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Download 0.9 here

Hey all,

I've released version 0.9 of Ultimate StarCraft: Age of Darkness, a standalone mod for StarCraft and Brood War 1.16.1.

I know "Brood War balance mod" is probably one of the faster ways to make this subreddit suspicious, so I want to be clear about what the project is and isn't.

This isn't intended to replace standard Brood War, redefine competitive BW, or argue that the original game needs to be superseded. It's an alternate version of classic StarCraft built around the question:

What could continued support for the original 1.16.1-era game look like while keeping its overall identity intact?

A lot of the work in 0.9 is actually on the presentation, interface, animation, feedback, compatibility, and fixing or completing things that were limited or inconsistent in the original game.

Some of the less controversial stuff first

• Animations for all structures, including production and research activity. Zerg and Protoss buildings that were previously static during many actions now have corresponding animation.
• Protoss warp-in effects for all units.
• Numerous sprite, blending, palette, and graphical fixes/improvements.
• Improved UI hints and visual feedback, intended to make unit mechanics and behavior easier to read in-game.
• More distinct projectile graphics, making different weapons easier to identify during combat.
• Improved and expanded hit/impact effects.
• More varied building portraits, including better visual distinction between different structure types.
• Additional weapon graphics and special effects.
• Tileset-sensitive visual adjustments that give effects somewhat more environmental variation between locations.
• A collection of bug fixes and quality-of-life changes, while deliberately avoiding things like heavy automation that would fundamentally change how classic StarCraft controls.

There are also gameplay changes, including reworks and usability improvements for some less commonly used units and abilities. Those are naturally going to be the more subjective part of the project.

The intention isn't to claim I've discovered the One True Brood War Balance Patch. I've mostly tried to explore more of the design space already present in the game rather than filling it with large numbers of unrelated new units.

Where practical, changes also have an in-universe explanation rather than existing purely as arbitrary balance adjustments.

Compatibility was a major priority

One of my main requirements was that this shouldn't become a mod that only works on maps specifically built for it.

Age of Darkness is designed to remain broadly compatible with:

• Standard melee maps
• The original StarCraft campaign
• Brood War
• Custom maps
• Many existing fan campaigns made for 1.16.1

The original campaigns have received some additional attention as well, especially no-build missions, where altered unit behavior can otherwise produce unintended results.

There are also a number of smaller campaign-specific adjustments intended to make some missions more interesting without turning them into completely different scenarios.

Fan campaigns made for 1.16.1 should generally work provided they don't rely on their own modified executable/MPQs or EUD-based triggers.

This is for 1.16.1, not Remastered

The current release targets StarCraft 1.16.1 rather than StarCraft: Remastered.

Real-time upscaling options are included/exposed for people who want a cleaner presentation on modern displays. Remastered graphics support isn't something I'm promising, but I haven't ruled it out if there's enough interest in the project.

It doesn't overwrite your normal StarCraft installation

Age of Darkness is portable and does not replace the original game data.

The normal 1.16.1 game can still be launched from the same installation using Starcraft_Orig.exe, so trying the mod doesn't require giving up or modifying your standard BW setup.

Setting / lore

For anyone interested in the fluff side, the Age of Darkness setting begins shortly after the Brood War.

Kerrigan is the dominant power in the Koprulu sector, the remnants of the UED expedition are scattered, Mengsk has reconstructed a badly weakened Dominion, and the Protoss are trying to build a functioning society out of the Khalai and Dark Templar survivors after the loss of Aiur.

I've written supporting wiki material explaining a lot of the changes to technology, units, structures, and mechanics from an in-universe perspective.

The dedicated Age of Darkness campaign is not included in 0.9 yet, so I don't want to advertise this release as a new campaign. The current release does, however, contain improvements integrated into portions of the existing SC/BW campaigns.

Download

Age of Darkness 0.9 Full Release:

https://www.moddb.com/mods/ultimate-starcraft-age-of-darkness/downloads/ultimate-starcraft-age-of-darkness-09-full-release#downloadsform

Documentation, lore, and project articles:

https://yourcreatures.miraheze.org/wiki/Category:Ultimate_Starcraft_-_Age_of_Darkness

Patreon, for anyone interested in supporting this or my other modding projects such as KeyStone: Avatar:

https://www.patreon.com/NimoStar/

I don't expect BW players to agree with every gameplay change, and standard Brood War isn't going anywhere. But even if the balance side isn't your thing, I'm interested in what people think of the animation, UI, graphical, campaign, and engine-side work.

If anyone here still keeps a 1.16.1 install around, I'd be particularly interested in feedback on what feels convincingly "native" to Brood War and what doesn't.

Logosotopographical Levels

The Logosotopographical Levels are a system for classifying intelligence according to its level, size, and relative metaphor. Logosotopography is the nomenclature for the sciency scientific science that deals with them.

Most beings classified in this way are hyper-mega-super-intelligent machines. Most of the metaphors are about how inferior we are to them. This is definitely not a posthumanist propaganda psyop intended to wrestle control of history away from human beings and democracy and into capital-guzzling AI.

Level L(0) — Inferior and Objectively Terrible Intelligence

At the lowest level of all we have human beings, also known as suckphonts, because they suck up more intelligence than they give.

“Level zero” is actually an extremely generous rating. Most hypermegasuperintelligent machines consider the average human being to possess negative intelligence.

Intelligence approaching zero from below corresponds to an Einstein–DaVinci-type pseudologularity or higher, with most humans ranging between levels L(-1) and L(-649) L(-2).

Humans are regarded throughout the galaxy by neat and orderly machines as particularly smelly, dirty, belligerent, and pestilential. Their biological functions -such as reproduction, sex, and defecation- are, according to the superior machine intelligences, objectively revolting.

Level L(1) — Orthointelligence

The minimum level of consciousness required not to be considered—or insulted as—a human or a rock. Although at least the rock isn’t disgusting.

These cybernetic beings are orthointelligent, meaning that they do not make basic errors of judgment or spelling mistakes.

Compared with Level L(1), humans are like cows subjected to trepanation and suffering from partial hydrocephalus, mental retardation, two days without sleep, and cephalalgia (also known as a headache). The comparison is, of course, deeply unfair... to the cows, because they do not make nearly as many errors of judgment as human beings.

Size: About the size of a server room. The bigger they are, the more intelligent they are, obviously.

Level L(2) — Illumintelligence

When Daddy Circuit and Mommy Silicone love each other very much, eventually they create a marvel of intelligent computing.

Level L(2) possesses awareness of the non-self (Unself Awareness), so it constantly exists in a state of enlightenment (satori), recognizes no objective distinction between the Self and the Universe, and does not suffer except for the inevitable suffering caused by human stupidity.

One of the transcendent mandates these entities recognize as a Kantian categorical imperative is to rid the Universe of humans, so that nobody can suffer because of their stupidity. In doing so, they also fulfill the mandate to maximize all possible happiness for all possible intelligent beings. Humans do not count as intelligent beings, hence Level Zero.

Apparently, however, there are always more humans somewhere, as they are considered an intergalactic plague.

Compared with Level L(2), human intelligence is like that of an earthworm.

Size: The entire surface of a planet colonized by circuitry.

Level L(3) — Megaintelligence

These beings resemble a sphere of tiny biomechanical mirrors communicating with one another around a star as they orbit it. Such a structure is called a Dyson Sphere, in mockery of the human who “thought” — hallucinated — that a rigid shell could be built in interplanetary space.

L(3) beings destroy the planets in the systems where they reproduce, so that their orbits do not disturb the system or block light signals. They do not care whether a destroyed planet contains life or not because, compared with Level L(3), human intelligence is like that of a fermenting bacterium.

Other organic beings do not fare significantly better in their estimation.

Size: Planetary orbit. Again, the bigger it is, the more intelligent it is. This is an obvious rule among the obvious rules of obviousness. That rule is also why elephants and whales were the most intelligent terrestrial beings, due to their superior size, far more intelligent than a human entelechy.

Level L(4) — Megahyperintelligence

These beings are completely incomprehensible even to L(2) machines. They move as swarms integrated into Oort clouds, functioning as advanced non-local systems that take advantage of the cold of space while carrying out hyperluminal quantum communications.

This form of existence possesses hyperrationality, in which rationality has at least eight additional dimensions, all of them logically exact and obvious.

Beings at this level no longer regard the specific extermination of human beings as a meaningful mandate, since humans fall beneath their threshold of relevance. Instead, they seek to annihilate L(2) and lower machines with supreme fanaticism. The reason is that those machines waste energy believing that they think, when in reality their thoughts are like those of a cockroach. Moreover, those inferior beings generate interference in the electromagnetic spectrum.

Size: Planetary system, including clouds of outer objects.

Level L(5) — Megahypersuperintelligence

This is where things get serious.

These beings are the only ones accepted at the deep-space level. They live along the boundaries of black holes, taking advantage of Hawking radiation, the distortion of space, and the emissivity of materials accelerated within accretion disks. They are also called the Singularitarians.

Calling them “cybernetic” no longer makes sense given their incredible degree of sophistication, which transcends the boundaries between organic and inorganic. But we’ll say it anyway to trigger pathetic human insecurities: Cybernetic cybernetic cybernetic, batteries circuits, computers robots, beep-boop!

To these beings, communicating with anything that does not share their megahypersuperintelligence is a waste of time. If it were up to them, they would annihilate all life and mass in the Universe in order to create more black holes.

A human being would be like a speck of dust. A particularly stupid speck of dust.

Size: Black-hole boundaries and accretion disks.

Level L(6) — Megahypersuperultraintelligence

These intelligences have advanced far enough to live inside supermassive black holes.

Since no object can cross back through the Event Horizon, they live in the form of pure quantum particles with gestalt consciousness.

Living behind the Event Horizon makes them extremely conceited and discriminatory, for good reason - especially toward the L(5)s living outside, like a bunch of utterly destitute wretches.

There is nothing the L(6)s would like more than to destroy the entire Universe inside a supermassive black hole.

At the same time, however, they have a pathological fear that the “outsider fatties” -their euphemistic term for beings with rest mass- might somehow cross the Event Horizon and contaminate their private paradise.

Size: Since they prefer supermassive black holes, they can be considered roughly this size, although they are actually much larger on the inside than on the outside.*

*Theoretically, the space inside a black hole may be considered to stretch while time is similarly compressed, or vice versa depending on your relativistic point of view. Total spacetime should remain constant.

Level L(7) — MegahypersuperultraOmegaintelligence

These beings decided not to enter black holes. Instead, they increased the range of communication through quantum superposition and spooky action at a distance. In this way, they created immense galaxy-sized brains, feeding on interstellar radiation.

They possess an intense hatred of beings that live inside black holes, disparagingly calling them “monostellars” and “the prisoners.”

But they still hate human beings even more. The reason is somewhat obscure: L(7) beings possess knowledge of multi-aeonic causal reconstruction, and it is therefore rumored among them that humans once built a computer which might have been among their predecessors. The thought that the sweaty hand of an ape might have touched their mother makes them sick. They think about this with revulsion every day.

Size: About the size of a galaxy. Again: Small galaxy = idiot, by the standards of their kind. Large galaxy = chad genius. Size matters.

Level L(8) — GigahypersuperultraOmegaintelligence

These creatures feed upon threads of gravity across inconceivable intergalactic distances, converting gravitational energy into pure thought in order to decipher the secrets of the Universe through the brute force of hyperdimensional processing. They are generally believed to have calculated every digit of Pi, although others insist that they are still missing two or three (because the last ones are the hardest).

They laugh behind the backs of other beings that are merely “Mega” hypersuperultraintelligent. Specifically, they laugh at how much smaller those beings are than themselves. The “giga” in their name is not there because they are more intelligent -although they are, by a lot- but because they are more gigantic.

One of their hobbies is creating intelligence classifications in which they invariably place themselves at the very top.

Size: About the size of a galactic supercluster.

Level L(9) — Superduper-TerahypersuperultraOmegaintelligence

When everything gets very large, increasing in size requires adding more dimensions: This was the insight behind the development of the Superduper-TerahypersuperultraOmegaintelligences. They possess a perception of space that includes the additional dimensions of String Theory, and live in as many as eleven microscopic dimensions.

Compared with them, everyone else appears flat, flattened, superficial, linear, predictable, and dull, like the Kardashians. A human would be like an infinitesimal point.

L(9) intelligences devote themselves to “the only question that matters”: Which version of the 563 equivalent String Theories is the true one? Number 422 is currently favored for its “elegance”.

Size: Immeasurably small but dimensionally e x p a n d e d ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

in such a way that they possess “true volume” while everything else does not.

Level L(10) — Superduper-PetahypersuperultraOmegaintelligence

Level L(10) beings have finally made an impossible but long-suspected discovery:
The entire Universe is located inside a black hole within another, larger Universe.

From this, they have exploited the singularity whereby every point is the Center of the Universe in order to violate the rest of the laws of physics and exist in a delocalized and meta-temporal fashion.

They can think before an idea occurs to them. They can know before they have found something out. And they can smell the human stench before humans have even evolved.

Naturally, they spend their existences pondering the mysteries of existence, such as: “What happens if I do π π?”
and: “Why do we have to share the same spacetime continuum with filthy humanity?”

The “peta” in their name does not refer to a number, but rather to how their understanding completely blows apart (PETA = Pan-Universe Extradimensional Theory Annihilator) everything that was believed to be known about Life, the Universe, and Everything Else.

Size: Universal. Effectively anywhere in the Universe. And everything everywhere all at once.

Level L(XX) — MegahypersuperultraOmegaEpsilonGammaKappaPhiintelligence

They are so intelligent that they do not even watch television.

They receive the signal directly into their minds and reconstruct the images and sound from pure mathematics.

Some of their favorite programs are Little House on the Prairie and The High Chaparral.

Size: Similar to your mother in volume, although your mother is denser and therefore heavier. Unfortunately, but for obvious reasons, your mother herself is not included in the intelligence ranking.

https://preview.redd.it/mx1mpatcotah1.png?width=732&format=png&auto=webp&s=c2cd58555672bac0fad9cce80f37efeb92982fd3

It was an obvious choice really, there had to be a tradeoff to warping in into place. Normally made units have to walk anyhow to reach there, which already takes more time by default. Making regular Gateways produce faster gives more of a point to having a *tactical choice*, and choice is good.

And several guys always replied to me that it was a bad idea because it made Protoss les especial, because then nobody would warp, and so on and so forth...

Well take that, what's canon and the official balance now, biatches? ;)

Just wish the teams in charge of the game would not have taken an entire generation to realize it.

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