An overview of all that we have done for the mod, listing key features that have made the cooperative experience an enjoyable one.

Posted by r4z0r84 on Jun 21st, 2014

An overview of all that we have done for the mod, listing key features that have made the cooperative experience an enjoyable one.

Cooperative

Dynamic

Difficulty Increase

Fully Scripted Dialogue

AI Balancing

AI Scripting improved

Shared units 50/50 for non base missions

Thoroughly Tested

Cooperative

We wanted Starcraft to be cooperative from the moment we found out we could gain access to the campaign maps, since then we have been working to achieve a full on cooperative experience. Every single mission from start to end is cooperative, even if you lose all of your unit's the other player still has a chance to get victory for the both of you though unlikely. In a very few select missions you will have to work hard to work together as you start off with bases on opposite sides of the map, these can be very challenging but extremely rewarding as you get the sense of saving your friend from their demise.

Dynamic

We wanted dynamic game play for each and every level, keeping in mind that each level is cooperative and thus every level will be dynamic depending on who you are playing with for example playing Starcraft with your dog will be much harder than playing Starcraft with your friend. In a few missions there is some dynamic events that may occur, for example in Protoss Broodwar mission 8 overlords will spawn units when they go to attack the temple, each time you play the mission regardless of who you are playing with the mission will play out differently as the AI is not scripted to move in and drop things automatically but by chance this means it will give you a dynamic outcome rather than the exact same thing each time, now thats probably going into a bit too much detail on the dynamic elements but just for the sake of it just know its going to be different each time you play.

Difficulty Increase

We believed that the stock AI difficulty was beyond too easy especially with two players, we have increased the difficulty in each and every map so they are all nice and challenging. Once we have completed every campaign mission we will release a second version of all the maps with full insane AI for those who want the ultimate challenge.

Fully Scripted Dialogue



Every level has been scripted entirely for two players, doesn't matter who's in the lead on a non base map who ever gets to the location first will start the triggers. Both players will get victory on every level if the victory conditions are met, same with defeat. All cut-scenes have been scripted to allow two players to watch/hear all dialogue and events, with a few levels with improved scripting to give a much nicer cut scene we don't leave anything out.

AI Balancing

Each level has been tested over and over again to get the best result for AI Balancing, we don't want it to be too easy or too hard, we want the game-play to be challenging and rewarding, i feel that we have accomplished this with all the testing and AI changes we have made throughout the levels.

AI Scripting improved

Various levels have been given improved AI scripting as a result of either bugs or difficulty, for example Original Terran 3 has been given above and beyond the default scripting to the point its almost insane compared the original solo campaign mission, in this map a lot more units will attack from the start to the end, each wave has been designed to attack the right place at the right time and in the end, if you haven't seen it from our youtube videos i wont wreck it for you but things get extremely overwhelming much like an Archon the Zerg will overpower you and push you back, if your defenses aren't up to scratch they will wipe you out.

Shared units 50/50 for non base missions

For all of those operation type game types we wanted players to feel like even if they are falling behind they can catch back up, by default all of the units you gain are set to Rescue-able so if you had a player running full steam ahead they would by default get all of the units, to stop this from happening we have created triggers to give 50/50 units for each player. With our 50/50 triggers in place it means if you do run full steam ahead and lose all of your units, the next group of units that gets rescued, you will get half of them getting you back into the game. With these triggers in play it gives each non base mission a feel of being equal and in the unfortunate event of losing all of your units, the other player can proceed on and eventually get you some new units.

Thoroughly Tested

Every map has been thoroughly tested from start to finish, this includes unit/base/resource placement, AI balancing, resource balancing, dialogue for both players, victory conditions, defeat conditions, triggers, sound, cut-scenes, mission briefing, unit upgrades, units available, special abilities available and everything else i cant think of, we make sure we have found and fixed every bug we can find before releasing each map.I hope you have enjoyed reading this overview of all that we have done for the mod, as always Enjoy!