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 ashutosh_chakraborti:
Mass Recall khelo bhai.
It's a good time to play in this campaign again. Thanks you for this hard work!
Beautiful campaign. However, it is very difficult to translate, since there is no mod, and I had to constantly check with all the missions.
Just finished the campaign. I was very impressed throughout the entirety of it and it was obvious the amount of effort you put into it, thank you! I played on brutal for each mission and had a great time. Most of the later missions took me a while/multiple attempts to figure out a good strategy to beat and think you did a great job at providing a challenging difficulty for those who want it. I'm bummed though that it's over lol. Thanks again for the awesome campaign!
In reply to robotman07:
Glad you enjoyed it! It was a blast to create and even better knowing that people like what I created!
Unfortunately you won't see any new content from me for a while, but I do have another campaign currently in the works. Here's the map page if you're interested in learning more: https://www.sc2mapster.com/projects/custom-campaign-a-war-story
Thanks for playing!
Is there anywhere where I could see the dates that each update/version of a file was uploaded? I appreciate the detailed changelog you write below each update, i'm just wondering if there the dates are located somewhere else? Thanks
In reply to robotman07:
If you click on "Files" to view the full list of all available files, you can see the upload date. It's right next to the file size. This only shows the latest update, though.
In reply to dudkisc2:
Okay thanks, just thought i'd check. And thanks for the extensive strategy tips you wrote below for mission 16. Much appreciated!
In reply to robotman07:
No problem. I hope it helps you beat that section. It's not easy!
Could anyone offer any tips for mission 16, specifically the 2nd macro portion? I'm playing on brutal and really don't want to switch to hard, but I am not very good tbh. I've seen some youtube videos but the only one i could find that was on brutal was a strat that exploited the earlier version where the enemy didn't have detection. I'm surprised at how easy the enemy was able to destroy my thors, even with my poor skills.
EDIT: Nevermind, i think i got it. Haven't beaten it yet but am using nukes lol. Just want to say though that I don't think brutal needs to be made easier, as i said, i just am not very good. Thanks for making this awesome campaign dudkisc2
In reply to robotman07:
Glad you're starting to figure it out. It is a very hard section, so I don't blame you. Here's a couple of notes for the strategy I normally have a lot of success with.
1. Don't move out too early. It's okay that you don't get any Ammunition Centers during the first cycle. I begin moving out at around 2 minutes before the first shots fire. At that point I have enough of a fighting force to comfortably take out the bases.
2. Goliaths, Vikings, Banshees with Science Vessel support takes care of most of the troops. Remember to get a lot of Marines and Marauders for mineral dumps. (Maybe a couple Medics to heal)
3. Don't neglect your Heroes. They are exceptionally powerful and should be used to help you push. The only issue is keeping them alive.
4. Once the bases has been cleared, continue making a lot more Marines to fit in Bunkers, Perdition Turrets and possibly Planetary Fortresses (if you picked that upgrade) to hold off the waves. Split up your army to defend all the Ammunition Centers. You only need a couple units to protect the left-most one.
Hope it helps if your current strategy doesn't work out for you.
Thank you so much for the update you release 2 days ago. i also tried to complete mission 21 and could not because of that bug. i just watched the mission on youtube but maybe now i will play it myself
In reply to raducu273:
Yeah, I apologize for that bug. One of Blizzard's patches seem to have broken part of the map. They like to do that sometimes, unfortunately. Hoping you don't face any issues in any future maps.
im having some problems opening the maps
even if i do as you say in the description by opening the maps one by one, none of them open
i thought the maps could be giant and so it would take a while to load, but i've been waiting for 30 minutes and the bar doesnt go up 80% for any of the maps
i've tried creating folders with the maps inside them to make them trigger like a launcher but didnt work too
can you help me solving this?
In reply to manococcenzo:
Hm, I'm not quite sure what the issue here is. Did you download the map files from this page? Once that's done, you have to open each one individually in the editor.
Try opening up the editor without pre-loading a map. Just launch the editor directly. Then use the "Open" function within it to launch a mission, and see if it loads then. Sometimes, people have had issues opening them and that solved it.
In reply to dudkisc2:
yeah it worked now, thanks for the response.
great campaign btw ;)
I just wanted to say, this is a really enjoyable campaign. Nice work! (oh and i love the music selection, especially the metal gear music).
In reply to sodapopinski98:
Thank you! Glad you're enjoying it!
how do you make the cut scene for the battles? i want to make a battlecruser vs a fleet of wrath in a cut scene battle
In reply to digitalwolfy12:
That is not easy for me to explain here. Essentially, you just have 2 players fight each other by placing units of both players and ordering them to attack towards one another, while you have the camera panning around. But that's the very basics of it.