Anyone who has checked out the Campaign creations year 2000 trailer (known also as the CC2000 mod) would know that during the golden age of starcraft there was a vast number of campaigns showing great promise both within and outside of campaign creations. Unfortunately, nearly all of the projects in development at the start of 2000 were either abandoned, canceled, or simply left unfinished. The campaigns with voice acting made in that year are particularly infamous for never being completed for whatever reason. All of the campaigns mentioned in CC2000 itself were never released with the exception of Legacy of the confederation 2 and 2000 ended up being a terrible year for starcraft. However, there was one exception to this trend, one series of campaigns that made promise after promise and did follow through with them, making not 1, not 2, but FOUR episodes in addition to an entire spinoff episode. This campaign is by far the largest campaign ever made and unlike the other three supermassive campaigns, this one is actually of good quality (That's an understatement, the other three are among the worst campaigns ever made with scores in the 8th quartile). This campaign is none other than Visions of the future.

Unfortunately, when starcraft was updated to version 1.08, the mod files were broken. Razorclaw X, the creator of this campaign, attempted to provide support but after warcraft III was released he stopped providing support and starcraft 1.09b ended up being the last properly supported version. Since then, people have taken to playing really crappy patches that have missing unit portraits, mission command buttons, and other problems. The only existing playthrough of visions of the future available on youtube was done with such a patch and the playthrough is pretty awful as a result. It is fair to say that for over 15 years almost no one has played this campaign the way it was meant to be played as a result of this mod file problem.

The time has come to end this problem, or at least attempt to do so, so that everyone can enjoy playing this campaign as it was intended to be played. I have sought out all of the original files for the vision of the future series and I have used them to create a working Firegraft patch for 1.16.1 that plays exactly the same as the original mod files would play on version 1.09b, and without the difficulties involving memGraft and whatnot. Finding the original files was a lot harder than it should have been by the way...

Testing has concluded as well as all relevant fixes. Enjoy!

Some pictures of VotF 1 running with the firegraft mod file:



And here's a picture from Vision of the future 2


In vision of the future 4, infested battlecruisers can now be spawned as well as brigands





In the Zeji campaign, manta spawning is now fixed. Also, Zeji observers are now spawnable



..

..

What have we here???


It's the game of our lives...


One HELL of a time!!!

DOWNLOAD LINK

CURRENT STATUS

- Vision of the future 1: SUCCESS
- Vision of the future 1 extra missions: SUCCESS
- Vision of the future 2: SUCCESS
- Vision of the future 3: SUCCESS (With help from DarkenedFantasies)
- Vision of the future 4: SUCCESS (With help from countless people at SEN)
- Vision of the future Zeji expansion: SUCCESS (With help from Voyager7456 and IlyaSnopchenko)

All credits for this incredible campaign go to Razorclaw X.

Post has been edited 25 time(s), last time on Oct 19 2021, 6:44 pm by Zincoshine.

There were invalid LiftOff and WorkingToIdle animation headers for a bunch of units (pointing to bad file offsets), invalid iscript entry IDs, and some weird duplicated null entry IDs.

The invalid iscript entry IDs actually pointed to real iscript entries; whatever tool the author used didn't apply the correct magic number and entry type values, which caused PyICE to throw loading errors. I have no idea if the game could read them fine beforehand (i.e. just a PyICE problem).

The file I have attached is identical aside from the listed issues having been manually repaired with a hex editor. I didn't test it myself in-game since I don't have the mod and its files, only that it checks out with PyICE. Re-saving it with PyICE could be a good idea, but not sure.

Attachments:

The author (Razorclaw X) used the very first tool ever made for editing script files, I think it was called "Ice" and it is infamous for corrupting iscript.bin and aiscript.bin as you have seen. IceCC was later made by campaigncreations to try and provide the community with a better script editor. Keep in mind, this campaign was developed in 2000.

I am extremely grateful for your efforts to fix this. Unfortunately, while it may open in PyICE now it still crashes in 1.16.1 (after replacing the iscript file in the mpq).
I'll provide the mpq for you as well as the stargraft patch and a map that can very quickly show the crash.

It is probably also worth mentioning that this mod was originally developed for starcraft version 1.07

Here are the other files: https://mega.nz/folder/8VcW3LSQ#RONIzOdmLjMc1M_sNIpOyA
I hope you might be able to fix it

On a separate note, Testing for the extra levels of vision of the future 1 has been completed. It will be a long time before I can test the other episodes in VOTF (excluding VOTF 3 which can easily be tested by trying to run the first map). This is because I am going to be extremely busy starting tomorrow and continuing for at least a month.

The carrier launches interceptors fine for me, and I do not get any iscript-related errors whatsoever. I only get a crash from the Disruption Field transmissions because it doesn't have a portrait.

Wait, what???? I've never gotten this far myself with 1.16.1.... Every effort I've made has failed at this point. Was it with the new or old iscript.bin file? Firegraft or MPQDraft?
Are you on discord? I think we need to work together on this. So many questions.....

Edit: I've added you on discord.

I used the mpq files you provided in the mega download link in a Firegraft mod, with the only modification being made to the Disruption Field's units.dat portrait ID. The unit portrait is set to ID 110 instead of 65535. I don't know if ID 110 was the expected "None" portrait in 1.07, but changing it to anything other than 110-65534 fixed the crash for me. (I presume, since I only tried with the Scantid and None (65535) portraits.)

I currently don't have access to my discord account.

Oh, I have the same problem with iscript.bin for my old projects... back then I didn't know better and used ICE which made the files un-openable in any other software because whenever I added a command the script just started pointing somewhere beyond the regular length instead of inserting the command and recompiling everything with shifted offsets. I'll have to redo iscript in all my projects from scratch when I get around to updating them. Of course I'll be using AICE anyway.

Oh well...

VotF was the source of endless hilarity for me back in the day as crossing SC and some kind of anime, to the point of sticking some anime faces instead of portraits, sounded (and appeared) completely stoned to me. By the time the campaign got out of that delirium and back onto the rails of SC, it actually started to be pretty enjoyable. I liked the third part - especially for the Zeji units: both the sprites in their original form (even if the perspective was off in some of them) and the voices. Speaking of voices - anyone knows where the "Devilray" unit got its voice from? I thought it was just great, both the tone and the lines ("Initiate the harvest!" especially - see, I remember it after 15+ years).

... This is just mindblowing. Are you able to send me the working mpq? I think I'll try this out myself.
I've just verified that you are indeed correct, it is indeed this static thing that is the problem, not the carriers! (launched under v 1.10)



While I will admit the first one was the wackiest of them all, it is still pretty well done technically. It has scored an 80 on my sheet.

You do not need to update anything in your projects, all you need to do publish the goddamn campaign files so we can finally play your campaigns! the BWAIDowngrader works fine for campaigns without stargraft/memGraft/fireGraft! The reason why this forum post was needed is because the VotF series uses stargrafts and hence BWAIDowngrader can't provide an easy solution.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Aug 31 2021, 6:00 pm by Zincoshine.

Just extract arr\units.dat from the mpq, change the portrait ID with PyDAT, and import the edited file into the mpq to replace it.

I can't believe the solution ultimately turned out to be so simple. So much time wasted last year on trying to fix iscript.bin which I thought was the source of the problem.

Yes, it works now. I've switched the portrait to the red flag one, which honestly is more fitting than having static.

However, one question remains. How on earth did you manage to pinpoint the problem so accurately?

I'm going to update my original post now....

Thought of the simplest/most likely thing I could think of that would be the cause the issue based on my observations.

I ran the mod & map as provided and noted that it crashed exactly when the transmission sound played, and not when an interceptor launch sound played (no hostile units were in range to begin with). Seems reasonable to think the issue was related to the transmission trigger, so I opened the map and looked at it. I saw that the only thing unusual about it was the Disruption Field being the portrait, so I hypothesized that its portrait could be the cause. Tested it by first changing the unit to something I knew didn't cause issues like Fenix, then after verifying that it then no longer crashed, edited the D.Web's portrait ID to something I knew was safe, and that confirmed my suspicion. I then made sure that the carrier/interceptors didn't cause issues as well, to rule out the possibility that I was experiencing an issue unrelated to your original claim.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Aug 31 2021, 6:18 pm by DarkenedFantasies.

Damn it, I only remember custom voices and modified weapons, I probably got one of those "crappy" version back then.
Still, it bring back memories, I think I was using some sound effects from the campaign as Windows start sound (and maybe exit sound too) even before Windows XP (actually, while I don't use it, I still have bgm-preb.wav in a location easily avaiable )

I know I do. Or, if you're not getting the same errors that I did in both FOTG and Vagrants when running them on 1.16 (non-cloaking cloakers in the former and dark templar that are completely static and do nothing even when attacked in the latter), well, I'm doing something wrong with my own goddamn campaigns.

Both were made for 1.10 FWIW and thus suffered inevitably when transposed to the later versions of SC. Besides, both are suffering from the rather pathetic AI Script writing I had exhibited back in the day. I tried cannibalizing one script from an unused version of a FOTG mission for WODF, and just ended up throwing the towel in and rewriting it. Believe me, stuff needs to be done to these.

Of course I am getting those errors as well as with a handful of other campaigns that also only work on 1.10. My point is that using BWAIDowgrader to go back to 1.10 is a super easy thing to do. I am planning on using this to play legacy of the confederation 2 as well as Fallen Angel when the time times. My point is that playing your campaigns is super easy to do because BWAIDowngrader allows me to go back to 1.10. Just put the files on mega.nz. I want to play, literally, everyone in this forum and in discord is waiting for you to upload the files and let us play. Playing on 1.10 isn't a problem.

I know, but it's not an option for general (re-)release. I really need to do something to these, but of late, I've not had any time even for the campaign I've been working on currently.

Uh What? of course it is an option.

Versions 1.07, 1.10, 1.14, 1.15, 1.15.1, 1.16.1, and the latest version of remastered are the valid versions that a mod can be released for.

As long as it works on one of those versions, it is ready to be (re-)released.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 3 2021, 5:20 pm by Zincoshine.

How many people would bother jumping through these hoops? Enough that 1.16 has to be used, which is a hassle in itself.

OK everyone, I am pleased to announce that my playthrough/testing of Visions of the future 2 with the new modfile was a success..... almost entirely. I had to remove the hidden objective in mission 2-3 as selecting the flag caused starcraft to crash and furthermore upon starting the hidden objective a overmind with shell is spawned... the same model used for the black dream. I also edited two other maps to quickfix two gamebreaking bugs with the map layout.

All the files are now available on the archive.

Vision of the future 2 has scored 82%


There is only one hoop to jump with those versions, that's why they are acceptable. You simply run BWAIDowgrader, select the right version, and you're done. I even provided people with an easy to understand readme for such campaigns.

And by the way, lots of people are jumping over this one hoop in order to play flame knives and legacy of the confederation... and Vagrants.

testing for vision of the future 3 has completed. Apart from that "none" profile, there were only 2 other issues with irrelevant tiny easter eggs in 2 maps causing crashes. It was a simple matter of removing the 2 offending units in each map and everything was OK afterwards.

The files for visions of the future 3 are available now and it all works excellently now. Enjoy!

I will be going on vacation in 2 days to celebrate the end of the pandemic (in europe) and the return of a normal life... as normal as it will ever get anyway.

Following this, I'll be busy with a number of things so it is unlikely that I will begin work on Vision of the future 4 for some time. One thing is for sure though, the modfile is notorious for bugs that Razorclaw X was unable to fix with the tools available at the time. It is unlikely that I can fix them but I could try, I would need to know how to modify the "size" of a building though.

Size is trivial to edit now, using PYMS, as much as any other unit setting.
I remember how it required a separate program to amend, though, seeing as how it was an unknown at the time of Arsenal 3.