change any of the file names. Doing this, as well as not having the files in the correct filepaths listed in the Installation Guideline above, will prevent the campaign maps from connecting and in turn, make the Campaign Launcher completely useless.
Ignore the "DS_Store" files that you may recieve upon downloading. These folders are added automatically when you store a file in folders on Mac computers. You can safely delete these.
Missions:
- Annihilation 01: Mindless Creatures - Completed (RELEASE)
- Annihilation 02: An Unfriendly Ally - Completed (RELEASE)
- Annihilation 03: The Idu'ran - Completed (RELEASE)
- Annihilation 04: Fallen Brethren - Completed (RELEASE)
- Annihilation 05: Departure - Completed (RELEASE)
- Annihilation 06: The Daggerfang - Completed (RELEASE)
- Annihilation 07: Homecoming - Completed (RELEASE)
- Annihilation 08: The Wandering Shadow - Completed (RELEASE)
- Annihilation 09: Bio-Weapons - Completed (RELEASE)
- Annihilation 10: Newfound Enemies - Completed (RELEASE)
- Annihilation 11: Ussorus - Completed (RELEASE)
- Annihilation 12: Reawakening - Completed (RELEASE)
- Annihilation 13: Facility 14A - Completed (RELEASE)
- Annihilation 14: The First Step - Completed (RELEASE)
- Annihilation 15: Entrance Into Risk - Completed (RELEASE)
- Annihilation 16: The Breach - Completed (RELEASE)
- Annihilation 17: Last Stand - Completed (RELEASE)
- Annihilation 18: A Major Downfall - Completed (RELEASE)
- Annihilation 19: Planetary Incursion - Completed (RELEASE)
- Annihilation 20: Sentient Reality - Completed (RELEASE)
- Annihilation 21: Mysterious Revelations - Completed (RELEASE)
- Annihilation 22: The United Forces - Completed (RELEASE)
- Annihilation 23: Frontal Push - Completed (RELEASE)
- Annihilation 24: Edge of Annihilation - Completed (RELEASE)
Difficulty Levels:
This campaign contains 4 difficulty levels, ranging from Casual, Normal, Hard and Brutal. Your success in completing the individual missions on these difficulties greatly depends on your level of skill.
- Casual: A difficulty requiring little to no multitasking and micro skills, featuring less enemies and focus on story.
- Normal: A difficulty requiring minor multitasking and micro skills, featuring fewer enemies and focus on story and minor challenges.
- Hard: A difficulty requiring good multitasking and micro skills, featuring a high number enemies and focus on challenges and entertainment.
- Brutal: A difficulty requiring great multitasking and micro skills, featuring tremendously more enemies and heavy focus on challenge.
Troubleshooting:
You may have trouble opening these maps if you open them directly from the map itself. If you do have this issue and the map opens up as just an empty map, then I suggest you open it in the following way:
- Open up the StarCraft II Editor.
- Once finished, go to "Open".
- Find the map in your catalog, and select it. Using this method to open any maps from the campaign should fix any issues you have with opening them.
Music
You may notice some of the music in the campaign are not from StarCraft, in fact, I focused heavily on the use of soundtracks to bring the campaign to life. If you wish to see a full list of all the tracks confirmed to be used, click here.
Credits:
- Special thanks to the respected composers of the various different music soundtracks used in this campaign.
- Special thanks to Thrikodias for the awesome custom models and units used in this campaign.
- Special thanks to VastanX for creating the unique models for various Hero units used in this campaign.
- Special thanks to all those who play and provide useful feedback to help improve these maps.
- Special thanks to users JayborinoPlays, deltronLive, Redlerred7 xMasterKD and Palnai for playing and providing entertainment and feedback for this campaign.
Discord:
Enjoy Annihilation? Follow my official Discord, and engage in discussions about the campaign, or chat with me directly. Following this discord also gives you access to frequent updates and WIP showcases of my latest campaign project, A War Story.
Patch Notes:
No patch notes are planned for the campaign.
Videos:
In reply to jfinneg121:
I would like a launcher if possible just saying since instead of spamming editor which can crash your pc if to much content is on due to all the doodad loading happening all at once. I would suggest a launcher anyways but otherwise one of the most advanced and awesome campaigns i have met. Best hopes for you and live long, Happy And awesome
Played them all on Brutal in 4 days. Really great campaign.
Definitely several tiers above just a collection of your standard clear out the enemy base missions.
In reply to lawhsia:
Hey DudkiSC2 there's a glitch in mission 19-Planetry Incursion. Researching "Burrow" in the infestation pit for some reason and ironically prevents Swarm Hosts from burrowing altogether. Specifically the "burrow" command is completely removed after the research finishes. It's present as long as "Burrow" is not researched and when researched it removes the "burrow" command from all present Swarm Hosts and new Swarm Hosts. So far only affects Swarm Hosts.
In reply to indurrago:
Why I can't go further on second bridge to the last two cannon in mission 15? I can't go to them, because something block them.
In reply to Forge_User_73496993:
I started to play 2 days ago, amazing work by the way, but Protoss cannot be controled in anyway.
Interesting and cool idea, but it's impossible. And a question, this campaign is placed after or before Amon war?
In reply to Forge_User_73496993:
So.. in watching some of jayborino's playthroughs of some missions, I noticed my model/portrait for Arrow doesn't match the one in his games.
I had a similar issue with another campaign, where it replaced someone's portrait with Nova, but it also messed up some actual gameplay as a result. I hadn't noticed any gameplay issues with this campaign due to this, but maybe I just don't know what I'm missing?
Do you know if I did something to mess it up or if there is a way for me to fix this? Or is it just because the maps were made awhile ago and something got changed in the blizz files for the game? I do own all the blizz missions (such as nova pack and LOTV) if that makes a difference.
In reply to Kirlock:
EDIT: originally quoted more of his post, but it got marked as spam? not sure if it's showing up for others, so reposting with less quoted.
Everything he said.. holy crap that mission is ridiculous. I'm in the same boat, play brutal co-ops all the time and can do most brutations, but I'd been having trouble even on normal difficulty with some maps. So, I went down to casual on this one, just wanting to cruise through it. NOPE! No chance. I even used a cheat code for 5k of each resource, still couldn't do it. There's attack waves dropping every minute or so, on every side, plus 2 really entrenched/populated bases to clear? Not counting the first expo one, that's not quite as populated with units. That's harder then most blizzard brutal missions. Plus, you've got enemy compositions that are great at cracking static defenses, so it's not like you can just set up a big amount of them and be fine. You can't be clever AND send a ton of units at the player. For casual, the dropship attack waves that hit on every side should be like 3 marines and a medic, for perspective. Instead, it's like 8 marines, 2 firebats, 2 medics, a siege tank or two, a thor, couple goliaths, etc.. on EACH side, plus the wraiths that trigger from elsewhere when you take an amplifier. I can't even imagine what brutal looks like if that's casual.
If you just had to get all 4 of them, and not also clear the protoss out, it'd be a lot better. You could possibly cheese it a bit, but for casual/normal settings you could reduce the total number of units everywhere in HALF and it'd still be tougher then it should be for those settings.
It also didn't progress after I cleared all the protoss, but I'm gonna chalk that up to it bugging out from the cheat codes. I sure hope 'clear all protoss' doesn't mean there's a cloaked observer sitting somewhere I have to track down, like in that one previous map and the burrowed zerg. Not sure why you think that kind of objective would be fun man.. Make a trigger to reveal all the protoss units and structures at that point, or after a certain amount of time, if you really want to use that as an objective.
In reply to Kirlock:
In reply to DudkiSC2:
Still playing my way through, up to mission 12 right now. Overall, the campaign has been great.
I could write 10x more text about what's good, but it's easier to point out the few issues I have and you can assume everything else is great :)
The last few missions have felt like the difficulty is off and/or there's some very tedious or annoying game mechanics. Not talking about difficult puzzles, but rather like on mission 10, with the protoss dudes and hopping between the three entrances to the base, opening doors in each of the others. There wasn't any clues or tricks to solving it earlier, you just had to run around, back and forth, hopping in and out of the drop ship. It was simply trial and error plus a little guesswork. The constant loading in and out of the dropship became very annoying as a result. You couldn't see the other maps, so you had to make an educated guess as to which one got opened if it wasn't in the current map.
Prior to that, the assassin's creed homage with the war pig was annoying, only because you can be IN grass and he'll see you if any part of the model crosses into another square that isn't in the grass. It was better to just stand behind it and not chance it. Also, his detection radius is not obvious and takes trial and error to figure out. It made solving the door very tricky to figure out, as I was too afraid to go in quickly after him. Spent a ton of time trying to find an alternate entrance.
Oh, and the Malrick fight with Reeves and the Superfriends needs a better tip/hint about the objective of the fight. I beat him, but I'm STILL not sure if it was because I had to 'overload' him X times, or do X damage while he was overloaded. I just kept kiting, standing on beacons and then eventually I just won.
I don't want to come across as too negative here, I just binged through these 11 missions in a single sitting (and still going!) so obviously it's great overall. Just some things that kind of annoyed me in the recent missions. Didn't have any such issues with the first 7 or so.
In reply to Kirlock:
In reply to DudkiSC2:
Like, why not make the war pig a detector just to show his 'aggro' range? It wouldn't change the puzzle, you aren't cloaked anyways, but it's a quality of life improvement. I enjoyed every other part of that mission immensely, even when I got stuck a few times (such as that one computer near the security guard, just assumed there wasn't enough space to hide next to the computer so i spent forever trying other things out).
Oh, or on the first malrick fight with khadruos and voradin. The placement of the beacons for voradin meant that half the time when he ported over to one, if I didn't move him immediately (if I went to micro khaduros for a few secs) and came back to move him.. he would then teleport back to the other side because more of his model was on the back side of the beacon. If you widen the small choke point setup at the beacons, so you can move in all 4 directions 'off' the beacon before continuing along to the generators, that would remove that small issue. Currently, you can only move in one direction from the beacon. ex: If you are on the left one, you move SW to get off it. If you are on the right one, you move NE.
To contrast my nitpicks, do you have a donation page setup? I would like to throw a few bucks your way, it's obvious you've put a lot of work into these.
In reply to Kirlock:
Hello, Dudki. I recently played mission 22, and I enjoyed it very much. There were a few things I think you should look at.
Other than that, I had a great time playing the mission and see our protagonists fight as one.