(12) S3 Marine Corps

[SentryIII]

S3 Marine Corps

S3 Marine Corps by SentryIII

Overview ---Overview--- S3 Marine Corps is a collection of maps that share the same unique weapons system and gameplay mechanics. Each map represents a different mission your team must carry out, requiring teamwork and cooperation to complete the objectives and help each other stay alive. The difficulty and learning curve has been made to allow those new to the series a chance to prove themselves worthy, while giving hardcore players the challenge they desire. S3 Marine Corps has 20 difficulty levels to choose from, and a load/save feature to carry your hard-earned "Award Points" from mission to mission. The weapons system allows you to play any role you choose, be it a long-range shooter, a close-quarters combatant, melee fighter, fire support, or a combination of all of them. Choose and switch your weapons when the situation calls for it, and combine parts with them to improve their performance. Although there are 20 difficulties, much of the game content is locked away in the higher difficulty levels. Beginners should start at difficulty 4 or lower.

Features ---Features--- - Over 30 weapons you can pick up, equip, reload, customize, and melee attack with! - Work as a team to complete the objectives. - Randomly generated terrain. - A simplified damage and armor system. - Custom button icons, sound effects and music. - 20 levels of difficulty. - Earn Award Points to gain higher stats and class for your marine. - Load/Save feature to save your Award Points from each game. - Use your code and transfer your points between all S3 Marine Corps Maps

S3 Marine Corps Survival

S3 Marine Corps Survival ---Mission Briefing--- A transport carrying a squad of marines has just been shot down over an unknown location. You must find the parts to assemble the distress beacon and call for help. Your weapons and supplies have been scattered across the area, and hordes of enemies are closing in on your position. Send out a distress signal to HQ before it's too late! ---Mission Objectives--- - Find the parts for the Distress Beacon, assemble it, and deploy it - Fortify your position and wait for evac to arrive - Rendezvous with the Dropship at the Extraction Point ---Screenshots--- ---Download--- Official: S3MCSv114.zip Mirror: Download S3 Marine Corps Survival v1.14

S3 Marine Corps Infiltration

S3 Marine Corps Infiltration ---Mission Briefing--- Information about experimental weapons and data has been leaked out, and its location has been confirmed to be in a recently abandoned base. You are to infiltrate the base and recover those weapons, and its data from their mainframes. Be careful, as it was abandoned for a reason. ---Mission Objectives--- - Locate and activate the two Power Generators - Find a login code, or retrieve the ISE Breaker - Download weapons information from the terminals onto Data Discs - Retrieve the Lightning Gun - Retrieve the Railgun - Rendezvous with the Dropship at the Extraction Point ---Screenshots--- ---Download--- Official: S3MCIv103.zip Mirror: Download S3 Marine Corps Infiltration v1.03

S3 Marine Corps Defense

S3 Marine Corps Defense ---Mission Briefing--- Intelligence report that hordes of enemies are amassing the perimeter around a remote base. A stealth transport ship carrying vital supplies and equipment was shot down somewhere within the area. You must rescue any survivors and salvage any equipment fron the crash site, and work together to defend the base! ---Mission Objectives--- - Locate the crash site of the stealth transport - Return all Damaged Cargo to the Cargo Return Point - Defend the base until S-III Fighters can arrive - Use the Infrared Laser to "paint" the two obelisks for the S-III Fighters - Defeat all remaining enemies in the area ---Screenshots--- ---Download--- Official: S3MCDv103.zip Mirror: Download S3 Marine Corps Defense v1.03

S3 Marine Corps ==UNPROTECTED VERSIONS==

==UNPROTECTED VERSIONS== Survival: S3MarineCorpsSurvivalv12.w3x Infiltration: S3 Marine Corps Infiltration v11.w3x Defense: S3 Marine Corps Defense v10.w3x Assault (Terrain v1): S3MarineCorpsAssaultv1.w3x Assault (Terrain v2): S3MCATerrain.w3x

Edited by Tim. Reason: Edited, attached, merged and formatted all three map threads into one thread.
EDIT: Updated content with new versions.
EDIT: Posted unprotected versions.

[ragingspeedhorn]

Ah, a classics, I remember playing this alot when it first came out :)

[SeasonsOfLove]

S3, the site link isn't working. Just FYI. In fact, it hasn't worked for quite a few months, since the site suddenly disappeared.

(I used to be BGBkstroke, if you recognize that name)

Still a great map, even today.

[Tim.]

The following is a list of issues that apply to all three maps in this series:

List Chests of gold for weapons, ammo, and even e-mail printouts? I personally would prefer more appropriate models for such things. Crates could be ammo, for example. This would allow, without selecting the item, easy distinction between items. It would also improve the awareness of special items like the beacon pieces and e-mail printouts. Your icons have some attempt at a gradient feel to them. However it seems this is a failed attempt, as the icons on the right all appear to be disabled (You know, ‘Not enough mana’ kind of thing). This is a serious problem, especially when you just start playing the map. I highly suggest you make all the icons the same brightness. Your icons are very monotonous and blurry. Not only is it hard to distinguish between different ammos, but also between guns and other items. I would say color the icons. Red are special items, Green are weapons, Yellow are ammo, for example. This would increase the response time of the player, and draw from the monotonous feel of the custom UI icons. I assume the maps are optimized/protected via Vexorian’s Map Optimizer? I don’t see mention of Vex in the credits. Same thing for whoever made the icons (That is, if you didn’t make them yourself). At the start of the map you ask Player 1 Red for the difficulty setting they would like. I would think GetHost() would be a better choice than Player 1 Red. This would allow the host to choose their color while still being in control of the difficulty settings. Why do you have 2 forces that are allied in-game? It would make more sense to just ally all 12 teams in-game, and have every slot locked to a team. It is always annoying to find a map where the second force is called “Teams don’t matter lol!1!!” if you get my meaning. Special event messages like the contents of an e-mail, or what a specific item is for should be sent to all players, not only the player who got/used the item. This is very important because otherwise half the people are left in the dark most of the game. The general gameplay style is complicated enough, winding paths, unclear missions, and all items having the cliché Warcraft chest model does not help. These maps need a serious dose of simplification. A complex map like this is just fine for people who have played it 6 or 7 times with the same guys, but for even a group of friends (We had 7+ Wc3c guys) who have never played it before, it was a serious issue. We had no clue what was going on, all we did was walk around and shoot. You should update the quest menu with the content of e-mail, the amount of pieces collected, and any discovered missions. It’s annoying when you have 3 missions going on, and you cant remember exactly what you were suppose to do for the second mission.

This is a list of specific issues to S3 Marine Corps Survival:

List The terrain was enormous for 7 players, it was very difficult to cover all that ground in search of an item that looks just like ammo. I would suggest you decrease the playable map area based on the number of players. It would help to know when someone is carrying a beacon piece, for instance a start above the units head for each piece in their inventory. This way we know who has a piece and who does not easily. Medikits or other means of healing seemed either very, very rare - or non existent. At least for small parties the number of healing/mana regen items should be increased. Overall the map has potential, and is in general well made. The issues mentioned above are crucial however, and should be taken seriously. Until I see most of the problems resolved, I cannot approve this map. Unapproved.

This is a list of specific issues to S3 Marine Corps Infiltration:

List The terrain was complicated, and it was easy to get lost. (Thank god War3 plots the shortest route for you!) The main problem was that it simply did not look like an abandoned facility. There was no use of doodads aside from cliché gates. The terrain could seriously use improvements. The mission was far too complex for someone to understand on their first run with a bunch of other new guys. We knew we were looking for generators, but once we found one, we couldn’t open the gate to it. We found some random e-mail sitting in some random section of terrain (Which makes no sence by the way) telling us about some link we had to make that happened to make no sence as well. By the time we decided to turn around and go back there were giant turtles surrounding the random bit of terrain and we died. Gg no rev, anyone? I ran out of ammo right away, and had no means of getting more. This was bad enough with 7 guys, let alone with 12. More ammo/weaponry is needed. Medikits or other means of healing seemed either very, very rare - or non existent. At least for small parties the number of healing/mana regen items should be increased. The map is simply too complicated to be enjoyable. It’s one thing to try and make players solve puzzles, it’s another to send them all over the place on random errands looking for printouts in the middle of an open field. Unapproved.

This is a list of specific issues to S3 Marine Corps Defense:

List It really did not look like a crash site, just a site with a bunch of treasure chests. Perhaps a terrain deformation, some smoke, pieces of broken metal, etc. Try to make it actually look like a crash site. The mission about the laser thing and the obelisks was confusing. You had to wait for the fighters to show up, then set up the laser? Normally wouldn’t you want to set up the laser beacons before the bombers arrive? This confused me in-game, and cost me my life. This kind of map with so many NPC’s really needs a good, advanced AI. They should pick up their own weapons, medipacks, etc. Also, when you get to the crash site, it might be helpful if the ‘survivors’ filled their inventories with the damaged cargo items and walked with you on the first trip. More flares, or other means of increasing the sight of the terrain is necessary. It’s very hard to find the crash site, let alone both obelisks. Might I suggest vehicles? This would certainly help in the ground-coverage issues. Again, like the other two, this map needs polish. It's a nice idea but could be better made. Also I would suggest you revamp the terrain of the main base, it looks nothing like a base or outpost. Doodads would help here. Unapproved.

[SentryIII]

Wow. First of all, it's been a year since I made this map, and this is the first time I got "actual feedback", so thanks for that. Second of all, a lot of the suggestions you made I considered a long time ago and seemed sufficient (most seemed to grasp everything easily enough), but since you brought it up, I might as well "patch" things up a bit. Third, there are some suggestions I can't comply with:

• Special event messages like the contents of an e-mail, or what a specific item is for should be sent to all players, not only the player who got/used the item. This is very important because otherwise half the people are left in the dark most of the game.
• Medikits or other means of healing seemed either very, very rare - or non existent. At least for small parties the number of healing/mana regen items should be increased.

I mentioned that the maps required teamwork and cooperation. Part of that involves players communicating with the team. Sure, there are players that don't tell the team anything and probably trot along until they die. That brings down the team, it's annoying, and that was intentional. :)

As for medikits, it's not as rare as you think. The trick here is simply to take as little damage as possible, and therefore use as few medikits as possible. The trick to that is use your weapons to their full potential. Each weapon class has a specific role, and should be used accordingly. If an enemy is close, melee attack them instead of shooting them to conserve ammo. This is intentional as well. :)

Overall, your suggestions within reason. It should take me between 2 weeks to a month to complete.

One more thing I need to ask since I'm gonna be working on this. The one thing that really bothered me was the fact that most people couldn't figure out how to reload. I already have a message at the start that appears a few seconds after the game starts, a message that appears if they "dry fire" a few times, info in the Quests (F9) area, and in the tooltips of each weapon. In Defense, I even have a message that appears when they mention the word "reload" in upper or lower case, and even then, a lot of people can't figure it out. How did you and your team learn how to reload, and what would you suggest to solve this problem?

[Metal_Sonic64]

I have to say I enjoyed the maps. They we're a little rought around the edges, but the overall concept was good.

I agree with the e-mail thing Tim. brought up, I picked up an e-mail and read it, but apparently I was the only one that saw it. Even if you don't show it to all players, a message of "Player X has found an e-mail printout", and then have it logged in the quest menu. I'll admit, I was being lazy, but I can see it being quite tedious have to rewrite the e-mail so everyone else can read it.

The icons too, my thought are to colour Piercing, Impact, and Fire (Green, Yellow, Red), then have the corresponding ammo the same colour, and leave blue for special items and skills blue. Also, make the weapons the Iron crate and the ammo the wood crate, this is a standard in a lot of these types of games and makes things much easier for the player.

Reloading- I believe one of our players on our team was complaining about the pump-action shotgun not reloading past 2 (the default after 1 reload I believe), and someone else didn't know how to reload either. I think the simplest thing is to have messages on both ammo and weapons, along with the "dry fire" message and hope for the best. On that note, congrats on the weapon system, by far the best I've ever seen.

One of the other things in the map that I think could be improved are the abilities. Very simplistic, and I realise it's best that way, but a slightly different set for each marine-weapon type would be different. You could give the shotgunner his impact proffeciency, then perhaps, instead of evasion, a critical strike type ability, then 2 other abilities, universal for all marines (health bonus or something, can't think of another), then exchange rifle marine's first 2 abilities to piercing profeciency and evasion, then bash or something for fire and fire proffeciency.

Overall, I enjoyed the maps, are you still planning on maknig the fourth installment?

[Tim.]

Originally Posted by SentryIII

Third, there are some suggestions I can't comply with [...]

Perfectly understandable, I assumed that was the case - but best to double check and make sure it was not a bug.

I assume your 2 week time-frame is for all 3 maps? Shall I move all 3 maps to our Map/Campaign Projects forum for the duration of development? Also I would really prefer it if all 3 maps were in 1 thread, would you mind if I merged them for you?

[SentryIII]

Originally Posted by Metal_Sonic64

I agree with the e-mail thing Tim. brought up, I picked up an e-mail and read it, but apparently I was the only one that saw it. Even if you don't show it to all players, a message of "Player X has found an e-mail printout", and then have it logged in the quest menu. I'll admit, I was being lazy, but I can see it being quite tedious have to rewrite the e-mail so everyone else can read it.

There are 4 emails throughout the map. One of them (2 if the diff is high enough) has the code. The rest are basically spam emails derived from my inbox (yes, I even email myself reminders of what I wanna do). :p I was hoping people would realize that spam emails are useless and throw them away. I wasn't expecting people to type out the entire email, I was expecting they say the code or that it's useless.

Originally Posted by Metal_Sonic64

One of the other things in the map that I think could be improved are the abilities. Very simplistic, and I realise it's best that way, but a slightly different set for each marine-weapon type would be different. You could give the shotgunner his impact proffeciency, then perhaps, instead of evasion, a critical strike type ability, then 2 other abilities, universal for all marines (health bonus or something, can't think of another), then exchange rifle marine's first 2 abilities to piercing profeciency and evasion, then bash or something for fire and fire proffeciency.

I had a few people suggest something like this over the last year. Basically, the gameplay and strategy I wanted to create was to get players to decide which weapons and equipment they carry, and then decide how to use it. I wanted to give the marines passive abilities that would simply support them, but not give them a high enough advantage that they could just use one type of weapon and stock up on ammo for it.

Originally Posted by Metal_Sonic64

Overall, I enjoyed the maps, are you still planning on maknig the fourth installment?

I'm still planning on making Assault, and if it's response is good, I might make Quarantine as well.

Originally Posted by Tim.

I assume your 2 week time-frame is for all 3 maps? Shall I move all 3 maps to our Map/Campaign Projects forum for the duration of development? Also I would really prefer it if all 3 maps were in 1 thread, would you mind if I merged them for you?

Actually, I looked through the list again and realized how simple these changes are. I already have half the general gameplay issues worked out on the list, and should have all 3 maps ready by tomorrow or the day after that, so it shouldn't be necessary to move them. As for the merger, I was thinking of doing that before I posted the maps, but since I was posting 3 maps, I thought it should be in different threads. Feel free to merge them and call the thread "(12) S3 Marine Corps", using the Defense thumbnail since it's my latest one. Thanks!

[Tim.]

Sounds good, I'll take care of it once I have the time.

[Metal_Sonic64]

Hehe, the mail I picked up was something about "natural male enhancement" :P I figured they're might have been experimental steroids aronud or something so I typed a bit of it out, obviously I was wrong :P

One other thing, did you ever consider using a custom marine model and attachments? I made a few guns a while back for someone's map, and if you wanted, I could do a few more. I was pretty surprised when I started the map and saw you just used the standard marine, there's a good one over at search for attaching stuff.

[Tim.]

Alright, you owe me big :P.

I just spent the last hour merging and reformatting three gigantic threads for you. Here you go, I think the new format makes it much easier to read.

After making me have to spend so much time on this thread, you better make the maps worth approving!

[SentryIII]

On another note, what do you guys think of the method of combining items/stacking ammo? Good? Bad?

[Tim.]

It was a good idea, but too difficult to use in my opinion. It would be better if you moved ammo on the same inventory slot as another ammo of the same type that they merged.

[Metal_Sonic64]

I can see people making mistakes on it and getting frustrated easily. I didn't have any problems with it, but the setup seems to be a little dodgy. Perhaps look into RDZ's Item Stacking system in the tutorials section? It's a nice solid way to stack items together.

[SentryIII]

I'm not really interested in removing something and implementing something completely different. I'm just gonna stick with what I have and improve on it. I have a couple ideas of how to improve the current system, and I should have an updated map ready within the next few hours.

EDIT: I've updated the map. Check it out, although there are a few suggestions on the list I did not implement...

• Special event messages like the contents of an e-mail, or what a specific item is for should be sent to all players, not only the player who got/used the item. This is very important because otherwise half the people are left in the dark most of the game.
• Medikits or other means of healing seemed either very, very rare - or non existent. At least for small parties the number of healing/mana regen items should be increased.

Already mentioned it in a previous post. Basically, I wanted it easier for the player to play, not make the difficulty easier. (If you get what I mean)

• Why do you have 2 forces that are allied in-game? It would make more sense to just ally all 12 teams in-game, and have every slot locked to a team. It is always annoying to find a map where the second force is called “Teams don’t matter lol!1!!” if you get my meaning.

The maximum amount teams you can have is 6. Even if I could make 12 teams, it would probably be shown outside the display area. I looked at 6 teams of 2, 4 teams of 3, and 3 teams of 4. They just didn't look right. On top of that, if I had more than 2 teams, I would still have to label them "Teams don’t matter lol!1!!" or possibly "S3 Marines", creating repetitiveness and overall it would just look wrong. Personally, I would have went with 1 team of 12 players, but you need 2 teams to start a game on Battle.Net.

• You should update the quest menu with the content of e-mail, the amount of pieces collected, and any discovered missions. It’s annoying when you have 3 missions going on, and you cant remember exactly what you were suppose to do for the second mission.
• It would help to know when someone is carrying a beacon piece, for instance a start above the units head for each piece in their inventory. This way we know who has a piece and who does not easily.

For this, I decided to just display all the objectives at the start of the game. Sure, it'll lose any curiosity and surprise to what would come next to new players, but when you play the map multiple times, you'll know what to do anyways. As for any "Key Items" collected, again, I want players to communicate to each other and work together. After all, teamwork is a skill used in real life, so why shouldn't it be applied to games? :p In any case, I did put a special effect on each key item in order to make it more noticeable to players who are paying attention. (As opposed to giving away the location of key items to everyone, including those who aren't even trying)

• The terrain was enormous for 7 players, it was very difficult to cover all that ground in search of an item that looks just like ammo. I would suggest you decrease the playable map area based on the number of players.

When I first beta-tested the map, it felt like the map was too small. I increased it to that size and it felt just right. The trick is to cover as much ground as possible while the enemies are still weak during the first few phases. In single-player or games with 3 or 4 people, there's less monsters so it's be easier for them to cover ground.


With that said, check out the map. I didn't bother changing the version number or filesize on the preview image, so don't be alarmed. Also, if you don't mind, could you save a replay when you try it? It should be easier for me to spot any problems than if you simply posted things in point form. :)