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First Encounters: A Starcraft Crossover Human Campaign

Author(s)
redwings1340
Tags
Campaign, Medieval / Warcraft, Space & Aliens
Size
63.42 MB
Rating

(3 ratings)

Downloads
1928
Created
May 15, 2016
Updated
Aug 17, 2019
Resources
1
State
Approved
This bundle is marked as useful / simple. Simplicity is bliss, low effort and/or may contain minor bugs.
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Version 2.1 Uploaded
Minor changes, mainly in terms of ai basebuilding in certain levels and cinematics.

Starcraft units are now properly balanced to their brood war stats, and the first three levels have been slightly modified to better adjust for this change.

This is a minor update, I haven't worked too much on this since the last update, still feel as though the updated version is better than the previous one.

Version 2.0 Uploaded

Changelog

Every level:

- Campaign name changed to First Encounters to avoid confusion with star wars, and to note that this is a human campaign, not a terran one. (note that the map is still starwarscraft for trigger related reasons, the name change only applies to the headline here)

- Bug where ensnare showed the wrong animation has been fixed

- Cinematics have been added to the start and end of each level

- Minor text fixes

- Probably a few minor changes not listed here

- Levels are no longer visible from the start of the campaign

- The marine is no longer named Kel'Thuzad, and is named Ozzie instead

Level 1:

- General modifications in terms of unit placement and triggers

- Bug where commands were being replaced by green squares has been fixed

Level 3:

- Enemy towers have been given less health and armor

- Major level redesign, many towers were removed, many zerg units were added

- Fixed several bugs, all mutalisks and wraiths work and read as anticipated.

- The wraith is no longer a heroic unit, is mechanical, and is weaker than it was previously. The wraith's cloaking field now works as if it is a normal terran wraith.

- A Zerg base was added to send more units at you

- All enemy attack triggers have been replaced with time based triggers, as opposed to progress based triggers

- There is only one enemy overlord on the map now, and this is no longer a timed level

- A terran siege tank with siege mode has been added in the center of the map. Enjoy it.

- enemy zerg are now 'burrowed' throughout the map, and will ambush you at key moments, while terrain has been changed accordingly to warn you of this.

- Enemy mutalisks will now attack your expansions after your initial town hall has been destroyed.

Level 3.5:

- A short cutscene after level 3 has been added to explain the undead's presence in Loarderon.

Level 4:

- rescuing the marine now gives you 3/3 rifle upgrades, and all associated human technology immediately upon him reaching the base

Level 5:

- Enemy attacks in this level are now less frequent and bigger when they happen.

- You can now train flagbearers, scouting units that can create flags, invisible wards that can be placed around the map, providing vision and mass teleport targets.

- A flag has been placed near the waygate directly above your base, directing players to the nearby expansion.

- Enemy troops now attack your expansions, provided they can reach them.

Level 6:

- You may now train Flagbearers during this level

- Minor death zone redesigns so they are less likely to trigger by brushing up against the edge of them.

- Death zones no longer shift and get created around as you kill undead bases. They only get destroyed.

- Flags have been planted near the waygate to the north of your base at the start of the level, as well as near the expansion to the north of your base, to allow players to see where they can expand early.

Level 7:

- Death zones have been removed from this level entirely

- Timers for when enemy bases start producing units have been modified

Level 8:

- Added triggers to make it more difficult for Jaina and Uther to get stuck outside of their base after casting a spell.

- The level now ends when the timer expires.

Level 9:

- Added treants attacking your base at the start of the level, from the trees destroyed on the left side of your base

- Enemy troops now attack your expansions

Level 10:

- Events from the cinematic are unchanged, only Cenarius is now a Xel'Naga, instead of Elune.

Map Info:

First Encounters is a ten mission, comprehensive human campaign in a crossover universe set after the events of Warcraft 2: Beyond the Dark Portal, and Starcraft: Brood War. In it, you play as Prince Arthas in a quest to stop the zerg from finding out about the World of Warcraft, then as Jaina and Muradin to beat back and destroy an undead invasion of Azeroth. This campaign sets in to motion a series of events that will forever change both Azeroth and the entire galaxy.

Features:

- Map designs that force you to think creatively about where and how you attack the enemy.

- Enemy bases that will rebuild and continue sending powerful attack waves at you until you kill them.

- An evolving tech tree that eventually allows you to train and mow down enemies with terran marines!

- Custom terran and zerg units with models used from the hive workshop.

- Action packed defense levels that won’t give you a moment to think if you want to survive.

- A set of difficulty levels that can allow players of various skill to play the game.

- Cinematics at the start and end of each level.

Credits

Map terrain is adapted from standard blizzard melee maps, with adjustments.

Currently uses the Ultralisk, sunken colony, and wraith models from Killst4r, and one of the mutalisk models from the hive workshop (I honestly forget which one, sorry). Also contains a spore colony model from a map on epicwar, which I do not know where it came from.

The marine, zergling, and hydralisk models are from blizzard.


Strategy Guide:

Warning, map spoilers are below.

Level 1:
While this level isn't that difficult, it does require a bit of focus to beat. Follow the creep path to get closer to the other nydus canals. Go away from the creep path to rescue other terran marines to strengthen your army. Continue moving to avoid getting overwhelmed by the constant zerg attacks, and don’t buy too many items, you’ll get better items next mission. You want to try to kill the nydus canals as soon as possible, because the longer you wait, the more the zerg will send at you. Once you kill them, rescue any straggler marines you haven't gotten to yet,, then move in for the kill on the overlord. Use divine shield if Arthas’ health gets low.

If you're low on marines before the final Overlord fight, you can wait a few seconds and buy a scroll of healing and a scroll of protection before you attack it. You can also buy a tome of retraining to get rid of divine shield on Arthas, it helps a little bit in the next mission, just make sure you have a potion of invulnerability for the final fight if you do this. On to level 2!

Level 2:
This level is very hard. Start immediately. Take the items, and send all your forces to one of the two front lines. I usually send Arthas and a couple marines south, and the rest of my uncommitted forces up north. Start building canon towers (the splash damage is useful) with your peasants at the front entrances, and start rifle upgrades immediately.

You’ll notice there’s a north entrance and a south entrance. Both will be under siege constantly during the mission. Try your best to build cannon towers on the high ground above the attack paths, as they can sometimes take out enemy catapults this way, but if you get pushed back, continue building towers further back. You can’t have too many towers, they’ll eventually all die, but they’ll take out a lot of orcs with them.

After a certain point in the mission, you’ll notice that your lumber supply is starting to run out. Try to distribute peasants to harvesting the remaining trees as fast as you can, and even take a couple off of gold if you need to. When you don’t have many trees left, build a few barracks at the center of your base, and research sword and armor upgrades. Since you will only have gold left for the last few minutes of the mission, train as many footmen as possible and get them to the front lines. They’ll die, but they’ll protect your towers and your marines in the process. You can research defend to help your footmen survive a bit longer, it helps against all their headhunters, but it takes a lot of lumber to research that could be used on towers.

The key to this mission is keeping your marines alive for as long as possible. Marines deal insane dps, but don’t have that much health. If a marine on your non-arthas side gets heavily damaged, send him to Arthas for healing. You’ll probably want to send more footmen to your non-Arthas side, as Arthas is an extremely good tank and doesn’t need the footmen to help soak up damage as much.

Once there are a couple of minutes left, the orcs will send four level 10 heroes at you, all at once. Protect your tower line for as long as possible, but try to avoid losing marines in the struggle. If you are about to lose marines, retreat. Continue training footmen while preparing to call to arms for the final defense. The enemy heroes will slaughter your footmen and militia, but if you play it just right, you just might be able to keep the grey marine alive until the timer ends. I can only do it sometimes. Good luck!


Level 3:
This level got changed the most in v2.0, so I'll just rewrite the entire guide for it. You start with a powerful wraith, Arthas, a couple of towers, and a small base. Build up your economy and start building a blacksmith and a lumber mill early, then build riflemen up until 50 supply. Try to get rifle upgrades, develop your economy, and build arcane sanctrums and workshops. Flare is a must in this level, so research it at some point.

When you have a couple mortar teams and feel comfortable with your defense, start advancing a bit. Don't charge in to sunken colonies, they're very strong and will rip your army to shreds, make sure to kill them from a distance. They're usually guarded, so lure out the defenders first with a couple of mortar team shots before you shoot at them. Be careful and watch for enemy attack waves coming while you're killing a tower, your mortar teams die easily if they're out of position.

Eventually, you'll come to a place with some suspiciously placed rocks. Send a unit near them and have it retreat, and a bunch of burrowed zerglings will unburrow and attack your base. This is a one time trigger, so just retreat to your towers, kill them, and continue advancing. Be careful to avoid triggering other burrowed zerg in the future, if you let them come out on you while your army is out of position, you can lose a lot.

Eventually you'll come up to a branch in the level, where the first zerg nydus canal is. Place your troops below it to block off enemy zerg from reaching your base, and use your mortar teams (you should have about 4 at this point) to blow up the sunken colony guarding it, first luring and killing the hydralisks guarding the canal. Use flair to get vision of the sunken colony from the lowground, otherwise your mortar teams will get in range of the colony to try to attack it. Once you kill the nydus canal, send a peasant to expand to the gold mine in that location.

There are some burrowed zerg near a sunken colony to the right, so lure them out and kill them. Once you kill that, you'll see some terran marines and a terran siege tank around a fountain of health. As soon as you rescue the siege tank, burrowed zerg will attack the position, so move a few of your marines in to your army and try to avoid losing them. Use resurrection here if you lose marines, you don't get that many of them, and their dps is essential against enemy mutalisks.

Once you rescue the siege tank, you can either go around the long way to destroy the nydus canal above it, or you can have the siege tank destroy the trees around it, and attack the nydus canal from the high ground. Be careful you don't move in the range of sunken colonies with this tank (try very hard to avoid losing this tank, because you're only getting one), but the range of the tank is high enough you shouldn't need to. It can two shot sunken colonies and destroy the nydus worm with ease from the high ground, then you can have it travel with your army to destroy hydralisks.

After you get the terran units, you can switch production to spellcasters, as riflemen arent needed as much for the dps. Sorceresses can polymorph mutalisks and slow zerg units, while priests can inner fire and heal marines. Keep advancing carefully, keeping in mind enemy towers and burrowed units, and kill the third nydus canal. At about this point, you will probably be getting a quest update saying mutalisks are heading to your base, at which point you should probably send your wraith back home to defend. Make sure your peasants keep it repaired in between battles, and add a few spellcasters home (maybe add a couple riflemen too), and you should be fine against them.

Advance cautiously with your tank, and save every once in a while, because this level gets much harder if you lose your tank. There's an enemy zerg base to the north, which has been sending a lot of units at you by this point. You should have enough to destroy it though. Below the zerg base and slightly to the left of it there are a few more rescuable marines.

Once you destroy the zerg base, the level is just advancing carefully, while avoiding getting killed by the mutalisks attacking your base. Destroy the towers with your tank, and use flair for scouting. Eventually, you should reach and kill the overlord. On to level 4, and a return to warcraft 3 units, which you'll be spending the rest of the campaign with and fighting against.


Level 4:
Immediately, you’ll notice an undead base to the north, and an orc base to the west. The undead base is heavily fortified with powerful heroes, frost wyrms, and many towers, but the orc base isn’t too strong, and is more of a nuisance than anything. You’ll then notice that your tech tree is limited to knights, footmen, and spellcasters, which means that your only real way to defend against purple is to build lots of guard towers to the north of your base.

While you’re building guard towers to defend against purple and developing your economy, start creating a powerful ground army with upgrades. You’ll want footmen until you can get a castle, then shift to knight production. When you can, try to kill off blue. Alone, blue isn’t much of a threat, but eventually, an orc base to the northwest will start sending chaos space orcs, master shamans, and master witch doctors at you. Having those units attack you with blue still alive and only one mining base will get tough to handle.

Once you destroy blue, expand to their base and continue creating your army with knights, priests, and sorceresses. If you keep your second town hall low, teal will not attack it, but you should be able to defend against teal with your army anyway. Before you charge in to teal, try to lure out their blademaster in to the open and kill him. You might lose an army doing this, but you should also have enough economy to rebuild it. Spend some extra time on low upkeep if you need the money. Once you kill teal, you’ll rescue a terran marine. Bring him to your base, and he’ll give you technology that can shoot up and kill towers.

Purple’s attaks will start ramping up at this point, but with riflemen and towers (and everyone else dead), you should be fine. Create an army with your new technology, and kill purple. I would personally not research barrage, as steam tanks have an annoying habit of prioritizing their air attack over their building attack, and your riflemen can take care of the flyers with Jaina. Once you’ve destroyed the undead base, you win!


Level 5:
You have a decently developed base and a lot of space here, but immediately head to the northeast of your base, and you’ll notice a waygate that transports you to a second gold mine. Kill off all the creeps guarding it, and take it. Then, move to the west of your base and you’ll notice a highground spot that’s perfect for building towers. Build about seven or eight guard and/or cannon towers there, their ability to kill units on lowground before the enemy gets vision to high ground is valuable.

Once you’ve set up your base, train some riflemen and knights to destroy the enemies constantly coming at you. The attacks can get pretty big, but if you're keeping up your macro, you should be fine. Once you’ve gotten your upgrades, start training up a diverse army while keeping the attacks at bay. While you're doing this, send out some flagbearers to scout the map, you can use the sorceress' invisibility spell to make them survive. If you didn’t get mass teleport last level, get it now. It's crucial to be able to switch from attacking to defending quickly in this level.

If you see the entrance to an undead base, flee the other direction, attacking them will only get you in trouble. There are two routes to the orc base. The first is a direct attack. This is costly, but possible. The second involves an optional quest involving a waygate to the north of your base. If you kill a furbolg near this waygate, you’ll get vision of a furbolg chieftain, which has stolen an item to make the waygate inactive. Head north, kill the furbolg chieftain, take the item it drops, and return it to the waygate, and you can get a direct route to the center of the orc base. You can also get a robe of the magi from another furbolg if you kill them, so its probably worth doing.

The AI doesn’t rebuild in this level, so once you kill a production structure or a town hall, its dead. Whichever way you want to, destroy the orc base. Within the orc base, you’ll find two waygates that lead to the undead bases. Try to destroy the undead bases in quick succession, on hard mode, the undead will start an eventually unstoppable attack against you after you destroy two of your three town centers. Use mass teleport, plant flag, and invisibility to get around the map quickly, and you should be able to kill them before your base is overwhelmed. Once you kill them, you win!


Level 6:
You start off with a decently sized base, with enemy undead bases all over the map. Your first priority here is survival. Build a lot of arcane and guard towers along the undead attack paths, one is to the north of your base, the other is diagonally to the northeast. Build at least two lines of towers, as they are very effective against necromancers and banshees. Once you build enough, the undead shouldn’t be able to kill you.

There are two flags on the map initial, each one showing an expansion you can take. These expansions aren't on the enemy's attack paths, so you can take them quickly and safely to get more income.

Once you’ve built your towers, start building an army that’s effective against necromancers, banshees, and towers. Spell breakers are fantastic for this mission, as they don’t take any damage from Jaina’s blizzard and don’t get effected by enemy spells. I also tend to build some riflemen for dps, and steam tanks for the towers. This isn’t a particularly upgrade efficient army, but you have time to build it up, so build a couple of blacksmiths and stay on no upkeep for a while to upgrade fast.

Don’t immediately attack orange, because you’ll lose your army if you do. There are invisible unit killing fields around the map, so use flagbearers to find them and figure out which enemy you can attack. Once you figure out you can reach an enemy base, create a flag near it and prepare to mass teleport your army to attack. Be particularly careful with steam tanks, they take up more area than regular units, and are more likely to die by brushing up against the death zones. Here is a screenshot of how to advance to the first base.

(screenshotttt maybe coming? I dunno. Probably!)

Once you get there, take your army and kill dark green. Don’t head in to brown’s base, though, there’s a killing field around it. To bypass it, hire some zeplins from dark green’s base, and head north to the waygate. Be careful with these zeplins, using mass teleport will destroy them, and moving them out of a certain region will destroy them. The waygate is an obvious trap, but it’s one you have to take, so be ready to lose a lot attacking brown. Remember to use mass teleport to quickly reinforce your army. One potentially effective strategy could be to send a few steam tanks in first, then mass teleport on top of them (edit: i tried this with an invisible water elemental, it works, but it does brush you up against a death zone you might otherwise not hit). Once you’ve destroyed all of brown’s structures, take the waygate out, or alternatively mass teleport to a flag you left behind in dark green’s base. Either way works. Your next target is orange, but you have to attack from the north. A killing field region changed, so to get there, you have to skirt by green’s base, and take a waygate to bypass it as shown.

(screenshot!)

If you can bypass all the killing zones, orange should die relatively quickly, and you can take a waygate back to green’s base. At this point, the west side of green’s base should be open to attack, but be careful. Green has an incredibly powerful base and a level 10 dreadlord. Try to lure out the dreadlord before charging in, even steam tanks have trouble destroying green’s buildings because they create so many skeletons when you invade.

Once you enter green’s base, your base will come under heavy attack from a new threat. Once you’ve either gotten enough of your army killed to make destroying green impossible, or destroyed green’s base, mass teleport back home to deal with this new threat. It shouldn’t be too hard, your towers can hold them back for a while, and once you destroy their meat wagons, they can’t create more. When you’ve dealt with the big attack, head back and destroy green once and for all.

When you’ve destroyed green, head to the east in this way

(screenshot)


You’ll find an undead base here. Destroy it, but don’t go too far east, there’s a magic field in the way. Get a few zepplins from the ruins of this base, and head east in them until you find a lone lich. Drop directly on the lich and kill him, and all the death zones will disappear.

Once you do that, recreate your army and kill the remaining undead forces on the map, including a group of spirit towers to your east, to win!


Level 7:
The best defense in this level is a good offense, so start building up your army right away, and get a lot of peasants on wood. Personally, I like using dragonhawk riders and gryphon riders for this mission. Cloud is excellent for neutralizing towers, and gryphon riders destroy most enemy unit compositions. Get upgrades and stay at low upkeep until you feel comfortable attacking the ghoul users, but try to kill the first enemy base quickly. The longer you delay, the more enemy bases will be attacking you at once.

Once you kill the ghoul users, the crypt fiend users will start attacking you, so make sure you have some defense or the ability to get back quickly. Expand to the undead bases as you kill them, and continue building up your army and attacking bases. As long as you continue moving quickly from base to base, you should be able to kill off all the bases surrounding the center. When you get within range of the frost wyrm base, green will start attacking your troops trying to destroy grey, so be careful. Get some additional dragonhawk riders once only frost wrym users are left, they work very well against frost wyrms and towers.

Green's base is pretty huge, and will attack you with frost wyrms from time to time, but as long as you make sure you keep an army at home, they shouldn’t overwhelm you. Get a lot of steam tanks and dragonhawks, and the rest of the steam tank upgrades, as that’s the best way to overcome the enemy base. There are zepplins you can buy south of the frost wyrm users base to get to the base, and some sky barges you rescue in the base. It will probably take a couple full armies to overcome green’s base, but it shouldn’t be too difficult. When you destroy the demon gate, you win!


Level 8:
You start out with three powerful allies, against one enemy fortress. Green is going to attack Antonidas soon after the level starts, and you can’t save him with the meager army you have. Instead, work on your economy and start clearing out creeps for extra gold. There’s a gold mine to the east of your base, so clear that out first, then start clearing out creeps on the way to Jaina’s base. Get a lot of peasants in lumber for upgrades, and build one gryphon rider immediately. Get in to low upkeep once you expand and start creating more gryphons.

Clear out all the creeps in between Jaina and Uther, they have a tendency to mess up your gryphons as you rally them to Uther’s base if they are left alive. You can theoretically have about 60 supply, 2/2 upgrades, one expansion, and your army in Uther’s base by the time green makes their first attack on him. How well prepared you are for this first attack can make the difference between winning and losing, so get ready, and use avatar to hold off the first strike.

Start building more gryphons, with two more gryphon aviaries, and rally them to Uther’s base through Jaina’s base. When you feel comfortable at holding off green’s attacks, expand to the gold mine south of Jaina’s base. You’ll need all the gold income you can get this level, especially because it will eventually run out. You can try to expand to the mine south of uther’s base, but I would focus on gryphon production instead. If you’re really good though, it can possibly be worth it.

Orange will take over Antonidas’ base and start building up and upgrading their forces slowly. Eventually, when orange gets full upgrades and a level 10 hero, it will become harder and harder to keep Uther’s base alive.

Once you get overwhelmed in Uther’s base, retreat your forces and head to Jaina’s base. Jaina has a diverse and powerful army that can help you hold off the undead for a long time, so make your last stand here. If you can, try to hold out at 80 food supply until the undead reach Jaina’s base, the extra gold from a little extra low upkeep can help considerably. You’ll probably have a little surplus gold for the first time in a while, but it won’t last you forever, because by this point, your gold mines will be collapsing. Build some towers to fortify Jaina’s front entrance if you want, get masonry upgrades, and keep up gryphon production until you run out of money, then micro well and hope its enough.

Eventually you'll get overwhelmed in Jaina's base, and you'll need to retreat to your own. If you save a couple of gryphons and still have some money left over, you can build a few towers on the edge to your base, create some knights and gryphons, and try to hold them off with one last stand. You can't hold them for long though, but if you only need a minute more by this point, you might be able to hold them off for that minute at your base.

If you can survive until the timer runs out, the orcs will start sending you a large supply of chaos space orcs, which will overwhelm the undead. Congratulations, the humans have successfully beaten back an undead invasion! Next level, we get to see what Arthas is up to again.


Level 9:
This level starts out a bit differently than the others. You have a small scouting party, but your base is blocked off by suspicious looking trees. Explore the map and kill off any creeps you find until you get to the northwest corner of the map, where you’ll find a green dragon. When you reach it, don’t kill it. Instead, double back and kill off every creep on the map, including the ones guarding the southern gold mine in between your base and blue’s. That extra starting gold and a quick expansion can be the difference between living and dying in this level.

Once you kill the dragon, Arthas will steal a sword to grab Frostmourne. As that happens, the sun will rise, revealing the trap the night elves set for you. Arthas’ divine shield helps him escape, while all your other units will disappear, captured. Shadowmelded units will become revealed and start attacking your base, and while your army will kill them without you, they will kill all of your peasants and severely damage your infrastructure. A lot of your units will be dead recently when Arthas gets there though, meaning resseruction can revive some of your units immediately if you use it now.

When you rescue the base, you’ll need to move fast. You should have a lot of gold, but very little lumber, so upgrade improved lumber harvesting and send your first few peasants on lumber. Send one to the expansion in between your base and blue’s if you’ve cleared that out. Build footmen immediately, and build a couple of towers as soon as possible. The enemy doesn’t give you much time to rebuild.

With resseruction, you should be able to survive red’s first wave, but they’ll attack again. Place a couple of cannon towers along blue’s attack path, and guard towers along red’s, while continuing to get upgrades and troops. Build a town hall in your expansion when you feel as though your defenses are good enough to do so, but be careful, blue will attack this with land units, and red will attack this with chimeras. Enemy chimeras will melt your towers, but they should be effective against the rest of your enemies’ forces.

When you get to low upkeep, wait until red attacks you, then send an army to eliminate blue. With blue gone, you can expand to their base and dramatically decrease the amount of troops attacking you. Be prepared to retreat during your attack if red attacks you again, but keep up the pressure, blue will rebuild if you don’t wipe them out.

Once you’ve wiped out blue, you’re free to build up your standard army and finish upgrading. Red doesn’t have too big a base or all that much in the way of defenses, so crush them. Free the prisoners, and continue marching forward to victory!


Level 10:
You start this level with a small group of units and a few peasants, but no gold mine. Head west, and you’ll discover a small night elf base protecting a gold mine. Destroy them and set up your base here. Immediately build a town hall and three farms to start your base, and when the farms are finished, send all your peasants to finish your town hall. While your peasants are constructing your base, send out your army to kill a few creeps, including ones guarding a gold mine to the north. You can try to expand here, but unlike in previous levels, the enemy will attack your expansions, so keeping yourself to one base is easier.

Develop your economy while building some guard towers to the north of your base, along the night elf attack path. The elves won’t give you much time to build up, so start building quickly, and send a lot of peasants on lumber. Try to tech up to a castle as quickly as possible, while creating footmen and towers to defend. Be careful to not lose Ozzie, you’ll need him to defend against the waves, but use holy light on him if he gets to low health.

When you get to a castle, this level gets a lot easier, because that allows you to build your new ultimate weapon. Marines have insane dps, and are pretty cheap for their effectiveness. Start producing as many as you can afford, and when you feel a bit safer in your defense, expand to the northern mine. The enemy will attack both halls at the same time, so be careful with your defenses. Once you have a critical mass of marines, you should be fine, but be really careful for Tyrande’s starfall and Maiev’s fury of knives. These spells can really hurt your marines. Once you have a critical mass of marines, you can add a few knights in the army for better tanking if you want, but its not necessary.

When you have enough marines to attack and defend at the same time, go after purple and kill them. I personally put Ozzie in my attacking group, the enemy attacks get crazy once you’ve expanded, and its easier to keep an eye out on him there. Expand here if you want, but be sure you’re able to defend your expansions. You can send flying machines to scout the map for the other bases if you want, or you can just go with your army of marines to crush anything on your path. Head to the elven armada base first, then the elven flyers, then to Tyrande’s final base, all while replacing your army on the way and defending attacks.

Once you’ve successfully gone full guns, germs, and steel on the indigenous population, march your army to the northwest, right above Tyrande’s base. Leave Ozzie behind for this final fight, its not worth risking him, and go attack the powerful creeps behind the gates. They should fall quickly to your marines, and once they die, you win!

Thanks for playing the campaign! The Xel’Naga/Orc campaign is next, where we follow what happens on Dreanor.

Keywords:
Starcraft, crossover, campaign
Previews
Contents

StarWarsCraft Terran Campaign (Campaign)

Author
redwings1340
Filename
StarWarsCraft (1).w3n
Required game
Warcraft 3
Recommended version
1.30
Difficulty
Normal
Size
63.42 MB
Uploaded
Feb 8, 2017
Updated
Aug 17, 2019
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Next Review: [2016-05-30] Rufus Moderation Note What you need to do: Add a decent description. As it is now, it is not very informative and messy to read. It doesn't give any information on what type of map this is and it lacks structure and...
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deepstrasz
deepstrasz
A different loading screen would be nice, something to fit the theme. It can be an image. Units still appear after the gates are destroyed. A different model for the canal would be great. Units are not paused/stopped during cinematic mode and remain...
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Moderator

M

Moderator

Next Review: [2016-05-30]
Rufus Moderation Note

storywritingart.gif
What you need to do:
Add a decent description.
As it is now, it is not very informative and messy to read. It doesn't give any information on what type of map this is and it lacks structure and screenshots.
I don't think you will attract any players with a description like that.
With a nicer looking description it might just become more attractive for people to download and try it out.

If you need information on how to create a proper description, check this out.

I also downloaded it and played it briefly. From just looking at he first msission, I could see that this needs some more work before it can be approved. All the basic commands (Move, Attack etc.) was replaced by green icons it seems you haven't imported them properly. Also, upon starting the first mission, I was thrown straight int combat, without any story elements or cinematics. It felt like I justed warped into the middle of the game, which was weird.

Status is set to Awaiting Update.
 

Rufus

Rufus

Rufus

Level 26
Joined
Oct 2, 2011
Messages
2,482
Next Review: [2016-05-30]
Rufus Moderation Note

storywritingart.gif
What you need to do:
Add a decent description.
As it is now, it is not very informative and messy to read. It doesn't give any information on what type of map this is and it lacks structure and screenshots.
I don't think you will attract any players with a description like that.
With a nicer looking description it might just become more attractive for people to download and try it out.

If you need information on how to create a proper description, check this out.

I also downloaded it and played it briefly. From just looking at he first msission, I could see that this needs some more work before it can be approved. All the basic commands (Move, Attack etc.) was replaced by green icons it seems you haven't imported them properly. Also, upon starting the first mission, I was thrown straight int combat, without any story elements or cinematics. It felt like I justed warped into the middle of the game, which was weird.

Status is set to Awaiting Update.
 

redwings1340

redwings1340

redwings1340

Level 3
Joined
Oct 27, 2011
Messages
28
I'll change the description when I can. I honestly have no idea why the attack commands are green on the first level, but its only a problem on the first level, the rest of the levels don't have that issue. I've also noticed that ensnare for some reason doesn't have the proper animation on any of the levels, and I have no idea why. If you could tell me how to fix it, that would be great, because I've tried and can't figure it out. In the end it doesn't effect gameplay too much, but I'll admit it looks bad.

I could work on cinematics more, my main priority (perhaps because I personally get more from this in campaigns) has been gameplay and difficulty level in this campaign. I experimented with a system in the first level to let people skip cinematics, but I'm a bit afraid that the more cinematics I put in, the more annoying the game will be to play. Is there an easier way to let people skip cinematics in the middle of one than what I did?
 

Rufus

Rufus

Rufus

Level 26
Joined
Oct 2, 2011
Messages
2,482
You can split the cinematic in the "Cinematic" and "End Cinematic" triggers.
In "Cinematic" you trigger your cinematic exactly how it should be, except for the ending (diabling cinematic mode, unpausing, restoring camera angle etc.). Instead, you put a trigger that runs the "End Cinematic" which ends the cinematic properly.

Now, you can add another trigger "End Cinematic" where if the player presses ESC during a cinematic, it will run the trigger "End CInematic".

Try asking around in the forums for solutions aswell, as I'm not a pro cinematic creator.

Good luck! :)
 

redwings1340

redwings1340

redwings1340

Level 3
Joined
Oct 27, 2011
Messages
28
Thanks, that sounds easy enough to implement, I hadn't thought of making it two separate triggers. That would make it easier to cancel the cinematic anytime without an if statement every two seconds, I would just need to make sure everything is loaded correctly at the end of the cinematic if its skipped.

I suppose that will be my next big project, creating reasonable and cohesive cinematics at the start and end of each level. That could take a while, so I may wait some time before I ask for it to be reviewed again, especially with a limited amount of time to work on this in the next couple weeks due to a busy schedule. I'll also need to make sure that the cinematics don't mess up the current AI timings of the level.

I'm not planning on changing my level structures outside of cinematics much for now, so if you still want to give feedback on that, that could be helpful. For the first level, I'm thinking maybe a very short cinematic leading in to that initial fight, then a slightly longer one after the first nydus canal is destroyed could work well and be less arbitrary.
 

deepstrasz

deepstrasz

deepstrasz

Map Reviewer
Level 69
Joined
Jun 4, 2009
Messages
18,798
This campaign brought me nuisance, not fun.
It has no story. It starts with terran and zerg only to end with undead, nelves and xel'naga without any logical link.

-all levels are visible from the start. Might want to change that to make it look like a campaign

lev1:
-I thought it was pretty obvious the horde had nothing more to send especially when the portal had been sealed
-starts with no cinematic scene
-how can that be called a Nydus Canal...
-the order icons are green squares...
-Marines sequestrated by trolls!?
-the orcs begun to use space arsenal
-the Priest can go through some trees getting to some places where other/the rest of the troops have to circumvent to get to; Zerglings do the same and attack orc groups; check pathing using P or clicking it in the view option/menu of the editor
-the units still attack in the cinematic scene with the Overlords; Marine appear out of nowhere near the Way Gate
-how did they know where the Overlords were going?
-Arthas just disappeared in the end cinematic scene from where he was
-he didn't seem to care or ask about who the Marines were and where did they come from
-well zerg are ruled by a hivemind; what they see the mind also sees; that means the zerg command already knows about Azeroth
-you need to use cameras to make cinematic scenes actually look like what they're supposed to be

lev2:
-so, why are the orcs attacking them all of a sudden?
-with what resources and materials could one Marine build a Wraith!?

lev3:
-a Marine named Kel'thuzad...
-the Overlord would have been to Char by now. The time it must have taken to build a Wraith...
-the Wraith's name is Mutalisk...
-so, the Wraith does not regenerate but it can be healed. I guess you should put the Mechanical classification to it
-also its level 5 is shown anywhere but in the hero name panel over the unit; it doesn't have a hero name
-you know, you could edit the blight's colour to purple or something to look more like the Creep; I think there is a custom texture on Hiveworkshop.com (this site)
-why is the Wraith considered a flying unit when it cannot actually fly?
-what the heck are neutral hostile units still doing being alive? Zerg either assimilate what they see fit or annihilate
-so, the retarded Overlord just runs from a place to another instead of going up towards the sky?
-blight should disappear after a while if no buildings are on it; Brood War, remember?
-please find a model for the Nydus Canal...
-Marines near a Fountain of Mana unharmed...
-there's a Mutalisk that looks like a Wyvern. Why is it also named Mutalisk?
-somehow, the Overlord had full HP after having below 20% when meeting it in the final zone; it also got teleported
-you might want to add a timer so players would know how quick they should act...
-the defeat can come right after the Overlord is killed; you need to use some boleans and turn off triggers to avoid this sort of thing
-"just as I was expecting, they went into hyperspace". Are you serious!? Then, why the rush to get it? It gets into hyperspace even if the troops doesn't reach it in time...
-I don't remember Arthas introducing himself to the Marines; how do they know his name?

lev4:
-what does the undead have to do with the zerg, especially cerebrates?
-at least, it's good that the blue orcs don't revive their hero otherwise the growing numbers/wave of the other two enemy bases would be even harder to fend; actually, the Space Orcs are the problem
-it would've been nice if the undead would've attacked the orcs too
-so, I saved a Marine to get RIFLEMEN!?
-the undead base was not all destroyed before victory... they were still training Frost Wyrms...

lev5:
-the starting camera is somewhere in the black mask to the north; it might be the place of importance? I suggest a minimap ping instead
-there's a Water Elemental permanent unit!?
-the orcs with the gun are just... why don't we have Marines?
-why does the Ensnare effect/buff look like Mana Shield?
-why are there Siege Golems reappearing at an infinite rate after they die in the southwest?
-the logic behind the Way Gates to the undead bases being in the orc base while they're enemies amongst themselves is? The way back through the Way Gate is a different location
-what's with the placement of those Iron Gates in the northeast!?
-oh, even the Revenants and golems in the northeast reappear at an infinite rate...
-I'm curious. If I had made an outpost at the mine where the purple Way Gate in the undead base leads to it, what would've happened if the undead base was still intact?

lev6:
-no, the traps have to at least be detected or something; remembering where every of them are is boring and a waste of time; make them be visible after a unit dies in them
-even the Zeppelins are affected...
-great, now you have to reconfigure your brain into memorizing new murdering magic barriers...

lev7:
-aha, so this level is basically (like) the other one with visible traps
-seems, neutral hostile units are not affected
-there's a Goblin Zeppelin belonging to the player named Immune to Magic in the gray undead base
-the undead player names are weird: Frost Wyrm Users, Meat Wagon Users...
-a Guard Tower is in (from the beginning of the map) the death field and does not take any damage
-I suggest Sky Barges instead of Zeppelins
-why doesn't the field disappear when units are able to pass through it?
-what's the use of the green Haunted Mines if they are not being mined?
-the Boneyards don't need to be destroyed in the green base to achieve victory

lev8:
-again, a Haunted Mine that does nothing but somehow they are training
-you can actually deal damage to their base with air units
-none of the undead want to use their Haunted Mines
-so, the Scourge Outpost 2 is before the Scourge Outpost?
-shouldn't they be making the third undead outpost?
-the purple AI has done some progress pertaining gold mining, however, their Acolytes only stand in the mining spots, they don't actually do it; some of them actually group near Ziggurats or other buildings to cough together
-how do their heroes level up if they don't get to kill that many troops?
-I think the green AI only uses the Dreadlord after all other heroes die; it's not bad at all
-what portal!? When did the orcs ally with the humans? The orcs just suddenly appear out of nowhere...
-they're not Fel Orcs; they're green and have no chaos damage type
-all quests have the same icon...
-there weren't that many troops in the camps, but I guess Thrall really cared about them

lev9:
-this, Kel'thuzad, he can die every level he "appears" in; why not make him a hero or a better warrior like the Captain is in the original Wc III campaign
-the nelves aren't mining
-the sword was waiting for him, eh? All of a sudden
-some small nelven group took Arthas' group!?
-if the nelves were already in the human base, why would the trees be lowered before they finish their attack?

lev10:
-wow, you've made Kel'thuzad a bit more powerful than a Marine and gave the unit the respective name
-what the heck are nelves doing on another planet?
-where's the Wraith?
-how do they know of the mineral?
-why is a Marine even able to be a scientist?
-why do most maps in the campaign look like melee ones? Did you make them yourself?
-it's better to attack the bases without having a base so the AI won't start working
-summoned Elune the Xel'Naga!? Elune was/is a woman, well entity; it does what a stupid elf wants?
-there were still troops there that were not "burned"
-suddenly a Cerebrates appears in the story and instantly revives Arthas that kills Elune..............................................
-units were selected during the final scene

Not only a boring "storyline" but also annoying gameplay most of the time.
2/5.

EDIT: updated. Rating changed to 3/5.
 
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redwings1340

redwings1340

redwings1340

Level 3
Joined
Oct 27, 2011
Messages
28
All right. Thanks for playing it through. I agree with a lot of your points, and I'm definitely going to be making changes for it.

Level 1:

I'm massively changing the cinematics in this level, and I'll create something plausable here. Note that this original storyline was created when I was in middle school, and... yeah... it doesn't make sense. I'm not sure about the green images, I have no clue why that's there.

Thanks for the pathing advice, I'll check that out.

Level 2: Yep. Changing cinematics again. I think the level itself isn't that bad though.

Level 3: Yep, agree with all of your points there. This level is also really tedius, so I'm making major changes to this one. Thanks for your input. I usually do turn off the defeat trigger at the start of the victory trigger, so I'm surprised to see I didnt there, but thanks for pointing that out. I think I'm just going to completely overhaul this level, add more zerg troops, remove a ton of zerg towers, and make the terran reinforcements more plausible. Probably modify the victory condition too, theres no reason you should need to kill two overlords in this level.

-there's a Mutalisk that looks like a Wyvern. Why is it also named Mutalisk?
I've fixed the wyvernlisk. I have no clue why the wraith is named mutalisk. That's been bothering me and I may need to recreate it from scratch.

Level 4: I feel like this one isn't that bad, but I'll add more cinematics to make it make sense, and have the undead attack the orcs from time to time too. That could actually be an interesting mechanic, rescue the marine before the undead kills him. I'll have to think about that.

And yes, you rescued the marine to get riflemen. Ignore all of your preconcieved notions about lore, this is a totally alternate universe.

Level 5:

"-I'm curious. If I had made an outpost at the mine where the purple Way Gate in the undead base leads to it, what would've happened if the undead base was still intact?"

I'll need to look at that, I'm not sure. It sounds like you want the level design to make more sense. I'll look in to that, and try to make it more logical and give players more of a clue to why it is that way.

-why does the Ensnare effect/buff look like Mana Shield?

I have literally no idea. Bothers me too, but I can't figure it out.

Level 6:

Yes. All right, I'll make the traps visible.

Level 7:

-why doesn't the field disappear when units are able to pass through it?
Good idea, I'll try to implement that

--I suggest Sky Barges instead of Zeppelins
Good idea, I'll change it, that makes more sense.

Level 8:

-again, a Haunted Mine that does nothing but somehow they are training
I'll try to fix this.
-you can actually deal damage to their base with air units
There's no reason to say you can't in this one, is there? If you try though, your allies are going to get overwhelmed by enemy attacks.
-so, the Scourge Outpost 2 is before the Scourge Outpost?
Heh. Whoops. I'll fix that.
-how do their heroes level up if they don't get to kill that many troops?
They get a bit of bonus experience upon dying. I discovered that the level was too easy when the enemy heroes didn't level up at all, and you could usually focus them down at lower levels. That's a mechanic I was using to make the level harder over time.
-I think the green AI only uses the Dreadlord after all other heroes die; it's not bad at all
I spent some time trying to balance what heroes they use. This seemed the best to me. If they used more heroes it was overpowered, fewer and you could hold forever.
-all quests have the same icon...
I'll try to change that.
-there weren't that many troops in the camps, but I guess Thrall really cared about them
No man left behind! Seriously though, I'll make cinematics better.
-shouldn't they be making the third undead outpost?
I decided that two outposts was enough to kill you super quickly, so they didn't really need a third.

Level 9:

-this, Kel'thuzad, he can die every level he "appears" in; why not make him a hero or a better warrior like the Captain is in the original Wc III campaign
Good idea. Maybe I'll even remove him altogether and change the plotline and the plotline going forward significantly. He really adds nothing to the plot than a terran scientist would, now that I think about it, other than to annoy people that standard lore is being put in a different way.
-if the elves were already in the human base, why would the trees be lowered before they finish their attack?
So the blue elves could attack? I dunno, I can probably find a reason. Maybe I'll have grey make a mortar team and have it blast the trees while you're away, though I'll need to balance that with not letting you return without the sword.

Level 10:

-why is a Marine even able to be a scientist?
Why can't a marine be a scientist?
-why do most maps in the campaign look like melee ones? Did you make them yourself?
I suck at terrain design. I don't think this is a bad compromise though.
-it's better to attack the bases without having a base so the AI won't start working
Really, you can do that? I didn't think your troops were powerful enough to do that at the start of the mission. The AI starts on a time delay, not on a 'when you build your hall.'
-there were still troops there that were not "burned"
Going to change cutscenes
-summoned Elune the Xel'Naga!? Elune was/is a woman, well entity; it does what a stupid elf wants?
Yeahhhh. Going to modify my plotline on this a bit. Still, forget all lore you know post wc2 and brood war for this.

I really appreciate the feedback. Thanks for giving it. I'll definitely make sure that anything I upload here in the future is better quality, and I'll make major changes to this campaign when I can. I agree with you that it isn't up to par in a lot of ways. I appreciate you playing it through regardless.
 
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redwings1340

redwings1340

redwings1340

Level 3
Joined
Oct 27, 2011
Messages
28
Other notes

-all levels are visible from the start. Might want to change that to make it look like a campaign

How do you do that? I tried experimenting with stuff, and couldn't figure it out.

-you know, you could edit the blight's colour to purple or something to look more like the Creep; I think there is a custom texture on Hiveworkshop.com (this site)

Good idea

-how can that be called a Nydus Canal...

Well... I'm not a 3d modeler and made this campaign with no assistance, and I started this campaign well before I discovered this site. As far as I know, there just aren't any nydus canal models out there.

As far as gameplay goes, here's what I think of it. Is this about what you experienced, or am I off base here?

Level 1 is meh but short.

Level 2 is solid.

Level 3 is tedious, long, and not fun. I like the general idea of chasing something through enemy territory, but then I realized that sucked when playing it, and I didn't change the level concept accordingly. I will fix this by making you have to be more active, adding more zerg coming in on a timer instead of a progress condition, and removing a lot of enemy towers in favor of more enemy troops.

Level 4 is pretty good, overall, though I need it to have a lot more explanation as to why this is happening. Its exceedingly random with no buildup. I think what happened is that, when I was creating the campaign, I had the idea of a zerg invasion, then I realized I wasn't good enough with the editor to program in the zerg, and didn't have models. Level 3, the level that involved the zerg, was also really tedious and boring. So, I shifted focus to the undead, and made the undead a weaker extension of the zerg. Now I have programmed in the zerg to an extent when working on the later campaigns, but this shift looks very weird, and I didn't give any reasoning why it happened. I am fixing it by adding a cinematic in between levels 3 and 4.

Level 5 is tedious and a bit long. Its also an annoyingly large map and microing your defenders isn't hard, but tedious and frustrating. I'll fix it by creating bigger attack waves that are more spaced out, to give you time to explore the map. I'll also make sure to add cinematics showing you how you're not supposed to attack, and give a reason why the front isn't penetrable and why the orcs have passage to the bases.

Level 6 is really annoying when you don't know where the traps are, and aren't me playing it. It's also a bit tedious as you need to build up a huge defense of towers before you can do anything, which is boring. I'll fix it by making the traps visible, and also trying to figure out a way to make you be able to play a more aggressive game without needing quite so many towers when your troops aren't home. I'm thinking... Maybe I could try out having little markers across the map that you can mass teleport to, so you don't need to walk your army across the entire maze. Orrrr.... I could even create a build-able special unit that can create flags around the map that can be mass teleported to. That would be a fun mechanic, and reduce a lot of the tedium in this level. I could even maybe add this unit to level 5, and instead of putting the waygates at the back of the orc bases, I could create a small path that you could sneak this particular unit in to. Maybe even have it have a blink spell or something if I could figure that out. Hmm, lots of potential here. I think this could make these two levels less boring and more tactical.

Level 7 is all right, for the most part. A bit long, but its action throughout, at least. Though, I feel like the level could be a bit more varied as to where enemies are, and force you to use different compositions than dragonhawk/gryphon. Perhaps I should change enemy unit compositions, and add more small forces of units throughout the map to make it look less like a melee map.

Level 8 is solid, though I should probably add a trigger to get uther back to the towers whenever he casts a spell.

Level 9 is actually pretty good, I think, though could make more sense logically. I don't think I need to do too much here outside of a little more cinematic work.

Level 10 has a weird ending, but as a level isn't bad. I'll look in and test out how you can kill the AI immediately, and make sure you can't.

As far as cinematics go, they basically suck, no argument there. I'm going to need to learn how to use cameras, because I've never really experimented with that.
 
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deepstrasz

deepstrasz

deepstrasz

Map Reviewer
Level 69
Joined
Jun 4, 2009
Messages
18,798
redwings1340 said:
I have no clue why the wraith is named mutalisk.
Click to expand...
A hero unit has two names. One is the unit name (eg: Paladin, Lich etc.) and the other is the hero name (eg: Arthas, Thrall etc.)
redwings1340 said:
I have literally no idea. Bothers me too, but I can't figure it out.
Click to expand...
Look at the ability. You might have changed the Ensnare buff's look with something else. Or, look in the import manager. Maybe, you have replaced the effect's model's path with something.
redwings1340 said:
Yes. All right, I'll make the traps visible.
Click to expand...
This level's concept is neat. To me the nuisance is not being able to see the traps at all even after you could potentially do something. For you, the map creator, it's easy, because you know/remember where the traps are. Don't make them visible from the start. Think of something interesting. Either use an item (Gem of True Seeing?)/spell to detect them or make them flicker from time to time. Use your imagination.
redwings1340 said:
I'll try to fix this.
Click to expand...
With the Haunted Mines, sometimes you have to understand I'm being sarcastic. That in no way affects gameplay but would look nicer if you could fix it.
redwings1340 said:
Level 8:
Click to expand...
Also has a neat concept even if it's similar to RoC's final level.
redwings1340 said:
I spent some time trying to balance what heroes they use. This seemed the best to me. If they used more heroes it was overpowered, fewer and you could hold forever
Click to expand...
Hmm, maybe make the other heroes not level up suddenly and leave the other two green ones to come back?
redwings1340 said:
So the blue elves could attack? I dunno, I can probably find a reason. Maybe I'll have grey make a mortar team and have it blast the trees while you're away, though I'll need to balance that with not letting you return without the sword.
Click to expand...
Yes or make the/a Keeper of the Grove attack too transforming the trees into Ents/Treants.
redwings1340 said:
Why can't a marine be a scientist?
Click to expand...
Because they are usually criminals that have their brain washed into serving a battling purpose. They're not UED Marines, I gather, are they?
redwings1340 said:
I suck at terrain design. I don't think this is a bad compromise though.
Click to expand...
No, I was really curious if you made them or not. Some of them are really nice. You could even release them as melee maps at some point :)
redwings1340 said:
Really, you can do that? I didn't think your troops were powerful enough to do that at the start of the mission. The AI starts on a time delay, not on a 'when you build your hall.'
Click to expand...
You're right. It's not easy. It doesn't work all the way.
redwings1340 said:
Yeahhhh. Going to modify my plotline on this a bit. Still, forget all lore you know post wc2 and brood war for this.
Click to expand...
Well, why have the names and the two universes merged if we are supposed to believe it's a whole different thing? I suggest you do your own "original"/inspired story with names and stuff. Even if I am to forget things post Beyond the Dark Portal and Brood War, I can't have a xel'naga be Elune and to some extent a male. I guess you should only modify what comes after the stories of those two games, not even their lore as well.
redwings1340 said:
How do you do that? I tried experimenting with stuff, and couldn't figure it out.
Click to expand...
In the Campaign Editor, there's a button/title menu named Loading Screen. There you have all the levels listed. Click them (double-click I think) and uncheck the Visible (from the beginning of the campaign). If you haven't added the buttons yet, right-click and add them with their respective levels.
redwings1340 said:
Well... I'm not a 3d modeler and made this campaign with no assistance, and I started this campaign well before I discovered this site. As far as I know, there just aren't any nydus canal models out there.
Click to expand...
Just use some other model that looks zergy/monstrous.
redwings1340 said:
Level 1 is meh but short.
Click to expand...
Well, it's the first level. You usually need that to get accustomed to the feeling and gameplay. It can be made more interesting. I have no ideas now how.
redwings1340 said:
Level 2 is solid.
Click to expand...
It's your typical survival type. It would be better if the Marine was in actual danger, say, if Wyverns and/or Troll Bat Riders/air units came to attack him.
redwings1340 said:
Level 3 is tedious, long, and not fun.
Click to expand...
It's only because the towers are a pain to destroy and facing them without a longer range than theirs is not a good idea.
redwings1340 said:
Level 4 is pretty good, overall
Click to expand...
Yes, the Space Orcs are hell though. Even though they have Piercing attack (not chaos as they name Fel suggests, thank the gods), the Knight's heavy armour is decimated in a matter of seconds. There is no unit as powerful as the Knight that can be trained.
redwings1340 said:
s far as cinematics go, they basically suck, no argument there. I'm going to need to learn how to use cameras, because I've never really experimented with that.
Click to expand...
It's not hard, it just takes time to create them, the triggers and test.

I thank you for the reply and I'm really happy you didn't take this as an offense as it was intended to be helpful and constructive.
 

redwings1340

redwings1340

redwings1340

Level 3
Joined
Oct 27, 2011
Messages
28
-A hero unit has two names. One is the unit name (eg: Paladin, Lich etc.) and the other is the hero name (eg: Arthas, Thrall etc.)
I'll take a look at that. I think there are some oddities going on because this campaign was originally created on the ROC editor, then I imported things in to the frozen throne editor, so sometimes there are contradictions between map data for the level and map data for the campaign, and the game doesn't know what to make of that. I'll double check everything in both places though, and see what I can find, and ask people on the map development forums if I can't find anything.

-This level's concept is neat. To me the nuisance is not being able to see the traps at all even after you could potentially do something. For you, the map creator, it's easy, because you know/remember where the traps are. Don't make them visible from the start. Think of something interesting. Either use an item (Gem of True Seeing?)/spell to detect them or make them flicker from time to time. Use your imagination.
Thanks, I appreciate that. Yeah, I'll try to be creative here. I have a couple of ideas in mind.

-With the Haunted Mines, sometimes you have to understand I'm being sarcastic. That in no way affects gameplay but would look nicer if you could fix it.
Yeah, makes sense. It does look a little weird, but I can probably figure out a way to get them to mine.

-Well, why have the names and the two universes merged if we are supposed to believe it's a whole different thing? I suggest you do your own "original"/inspired story with names and stuff. Even if I am to forget things post Beyond the Dark Portal and Brood War, I can't have a xel'naga be Elune and to some extent a male. I guess you should only modify what comes after the stories of those two games, not even their lore as well.
Change heroes to original names? Shouldn't be too hard, shouldn't effect the story much. I'll probably change things to make more sense and try to establish it in the lore a little better, but not give up on the crossover altogether.

-Yes or make the/a Keeper of the Grove attack too transforming the trees into Ents/Treants.
Ooh, I love that idea!

-In the Campaign Editor, there's a button/title menu named Loading Screen. There you have all the levels listed. Click them (double-click I think) and uncheck the Visible (from the beginning of the campaign). If you haven't added the buttons yet, right-click and add them with their respective levels.
I tried doing that, but the issue is that I don't know how to make them re-visible once you get to them in the campaign. They just stay invisible forever, and I couldn't figure out where the trigger was to let it become visible.

-Just use some other model that looks zergy/monstrous.
All right, I'll take a look for one.

-It's your typical survival type. It would be better if the Marine was in actual danger, say, if Wyverns and/or Troll Bat Riders/air units came to attack him.
Interesting idea. That would be hard to impliment as it is because this level is already so hectic, but I'll think about that.

-It's only because the towers are a pain to destroy and facing them without a longer range than theirs is not a good idea.
Definitely. Those towers are really annoying.

-Yes, the Space Orcs are hell though. Even though they have Piercing attack (not chaos as they name Fel suggests, thank the gods), the Knight's heavy armour is decimated in a matter of seconds. There is no unit as powerful as the Knight that can be trained.
I don't find this one too bad honestly, you just need to build up an army and eliminate blue before teal starts attacking. If they're both attacking at the same time, its really difficult, but the chaos orcs don't have that much health, and a big army can pretty easily defend against their attacks. Your towers stop the undead attack waves really easily, so you don't need to worry too much about them.

-It's not hard, it just takes time to create them, the triggers and test.
Yep. I've figured out how to make a cutscene skippable, added them for the first two levels so far, and I'm working on a cutscene right now in between levels 3 and 4 to help make the transition a little less sudden. It will probably take a long time before I've made all these changes, but I think this has the potential to be a pretty good campaign, even if its not there yet. Do you have any advice on how to make a good cutscene?

-I thank you for the reply and I'm really happy you didn't take this as an offense as it was intended to be helpful and constructive.
You're welcome, it was a really detailed response, even if it was pretty critical. You've given me a lot of ideas.
 
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redwings1340

redwings1340

redwings1340

Level 3
Joined
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Messages
28
-No, I was really curious if you made them or not. Some of them are really nice. You could even release them as melee maps at some point :)

I mean, these are blizzard melee maps, just changed to fit whatever scenario I needed. I found the level looks a lot better when I do that than when I start from scratch. There are a lot of melee maps out there, so I chose whatever ones I thought fit for what I needed (the long path for level 3, a perfect defensive setup in the center of the map for level 2, etc)

I'm also thinking of eventually changing how much gold is in each gold mine and where gold mines are for some levels to force you to play a little more aggressively at times. One of the reasons I like level 2 is because you run out of lumber, and while that was a bit of an accident, I kept it in there because it made the level better in my opinion.
 

deepstrasz

deepstrasz

deepstrasz

Map Reviewer
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redwings1340 said:
and ask people on the map development forums if I can't find anything.
Click to expand...
Or just update the campaign for TFT and the latest patch (well, this last one would be a bit of a problem since I've seen people writing that they won't update yet because of paranoid reasons; I tried the update and everything up until today [including] is working fine). You'll have to replay your campaign for testing though.
redwings1340 said:
I tried doing that, but the issue is that I don't know how to make them re-visible once you get to them in the campaign. They just stay invisible forever, and I couldn't figure out where the trigger was to let it become visible.
Click to expand...
Oooh, it's a trigger in the editor. Action(s)->Game->Show/Hide Custom Campaign Button. You have to write down the numbers so you won't be making something else visible than what you actually want. This trigger should be used right after victory, before the next/following level starts.
redwings1340 said:
Do you have any advice on how to make a good cutscene?
Click to expand...
Hmm... it depends on what that means. I am not really that good at it. There are plenty of cinematic maps on this site and even custom campaigns that have that. You could learn from there either by just looking or even opening up the maps if they're not protected. But, the original Warcraft III campaign maps can be opened.
redwings1340 said:
You've given me a lot of ideas.
Click to expand...
That's what I am aiming with these posts otherwise I wouldn't waste time writing them. I don't make fun of stuff for the sake of it. If something is funny, I notice it, laugh but don't make fun of it publicly unless it's meant as self-defense.
redwings1340 said:
I'm also thinking of eventually changing how much gold is in each gold mine and where gold mines are for some levels to force you to play a little more aggressively at times. One of the reasons I like level 2 is because you run out of lumber, and while that was a bit of an accident, I kept it in there because it made the level better in my opinion.
Click to expand...
It's a strategy game, isn't it? Yes, I wondered if you thought about it or made it by accident :) Experimentation is fun.

Try writing everything in one post to avoid more posts belonging to you one after another if they're not the intention of an update.
Also, for replying, just drag the mouse on a piece of text and click the reply that appears at the edge of the selection zone. It's faster than CTRL+C->CTRL+V.

Why did you write pieces of the story for each level in the opening post?
 
Last edited:

redwings1340

redwings1340

redwings1340

Level 3
Joined
Oct 27, 2011
Messages
28
deepstrasz said:
Why did you write pieces of the story for each level in the opening post?
Click to expand...

What do you mean by that?

deepstrasz said:
Also, for replying, just drag the mouse on a piece of text and click the reply that appears at the edge of the selection zone. It's faster than CTRL+C->CTRL+V.
Click to expand...

Oh, that's really cool, thanks.

deepstrasz said:
There are plenty of cinematic maps on this site and even custom campaigns that have that. You could learn from there either by just looking or even opening up the maps if they're not protected.
Click to expand...

I'll take a look at them, thanks.

deepstrasz said:
Oooh, it's a trigger in the editor. Action(s)->Game->Show/Hide Custom Campaign Button. You have to write down the numbers so you won't be making something else visible than what you actually want. This trigger should be used right after victory, before the next/following level starts.
Click to expand...

Oh, nice. That sounds pretty easy, thanks.

deepstrasz said:
Or just update the campaign for TFT and the latest patch (well, this last one would be a bit of a problem since I've seen people writing that they won't update yet because of paranoid reasons; I tried the update and everything up until today [including] is working fine). You'll have to replay your campaign for testing though.
Click to expand...

Patching it is going to be difficult because I'm running warcraft 3 through wineskin on a mac right now, but I'll look in to this. I think for some of them I may just have to recreate the units from scratch, but it shouldn't be that bad. The WC3 campaign object editor is pretty easy to use, overall, at least for simple units. I was having trouble with some of the more advanced zerg and terran abilities though, when I was trying to program them in when creating the future campaigns in this series. Every campaign (well, the first three campaigns and the start of the fourth one) had a draft done a long time ago (a draft I've been working on, on and off, for many years, I abandoned this campaign for a long time when SC2 came out and am starting to work on it again on and off for the past year), which is why there's so much variation of quality here, and why there's so much data in the campaign editor that I didn't use in this campaign. I got better with the editor as time went on, and though I did a lot of renovations to this particular campaign to make it more playable, there are still a lot of relics and oddities that result from this timeshift, most of it in the dialogue, which I hadn't really updated.
 

redwings1340

redwings1340

redwings1340

Level 3
Joined
Oct 27, 2011
Messages
28
Hey, it's been a long time since I've posted here. I've been working on the campaign on and off over the past while (I took long breaks from it where I wasn't doing anything on it), but I think I'll have a pretty major update on this in a few days that will make this campaign much better, both with cinematic updates and major gameplay changes on several missions. I just need to play it through myself to make sure everything is still working correctly, but when I'm done with that, I'll post it.

As part of a plot explaining device (I'm trying to make changes to the plot to make it halfway plausible, if not incredible, given the limitations of trying to fit events in to what my middle school mind thought was logical when I first started this campaign), I'm planning on creating a prologue level where you play as the terran forces that eventually get stranded in Azeroth, but that level will take me some time to create, and if I wait for that level to be completed, the update may take a while. Do you think I should create the prologue level before I update, or should I update the campaign first once I'm sure everything in all the other levels is working correctly?

EDIT: Update is up!
 
Last edited:

redwings1340

redwings1340

redwings1340

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Joined
Oct 27, 2011
Messages
28
Michael the Boombringer said:
You should fix cinematic durations and camera angles. You can double click a camera and then check the box on the bottom left to see how it looks.
Click to expand...

All right. This is my first time really getting in to cinematic scenes, so do you have any tips about what optimal durations and camera angles should be? I think the reason they don't look particularly great is more because I don't know what looks good rather than me being unable to get them to work.

Thanks for the rating/comment, I hope you've been enjoying it!
 

Michael the Boombringer

Michael the Boombringer

Michael the Boombringer

Level 5
Joined
Dec 18, 2016
Messages
92
I don't really know about the durations because I am very lucky, my cinematics are never too short. I suggest you should put less than 1 second for a couple of words, 2 seconds for a sentence and so on. And I really enjoyed the campaign. I've never seen starcraft 2 in warcraft 3 before: 4 stars from me.
 

deepstrasz

deepstrasz

deepstrasz

Map Reviewer
Level 69
Joined
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Messages
18,798
A different loading screen would be nice, something to fit the theme. It can be an image.
Units still appear after the gates are destroyed. A different model for the canal would be great.
Units are not paused/stopped during cinematic mode and remain selected.
Arthas could have different spells as to make the game more interesting and not "seen that before".
The level should end with the cinematic mode on.
Camera work is required for cinematic scenes.

Set to Awaiting Update.

You could also make the techtree more interesting and unique. The game would feel too familiar otherwise and would not appeal.
 

redwings1340

redwings1340

redwings1340

Level 3
Joined
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Messages
28
deepstrasz said:
A different loading screen would be nice, something to fit the theme. It can be an image.
Click to expand...

I agree it would be, but I'm not particularly good with photoshop, nor do I have the program. Any recommendations on how I should do it?

deepstrasz said:
Units still appear after the gates are destroyed
Click to expand...

Can you elaborate on this? I believe you, but I thought I fixed that. What level?

deepstrasz said:
Units are not paused/stopped during cinematic mode and remain selected.
Click to expand...

If I pause units during cinematics, wouldn't everything stop, even if I want units to move? I'm assuming the selected part is just a simple trigger I'm not using that would be an easy fix.

deepstrasz said:
Arthas could have different spells as to make the game more interesting and not "seen that before".
Click to expand...

Any ideas for that? At this point, I'm worried about throwing off level balance, mainly, but I suppose this would be a simple enough fix, and probably wouldn't change that much. It would still involve changing a whole lot of triggers for relatively little benefit. Maybe I'll do something like this for the next campaign I do here though, I've had a draft of my next campaign created for a long time now, but after getting feedback here, I am realizing how it is inadequate in many ways, and am basically deciding to redo my entire orc campaign after the first level. I should put more creative stuff in that one.

deepstrasz said:
The level should end with the cinematic mode on.
Click to expand...

Oh, huh. That's an easy enough fix, for some reason I thought that if I did that, the victory screen wouldn't come up.

deepstrasz said:
Camera work is required for cinematic scenes.
Click to expand...

I'll try my best to look at some other maps to see how they did it, but I'm still a little lost on this. Right now my cinematics are functional and I think they do a decent job of explaining the level, but I'll admit they are still pretty hastily and inexperiencingly thrown together. Do you have any tips for how I could improve one of them, which I could then apply to improve the rest?

deepstrasz said:
You could also make the techtree more interesting and unique. The game would feel too familiar otherwise and would not appeal.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I started that process by adding the flagbearer to levels 5 and 6, which I think worked out quite well, so it could be interesting to continue that. As you've seen from the edits, I'm much better at using the object editor now than I was when I started this campaign, so little alterations here and there could be cool. Maybe I'll do that more for my next campaign though, because modifying the tech tree would change so much and force me to redo a whole lot.
 
Last edited:

deepstrasz

deepstrasz

deepstrasz

Map Reviewer
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Messages
18,798
redwings1340 said:
I agree it would be, but I'm not particularly good with photoshop, nor do I have the program. Any recommendations on how I should do it?
Click to expand...
Well you could just add an image from the net you think fits and post a link to it in the credits list.
This is how you do it: Simple Loading Screen
redwings1340 said:
Can you elaborate on this? I believe you, but I thought I fixed that. What level?
Click to expand...
First one, first gate. The second wave appeared right after the gate was destroyed.
redwings1340 said:
If I pause units during cinematics, wouldn't everything stop, even if I want units to move? I'm assuming the selected part is just a simple trigger I'm not using that would be an easy fix.
Click to expand...
There's one with clear selection for player.
About the pause, well, you can pause certain units, and unpause the ones you want to move. Unit Group-pick all units in region and do actions: pause units; unpause Arthas. Order Arthas to move to region.
redwings1340 said:
Any ideas for that? At this point, I'm worried about throwing off level balance, mainly, but I suppose this would be a simple enough fix, and probably wouldn't change that much. It would still involve changing a whole lot of triggers for relatively little benefit.
Click to expand...
Well, imagine what your hero should be and what he should do. There are many spells that can be used and even triggers could be used along with them. An example: let's say you have a Storm Bolt based ability. A unit starts the effect of an ability->unit group-pick every unit in units within 400 range of target of ability being cast->damage picked unit by 150 fire damage. You can also have an effect on the area for eye candy. Special effect-create special effect at location: position of target of ability being cast.
Triggers - Memory Leaks and Custom Scripts (useful to eliminate leaks and lagging triggering)
redwings1340 said:
Do you have any tips for how I could improve one of them, which I could then apply to improve the rest?
Click to expand...
Well, you just need to create cameras with the editor, place them to look at the important stuff. You can rotate them easily in the editor and you can also place test units to get an idea of what is seen and what not. You can take a look at the cameras in the original game's campaign levels. I usually "learned" a lot by doing so.

About the techtree, well you can export your object data and import it in which map you want but that replaces the current data in said map.
 

redwings1340

redwings1340

redwings1340

Level 3
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Oct 27, 2011
Messages
28
deepstrasz said:
First one, first gate. The second wave appeared right after the gate was destroyed.
Click to expand...

Oh, huh. How did you destroy the first gate before the second wave appeared? I thought that was impossible without cheats so I didn't bother to check in the trigger for it.

deepstrasz said:
This is how you do it: Simple Loading Screen
Click to expand...

I'll take a look at that, thanks!

deepstrasz said:
About the pause, well, you can pause certain units, and unpause the ones you want to move. Unit Group-pick all units in region and do actions: pause units; unpause Arthas. Order Arthas to move to region.
Click to expand...

Makes sense. Doesn't sound like too difficult a fix.

deepstrasz said:
Well, imagine what your hero should be and what he should do. There are many spells that can be used and even triggers could be used along with them. An example: let's say you have a Storm Bolt based ability. A unit starts the effect of an ability->unit group-pick every unit in units within 400 range of target of ability being cast->damage picked unit by 150 fire damage. You can also have an effect on the area for eye candy. Special effect-create special effect at location: position of target of ability being cast.
Click to expand...

Makes sense, I've done similar things at certain times in the campaign, that's how I managed to fix the wraith to what it should have been originally. Its still a matter of designing new spells then changing all my game cache triggers accordingly though. I also kind of like the idea of taking campaign units and giving them new directions, but I'll think about doing this.

deepstrasz said:
About the techtree, well you can export your object data and import it in which map you want but that replaces the current data in said map.
Click to expand...
I mean, I have a ton of custom object data already right now in the campaigns, way more than I'm actually using in this campaign, because before I abandoned this project the first time, I started programming in the starcraft races in the editor to the best of my ability. Its very buggy at the moment though, and there's still a lot of work I need to do if I actually want to play as any of them. The terrans are probably the best designed right now, and I have them at a state where it's decently playable pre-starport tech (though I would still need to add custom sound effects for it to feel right), though even for that the UI is still in a test phase, and bunkers crash the game when you click on them (I tried to use orc burrows as a base for them, but I haven't gotten it to work). I've also done a fair bit of work on the zerg, some of which you can see in my level 3 now, where I decided to add some hatcheries to the level.

However, right now I have each level balanced around the tech the game gives you, and I don't see any places where I could add in more tech choices like the flagbearer to make the levels more interesting. I'm open to the idea, and I think I am capable of doing so, but I'm not really sure what that would accomplish right now. However, I do plan on taking this advice and using custom tech for any future campaigns.
 

deepstrasz

deepstrasz

deepstrasz

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Messages
18,798
redwings1340 said:
Oh, huh. How did you destroy the first gate before the second wave appeared? I thought that was impossible without cheats so I didn't bother to check in the trigger for it.
Click to expand...
I did cheat. I wanted to test the whole campaign like that because I've already played it way back when it was released.
redwings1340 said:
Doesn't sound like too difficult a fix.
Click to expand...
It just takes time and testing.
redwings1340 said:
However, right now I have each level balanced around the tech the game gives you, and I don't see any places where I could add in more tech choices like the flagbearer to make the levels more interesting.
Click to expand...
I'm not certain. Maybe, add some custom abilities/upgrades to some units? (you can even have two or more and only be able to choose one of the per level)
 

redwings1340

redwings1340

redwings1340

Level 3
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Messages
28
deepstrasz said:
I did cheat. I wanted to test the whole campaign like that because I've already played it way back when it was released.
Click to expand...

Ah, makes sense. The other triggers that summon units from the waygates have a condition that they only do it if the canal is alive, but I didn't do it for that one because I figured the only way it would matter is if you're cheating. Considering the first wave is probably necessary for the level, I'm not really sure a way to fix that properly.

deepstrasz said:
I'm not certain. Maybe, add some custom abilities/upgrades to some units? (you can even have two or more and only be able to choose one of the per level)
Click to expand...

Interesting idea, I like it. I'll play around with things and see if I can figure out a good system for it.
 
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