Hello everyone! StarCraft: Inconsummate is my latest SCBW campaign project. The campaign can be downloaded now by visiting the release party at the link below! http://www.staredit.net/topic/17359/
And you can watch the trailer here!
Inconsummate requires version 1.16.1 of StarCraft, which can be downloaded on the same page as the main project (link above). Screenshots and a brief overview of the project can also be found within the release party, but to summarize:
Inconsummate is a fully-voice-acted campaign set on Aiur, and boasts two powerful new heroes with unique mechanics; custom terrain to facilitate visual storytelling; custom AI scripts that take the challenge to a new level; an impactful story that will appeal to lore buffs and laymen alike; and much more!
edit: It's done! Final update is here. Hope you guys enjoy!
On June 11 2017 20:06 Pippah wrote: Will this be made playable with 1.18 ?
Unfortunately, 1.18 only allows for simple modding, and the mod component for Inconsummate relies on button and exe editing not currently possible in the new versions. I'll look into how feasible it will be to update it once SC:R comes out, but until then, it'll be stuck in the past. 1.16.1 is free to download however (and I've included a link in the release party in case anyone needs it), so it shouldn't be too much a hassle!
On June 12 2017 02:50 Pr0nogo wrote: Thanks guys! Let me know what you think!
I love that maelstrom on buildings ! And that evil defiler!! Man , nice abilities !! Shots like a spore or something~ I really enjoy your work ! Well Done !!
On June 12 2017 03:04 prosatan wrote: I love that maelstrom on buildings ! And that evil defiler!! Man , nice abilities !! Shots like a spore or something~ I really enjoy your work ! Well Done !!
Thanks man! Glad you like the changes! I hope they feel make the heroes more unique, haha.
On June 12 2017 03:08 abuse wrote: abuse liked this.
Appreciate it man!
On June 12 2017 03:52 GGzerG wrote: Looks very interesting, thanks for sharing. I don't play campaign's but I think it is awesome that you do this sort of thing for the community bro
No problem man! I'll be making campaigns for a while, so even if it takes you a while to get into them you'll have plenty of content to choose from! Cheers!
On June 12 2017 12:58 Galtath wrote: Just to let you know, the .rar file doesn't seem to include the Wmode.dll that is supposed to be there.
D'oh! Fixed. Thanks for catching that!
On June 12 2017 12:58 Galtath wrote: So far I think it's interesting! The voice acting is a little hit or miss for me, but over all I'd rather have it than not!
Thanks! I'm interested in your opinion on the full package once you (and I) complete it.
On June 12 2017 17:15 Glioburd wrote: Oh man I will download and play it! I've played a ton of campaign made by players, so a campaign with bigs mods changes should be awesome .
On June 12 2017 18:46 noname_ wrote: I found no sign of this on cc, what`s the reason of it sir Pronogo?
Due to some unfortunate drama many years ago I am permanently banned from CC, and most posts advertising my projects are removed regardless of who posted them. Church said she updated her campaign listing with it, so maybe it's over there somewhere? Either way, feel free to give it a whirl and let me know what you think!
edit: I've released a new patch for the project, available from the release party thread on SEN or from the link in the video's description. Nothing major, just some small fixes and optimizations.
On June 14 2017 01:42 Ryzel wrote: Hey! I'd love to give this a shot but I'm stupid with old versions. I couldn't find the link to 1.16.1 to download, could you post a link?
On June 14 2017 01:42 Ryzel wrote: I'm also new to the custom campaign world of Starcraft in general. Any recommendations would be welcome =)
The installation instructions should walk you through the setup. If the mod doesn't work even after you download 1.16.1, try renaming your 1.18 StarCraft exe to something different, like "StarCraftA.exe", and the mod should work fine.
You might find the campaign a little challenging, so just make sure to save often! Once you have 1.16.1 up and running, you can play a lot of other campaigns as well. Here's a (very large) list of campaigns people have made over the years: http://www.campaigncreations.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=6645
On June 14 2017 04:25 onlystar wrote: just amazing what the broodwar community can create !
Thanks! I'm pretty proud of it, haha.
Another update has been pushed. It changes some stuff about map 3, so if you've already downloaded the whole package, you can just grab the third map from the components section in the release thread.
I've finished the first two maps! I loved the vibe of the first one + Show Spoiler +
that hold lurker trap... :O
The art is super nice, I like the voice acting as well. As a T player I feel a bit bad though :D Advancing the plans of the evil zerg... One thing I missed, is that with the mca launcher the single player speed is automatically set to fastest and here I had to do it manually.
I was trying to make it through the first map without loosing a unit and had to give it a few tries before succeeding (the place with the cutscene and the sunken colony) and it was a bit annoying that I had to manually set the game speed every time. Cool work though overall, thanks a bunch!
On June 12 2017 18:46 noname_ wrote: I found no sign of this on cc, what`s the reason of it sir Pronogo?
Due to some unfortunate drama many years ago I am permanently banned from CC, and most posts advertising my projects are removed regardless of who posted them. Church said she updated her campaign listing with it, so maybe it's over there somewhere? Either way, feel free to give it a whirl and let me know what you think!.
I was a "regular" reader there, but didn`t noticed any sign of this. What was the reason behind it? I think she is a he (like he changed his nick like 5 times). I can`t find any of your campaigns in that list currently though, but if you`d be so kind to give me the name of a few of your works, I`d be happy, it`s quite probable that I played some of them too. (I played countless campaigns: nearly all cc campaigns, cc contest campaigns, just my memory fails me on the relations between the campaign creators / campaigns.
On June 16 2017 23:21 noname_ wrote: I was a "regular" reader there, but didn`t noticed any sign of this. What was the reason behind it?
I did some goofy teenager shit a few years back that Lavarinth didn't particularly like. Nothing undeserving of a ban.
On June 16 2017 23:21 noname_ wrote: I think she is a he (like he changed his nick like 5 times).
I speak with her regularly. She's male-to-female transgender.
On June 16 2017 23:21 noname_ wrote: I can`t find any of your campaigns in that list currently though, but if you`d be so kind to give me the name of a few of your works, I`d be happy, it`s quite probable that I played some of them too.
Actually, I've never released any completed campaigns. I've been working in the space for over a decade and a half but never saw any of my projects through. I intend to change that with Inconsummate. Hopefully you enjoy the project!
I think the levels are pretty well done, the amount of resources feel pretty well balanced so you are forced to kill bases quickly and not just wait for 200/200. What bugged me a little is, that this mod doesn't use the installed language version for the shortcuts. I had to relearn almost every hotkey for zerg during the playthrough.
On June 18 2017 03:54 Cryoc wrote: What bugged me a little is, that this mod doesn't use the installed language version for the shortcuts. I had to relearn almost every hotkey for zerg during the playthrough.
Oh man, I hadn't even considered that. It uses the english language stat_txt.tbl file (which contains shortcuts, tooltips, unit names, etc.), which means it will for sure overwrite the regional localization. Sorry about that! Unfortunately, there's not much I can do to fix that without providing different mod files for every language, which is unfeasible at the moment. I'll look into it after the campaign's finished, though.
On July 22 2017 17:17 dank_zerg wrote: I finished it. Really good one
Hey, glad you like it! I'm working on map 6 as we speak and there'll be 7 maps total. I'll be sure to post here when they're done so you can try them out!
I didn't even know you could mod Brood War this much, but... Awesome work you did here - from graphics to sound and gameplay and everything... It's hard though (at least for my skill level - made me feel like a real scrub ). It took me an hour to finish the 1st level. Still working on the 2nd. But I do appreciate a good challenge, and I cannot describe how glad I am that there's more of Brood War campaign for me to play (I was really sad when I finished the official one).
Anyway - kudos all around and I'll wait for the final 2 maps eagerly
Edit: Finished mission 2, this one was a lot easier. Also, I forgot to mention, the medic has (had) a great choice of music (Somebody to Love)!
On July 23 2017 05:50 Coalmeister wrote: I cannot describe how glad I am that there's more of Brood War campaign for me to play (I was really sad when I finished the official one).
Thanks for the kind words! I hope Inconsummate scratches that itch for single-player, story-driven RTS. It's why I made it, after all.
On July 23 2017 05:50 Coalmeister wrote:Anyway - kudos all around and I'll wait for the final 2 maps eagerly
Also, I forgot to mention, the medic has (had) a great choice of music (Somebody to Love)!
Haha, I hoped I wasn't the only one who enjoyed that. I'm working on map 6 as we speak, and it should drop around Thursday or Friday of next week, with map 7 following within a week or so afterwards if all goes well. I'll post here when it's out. As for difficulty, be warned - the fourth and especially fifth maps are a bit of a spike. Save early and often!
On July 23 2017 07:52 Endymion wrote: holy shit this is actually really good. in particular i enjoyed the voice acting and writing, it was just overall very high quality!
Glad you liked it man! Hope you'll stick around for the final maps!
On June 11 2017 20:06 Pippah wrote: Will this be made playable with 1.18 ?
Unfortunately, 1.18 only allows for simple modding, and the mod component for Inconsummate relies on button and exe editing not currently possible in the new versions. I'll look into how feasible it will be to update it once SC:R comes out, but until then, it'll be stuck in the past. 1.16.1 is free to download however (and I've included a link in the release party in case anyone needs it), so it shouldn't be too much a hassle!
Off-topic, but what's the reason for this? Does it have anything to do with preventing cheating or is Blizzard just being its inexplicable self?
On July 23 2017 15:50 Ancestral wrote: Off-topic, but what's the reason for this? Does it have anything to do with preventing cheating or is Blizzard just being its inexplicable self?
More the latter than the former from what I understand. The file structure has changed significantly. If I had to guess why, I'd hazard that because the coders of SC:R have probably never come into contact with StarCraft's assembly before, reordering and restructuring the engine improved their workflow. It also could have been necessary to add additional graphical features and for plenty of other reasons that I can only speculate on.
Modding will persist on 1.16.1 (I myself will be continuing to create campaigns for years to come), and that's likely to remain the case at large until the SC:R team ceases updates for the game, since we'll need a stable version to design the more advanced memory-based programs like FireGraft and reverse-engineer the new data structure. This is no small feat and will likely take several months to even see minor progress given the perceived scope of the engine overhaul.
As for difficulty, be warned - the fourth and especially fifth maps are a bit of a spike. Save early and often!
Cheers everyone.
Huh, you weren't kidding... Could've finished Omega like twice in the time it took me to finish about 30% of the 4th mission and then get promptly destroyed by Gorn's guys :'(
Inconsummate's 6th map has been released, and with it, Inconsummate's main story has been concluded! An accessory 7th map will enter active development sometime soon and will serve to set the stage for the sequel. Thanks to everyone who has supported the project during its lengthy public development time! If you only wish to download the most recent release, be sure to download the new mod file as well, as it contains the AI scripts and some additional data that allows map 6 to function correctly!
So it took me 6 days but I finally managed to beat the 4th map. + Show Spoiler +
It gets a lot easier once you realize that the mission is "Find Gorn" and not "Kill everything". Also, Guardians are amazing against AIs
I have a problem with the game itself though. I don't know if it's the custom launcher that's causing this, or the mods, but either way, every time I load a saved game, all my hatcheries set their rally points somewhere on the far right hand side of the map. And if I forget to reset them, once I start producing units they all run into the Protoss base and die... Any ideas?
I'll take a look at the plugin code and get back to you on that. Hopefully I'll be able to resolve it soon. Thanks for the bug report, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the maps!
edit: the problem has been discovered and a fix is in the works. I'll post here when the final update has shipped.
The voice acting is great and really helps the immersion and is something other campaigns sadly, though understandably, lack.
I also really like the highly detailed terrain work and custom doodads that really set a unique atmosphere. As a map maker, what I especially like is that the maps are not protected and can be looked at in the editor. However, I don't like your seemingly complete disregard of terrain levels (or maybe tile flags in general). In particular, mission 3 has all those buildable medium ground spots with Bunkers and Turrets on otherwise low ground bridges. This may look aesthetically interesting in ScmDraft. but in-game being not able to see or hit those unit on those areas without there being any ramp or cliff is just weird and confusing. You could have just used low ground bridge or ruins (it's not as if the AI would rebuild those buildings) or, since you use modded tilesets anyway, created low ground tiles with the right looks. What's worse is that there are high ground jungle tiles scattered everywhere on all of the maps. Conversely, your the "medium ground" versions of your custom doodads are all set to low ground. The other problem with the terrain work is that almost everything is very tight, cramped and cluttered with doodads and other obstructive deco, so there's hardly any open space for comfortable base design or army movement. Together with the fact that all the maps feature plenty, but low resource bases and the fact that all the AIs seem to revolve around constant, but small attacks this also leads to a clear preference for static defense and mass air tactics (same old story with campaigns), I think. As much as I like the custom player colours, the in-game colours not matching the score screen colours is a nuisance. I also ran into quite a few bugs and frustrating features.
1st mission I guess this one is meant more as warm up to familiarize players with the new heroes. I feel like the commando section could need some sort of difficulty spike towards the end, though. I avoided safe-scumming, and this mission already had me regret that. The first time at the end of the commando section, one of the Marines ran back up the ramp and stayed there. out of sight range for the Lurkers, which caused the map to hang up. I guess the trigger to start the dialogue asks for no blue Terran units to be at that location. So restart the Mission. All's fine, just until the same cutscene. This time a Firebat ran out of the location, causing the dialogue to start preemtively, and the FIrebat to kill one of the unburrowed Lurkers… I want my Lurkers, epsecially since the base has no gas. So I had to start from scratch a third time. This time everything worked (and I remembered to safe before the cutscene…). If you have triggers depending on unit deaths like this, you should probably also have a trigger that actually kills the units after some time, just to make sure it does not glitch out. The rest of the mission also felt very easy. I am not sure if you really wanted players to have to take a gas base, but it turns out that the four initial Lurkers and Stroluum, with some Zerglings to consume for constant swarms, are more than enough to quickly finish off all the enemy bases.
2nd Mission Dropping both Protoss bases seems to be the only way of getting a fast 2nd gas. Given the resource distribution, Hydralisks seem like an ideal strategy. But there are so many tight spots, especially on the entrance to the blue base, where it is basically impossible to not get stuck under Storm and lose half your army. On the other hand, the AI does not seem to react to Mutalisks at all. I suspect that none of them is even having any defensebuild/defenseuse lines in their AI scripts. Is this intended? Kind of reduces the whole challenge of the mission to "get one group of Mutalisks and micro away…"
3rd Mission From the transmission I gather that you actually envisioned this to be run by ground, clockwise from the SW corner. However, I just took the mini base in that corner and the second gas base on the starting plateau in the SE, which was hardly even attacked by the AI, and that was enough to get a control group of Mutalisks to which, again, the AI seemed not at all to even respond. So again I Muta microed down the teal bases, took the resources and the whole thing felt like a giant sequence break once I had reached the NE corner and started to kill Starports.
4th Mission Given my early lack of gas, I again decided to run this with Hydras. Can't ever go wrong with this. Again the AI seemed to hardly even react to attacks and it was mostly a smooth run-through from beginning to end. At no point did this feel challenging at all, apart from the fact that with 4+ control group of Hydras the long walking distances and claustrophobic pathways made me really wish I had switched to Mutas after 2nd gas. I once lost a base simply because my Hydras needed what felt like an hour to march all the way back to defend… I guess I should have just build Nydus Canals all over the place.
5th Mission It can be a bit hard to cover against all the attacks at the beginning, but once you know what's coming the initial units are easily enough to get up the intial 2.5 bases (the few small mineral patches on the right side of the "main" really cannot be counted as a full expo) and get 2 or three control groups of Hydras. From there, and with help of Goska, it becomes pretty easy to just run around and take all the bases on the bottom half of the map. I had to get a control group of Mutas (later Kukulzas), just to be more mobile and be able to defend them all while my Hydras and Goska erratically tried to find their way to the next bases and mission objectives. For this kind of large-scale build and destroy missions I'd really rather see some actually big (even 256²), but more open map, rather than these frickin' mazes all the time. Had I just gone Guardian, Devourer, Kukulza, as any good campaign player ;D, I'd probably have completed this a lot faster. Having an AI ally is a nice touch, though, and something that I'd like to see use a lot more in campaigns (or alternatively coop missions, but not all campaign stories or potential mechanics involving allied AI are really suitable for co-op).
6th Mission Hmm… Well, I obviously had to restart this a few times. It's obviously meant to be this way, I guess, and I personally like to min-max the hell out of the start of missions, so why did this still get so frustrating so quickly? It's not so much that a near-perfect build order is needed just to survive the first five minutes, but that the some aspects of the initial setup just seem like a "fuck you" to the player. The almost complete lack of building space, for example, but then, you don't actually need much, so it's workable and most buildings are best used to wallin the bottom choke and a bunker on the high ground, anyway. But what really pissed me off is that mine on the low ground. In one of my first trials the first Ling just dragged it right into the tank. Only went steeply down from there, as you can imagine. Next try, it was dragged into and killed both SCVs who were occupied walling the low ground choke with two depots. In the subsequent tries the first thing I did (after getting my SCVs to mine) was just to kill the bloody thing before it could hurt any one.… The only major failure I had after that was because of my overcommitment to tanks, which for their huge price tag only managed to kill my own Marines all the time. So I went pure bio with a skeletal force of tanks, just to defend my back and clear the two Sunkens across the bridge just outside to the east of the base. Turns out that one or two control groups of M&M and Goska upgrades (detection, most of all!) is really all that's needed to finish the rest of the mission (killing the white Zerg first – damn, are those upgraded Sunkens hard to kill, though). The no-liftoff for buildings felt more like a cheap cop-out and very much suspect that you just wanted to prevent the player from getting to the top left of the map at all costs ;P; that part would probably have fared better as a separate epilogue mission. With the nomadic playstyle this map forces unto the player, I feel like having to use lift-off would have felt more fitting, and as a bonus you could have adhered to the actual premise – why not make the AI produce a ton of Scourge (numbers depending on the number of Spires alive) and send them to immediately attack any lifted building that is detected?
Speaking of min-maxing mission starts: A lot of the missions start with workers already mining. By canceling the intro cutscenes at the right moment, it is possible to start those missions with each worker holding a chunk of minerals, meaning you only need to select them and press C the moment you gain control and they'll start mining and immediately give you some extra starting bank. This is especially useful in the final mission, obviously.
I hope this did not sound too negative, because overall I really enjoyed these missions and they are definitely a lot better made than any of the Blizzard campaigns (or any other campaign I can think of). I just feel like there is still room for improvement.
Hey! First off, thanks for writing such an in-depth post about the campaign. As someone who worked on the project for months, it's very rewarding to read someone else's thoughts about it.
On December 28 2017 09:08 Freakling wrote: The voice acting is great and really helps the immersion and is something other campaigns sadly, though understandably, lack.
I agree that the lack of voice acting in other campaigns is a tragedy. I hope to improve my acting and editing techniques in the future, and I can't see myself ever going back to using transmission.wav for the dialogues, so it's safe to say that voice acting will be standard-fare in my projects. Glad you liked it!
On December 28 2017 09:08 Freakling wrote: I also really like the highly detailed terrain work and custom doodads that really set a unique atmosphere. As a map maker, what I especially like is that the maps are not protected and can be looked at in the editor.
I've worked on the doodads quite a bit since, and I think they're more or less a complete set now. Inconsummate was the first project to ever see this level of asset creation for its terrain, and to facilitate it, some new tools had to be created (and some old ones had to be updated, like SCMDraft). This also lead to the height level issues (I'll explain more below), and as with any new tool that lets you do stuff you could never do before, I went a little overboard with the decoration. But I think the possibility for visual storytelling is unlocked in a very new way thanks to these modifications, so I've made it something of a priority to include the new doodads in all future projects.
And my stance on map protection is fairly public, but in case anyone didn't know, I think it's a foolish system to have when the mapmaking scene is as small and floundering as it is, and can only stifle learning, as opposed to enhance it, which is more harmful to the scene overall than the temporary trouble caused to a mapmaker if their work is "stolen". But I design stuff that almost always requires mod components and has historically been singleplayer, so I won't claim to have all the perspectives.
On December 28 2017 09:08 Freakling wrote: However, I don't like your seemingly complete disregard of terrain levels (or maybe tile flags in general). In particular, mission 3 has all those buildable medium ground spots with Bunkers and Turrets on otherwise low ground bridges. This may look aesthetically interesting in ScmDraft. but in-game being not able to see or hit those unit on those areas without there being any ramp or cliff is just weird and confusing. You could have just used low ground bridge or ruins (it's not as if the AI would rebuild those buildings) or, since you use modded tilesets anyway, created low ground tiles with the right looks.
My solution to the bridges was to create map revealers when players approached them with units, which worked every time I tested (and I received no feedback on the height levels), though the miss chance is obviously not ideal. At the time I lacked a proper understanding of tile flags and wasn't able to clone the high dirt tiles, but that's obviously a chance I can make now that I've learned a thing or two.
On December 28 2017 09:08 Freakling wrote: What's worse is that there are high ground jungle tiles scattered everywhere on all of the maps. Conversely, your the "medium ground" versions of your custom doodads are all set to low ground.
Yeah I still don't know what caused the issue with the jungle tile thing, probably an import error when PyTILE had less clear commands and/or I had no idea what I was doing. The tileset files Inconsummate uses were rebuilt dozens of times (with pathing painstakingly hand-painted each time :D), so I had no interest in going back to fix stuff. I didn't even find out about the jungle bug until after a few updates to SCMDraft were released and I realized the height display wasn't bugged. As for the medium doodads being set to low height, expect that to be fixed at some point.
On December 28 2017 09:08 Freakling wrote: The other problem with the terrain work is that almost everything is very tight, cramped and cluttered with doodads and other obstructive deco, so there's hardly any open space for comfortable base design or army movement. Together with the fact that all the maps feature plenty, but low resource bases and the fact that all the AIs seem to revolve around constant, but small attacks this also leads to a clear preference for static defense and mass air tactics (same old story with campaigns), I think.
I personally like strangling the player's base areas and forcing them to expand, and additionally liked the challenge provided by aggressive AI and low resources, but I wouldn't expect it to be to everyone's taste. I don't think I used air units in any map besides To Free the Beast as my preferred strategy, instead opting for hydra/lurker/ling.
I playtested a few of the maps with muta-heavy builds to make sure they were an option for players who preferred those. Generally you can just build 2-3 sunkens at each expansion, support them with 1-2 spores and 1-2 lurkers, and move the lurkers around as you mine the map out. Feedback noted, though, and I'll look into offering more open/resource-rich maps in future projects, since I think it's better to have some variety where the challenge comes from other sources.
Another reason static defense is likely preferable is the fact that they benefit from upgrades. I'm still looking for ways to better balance the static defense, and will likely ship structure-specific upgrades (instead of having them benefit from vanilla ground/air/etc upgrades) in my next project. If you have any feedback on this point, I'm all ears.
On December 28 2017 09:08 Freakling wrote: As much as I like the custom player colours, the in-game colours not matching the score screen colours is a nuisance.
I'll see what I can do to address that. If the score screen colors are just a pcx file somewhere I can hotswap the cyan color. The only (used) custom color is cyan in map 5, so I'll assume that's what you're referring to.
On December 28 2017 09:08 Freakling wrote: 1st Mission I guess this one is meant more as warm up to familiarize players with the new heroes. I feel like the commando section could need some sort of difficulty spike towards the end, though.
I personally feel like the first 4 maps are generally too easy for what I want them to be, but the vast majority of players complain that all maps are too difficult, so there's probably no happy medium for this project. I've cobbled together a difficulty selection plugin for future campaigns, though.
On December 28 2017 09:08 Freakling wrote: The first time at the end of the commando section, one of the Marines ran back up the ramp and stayed there. out of sight range for the Lurkers, which caused the map to hang up.
Out of curiosity, was your run of the first map done on the latest update? I thought I had fixed an issue regarding this early on in the project's lifespan, and I haven't encountered it in any of my recent tests. I'll work on a more definitive fix either way.
On December 28 2017 09:08 Freakling wrote: The rest of the mission also felt very easy. I am not sure if you really wanted players to have to take a gas base, but it turns out that the four initial Lurkers and Stroluum, with some Zerglings to consume for constant swarms, are more than enough to quickly finish off all the enemy bases.
Yeah, it's intended that you can win with the starting gas and some micro. I wanted to encourage players to go for early action against the AI, but maybe they fall over too quickly with little investment, so I can look into ways of beefing them up a bit. At the moment, the raider base expands to the gas expo on the high ground early on, so if you don't take it yourself you'll be in for a much tougher time (their attack and defense forces get beefed up after the CC completes).
On December 28 2017 09:08 Freakling wrote: 2nd Mission Dropping both Protoss bases seems to be the only way of getting a fast 2nd gas. Given the resource distribution, Hydralisks seem like an ideal strategy. But there are so many tight spots, especially on the entrance to the blue base, where it is basically impossible to not get stuck under Storm and lose half your army.
I'm sort of conflicted on how to update this mission since Goska is much more ideal to combat protoss, but I want to give players more alone time with Stroluum before map 3. The ideal fix is probably just a few extra mineral nodes and maybe lowering the number of zealots on the map to make hydras a bit more cost efficient without neutering the protoss' ability to counter them with reavers or storm. I'll think more on this.
On December 28 2017 09:08 Freakling wrote: On the other hand, the AI does not seem to react to Mutalisks at all. I suspect that none of them is even having any defensebuild/defenseuse lines in their AI scripts. Is this intended? Kind of reduces the whole challenge of the mission to "get one group of Mutalisks and micro away…"
Definitely not the intention, but the AI for Inconsummate's first few maps (and in general) was designed when I had a very poor understanding of aiscript, so it's quite possible that I put in the wrong opcode for air defense or forgot it altogether. Thanks for the heads up.
On December 28 2017 09:08 Freakling wrote: 3rd Mission From the transmission I gather that you actually envisioned this to be run by ground, clockwise from the SW corner. However, I just took the mini base in that corner and the second gas base on the starting plateau in the SE, which was hardly even attacked by the AI, and that was enough to get a control group of Mutalisks to which, again, the AI seemed not at all to even respond. So again I Muta microed down the teal bases, took the resources and the whole thing felt like a giant sequence break once I had reached the NE corner and started to kill Starports.
The triggers for this map are not great for the dialogue, since it does assume that the player will take a standard ground path in the early game. I will overhaul the conditions to better reflect the number of starports that have been destroyed, but I don't plan on recording new voice acting so it's likely that some awkwardness would still exist.
My favorite thing about this map is that you can do it any way you want, in any order you want. It's more open-ended than the previous missions since the objectives take far less time to destroy than proper protoss bases from map 2 or the main raider base from map 1. But the AI shouldn't ignore air units, obviously, so I'll run some tests at some point and make some changes.
On December 28 2017 09:08 Freakling wrote: 4th Mission Given my early lack of gas, I again decided to run this with Hydras. Can't ever go wrong with this. Again the AI seemed to hardly even react to attacks and it was mostly a smooth run-through from beginning to end. At no point did this feel challenging at all, apart from the fact that with 4+ control group of Hydras the long walking distances and claustrophobic pathways made me really wish I had switched to Mutas after 2nd gas. I once lost a base simply because my Hydras needed what felt like an hour to march all the way back to defend… I guess I should have just build Nydus Canals all over the place.
I'm starting to suspect the AI bugged out or you ran the maps without an updated mod file. The white base definitely responds to attacks, but with 4+ control groups of hydras you can wipe anything besides maybe Gorn's base. I'll probably add some more gas to the bases you can expand to while beefing up the hostiles to make the mission feel more involved.
On December 28 2017 09:08 Freakling wrote: 5th Mission It can be a bit hard to cover against all the attacks at the beginning, but once you know what's coming the initial units are easily enough to get up the intial 2.5 bases (the few small mineral patches on the right side of the "main" really cannot be counted as a full expo) and get 2 or three control groups of Hydras. From there, and with help of Goska, it becomes pretty easy to just run around and take all the bases on the bottom half of the map. I had to get a control group of Mutas (later Kukulzas), just to be more mobile and be able to defend them all while my Hydras and Goska erratically tried to find their way to the next bases and mission objectives. For this kind of large-scale build and destroy missions I'd really rather see some actually big (even 256²), but more open map, rather than these frickin' mazes all the time. Had I just gone Guardian, Devourer, Kukulza, as any good campaign player ;D, I'd probably have completed this a lot faster. Having an AI ally is a nice touch, though, and something that I'd like to see use a lot more in campaigns (or alternatively coop missions, but not all campaign stories or potential mechanics involving allied AI are really suitable for co-op).
As the magnum opus of Inconsummate, this mission is getting the largest and most significant update. Tuzor will train the same hero units you can requisition from him and will inform you of where he plans to attack thanks to some new tech, and all the AI will be far more involved. Similar to the previous map's proposed changes, more resources will be available in most cases, but you'll have to bleed for the land you take, because the AI will target expansions as they are taken, and will seek to expand out themselves (something that unfortunately is pretty absent). I'm actually glad you didn't make a billion air units since it allowed you to talk to me a bit about the mazes. I'll see what can be done about opening up the terrain, but keep in mind the AI would use this to their advantage as well, and you'd catch their armies out of position less often than you're able to now.
On December 28 2017 09:08 Freakling wrote: 6th Mission Hmm… Well, I obviously had to restart this a few times. It's obviously meant to be this way, I guess, and I personally like to min-max the hell out of the start of missions, so why did this still get so frustrating so quickly? It's not so much that a near-perfect build order is needed just to survive the first five minutes, but that the some aspects of the initial setup just seem like a "fuck you" to the player. The almost complete lack of building space, for example, but then, you don't actually need much, so it's workable and most buildings are best used to wallin the bottom choke and a bunker on the high ground, anyway.
This mission had been updated a few times to add more starting build space and resources, so it used to be even worse! But I agree that it's challenging in a way that none of the other maps had prepared you for, so it could stand to have more of a warm-up period (though you'd probably stomp the AI now that you know what to expect, but you know what they say about first impressions).
On December 28 2017 09:08 Freakling wrote: But what really pissed me off is that mine on the low ground.
Yeah, a lot of people just killed the mines, so I'll probably remove them completely, or move them further up. It's not really worth the headache for players since they won't think about them as often as they would had they laid them down themselves.
On December 28 2017 09:08 Freakling wrote: The only major failure I had after that was because of my overcommitment to tanks, which for their huge price tag only managed to kill my own Marines all the time. So I went pure bio with a skeletal force of tanks, just to defend my back and clear the two Sunkens across the bridge just outside to the east of the base. Turns out that one or two control groups of M&M and Goska upgrades (detection, most of all!) is really all that's needed to finish the rest of the mission (killing the white Zerg first – damn, are those upgraded Sunkens hard to kill, though).
Yeah, I'm pretty happy with the detection upgrade, though obviously it comes out of left field. I think it's pretty important for this mission though. Lurkers are impossible to deal with otherwise, since you have no comsat (I wonder why that is...)
On December 28 2017 09:08 Freakling wrote: The no-liftoff for buildings felt more like a cheap cop-out and very much suspect that you just wanted to prevent the player from getting to the top left of the map at all costs ;P; that part would probably have fared better as a separate epilogue mission. With the nomadic playstyle this map forces unto the player, I feel like having to use lift-off would have felt more fitting, and as a bonus you could have adhered to the actual premise – why not make the AI produce a ton of Scourge (numbers depending on the number of Spires alive) and send them to immediately attack any lifted building that is detected?
I like the idea of scourge fucking with you if you lift off as an alternative to disabling liftoff, so maybe I will do that. The problem with allowing liftoff at all is that you can easily aggro units and such that are pre-placed in Stroluum's area, and I'm pretty sure I'm at the string cap for this level, so I can't make new locations to create them. I could use the create_unit aiscript opcode if I were so inclined, I suppose.
On December 28 2017 09:08 Freakling wrote: A lot of the missions start with workers already mining. By canceling the intro cutscenes at the right moment, it is possible to start those missions with each worker holding a chunk of minerals, meaning you only need to select them and press C the moment you gain control and they'll start mining and immediately give you some extra starting bank. This is especially useful in the final mission, obviously.
That's pretty clever, I probably would never have thought of that. I leave it to the melee specialists at TL to find ways to make the most out of my silly shit.
One thing I might be able to do is run an aiscript for the player that makes their workers continue to harvest after they take control. It's always bothered me that the drones stop working, so I'll see what I can come up with.
On December 28 2017 09:08 Freakling wrote: I hope this did not sound too negative, because overall I really enjoyed these missions and they are definitely a lot better made than any of the Blizzard campaigns (or any other campaign I can think of). I just feel like there is still room for improvement.
Again, thanks a lot for the post. I'm proud of what I was able to accomplish with Inconsummate, but more than that, I'm excited to show off all the new stuff I've learned. You'll get a sneak peak before the sequel's done, since I'll update Inconsummate with a bunch of new stuff (some of which I've gone over here), and your honest feedback is an integral part of the process.
Well, the tight bases were not such a huge problem this time as most of the time you are playing as Zerg anyways and in the Terran mission two barracks is really all you need in terms of macro. However, usually it is hard to even place a macro Hatch (though I used them to wall-in most of the time, anyway). You could at least forgo using so much unbuildable terrain in base locations next time. And if you ever do a Terran or Protoss campaign, please make sure that in a macro-heavy mission there is actually a space where a nice matrix of Gates or Factories can be set up.
I missed out on those Map Revealers, I guess, because I used Mutas all the time. Still. if I had gone for Hydras the miss chance would have been really annoying, at best.
Yes, static defenses are crazy strong with upgrades in these missions. But I hated that I needed to invest a few hundred minerals into colonies to be able to hold all the bases when they all yielded so little resources to begin with. I find an expansion design that favours a fast, nomadic playstyle and a map layout that hinders mobility don't make a good combination together. Separating structure upgrades would definitely be better, as it helps differentiate playstyles and choices for players; and Sunkens profiting from melee upgrades does not make a whole lot of sense, anyway. If I play these maps again, I'll probably run everything on Muta-Ling, just for the mobility it gives.
It's not just the cyan colour. All the colours seem off in the score screen. For example, the player is playing as green Zerg most of the time, but the score screen shows them as red.
As for general map difficulty, the best way to go about this is probably to have two versions of each map, one in easy and one in hard difficulty. I looked into a playthrough on youtube, and the guy's not even using control groups most of the time, it seems. So the difficulty is basically self-made…
As for the map version: I guess I was using the newest ones, as I just downloaded them a few days ago from the SEN link you provided here on TL. Is there a version numbering somewhere in the map file so I can check? Terran does not expand to the high ground gas in this version, though, as that is occupied by Protoss at the beginning. Or maybe I was just to quick, that is where I took my gas (which I then never really made any use of, except for additional upgrades).
In the second mission I actually lost twice due to Stroluum dying off-screen to some Reavers, because I left him as a front line defense. But he's a great one-man-army to defend some back expansion against any stray Scouts and whatnot, where he then spent a happy game burrowed for my Muta stacks.
As for catching opponent armies off-guard in more open maps: I am pretty certain coordinated army movements, besides sending X units to attack or pulling y units for defense, is among the things AI scripts cannot do. So it would probably make no difference.
Is there actually a way to run Ai scripts for human players to make workers mine? Without modding that's definitely not working.
On December 28 2017 18:12 Freakling wrote: You could at least forgo using so much unbuildable terrain in base locations next time. And if you ever do a Terran or Protoss campaign, please make sure that in a macro-heavy mission there is actually a space where a nice matrix of Gates or Factories can be set up.
Noted. With some new aiscript plugins I can make the AI allies/enemies play nicer with larger maps, so more open designs shouldn't be as cumbersome to implement in future projects.
On December 28 2017 18:12 Freakling wrote: I find an expansion design that favours a fast, nomadic playstyle and a map layout that hinders mobility don't make a good combination together.
Right. These kinds of things will always be able to be improved upon in the future, and as this was my first campaign I don't doubt I'll be changing a lot about the design paradigms.
On December 28 2017 18:12 Freakling wrote: It's not just the cyan colour. All the colours seem off in the score screen. For example, the player is playing as green Zerg most of the time, but the score screen shows them as red.
I thought this was just a bug with SC in general. I'll look into what in the mod is causing this issue and attempt to resolve it.
On December 28 2017 18:12 Freakling wrote: As for general map difficulty, the best way to go about this is probably to have two versions of each map, one in easy and one in hard difficulty.
Easy to do if maps aren't 100mb+ each. I'd much rather have the current solution, which is to add a plugin that allows users to select between easy/normal/hard in the map selection screen. I'll show that off in a few months, probably.
On December 28 2017 18:12 Freakling wrote: I guess I was using the newest ones, as I just downloaded them a few days ago from the SEN link you provided here on TL.
I'll stress test the issue and see if I can narrow it down, then. That is indeed the latest version (older links wouldn't work since I removed the older files). The readme should include some note that says "this is to be the final update" in the patch history section.
On December 28 2017 18:12 Freakling wrote: I am pretty certain coordinated army movements, besides sending X units to attack or pulling y units for defense, is among the things AI scripts cannot do. [...] Is there actually a way to run Ai scripts for human players to make workers mine? Without modding that's definitely not working.
There are new plugins that have been developed for another one of my projects that make for much more varied AI behaviors. I'm hoping to get a plugin developed that will allow spellcasting behavior to be set on a script level, for example giving the AI a list of units to prioritize when casting lockdown/broodling/mind control. New code already exists to have AI land buildings (see here) as well as all other orders (e.g. a floating barracks could build a command center, since the plugin overrides tech reqs), which is the same tech that would be used to order drones to do the harvest order on mineral fields. AI scripts are hardcoded to not run for players except for the share vision scripts, which can be modified to detect death counters as a sort of map-side variable, which would then jump to a new block that contains appropriate commands. So, short answer: yeah, it's very possible.
Being able to use death counters as an interface variable between triggers and AI scripts sound great. Back in the day I used modulation of mineral amounts for that purpose, but that's obviously not ideal. But it allows to keep track of the player in a lot more detail (normal AIscripts can only detect the presence of specific tech buildings, but not of unit composition, macro building counts or upgrade status, triggers can [upgrades probably via EUD]), so it is possible to get a lot more smart and adaptive AI scripts that can adjust their own compositions and macro to what the player has.
There is a very fast way to beat mission 4: get ovi speed asap, fly an ovi over the water, in between the purple Zerg, to the dead Cerebrate location, then use the Mutas and Guardians you get to kill the Protoss and any stray Protoss buildings on the map while getting Goska to the beacon via Nydus and ovi transport.
Yep, map 4 could use some adjustments to the cheese potential. I'll see about adding more anti-air defenses, and maybe making the final threat a bit more significant.
Yeah that's what I was referring to. They're designed as a victory map, but maybe I can have them be attacked by the other AI, so the longer you take the easier they are and vice versa.
I just finished the first 3 scenarios and I'm overjoyed with the amount of work that has been put into this. It really shows! The voice acting only took me a bit to get used to, it's a really nice fit to the original nilla and BW voices. Smart rally is a really cool feature! I bet it pleases many SC2 fanboys who also like to play BW. The difficulty is well tuned, it fits the BW campaign's difficulty level.
Some nitpicking feedback on Goska:
Goska's C-26 Assault Rifle what kind of damage type is used here? It makes no sense to me. It seems to consists of 2 hits like the zealot attack? Or even damage over time? The damage output seems closest to concussive damage, but it's very random and it seems to disregard armor?
I remember as a kid I was let down that Infested Duran didn't receive a bonus on his weapon when I upgraded Zerg missile attacks. But it made sense - unlike Infested Kerrigan he was still using his Terran gun, right? As such I feel Infested Goska shouldn't receive a bonus on his attack from upgrading Zerg missile attacks. The numbers also seem very overpowered, especially when you get +10 per upgrade.
I'm not a gun expert, so I wouldn't know how it should sound, but imho its soundeffect doesn't fit the game too well. I think this could be hot fixed by bringing down it's volume by 15~25%, right now I feel it stands out too much, especially since it's rather unique already. (Louder sound would make more sense if the damage it displays is also its output damage.)
Traditionally ghosts don't wield automatic rifles. While his weapon is more in line with the marine's or goliath's, it's attack cooldown is still of a ghost.
Repeated selection on Goska is a bit meh. I expected something good giving his voice over is so cool.
Some suggestions I'd implement:
Mission briefings have way too much delay. It should be made more obvious that I have to wait for a briefing or address the delay. I only found out on the second scenario there are pregame briefings because I had received a text that occupied me.
When the game freezes to tell you the mission objectives that duration should be tuned down by 2-3 seconds, but I'd actually prefer no freeze at all.
Default game speed should really be on fastest or faster, but not fast. The few noobies who can't handle that are free to select their preferred speed. (Preferred game speed doesn't get saved which is why I'm bitching about this, so if that is possible to tackle it would be the best solution).
I would have given Goska a sniper rifle to fit to ghost theme or either given him some sort of zerg weapon *think Half-Life where you get to fire living alien weapons?* It would also debunk my comments about benefiting from missile attack upgrades. For simplicity sake I'd probably change the attack type to normal. And I'd definitely keep his special ability!
Just some thoughts:
Most (if not all?) speech in Starcraft has a distinct ambient sound in the background. While I didn't miss that, it would have made it feel even more authentic.
If you run another project it would be cool to see a hero return in a different form. Like Jim Raynor knows 3 forms, as marine, vulture and BC. It would be sweet to see a prequel of Goska as an original ghost, like Samir Duran.
I really like the formulation in which Stroluum speaks, but his intonation feels a bit too out there (rancid) or perhaps his speech is a bit too slow for my liking.
Playing this gets me to relive my childhood. Thank you! I could totally see you create a Remastered scenario that gets a Blizzard stamp of approval. I'm not much of a reader nor am I writer - perhaps someone in that field can reflect on that - but to me your story line seems really legit.
Teal is a much cooler hero color than orange
Doodads really add to the experience and the dancing zealots really blew my mind!
(I initially loaded up the first scenario as UMS in 1.16.1 because I was too lazy to read the readme and I figured Freakling would go apeshit in his posts about the terrains. Did you originally design this as an UMS without mods?)
Perhaps I should first finish the campaign, but I am just too excited that I wanted to share my feedback now. I don't mean to be your director and I'm totally going to recommend your product as it is.
Pretty sure the voices have ambient sound effects. They could be tuned up a bit more, as well as the effects (reverb, distortion, general radio squawkiness). Especially the Cerebrates sound much too clean. But you cannot really expect professional sound engineering from what is essentially a one-man project.
Game speed can probably be set via EUD triggers
I found the pause times for mission objectives a bit irritating at first as well, but on the plus side this gives players to actually read them with undivided attention (at least in theory). I just canceled them and that was quite alright,
Hey man, thanks for the kind words and the lengthy feedback! This is the kind of stuff that will allow me to improve Inconsummate and all future projects. Below are some direct responses.
On December 30 2017 08:38 Peeano wrote: Goska's C-26 Assault Rifle what kind of damage type is used here? It makes no sense to me. It seems to consists of 2 hits like the zealot attack? Or even damage over time? The damage output seems closest to concussive damage, but it's very random and it seems to disregard armor?
So Goska's attack uses a few different weapon entries (he actually has 3 different units, all with unique unit responses and weapons). They all use concussive damage and attack 5 times. The first shot has a chance to stun, which also ignores armor, though I didn't document that. Originally the stun shot didn't do any damage, which was unintentional but I could see an argument for swapping it back to that.
On December 30 2017 08:38 Peeano wrote: I remember as a kid I was let down that Infested Duran didn't receive a bonus on his weapon when I upgraded Zerg missile attacks. But it made sense - unlike Infested Kerrigan he was still using his Terran gun, right? As such I feel Infested Goska shouldn't receive a bonus on his attack from upgrading Zerg missile attacks. The numbers also seem very overpowered, especially when you get +10 per upgrade.
Well, it doesn't make any logical sense to have a terran infantry weapon upgrade on the evolution chamber; and to have him scale up properly into the mid- and late-game of these large-scale maps, the heroes need to have upgrades. It would have been nice to have a lore-friendly reason to have a rescuable/infestable engybay for this purpose, but in maps 4 and 5, it didn't quite work out that way.
On December 30 2017 08:38 Peeano wrote: I'm not a gun expert, so I wouldn't know how it should sound, but imho its soundeffect doesn't fit the game too well. I think this could be hot fixed by bringing down it's volume by 15~25%, right now I feel it stands out too much, especially since it's rather unique already.
Agreed on the volume. I'll patch it down for the next update. Thanks for the idea!
On December 30 2017 08:38 Peeano wrote: Traditionally ghosts don't wield automatic rifles. While his weapon is more in line with the marine's or goliath's, it's attack cooldown is still of a ghost.
He's a very good hero and I intended for him to be as such so the player would be less likely to stick him in your mineral line and hide him away.
On December 30 2017 08:38 Peeano wrote: Repeated selection on Goska is a bit meh. I expected something good giving his voice over is so cool.
There's a fair bit of symbolism in his final quote, which probably wouldn't be understandable unless you're familiar with the source material, though I'll tie it into dialogue in the sequels. Otherwise, he's a bit melodramatic, which is also by design. The sequel will have better voice acting for all heroes, so I'll look into 'updating' the unit responses accordingly.
On December 30 2017 08:38 Peeano wrote: Mission briefings have way too much delay. It should be made more obvious that I have to wait for a briefing or address the delay. I only found out on the second scenario there are pregame briefings because I had received a text that occupied me.
Yep, I'm planning on cutting down on the delays and having better sound design in the future. I'm aware that dialogue is also delivered too slowly for my liking. All things I plan on fixing, but thanks for reinforcing that idea.
On December 30 2017 08:38 Peeano wrote: If you run another project it would be cool to see a hero return in a different form. Like Jim Raynor knows 3 forms, as marine, vulture and BC. It would be sweet to see a prequel of Goska as an original ghost, like Samir Duran.
No plans for a prequel currently, but I think an infested goliath or something would be sweet for the future. We'll see what happens and what the story allows!
On December 30 2017 08:38 Peeano wrote: I really like the formulation in which Stroluum speaks, but his intonation feels a bit too out there (rancid) or perhaps his speech is a bit too slow for my liking.
He should definitely speak a little faster and be a tad more excitedly.
On December 30 2017 08:38 Peeano wrote: Playing this gets me to relive my childhood. Thank you! I could totally see you create a Remastered scenario that gets a Blizzard stamp of approval. I'm not much of a reader nor am I writer - perhaps someone in that field can reflect on that - but to me your story line seems really legit.
If remastered allowed for the same kind of modding 1.16.1 did I'd probably have released Inconsummate for SC:R, but so far, no dice. Maybe next year?
On December 30 2017 08:38 Peeano wrote: (I initially loaded up the first scenario as UMS in 1.16.1 because I was too lazy to read the readme and I figured Freakling would go apeshit in his posts about the terrains. Did you originally design this as an UMS without mods?)
You mean you played without the mod? It was always designed with modding in mind.
On December 30 2017 08:38 Peeano wrote: Perhaps I should first finish the campaign, but I am just too excited that I wanted to share my feedback now. I don't mean to be your director and I'm totally going to recommend your product as it is.
Thanks again, and I hope to read your thoughts on the final 3 maps!
So I did a second playthrough (not in order, just playing specific missions again, after looking at the maps and triggers a bit closer, trying, well, to basically break the game wherever possible. So some of the strategies are very abusive.)
Mission 1: Well, Part one, just pick off the Zerg one by one. I think you need more triggered aggression, because normal aggro can be too easily abused. Again getting a gas base was hardly worth it because by the time it actually got up the Terran was already as good as dead with some Lings clearing out the leftovers and my Lurker/Ling/Stroluum already clearing out the Protoss. This time I killed the blue Terran Bunker/Tank first, which ended up costing me a Lurker to a tank shot and some Zealot pokes when I proceded to kill the Gates on the left.
Mission 2: Only got enough ground forces to secure both gas bases, then switched to Mutas and cleared out the rest. Haven't tried it using only the starting forces yet. Since the Protoss actually mine out the bases in this mission, getting them as fast as possible is probably best.
Mission 3: After some experimenting with different unit composition I still deem Muta micro into Muta/Ling to clear out the bases on the right (where most of the resources are) the best strategy. After that I easily had 4+ control groups of Mutas to just walk (well, fly, actually) over all the blue stuff… The intro cut-scnene is best skipped completely – reason being that this gives you about 6 extra starting lings across both positions, which would have otherwise died during the intro.
Mission 4: I already told you, I basically speedran this: Get Ovi speed, fly an Ovi to the dead Cerebrate.It's possible to take a direct route or get the Overlord to the water on the right side and wait for speed to finish, doesn't make much of a difference distance/timing-wise. After that just kill the Protoss with Muta/Guardian/Drop, use a control group of Mutas to kill all the remaining Protoss building scattered around the map and get Goska to the beacon. Took me less than 15 minutes on my first try. With an optimized strategy (mostly because I did not know I'd also have to kill the scattered buildings), with an optimized strategy and good execution this mission can probably be finished in about 5 minutes. Not skipping the intro dialogue has the upshot of starting with a Larva immediately, but for an actual speedrun you'd probably skip it to get the Ovi speed upgrade started asap.
Mission 5: Well, I think I broke this one in way you probably haven't foreseen by heavily abusing how you triggered the map. This was not necessarily the fastest possible way to beat the map, but with some modifications/optimizations it might just as well be. So here's a step by step instruction, with a map overview to help you follow along: + Show Spoiler [map overview] +
At game start, skip the intro when all Drones are holding minerals for an optimal start (this is a bit luck-based, as they don't mine from the same patches every time). So my original strategy was to get the gas base [1] asap. However, I figured out that this triggers the red Protoss AI, so I skipped that base completely this time. Instead I build 4 extra Hydralisks and killed the base [2] to get my 2nd gas there. Some droning up, build a control group of Hydras (+Goska) and kill the Starports in the bottom left, then I killed [3] with 2 control groups of Hydras. Kill, that is, except for the Nexus.
so now the red Protoss AI is still not triggered
and I have a base with unlimited resources.
Killing [4] and [5] after that, because could as well… Now I consolidated what I had by taking all the bases, building a ring of Sunkens around [3] (out of range from the Nexus, of course, to prevent any Probes from rebuilding stuff), take bases [4] and [5] for myself and build a nice defensive Spore/Sunken wall along [2],[0], [5] while also getting two Spires and starting Muta production. By now my Hydras move in on [6], about to become my second inexhaustible resource base. That means I did not trigger Tuzor, of course, but who needs them anyways? – nor the red Protoss, again… Again, Sunken ring around the base. I also parked Goska behind the mineral line where he could snipe any rebuild Probes. My force is now one left-over group of Hydras and bunch Mutas, Guardians, Devourers, which are getting constant air upgrades. Next base is 7, still not triggering red, but at this point it probably doesn't even matter any more, as [8] is what I am really after, as my third inexhaustible Protoss slave base. By that point my death cloud (1 control group of Devourers, 2 cgs of Mutas, 2cgs of Guardians with 3/3 air upgrades – eats through anything!) is done and I go straight for the jugular, only taking out the Fleet Beacon before, as it's on the way anyway. And if my first attack had failed, I'd have had massive Sunken lines and unlimited rebuild potential to fall back on…
Mission 6: Again, cancel the intro right when all four SCVs have finished their first mining cycle and start with 32 extra minerals in the bank. Kill the mine on the low ground with the tank, unsiege it and move it back into the mineral line, where it will be safe from all attacks. Send all the other units to defend on the high ground. Also kill the high ground mine, nothing but trouble with those things. At 6 workers, wall-in the right-side choke between the cliff and mineral line with two Depots, leaving enough space for a Bunker. Next get some more SCVs and, as soon as reources allow, said bunker, some extra Marines, a Refinery and an Ebay. When ebay is finished, get two missile turrets on the low ground. get a bunker on the High ground and wall it in with a factory, Accademy and Depot. First tank on the high ground to kill the Sunken colony, then move it to the other tank on the low ground, get upgrades (U238-Shells, +1 Infantry attack and Goska's detection), build Marines, start killing the base to the right with the first control group of M&M/Goska. Get the gas, defend it with Bunker, 2 turrets (one in mineral line to stop Mutas, one at the Bunker against Lurkers) and some Depots (wall-in the Bunker). Get 2 or three more Tanks to defend the base and Factory on the high ground, constantly keep upgrading and move to the left. The base in the bottom left has all the minerals ever needed. From there just arc around counterclockwise, killing the purple Zerg, which is considerably easier than going the other way around due to not having to cross that tight bridge against three Sunkens and the easily acquired resources. Finally kill white…
Note: The same trick I used in mission 5 to get unlimited resources also works in missions 3, 4 and 6, but I don't think it makes much of a difference for those missions. In mission 6, the mineral-reset locations for the 6 O'clock base are offset one tile to the south, by the way.
Haha I wish I had you testing during development. I typically don't plan around extreme abuse cases but the fixes to most/all of these should be simple enough so I'll figure something out.
On January 01 2018 01:31 Freakling wrote: Mission 1: Well, Part one, just pick off the Zerg one by one. I think you need more triggered aggression, because normal aggro can be too easily abused.
Agreed and already on the list.
On January 01 2018 01:31 Freakling wrote: Again getting a gas base was hardly worth it because by the time it actually got up the Terran was already as good as dead with some Lings clearing out the leftovers and my Lurker/Ling/Stroluum already clearing out the Protoss.
The increased defense garrison should address some of this, and making the protoss actually defend themselves should help as well.
Map 2 will have increased resources globally while also beefing up the defense garrisons, so it should make the battles a little more prolonged/interactive and put less of an emphasis on mutalisks.
On January 01 2018 01:31 Freakling wrote: Mission 3: The intro cut-scnene is best skipped completely – reason being that this gives you about 6 extra starting lings across both positions, which would have otherwise died during the intro.
Though this isn't a huge difference, I may remove 2-3 from each position.
Mission 4's speedrun strat will be addressed. It's the product of poor level design for repeat playthroughs (and in general), though it makes for a pretty tense first-time run assuming you're not above average in the skill department. I'll be adding more resources to the patches as well.
On January 01 2018 01:31 Freakling wrote: Mission 5: so now the red Protoss AI is still not triggered and I have a base with unlimited resources.
Yeah, this is a big oversight. I planned on adding a time-sensitive activation for red, but in addition I'll have it detect x amount of expansions, to be safe. The resource persists will also have a "player 1 bring 0 hatchery" condition, which I'll make sure to do across all maps.
Thanks for the visual aid. I'll probably throw in a few more reavers/carriers to the end-game loops of red/blue to help break static defenses, though with your infinite resources and delayed red/blue activations (upper blue only activates when his lower base is dead) it probably made it so the AI never got to those scripts.
Dunno if you ever noticed, but in map 6, if you never expand more than 1 time (I think), you have to use tanks to kill a white barracks in the top right corner. That was a funny issue that I found out about a few weeks ago.
On January 01 2018 03:28 Pr0nogo wrote: Haha I wish I had you testing during development. I typically don't plan around extreme abuse cases but the fixes to most/all of these should be simple enough so I'll figure something out.
Maybe I can help with your next project.
Map 2 will have increased resources globally while also beefing up the defense garrisons, so it should make the battles a little more prolonged/interactive and put less of an emphasis on mutalisks.
What would be nice is if you could make the AI build Archons when the player has a certain number of Mutas, or something along those lines. Is there any way to privately contact you? I'd like to delve deeper into the issue of AI scripting.
On January 01 2018 01:31 Freakling wrote: Mission 3: The intro cut-scnene is best skipped completely – reason being that this gives you about 6 extra starting lings across both positions, which would have otherwise died during the intro.
Though this isn't a huge difference, I may remove 2-3 from each position.
Mission 4's speedrun strat will be addressed. It's the product of poor level design for repeat playthroughs (and in general), though it makes for a pretty tense first-time run assuming you're not above average in the skill department. I'll be adding more resources to the patches as well.
My suggestion for this would be similar to what I suggested for the 6th mission: Have some Scourge hunt all air units that enter the top half of the map before certain conditions are met. Maybe add a ring of Spores around the Cerebrate as well, to avoid fast run-throughs with single Mutas or Scourge.
On January 01 2018 01:31 Freakling wrote: Mission 5: so now the red Protoss AI is still not triggered and I have a base with unlimited resources.
Yeah, this is a big oversight. I planned on adding a time-sensitive activation for red, but in addition I'll have it detect x amount of expansions, to be safe. The resource persists will also have a "player 1 bring 0 hatchery" condition, which I'll make sure to do across all maps.
make it player 1 bring at least 1 Drone to deactivate the Mineral refresh and trigger the AI, just to make sure distance mining isn't an option either. You should also move the RedTown]Trip location up a bit so taking the free gas base does not preemptively trigger the red AI.
Thanks for the visual aid. I'll probably throw in a few more reavers/carriers to the end-game loops of red/blue to help break static defenses, though with your infinite resources and delayed red/blue activations (upper blue only activates when his lower base is dead) it probably made it so the AI never got to those scripts.
Yes, maybe make the cyan get more aggressive as well, and make attack waves bigger. Single Carriers/Reavers and groups of a handful of units don't do anything against clusters of static defense.
Dunno if you ever noticed, but in map 6, if you never expand more than 1 time (I think), you have to use tanks to kill a white barracks in the top right corner. That was a funny issue that I found out about a few weeks ago.
I haven't looked into the function of those buildings yet, but I spotted them on my first playthrough. I would put them somewhere in the top left, where they are out of sight from the player. It's just odd having them where they are now.
On January 01 2018 03:55 Freakling wrote: Maybe I can help with your next project. [...] Is there any way to privately contact you? I'd like to delve deeper into the issue of AI scripting.
If you're down for it, you can join my personal discord server at http://discord.gg/s5SKBmY or just PM me here/at SEN. I do most of my testing via the server currently, so if you have discord, that's the most convenient place to reach me.
On January 01 2018 03:55 Freakling wrote: What would be nice is if you could make the AI build Archons when the player has a certain number of Mutas, or something along those lines.
Yeah this will be possible, though I typically dislike having the AI hard counter the player without first being interacted with, so I'll probably just add a scaling number of dragoon and eventually archon (blue) or scout (red) calls for the enemies.
On January 01 2018 03:55 Freakling wrote: My suggestion for this would be similar to what I suggested for the 6th mission: Have some Scourge hunt all air units that enter the top half of the map before certain conditions are met. Maybe add a ring of Spores around the Cerebrate as well, to avoid fast run-throughs with single Mutas or Scourge.
The scourge idea is pretty good. If I preplace enough of them, the AI will treat them as guards and reinforce them to that area after they're lost, so I can have a location over the hot zone that tells them to go on strategic suicide missions or patrol to the nearest set of enemy targets using the make these units patrol/set generic command target scripts. Or better yet, use the new issue_order plugin to target all air units in an air-only location. Additional spores should be possible as well.
On January 01 2018 03:55 Freakling wrote: make it player 1 bring at least 1 Drone to deactivate the Mineral refresh and trigger the AI, just to make sure distance mining isn't an option either. You should also move the RedTown]Trip location up a bit so taking the free gas base does not preemptively trigger the red AI.
Good ideas. I think that the x amount of expansions trip for red would be enough, so I can comfortably move the location up a bit.
On January 01 2018 03:55 Freakling wrote: I haven't looked into the function of those buildings yet, but I spotted them on my first playthrough. I would put them somewhere in the top left, where they are out of sight from the player. It's just odd having them where they are now.
I think I used guard_all on white (maybe not) but overlords patrol between base structures commonly and would just fly halfway across the map and look bizarre if the structures were in the top left. I have an AI plugin that resolves this issue now via deaths, so that'll be taken care of in the update. 1 structure is removed for each expansion, and a notowns_jump command checks for that structure and jumps to a block that adds extra hydralisks to the attack waves, as a way to make white competitive regardless of the number of expos you take. Not a clean way of implementing it, and now that there are better ways, I'll clean it up.
Just write a trigger that deals with players who abuse the 11 muta micro. (maelstrom+storm would be fun way to punish it)
I still haven't really finished it yet, but I'd like to echo that I believe the difficulty level is fine where it's currently at. Any friends I will recommend this to, will not have the knowledge, experience nor mechanics like the regular BW forum visitor. Please don't over-tweak the difficulty level where it becomes discouragingly hard for noobs (or have it as an option).
Btw, on mission 6 you get to fly your factory by telling it to build a machineshop on a different location, which then allows you to reach and kill the entire north west part of the map if you wanted to. A fix could be to create a no-fly-zone. (I've seen that feature in a couple of UMS, where your building just explodes once it flies over/into the no-fly-zone)
On January 01 2018 04:52 Peeano wrote: Just write a trigger that deals with players who abuse the 11 muta micro. (maelstrom+storm would be fun way to punish it)
Well, getting the units and upgrades is easy enough, but getting the AI to use spells intelligently is a whole different story…
I still haven't really finished it yet, but I'd like to echo that I believe the difficulty level is fine where it's currently at. Any friends I will recommend this to, will not have the knowledge, experience nor mechanics like the regular BW forum visitor. Please don't over-tweak the difficulty level where it becomes discouragingly hard for noobs (or have it as an option).
That's why I think different difficulty levels should be available.
Btw, on mission 6 you get to fly your factory by telling it to build a machineshop on a different location, which then allows you to reach and kill the entire north west part of the map if you wanted to. A fix could be to create a no-fly-zone. (I've seen that feature in a couple of UMS, where your building just explodes once it flies over/into the no-fly-zone)
Damn, why haven't I tried that?!
EDIT: lol, even better, you can directly trigger the victory cutscene that way. So another abusive Speedrun strategy.
On January 01 2018 04:52 Peeano wrote: I still haven't really finished it yet, but I'd like to echo that I believe the difficulty level is fine where it's currently at. Any friends I will recommend this to, will not have the knowledge, experience nor mechanics like the regular BW forum visitor. Please don't over-tweak the difficulty level where it becomes discouragingly hard for noobs (or have it as an option).
The difficulty will be a bit more forgiving for entry level players due to extra failsafe mechanics (more resources), and more engaging across the board with stronger AI. That's the intent, anyways.
On January 01 2018 04:52 Peeano wrote: Btw, on mission 6 you get to fly your factory by telling it to build a machineshop on a different location, which then allows you to reach and kill the entire north west part of the map if you wanted to. A fix could be to create a no-fly-zone. (I've seen that feature in a couple of UMS, where your building just explodes once it flies over/into the no-fly-zone)
Noted. I'll remove the liftoff order from the factory and see if that fixes it.
I am now actively developing the final update for Inconsummate. This will fix bugs in maps 3 and 6; improve AI in all maps; rebalance resources in most maps; and smooth out cutscenes in most maps. If anyone has any feedback they'd like to share re: changes along these lines, please let me know and I will take it into consideration during the update process.
I expect to be done with this update within two weeks.