March 12th, 2003

The dying gasp

A long time ago,
in a galaxy far, far away,
there were two dominating powers
continuously fighting a fierce war with
each other...I don’t know if it is true or
not, and honestly, I don’t really care...

But really, a long while ago (some sources might place it as Summer 2001) the first episode of Alternate Reality was released. With a scant three maps, it was a very humble offering by me, an attempt to create a TAC forumer campaign. Still, people seemed to like it, and I decided to expand into a rather grand and epic saga encompassing several episodes, each which would have three maps, custom music, and its own EXE.

I think you may already know where this is going. Yes, for over a year, progress on Episode II had stalled. The final kick to the shins was most likely when I had to uninstall StarCraft to create more room for the ever-hungry WarCraft III. Madness, sheer madness. I never really understood why Seawolf had so much trouble with his SpecOps; now, I think I have an idea.

I offer no excuses. There was no hard drive crash, there were no viruses, no mounds of Space Crack, nor were there any Death Space Ninjas beaming my work straight out from my computer. A simple, good old-fashioned lack of time and effort is the culprit behind poor Episode II’s demise.

So, what was done? The EXE and two maps out of three; in fact, the first and the last, despite the third being kinda buggy. The second one, completely conceptualized, simply never was. I can tell you that many Antiochers were to appear in it...so that’s quite a disappointment to me that it never was made. Moreover, I proved to be utterly incapable of terrain creation and only marginally better at triggering. Alternate Reality quite simply never would have been without the efforts of these people:

Typhoon(ius Lucius Maximus), who provided the terraining and much of the triggering for Episode I. AR was in fact, originally to be a “Styphoon Productions” thing. (The less said about that, the better.) I am deeply grateful to him. He r0x0rz, as some (very few) might say.

Dine, who created the Episode I patch. I was pretty annoying in insisting that “such and such” wasn’t quite right or “this is supposed to be that,” but he bore my requests with good humor and delivered what he promised. Thanks, man.

BlitZ Zero: The third hero of Team Styles, BlitZ cobbled together the Episode II EXE and also terrained both maps 1 and 3, and triggered 1. Again, BlitZ played the role Typhoon had a year ago and did a bang up job. Thank you, BlitZ. You’re a stand up kinda guy. :)

Mac Chaos deserves a nod here, too. While he proved to be a bit too otherwise occupied to ever really get my terrain done, he was a source of encouragement. Ultimately he did fail, heh, but nonetheless, I appreciate the effort. :)

I would also like to thank E Mouse, Magnum, and Mack Kilimaro for providing unit responses (they would have appeared, again, in map 2.) I’m going to go out on a limb here and say Magnum’s were actually quite good. “CC quality” good even, if you follow me. E Mouse, well...uh, he also beta-tested a little, proving quite helpful. That more or less makes up for the horrors of hearing E Mouse the Zergling screech out “For cheese and country!” :)

To wind down: Thanks for reading this longwinded and rather pointless post. I apologize for having failed in my quest to forever immortalize the gang of Antioch in StarCraft campaign format. I suppose that torch has been passed, in some small way, to Seawolf and Zeratul; I only hope they can live up to the bar of the “HIDDEN PHIGMENT CUTSCENE” I have set. If I could, I’d give you all a free mint for your troubles. And that ain’t no lie.

Yours,
The Admiral of Style,
Ryan