ODYSSEY CAMPAIGN: (1) The Treasure of CSS Reliant

[Ricky_Honejasi]

Positives :

- Passable voice acting quality-wise overall
- Some custom content
- Completed campaign
- Good terrain work
- Comprehensible story

Brownie Points :

- A different language speaking crew instead of the everyday primary English speaking crew.

Negatives :

- Voice acting was often barely auditible especially in mid-game with the music on.
- Inconstant voice acting use. There was voice acting and then at other times, there weren't when there was dialog.
- Difficulty is high compared to the author's intentions (according to the readme) to be between easy to medium.

Other :
- I personally neglected more to check about typos for your case.

And so my preference/bug list :

###README###

- Over 20 typos.

###GENERAL###

- When you cannot build, player should not have a 50 starting minerals.
- For a campaign that is supposed to be easy to medium difficulty, the difficulty is quite high. You shouldn't have used Insane AIs for example.
- Dr. Marcellin Brongniant hero unit got civilian and custom voices instead of all custom voices.
- Same as above for Gottfriend hero unit
- Gottfriend's custom unit voices tend to have a long delay (2-3 seconds) before actually speaking thus you see the animated portrait "speaking" without hearing any voice and then it closed it mouth, you hear the voice.
- If a hero died, it is preferable to know which one has died instead of "a hero died" text message before losing.
- It would be preferable to update the game objectives (as in via menu then game objectives) more often with minor objectives instead of just keeping the main objectives when there is a lesser but more immediate goal to achieve.
- When creating terran player buildings as reinforcements, they should appear in slightly different locations instead of all hovering in the very same location over each other.
- It would look odd when the USS Steelcourt One have invulnerability and maxed stats. It would be preferable to remove its invulnerability and to give him very high but rounded stats (ex : 7500 hp, 3000 damage)  to make it somewhat more realistic.

###MAP 1###

- Since the USS Steelcourt was invincible, it was pretty much possible to send him alone, kill everything and win ridiculously easily.

###MAP 2###

- In the briefing, it looks more professional to use "Northwest" and "Northeast" instead of "NW" and "NE".
- In the briefing, the last dialog should have switched sooner to "End of Briefing" instead of waiting additional 3-5 seconds for it when you no longer saw any text.
- Some noticed typo : "you" (supposed to be "your" as in "your efforts")
- First occasion of Insane AI, basically had 6 guardians, 6 devourers and 5 ultralisks against my base at one time (which is somewhat a lot for an "easy/medium" map.)
Oddness : Looks odd when Captain Greg Elendil loses it whole base to the Zerg and he is just shooting the zerg at its old base location while staying invincible without moving to your base or some more realistic alternative.
- One of the expansions' setup (somewhat bottom-left of map's middle) makes workers get stuck behind the minerals and gas after harvesting gas (screenshot included at bottom of post)

###MAP 4###

- President Joseph's speech might have been good to be shown with subtitles as well
- Gottfriend's portrait during his dialog speech was of normal tank portrait instead of the Edmond Duke used for the rest of the campaign.
- Too much delay wait between the last transmission and the victory screen.
- Oddness : Never use "Terran Flag Beacon" since it spawns a flag and it looks odd, in addition of it having the "Place OPP" ability.
- Noticed typos : unkown (unknown), plant (when it was supposed to be "planet"), Earth (when it was supposed to be "Earth's" as in "Earth's greatest"), prelim (preliminary)

###MAP 5###

- In the briefing, when it is Allumeur's turn to speak, it stills animate the doctor's portrait.

###MAP 6###

- Briefing : No "Start Mission" text message or anything at the end of it.
- CRITICAL : Ridiculously high quantity of carriers that launches so many interceptors which each of them attacks thus maxing out Starcraft's engine of maximum unit shots at any time. I advise you to reduce the number of protoss ships in the map and reducing the terran's strength if necessary to balance the changes.
- You shouldn't have a leaderboard of kills unless there is a logical reason to keep track of a specific amount of kills.
- Noticed typo in briefing : AVTOPILOT (instead of AUTOPILOT)

###MAP 7###

- Briefing : At the end of the briefing, it should have the "Start Mission" equivalent message without waiting 2-3 seconds for it to appear.
- Briefing : You should not use "WTF?" and use "What the fuck?" instead since it looks more professional.
- Again, President's speech should be subtitled.
- IMPORTANT : The minor objective text about liberating Jean Broeque should last a lot longer.
- IMPORTANT : If you don't liberate Jean Broeque first and then go south of teal beacon, you can see the Hero Arbiter cloaking Greg's troops as well as wondering what's wrong.
- The base should start with more than 2 SCVs otherwise the player loses initial time to just to let the ressources pile up to get more SCVs or anything.
- Can't build tanks or goliaths since you cannot have the factory addon for tanks nor don't have the armory for goliaths. If it was voluntary then tanks and goliaths should have been disabled.
- If you lose one of the ghosts, the defeat message says you lost one of your heroes instead of one of the ghosts.
- The ghost ambush is too devastating and sudden compared to the average weight of warnings given especially considering that the player already used 15 minutes to build up his troops and might have not saved. I am also considering your intended campaign's difficulty to be easy to medium as well.
- The trigger to start the 2nd yellow wave should be after the ghost ambush failed (zerg ambush dead) and not 3 minutes later after the ambush started.
- The crashed battlecruisers should be renamed "Crashed Battlecruiser" or something like that instead of "epave ancienne" for English players.

###MAP 8###
- In general, this stage is very hard compared to the campaign's intended difficulty.
- IMPORTANT : Unless you move your troops ahead of time during Perikaistos' dialog, you are pretty much assured to die to rushing Dark Templars (which you cannot see them).
- Perikaistos' voice (protoss character) is not protoss-like at all.
- Hydralisks should not have the ability (icon-wise) to morph into lurker form in a commando mission unless it is intended. If so, they should have no ressources cost.
- It should be "uploading the virus" instead of "downloading the virus"
- Oddness : Since Jeanne de Caunes became "sick", it would have been more fitting if she had a modified voice for her unit instead of her standard unit voiceset.
- Noticed typos : exloit (exploit), itt (it)

Stopped testing in early map #8
Below is screenshot of stuck workers in Map #2

[Jadefang]

Hi Ricky,

Thank you very, very much for these detailed comments. They will be extremely valulable to improve the campaign later on in the post-contest phase. I would like to comment on a few things.

1.)  Diffculty: I guess I purposefully understated the difficulty as I do not consider myself a SC crack, probably average player, and did not want to say difficult when the hard core gamers around here may find it lame. But you are right that it is not accurate. Therefore, I shall change the read me.

2.) Mission 6: Avtopilot should reflect the russian word "автопилот", which means autopilot, and is pronounced "avtopilot" in Russian. Just like Samolikvidirovatsja should reflect "самоликвидироваться", which means self-destruct in English (which was hopefully clear due to the unfortunate fate of Lt. Marquart). Maybe I can make it somehow clearer in the briefing. Unfortunately, cyrrilic typeset is not possible in SC. This particular mission is furthermore intended to be easy, just to enjoy the explosions, therefore the insane settings in terms of carriers and terran superiority.

3.) Mission 4: I do have a specific question for you on mission 4, how did you find the Mutalisk base rush in the middle of the game? I consider it one of the most difficult moments of the entire campaign. Did the trigger work? Was it feasible?

Again, thank you so much for commenting in such detail. It is a huge help. I agree with 99% of the points you made and will change them in the future versions. Looking forward to your comments on Mission 8. 

[Ricky_Honejasi]

3.) Mission 4: I do have a specific question for you on mission 4, how did you find the Mutalisk base rush in the middle of the game? I consider it one of the most difficult moments of the entire campaign. Did the trigger work? Was it feasible?

I will be honest with you : I don't know since I just used the reveal map and god mode cheats then go straight to the goal to finish the map asap. I did open it in Staredit before and I noticed AI Insane which I presumed the result would have been similar to map #2.

[chris]

Hmmm, will play this when fixed version comes out.

[Legion]

Hmmm, will play this when fixed version comes out.

Really, you don't have to say this in every thread.

[Lavarinth]

If any campaigns are listed on the site, we will link the released version and any updates as well. They will not count towards the submission and only the projects submitted on the deadline will be used to judge projects.

[chris]

Dear CC community. Touchdown.
I have now uploaded my campaign. I wish you a happy time testing it. 


http://www.sendspace.com/file/6jkgs2

Sorry, the free service is at full capacity.

Please try later or upgrade to sendspace Max™ to enable guaranteed slots and instant, fast downloads.

I want to play it! 

[Jadefang]

Hi Chris,

try again, it is still working. Maybe there was a temporary problem with their server.

Dear CC community. Touchdown.
I have now uploaded my campaign. I wish you a happy time testing it. 


http://www.sendspace.com/file/6jkgs2

Sorry, the free service is at full capacity.

Please try later or upgrade to sendspace Max™ to enable guaranteed slots and instant, fast downloads.

I want to play it! 

[Jadefang]

ODYSSEY CAMPAIGN REVISION ONLINE

I have created an updated verion of my campaign based upon the critique points raised by Rickey and flaws I found myself upon rechecking. A major effort has been put into the custom voices.

The whole revised campaign can be downloaded here (102.5 MB):
http://www.sendspace.com/file/kg2r84
EDIT 05/10/08: deleted for suspected infested "MPQdraft.exe"
will try to find alternative MPQdraft version. Please scan your system for "TR/dropper.gen"
EDIT 05/11/08: Looks like the "TR/dropper.gen" thing was a false alarm (see http://www.campaigncreations.org/forum/index.php?topic=801.0). Anyway, when I saw the alert I did not want to take any chances and exchanged the files. I have now re-uploaded the campaign with the new MPQDraft.exe from SourceForge.net, although the old one probably never was infested. I have posted the upload link in a newer post down below (5/11/08).

LIST OF CORRECTIONS:
MPQ file
The primary focus of my revision has been to improve the MPQ file and the unit audio, adding more custom voices (Lt. Bertrand Auteuil, Dr. Marcellin, and von Hagen), and correcting errors (Lt. De Caunes, von Hagen, Marcellin). If you are interested in just the new MPQ file alone here is the link (32.6 MB):
http://www.sendspace.com/file/tfg89q
Even if you want play the original version I would highly recommend the new MPQ as it does make the gameflow much more fun with the new voices.

2. Read Me:
I am correcting the announced campaign difficulty to hard. Acutally it varies in difficulty from mission to mission.
M1: easy (symbolic battle)
M2: hard
M3: hard
M4: very hard
M5: easy (video only)
M6: easy (symbolic battle)
M7: medium
M8: very hard
M9: easy (credits only)

Mission 02 corrections:
errors corrected as outlined in Rickys post
Added more audio, extra triggers

Mission 03 corrections:
corrected speech and typos
tuned triggers, shortened delay within victory trigger

Mission 04 corrections:
fixed as suggested by Rickey in his post except portrait (don't understand how to make/exchange custom portrait's) and one typo I did not find.
fixed some dissassociated speech/voice issues

Mission 05 corrections:
fixed according to Rickey's post
This mission remains cinematic only. If everything goes very well, I may release it as bonus mission

Mission 07 corrections:
fixed according to Rickey's post
added some more voices but had to leave some blanc (less then 3% off text whole campaign if 09 is not counted)
made triggers more elaborate, fool proof
more mission objective updates

Mission 08 corrections:
new voices for infested units De Caunes and Auteuil
new triggers to prevent some bugs I found
corrected some typos

Mission 09 corrections:
made text a little slower

[omega20]

Hey, thanks. That can be quite useful. 

[Jadefang]

Copy of message in Starcraft formum regarding possible infested MPQdraft.exe

I have just recently updated my virus scanner (AVIRA version 8.1.00.295) and was alerted about the the trojan horse "TR/Dropper.gen" in the "MPQdraft.exe" file on my system. After scanning and cleaning my system, I have re-downloaded the current MPQdraft.exe version from the CC download section and was alerted about this trojan horse again. The same was true for all other versions I downloaded in other published campaigns that included the MPQdraft.exe file.

It is therefore possible that the MPQdraft file from CC is also infested, although it may be a secondary phenomenon of my system (still being?) infested in the first place. @Admin, and other authors also using the MPQdraft.exe, please check.

I have for the time being disabeled my own Campaign from download as it also has a potentially infested "MPQdraft.exe" included. Although I recognize I might violate double posting standards, I will CC this warning message to my own campaign thread.

Jadefang

[Ricky_Honejasi]

So I downloaded MPQDraft off CC and scanned it with AVG 7.5 and it shows no viruses.

Note however that your virus scanner is likely to have made a false alarm since it's a program that was there for like forever and unless some server files were infested by a virus on the server side recently or that it was an old admin that re-uploaded the program infested long ago by accident or something, it should be safe.

Odds are if it was really infested, we would have heard of various people complaining that MPQDraft being infested, crashing computers and so on a long time ago.

EDIT :
Heck, I even downloaded it since it came with your campaign and used it. So far, 1 month later or so, there are no negative changes I noticed on my computer.

[Jadefang]

Odyssey Campaign Revision

I have re-uploaded the Odyssey Campaign with an uptodated MPQDraft.exe. The old one probably was still fine, though. If you want to download the new MPQDraft.exe alone just download it from this post (or the updated download section in CC). The mission files have only minor changes, and the MPQ file is completely unchanged. I have also attached some propaganda material (possible splash screen in later versions).

The whole campaign:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/z6a0mf

The MPQ file alone:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/wxi3jo
Cheers,
J

EDIT: updated MPQ link

EDIT 05/26/08: Removed links for further modifications upon end of contest.

[Jadefang]

Campaign Makeover
In conclusion of the contest, I want to say that I think the other campaigns that won are really great. Boot Camp was also excellent (actually my personal favorite if I would have been the judge), and LoaW won over with a good story. I have no illusion given the overall lack of feedback that my own campaign could not keep up, and tried to analyze the shortcomings, what would make up a high quality, or “polished”, as someone else said, campaign.
I have decided to work my campaign over from A-Z. That will include fixing all typos, adjusting all audios to the similar volume, re-casting some audio files, including more custom unit voices (Captain Greg, Sgt. Benoit), fixing other minor but frequent errors such as inconsistent portrait use during conversations, and many more. Finally, Mission 05 will be completed and included, as well as a previously unpublished prologue mission. My goal is to reach a higher level, closed to a “polished” campaign that can convey the story I wanted to tell.
Anyway, these steps will take a lot of time. I do not want to rush anything, and will hold off releasing material before I think it is ready to do so. In addition, some major "distractors" in the RL realm (very positive ones, by the way ) allude me to say that I will probably need a few months, maybe until the fall, I cannot even tell.

Thank you for reading this,
Jadefang.

[Marine]

LoaW won over with a good story.

Really now, thank you.

But your campaign was really fun to play I truly enjoyed it.