Random Thoughts Thread

[Sheliek]

After months of writer's block, I finally learned a method of plotcraft that enabled to me come up with a coherent first draft of Episode I of my custom SC2 campaign/remake. If someone with experience with storytelling and campaign design wants to read the treatmentI wrote and give feedback, I'd be grateful. Looking at you, Gradius.

(It's only a five-page beat doc going over all the major character's arcs and motivations.)

Regardless, to celebrate I'm getting day-drunk. Tomorrow, the mission outlines! After that, the script.

[Mislagnissa]

I think everything Blizzard has written about protoss biology is over-complicated and nonsensical. A much simpler and sensible explanation for everything is that the protoss have replaced their biological functions with their psychic powers and their bodies have atrophied into these biomechanical exoskeletons full of blood and offal and blue flames. They "eat" through psychic vampirism that drains energy from available power sources (e.g. pylons, lamps, flowers, humans). They reproduce by temporarily merging (a la the archon) and then emerging with a house-trained pre-adolescent child. The archon is actually the final stage of their evolution (a la Star Trek evolutionary levels) but is currently unstable. They have "purity of form" (an arbitrarily quality referring to physical stature prior to Metzen's retcons) because a naked protoss can survive in freezing temperatures, boiling temperatures, deep sea pressures, and the irradiated vacuum of space with ease.

EDIT: Checked the co-op assets, it has at least 8 distinct races for several sub-factions. All I need is 18, so here's hoping it's as simple as I'd like it to be and the engine can support that many. It'd make my programmers life easy-peasy at any rate.

Check out other mods like Heptacraft and Tech Wars 1/2. IIRC Tech Wars implemented cut units like the devourer with upgrades.

EDIT2: I just realized "Zargil" is just "Nargil" with the N turned sideways.

That is just so lazy. His brood is named Sennith, which disregards the previous convention of naming broods after mythological monsters. What makes more sense is to name the cerebrate Sennith and the brood Apophis or something.

[Gradius]

After months of writer's block, I finally learned a method of plotcraft that enabled to me come up with a coherent first draft of Episode I of my custom SC2 campaign/remake. If someone with experience with storytelling and campaign design wants to read the treatmentI wrote and give feedback, I'd be grateful. Looking at you, Gradius.

(It's only a five-page beat doc going over all the major character's arcs and motivations.)

Regardless, to celebrate I'm getting day-drunk. Tomorrow, the mission outlines! After that, the script.

Send me a PM!

[Sheliek]

Sent! And before you make any snide remarks about my Duran note: he's not working for ancient deathgods. His origin will be explored as the story progresses, and I hope to make him into a flawed character with interesting, if unusual, motives.

That is just so lazy. His brood is named Sennith, which disregards the previous convention of naming broods after mythological monsters. What makes more sense is to name the cerebrate Sennith and the brood Apophis or something.

Sennith would be a good name for a Zerg character. I'm planning on incorporating Zargil (with a retconned Brood name to be more fitting the theme) as a minor supporting character in the first Zerg campaign, with his ultimate being just being Kerrigan. Him the three other remaining Cerebrates are hiding outside of the sector, planning to usurp her. Whether they succeed or not I'll leave to the imagination, but one monolithic Zerg force is boring so I had no choice but to undo Blizzard's off-screen extermination of them. Sadly, Daggoth is dead though.

As for Brood names, say what you will about Broods. The monster theme from StarCraft I was cool and is definitely canon as a Terran classification system, but Heart of the Swarm's "Zagara Brood", "Nafash Brood", and "Naktul Brood" definitely seems like the way the Zerg would've named their broods, as those broods are just the extended sensory and manipulation organs of the broodmothers/cerebrates; they are part of the leaders' bodies. I might use that for the Zerg campaign's method of distinguishing them, but I've already come up with suitably brutish names for brood roles (the Bladerunner Broods are Kerrigans rapid terror force, while the Plaguebringer Broods infest and assimilate their targets; however, a Bladerunner Brood may be known as Cerberus or Minotaur Brood to the Terrans, and a Plaguebringer might be classified as Karkinos or Medusa Brood).

Check out other mods like Heptacraft and Tech Wars 1/2. IIRC Tech Wars implemented cut units like the devourer with upgrades.

While it would be easy to cannibalize another 2-dozen faction mod and just use that, I'm quit proud of the five Zergling and six Marine variants that aren't completely identical but also aren't drastically different that I've come up with. Plus, my friend wants experience as a game programmer, so this'll be a fun project for the two of us. Suffice it to say, co-op and war chests have made the job much easier than my previous project in 2012 would've been. I'd probably actually have to pay someone to make models back then, but thankfully Blizzard is just releasing them every 3-4 months now.

EDIT: Oh and for reference, Episode I in my project takes place in 2507. It's not mentioned anywhere in the design document, but I've made a very basic timeline of the initial 6 campaigns, and it covers 2507-2511. Depending on how long they take to make, I'll probably make a sequel 6, but if I spend one year on a single campaign once the basic mod extension is finished, I'm sticking to six. Thanks to my life situation, I've been able to devote all of my free time to the project, and the entire tech trees (20 total*), including most important unit statistics, are finished and just need to be implemented. It took less than a month.

Sorry for the wall of text, I'm a bit drunk and very proud of the fact I've finally broken my writer's block. I'm probably going to make a thread about this project once I finalize the mission outline.

*
Terran:
1. Raynor's Raiders
2. Terran Dominion
3. Umojan Protectorate
4. Kel-Morian Combine
5. Shadow Corps
6. Fringe Pirates

Zerg:
1. Overqueen Brood
2. Bladerunner Brood
3. Plaguebringer Brood
4. Metamorph Brood
5. Acidfang Brood
6. Feral Zerg

Protoss:
1. Praetorian Legion
2. Golden Armada
3. Unified Protoss
4. Temple Guardians
5. Shadow Guard
6. The Forged

Hybrid:
1. Highborn
2. Lowborn

EDIT 2: I really want to write an Gnostic analysis of Amon, because while he was handled poorly, there's some very interesting theological concepts explored in his characterization in Legacy of the Void. It's a shame he was made up as they went along. If they had a set-in-stone notion for what they wanted to do with Amon from 2006-on, he would've been so much more effective. I'm still not involving him in my project though, because as an Gnostic I'd be biased.

[Mislagnissa]

It's a damn shame you're still using Kerry (and other stupid Metzen ideas). Her introduction pretty much ruins the characterization of the zerg.

[ragnarok]

It's a damn shame you're still using Kerry (and other stupid Metzen ideas). Her introduction pretty much ruins the characterization of the zerg.

Not all of us have your level of hate for the character

[Mislagnissa]

Not all of us have your level of hate for the character

I don't hate the character per se. I hate Blizzard's laughably bad writing. Ask yourself this: if you were writing a grimdark military scifi story where space bugs were attacking humanity, would it have turned out even remotely similar to the Queen of Blades novel? Reading that novel really highlights how laughably bad the plot of Starcraft became under Metzen's control. If you ignore that it is set in outer space, it feels exactly like a bad fantasy novel.

I hate Metzen's execution, for several reasons:

• The zerg modus operandi was to consume species and use them as materials for spawning armies of doom. Making Kerry into a messianic hero contradicts that. A better writer would have the zerg creating armies of monsters derived from the genetic material of psychics.
• Metzen contrived the plot to let Kerry take over the swarm by arbitrarily giving any lame-brained infested terrans the ability to control broods and killing off the cerebrates through fiat. The cerebrates were barely even utilized before Metzen killed them off. The brood mothers, cerebrates of a different color, are bland and boring.
• Kerry does not act like a zerg and uses the swarm to fulfill whatever insane delusions currently fill her head (since she's officially a tabula rasa). Her (lack of) motives are lame compared to genuinely zerg characters like Overmind, Abathur and Dehaka. All as part of a lame attempt by Metzen to turn the zerg into space orcs, which ruined their characterization forever.

Remember that I said Metzen's execution. I don't have a problem with humans leading the swarm if the execution is good and fits within the grimdark military scifi genre. Examples of good execution would be an infested human personality being consumed by the zerg hive mind (such as Carpenter's brood in Insurrection or Daggerfang brood in Annihilation), or humans using science to enslave a brood (a common plot).

[ragnarok]

Remember that I said Metzen's execution. I don't have a problem with humans leading the swarm if the execution is good and fits within the grimdark military scifi genre. Examples of good execution would be an infested human personality being consumed by the zerg hive mind (such as Carpenter's brood in Insurrection or Daggerfang brood in Annihilation), or humans using science to enslave a brood (a common plot).

Yeah the whole Daggerfang brood in Annihilation made more sense mainly because the human character wasn't driven by animal instincts too much, he was able to think more rationally. It was another flaw to HotS's storyline.

[Mislagnissa]

Another problem with Starcraft is a reliance on deus ex machinas and a general lack of consistency in the rules governing its universe. The zerg fall prey to this a lot, as the rules governing the hive mind, resurrection, commanders, etc changes from game to game without explanation. Even in the same game it is always inconsistent.

The Overmind, for example, is capable of resurrecting cerebrates and itself even if unconscious or its body is destroyed. Even if killed by dark templar deus ex machina, it can still be resurrected by merging cerebrates, reanimating its corpse, cloning it or whatever. The dark templar deus ex machina ends up being entirely unnecessary.

In SC2 (and the case of the Torrasque in all games), zerg heroes may endlessly resurrect so long as their base is intact. No dark templar deus ex machina is present. The narrative ignores this and acts as if they have only one life.

The easiest thing, I think, is to use SC2-style resurrection (where the hive mind is literally the player and they don't die unless they lose the game) and treat any cases of instant permadeath on a case-by-case basis. Permakilling should be treated like cyber warfare and thus subject to arms races and countermeasures. This prevents the contradictions typical of Blizzard.

I mean, there is really no logical reason why the zerg didn't evolve a immunity to dark templar as soon as they knew it was a danger. Torrasques and SC2 heroes don't have the same weakness, so why not switch to that?

IDK.

[ragnarok]

I mean, there is really no logical reason why the zerg didn't evolve a immunity to dark templar as soon as they knew it was a danger. Torrasques and SC2 heroes don't have the same weakness, so why not switch to that?
IDK.

Did at any point in SC1 and BW you felt they wanted to show there were limits to zerg evolution?