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Shards of Resistance: The Raiders


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A single-player campaign based on Lord Soze's classic campaign of the same name.
The story follows the conflict between the surviving Blackrock clan, the human kingdoms
of the Northlands and the Vampire Lords of Khemri.

The campaign was remade from the ground up, featuring high-definition models and some redone
cutscenes. I'm aware of issues with the finale, but alas, this is merely a remake. Anyway, enjoy!


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- Fixed some typos
- Added dozens of new models, both for units and decorative (thanks to Warcraft: Rebirth, YourArthas)
- Changed Kobayashi's model
- Fixed error where Kobayashi and Verbal do not appear in "The Remnants"



- Updated campaign's HIVE profile page



- Updated with new HD models
- Reworked some of Bauer's dialogue
- Replaced Kobayashi's bugged Firebolt spell
- Minor visual enhancements in the terrain and cutscenes



- Released



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This campaign was made with Warcraft III patch 1.27 and not Reforged.
Due to some players have different versions of the game, which may result in possible crashes,
I've decided to have all the levels unlocked.

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Lord_Soze (Original Creator)
Med. MapGuy (Co-Creator)

Models:
Your Arthas
yonatanDS
Warcraft Rebirth
Tamplier777
Dreacon (Tileset Artist)
Dimitry Rommel
Nasrudin
Kill4ster (Starcraft Models)
Whitehorn
Armel
Urkdrengi
!!GORO!!
Crazynutter
Pheonix-IV
Xaran Alamas
Lord_Soze
DP Clan
tobyfat50

Promotional Art:
Wang Wei
Jeremy Chong

Sound and Music:
World of Warcraft
Blizzard Entertainment (WoW)
Monolith Productions (F.E.A.R.)
Bethesda Software (Fallout Tactics)
Creative Assembly (Rome: Total War)
Jedi Academy, Half-life: Counter-Strike

Special Thanks:
Lord_Soze
Dreacon
Your Arthas
Jayborino
Abishkar
诺森德的呜喵王
Otherknownoise
deepstrasz
Shar Dundred

Contents

Shards of Resistance: Classic (Campaign)

Shards of Resistance: The Raiders (Campaign)

Reviews
VGsatomi: Approved. This campaign was originally hosted on wc3search.

deepstrasz

Map Reviewer
Level 69
Joined
Jun 4, 2009
Messages
18,798
Level 7
Joined
Mar 11, 2020
Messages
94
hi i allawys like your campaigns allawys such a marvel just a quick notice there is a probleme with bauer's cache i think when u get to the almighty one you have like his sword the golden skull u find and a couple of other stuf they all get lost after u transfrom into a paladin this was from the old version and is aswell on this one can u please fix it thanks :D i rly like the models btw
 
Level 23
Joined
May 14, 2004
Messages
299
Thanks again for everyone trying out this remaster. Hope you folks enjoy!

As for the HD models, majority are taken from @YourArthas excellent Warcraft Rebirth mod. The rest are from here.

Warcraft rebirth mod

As for the items of Bauer not carrying over, I knew I forgot to add a trigger that would force un-transformed Bauer to drop his items...
 
Level 4
Joined
Jan 31, 2013
Messages
11
Just completed the new remastered version. Which probably makes this my 5th playthrough of this campaign. It remains the masterpiece it was 13 years ago. It is that good.


For this reason I have seen pretty much all the bugs and other flaws present in it. It is a list I never thought that I would have a purpose to share but here we are. I am so joyous to see your return Med.MapGuy



First some feedback on the new models:


Kobayshi: Off to a bad start. I get that it is no small feat to port the mounted version of Thrall in HotS into a WC3 model, but I just don’t see the upgrade. Old Kobayshi reeked of darkness, it was understandable that this guy was addressed as a warlock. If I wanted a campaign where the main orc leader is a straight up Thrall clone, I would go and play the Mathias Redux…

I am going to go and do that eventually by the way.



Bauer: Eh… We joke a lot about them, but nothing was ever improved by adding Wow-sized shoulderpads.


Vallery: Her model essentially got upgraded to the Hots version. Visually it looks fine, but oh lord are those animations off. Her walking speed is way off and she attacks by wailing her bow in one hand. This model needs a lot of work.


Mephisto and Verbal Klint: They’re greeEAAT!! Now we are getting to some good stuff. I miss Mephisto having a hammer, but the tradeoff seems super worth it for now. These models don’t do well with Bladestorm though.


General Orc/Troll Models: I prefer the old visual style but these models gets the job done. Montana is still great.


Dreadlords: Auch. The best models in the old campaign replaced by a very botched porting job. All the HD textures adds nothing when one can count the triangles on the eye-effects. The pink-ish effect on their wings also looks more like a texture error than an actual art decision. And lets not even get started on those stiff animations. IMO this is by far the biggest visual downgrade in the remaster. The Lothraxion model looks fine though.


Shiva: Nearly perfect porting job, with portrait that is excellently aligned, and overall it is a good switch from a Lich to a Legion Inquisitor. All that needs to be done is to take away his orb, since the model doesn’t have proper attachment points.



Bugs/Annoyances:


Mission 3: Bauer loses all of his equipped items when transforming into a full hero. During Mission 3, he also maintains the defend skill as a Hero, though it is lost later. Since this abilitiy has same coordinates as Holy Light, this messes up his command card.


The new location of the fountain of health near the Almighty makes it almost impossible to reach.


There is a general annoyance with how resources interact with the alliance setup. Once you get the base, you will typically have over 4k gold that cannot be spent on units since it is an allied base. Only thing it can be spent on is items, which in turn also means that should you spent all of it, then you won’t be able to buy any more items for the mission. Even when the allies orcs got all the gold in the world.



Mission 4:


There has been a persistent bug where heroes gets removed during mission 4 and 8. Though I did not experience it this playthrough (My Heroes didn’t die), I have seen it plenty. Looking through the campaign files I have an eerily suspicion that Mon’Tanas Cannibilaze Soul Aura is able to “eat” heroes. It doesn’t seem like there is anything stopping ‘Salvation_dTargetUnit’ from being a hero.



Mission 5: The barrel that it seems like you should be able to tab for 225 gold, remains invulnerable forever.


If Fensters Inventory is full, then the large sack of gold will just be dropped on the ground where he stood.


Mission 6: There was A LOT of missing models present on this map. Something must have broken terribly because I was seeing purple squares everywhere. I get that it might be version mismatch, but I played on the public test version 1.31, which should be very compatible with 1.27



Mission 7: No bugs, just an observation. Did this get nerfed? I remember doing my usual shenanigans by overloading Fenster and Hockey with imbalanced items in order to just barely manage to hold the line against the caravan. This time it ended like a breeze, and it seems to me that I was swimming in gold compared to past playthroughs.



Mission 8: Lord where do I start. This has always been quite a messy mission.

Pathing seems to be broken, making the enemies only attack from the center and then heading west.

In all of my playthroughs I barely noticed the swarm siege on Khemri. It seems incredible hard to trigger the initial siege cutscene.

As mentioned there is a bug where Heroes gets removed from the game on this map.

I also had a hard crash on this map on this playthrough. Can’t really say why.

The prisoners on the barges does not get rescued if they are freed during the cutscene with Valery reaching 10.

The buildings of The Red Undead (Khemri Guards) takes nearly no damage from Valery’s Starfall.





That is all I found. Still it was great to have a reason to return to this once again. It is a work of art, then and now.
 
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Level 23
Joined
Jul 26, 2008
Messages
1,317
But why wow models, why?

I checked and spotted the mistake. I apologize for this error. I've since uploaded a patched version.



I wanted to give them a try...

I have not played either of your remakes, but I think the contrast can be seen in the portraits of the screenshots you posted on the map descriptions for Mathias remake + Shards remake.

Mathias Portrait:



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Shards Portrait:


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The portrait of Mathias looks like a fantastic custom model for wc3, while Kobayashi's portrait looks very out of place.

There's nothing wrong with the rebirth model back, but it definitely clashes with the traditional wc3 art-style.
 
Level 23
Joined
May 14, 2004
Messages
299
@Sumadin Great! I'm so glad you've been enjoying this campaign for so long. A lot of the model choices were unfortunately compromises I had to make, mostly due to lack of alternatives. The Thrall model in particular - I was going to go more for the beefed up Chaos Warlord model, but for some reason it didn't work. Valery too - I wish I could alpha her ears out haha. The Dreadlords / Vampire Lords were supposed to have redder looking wings, but alas. I also didn't tweak the gameplay much in many of the levels, so a lot of the old bugs are there. Mission 7 was also made easier after I couldn't personally finished it. I blame Lord Soze for Mission 8. Heh.

@tulee Yes, I wanted a different model for Kobayashi, but couldn't find a suitable alternative. I'll strive for consistency in the future.
 
Level 23
Joined
Jul 26, 2008
Messages
1,317
@tulee Yes, I wanted a different model for Kobayashi, but couldn't find a suitable alternative. I'll strive for consistency in the future.
I didn't mean to come across as accusatory. It was not really fair of me to judge just by looking at the screenshots on the map description without playing it first.

Maybe the prejudice against WoW models from the older members of the wc3 community is the main problem problem ha-ha. Who knows~.
 
Level 4
Joined
Jan 31, 2013
Messages
11
@Med. MapGuy Oh I totally get it. It is about what is available. Just hoping someone makes Thrall's Hellhammer skin available, because that would probably be the best bet for decently convincing HD Kobayashi.

I also forgot the most hilarious bug of them all. Mephisto's Unleash Corruption spawns Bauers. Just the non-hero form and they vanish almost instantly. This bug always had me the most puzzled when I was younger, but since I started dappling in modding myself, I can easily recognize it as a dummy unit with the wrong reference.
 
Level 6
Joined
Sep 29, 2015
Messages
92
You obviously ran very short of patience while making this, eh?

I give this campaing 3/5 stars (my opinion). Very fun, and I enjoyed the new models and the original sounds, but the ending is way too rushed and sudden. There are certain, very important storylines that received no conclusions.

SPOILERS AHEAD:




I'm especially thinking about the aliens, that were set as the biggest threat of the story and yet they were defeated by killing a single flying creature, and not even by US, the players... I honestly got strong Game of Thrones vibes, with the biggest threat solved with a fart in favor of the secondary threat that turns out ot be the main big bad only at the very end... That was pretty lame.
 
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Level 2
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Jun 22, 2019
Messages
8
Hi! Typing this text in 05 of June 2020. Have much fun from this custom campaign. I see you put indescribable effort in your work. Thank you very much! This custom campaign is for sure in Must Play list.
 
Level 7
Joined
Jul 17, 2020
Messages
156
I played the original and i like it downloading right now

In act 2 i found some creeps with gnolls heads and murloc bodies WTF:vw_wtf:

in act three there must be blademasters but i only see bauer it is a Bug
I can't pick up Tomes with Bauer it cause a crash HP tomes i can
and whats up with that ogre in the cage i saved from bandit camp
I CAN'T FINISH ACT 3 so i just play act four fix this map i need those blademasters to finish the tunnel mission

I've got an error in the act 4 in middle of the cinematic... Okay i skipped the cinematic and map works now

Awesome
Gameplay 10/10
Spells 10/10
Models 10/10
Skins 10/10
Terrain 10/10
Music 10/10
Story 8/10 Aliens were like a side enemy like in the last map they just send couple of troops and that's it and they were so easily beaten kill a commander and over,we won
Overall 68/70
love you and your campaigns and good luck
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Level 9
Joined
Oct 1, 2015
Messages
352
I loved playing the remastered version, I have some notes to add to those Sumadin mentioned

On Chapter 4, I'd suggest adding a timer to the first phase of the main quest so the player could know for how long they have to hold out and give more space on the main entrance to build the defenses necessary to hold back the swarm because those infested terrans make short work of the towers if you don't have enough of them.

On Chapter 8, it was very hard for me because the enemies waves attacked at the same time, meaning I have three armies marching on my base which made the mission longer.
Starting position isn't a good defensible position because the defences I build on the far side of the ramp close to the waterfall are obliterated quickly. You should either change the river terrain leading to the base entrance or change the base entrance terrain.

General notes:
Chapter 4, after I reached Mon'tana's base and given control over his base there was a lonely troll priest that uses a skeleton model and has the spell "Heal" instead of Voodoo Rite and his hitpoints were 265 while the normal troll priest has 240.

Mon'tana's Cannibalize Soul Aura doesn't seem to do anything at all and doesn't surround the hero with an aura and Mon'tana lacks an ultimate. Actually, I didn't like his abilities at all, none of them really suit him and give an advantage in a fight.
Only hero who has an ultimate is Verbal with his blademaster ultimate. I understand that Verbal and Mephisto have Bloody Slash and Whirling Force, respectively, but they should have some kind of a proper ultimate ability.

on Chapter 8, after Valery reach level 10, her only ability is Starfall which should deal 62 damage per fall as stated in the description but it only deals that damage to units and deals only 3 damage to buildings.
Enemy bases, economy, and their heroes items are visible to me after Valery reaches lvl 10, the items are visible from the start.
This chapter could really use a boss fight since it is the last one in the campaign and we are fighting the Vampires and their undead minions.
Scavengers food cap is 100 and not 135 just like the rest of the teams.

That's all I could remember, I would love to see more of the zerg swarm and not have them die in a small cutscene at the final chapter, maybe a chapter where we go to their caverns and destroy them from the source?

Other than the mentioned above, I loved the originality of the campaign, the models used and story progress but it needs a tiny adjustment.

Great job though!
 
Level 12
Joined
Mar 4, 2014
Messages
204
Hi, just replayed the campaign, on version 1.29, just want to say a few things:
I see you went with a theme to change all the old skins with some new wow like skins in all your campaigns, to be honest i really hate the new skins, they look like they are from wow or Hots, they look so out of place of the Warcraft 3 universe is not even funny, when i am playing War3 i don't want to play and stare at ugly CGI Wow units, is like reforged all over again, they just look bad.

Because of that i played on the classic version, that is a good thing tho, that there are both versions here, gives the players a choice.

Talking about ugly skins, what did you do with Valery lol, why does she look like an 80 year old grandma, even her unit model looks off, dayum she is ugly! :ugly::witch_doc_sad::nw:
ugly.png
And this is on the classic version btw

Now even tho you "remastered" this campaign with all those new skins, you pretty much didn't really fix any issues.

Huge Issues like spells not having q w e r hotkeys (instead they have stupid hotkeys like f, x, b , t, u, etc) ; lots of spells don't even have hotkeys and some do have but they don't work (like the troll priest heal spell).

For me not having heroes and units with decent hotkeys is a big nono, is kinda weird to be honest, especially when you went through so much effort to "revamp" your campaigns, but just changing the unit skins is not much, again, this is very similar to what Blizzard did with Reforged and you can see how that ended up, the biggest failure in modern history.

Another big issue is the story, how some other people pointed out, the whole campaign from the beginning is based on this other worldly threat of the aliens but they just end up being a huge joke by the end of the campaign getting their entire armies stopped by a group of gargoyles? that is indeed lame.

There are other smaller bugs that weren't solved how when you kill the Necromancer that controls the aliens there is some very annoying sound that just keeps going and never stops and you have to turn the sounds off.

Another bug, in the last mission i had no vision of the aliens attacking the citadel, i remember when i played in the past, i could see the aliens attacking the undead and that was pretty sweet.. until... they got stopped by a few gargoyles that is...

More bugs: green boxes everywhere
oh yes.png
more boxes.png

It pains me to say this but after i replayed this campaign after all this time, i think is pretty bad and only because of those 2 main issues, bad hotkeys, main story line goes to shit.

You can have the best dialogues and best looking cutscenes in the world, but without a good gameplay and a good overall story from the beginning to end, then is all for nothing.


Another funny bug, the human guy Bauer when he gets out of the armor for some reason he becomes giant
big guy Bauer.png
 
Level 23
Joined
May 14, 2004
Messages
299
I appreciate the feedback, and I too share everyone's frustration with how the final act turned out (particularly the fate of the Xenomorphs). Unfortunately I was only working with what the original author Lord_Soze
had in his campaign, and I (unfortunately) didn't feel up to changing how the campaign ended. If I had unlimited time and effort, I would love to make a sequel with the Xenos coming back to redeem themselves
in some fashion. I did have one plan with the Vampires / Dreadlords striking back against the now-Orc-occupied Khemri in a floating Citadel, but scrapped those plans a while back.

As for the issues pertaining with the campaign itself, I'll admit, this latest "remastering" is more an HD re-skin than anything else. At the time of development, I did try to fix a lot of the issues others have
pointed out in the past, particularly in the stealth level. Lastly, regarding the issues with using WoW Rips and HotS models, I dunno, I kinda like them. I do admit Kobayashi's model isn't the greatest. Anyway, it's a matter of
personal taste, though I do understand if they clash with the Warcraft 3 aesthetic.
 
Level 7
Joined
Jul 17, 2020
Messages
156
i need that bloody dreadlord model anyone knows where to download it?????
i give a special thx to any one found it on my new coming map :infl_thumbs_up:
 
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Level 7
Joined
Oct 22, 2004
Messages
68
bumping and bringing this back from the dead after 5-6 years, better late then never. i enjoyed replaying the "classic" version, and the remaster, so to speak. only minor bug i know of [by intent perhapse?] is that kobayashi cant seem to level up for his ultimate spell. still a fun homage, to blend titles in a fun way. and awesome cinematics, as usual. kudos <3
 
Level 23
Joined
May 14, 2004
Messages
299
Hello! I've uploaded another visual overhaul just to bring it in line with my other projects. Unfortunately, all the old bugs are probably still there. I've also swapped Kobayashi's model to a more grittier looking orc. At the time of my previous "remastering", the HotS version of Thrall was the only decent(?) Wolfrider model I could find. Hopefully this new version brings back that rough feel to ol' Kobs. I've also fixed some models which were "unshaded" and appeared too bright in cutscenes (namely the Vampire Lords). I'm aware there are probably some bugged icons and other visual issues, but one thing at a time.

Some preview shots:

Shot0.jpgShot1.jpgShot2.jpg

Shot3.jpgShot4.jpgShot5.jpg
 
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Level 7
Joined
Nov 13, 2018
Messages
83
The best campigns ever...!

one suggestion is that :

the last chapter is too easy...
I expected it to be real wide range of battles
but, somehow, after the woman starts to spell starfalls...
it becomes too easy....
I wish, that momonent could be delayed... so that
i can enjoy battles more...
 
Level 13
Joined
Jun 22, 2020
Messages
196
.... Unfortunately, all the old bugs are probably still there.

Yes they are here and some of them even have different behavior when restarting the specific mission. Minor bugs, bugs causing mission restarts, bugs causing WcIII to crash, bugs with different behavior on mission restarts, bugs that could ruin a few hours of gameplay + a few levels that could completely turn off the average player. I wonder how you would rate such a campaign if you were me?

I give +5 for overall visual experience +5 for the effort + 5 for enjoyment of the game in general and where there are no game-ruining and nerve-wracking bugs and x-5 for everything else.

I read above that fixing them is a big "journey" for you, but you are a real machine for a high-quality (visually speaking) campaign considering how long it takes others to do something similar and almost bug free. However, the rest does not drag you considering what period of time has passed.

Not long ago I played an HQ campaign at a level like yours and I wondered why it was rated so low when it was almost 1:1 like your campaigns in terms of visuals and sound and the bugs were so minor that there was no point in paying attention to them. I finally figured out what the low rating was due to and I find it quite unfair. Maybe you should think about starting to exchange experiences with your colleague. It will work so that the campaigns have imperceptible errors and you on everything else.

Maybe for the specific campaign you are now preparing a RE-RE-Remaster for REforged where most of the bugs will be fixed.
 
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Level 2
Joined
Jun 26, 2023
Messages
5
In the current version of Reforged, this campaign hard-crashes to desktop when attempting to start the prologue due to a failure to load a file from the database (likely Blizzard changed the model/file name).

I would say at this time, without rolling back to an earlier version, this campaign is no longer playable. I did not test other missions, but if you can't even get past the campaign start without a crash to desktop, it likely does not bode well for the other bugs further one.

To be clear, I don't think the origin of these bugs is the authors fault (more Blizzard's patching)-- but regardless a word of caution for anyone wanting to download it.
 
Level 4
Joined
Apr 27, 2020
Messages
19
I'm playing the classic shards of resistance right now and the only problem is that chapter 8 is unplayable. Whenever I skip the cutscene for the last mission the game crashes and despite watching through the cutscene it still crashes. This campaign is one of the three most amazing ones that gets me playing again and again so please help!
Hello! I've uploaded another visual overhaul just to bring it in line with my other projects. Unfortunately, all the old bugs are probably still there. I've also swapped Kobayashi's model to a more grittier looking orc. At the time of my previous "remastering", the HotS version of Thrall was the only decent(?) Wolfrider model I could find. Hopefully this new version brings back that rough feel to ol' Kobs. I've also fixed some models which were "unshaded" and appeared too bright in cutscenes (namely the Vampire Lords). I'm aware there are probably some bugged icons and other visual issues, but one thing at a time.

Some preview shots:

View attachment 399119View attachment 399120View attachment 399121

View attachment 399122View attachment 399123View attachment 399124
 
Level 28
Joined
May 14, 2021
Messages
1,111
I'm playing the classic shards of resistance right now and the only problem is that chapter 8 is unplayable. Whenever I skip the cutscene for the last mission the game crashes and despite watching through the cutscene it still crashes. This campaign is one of the three most amazing ones that gets me playing again and again so please help!
It is advise you to check the comments above regarding this matter. Most notably, you have to use the older versions of the game if you are using the latest one (especially Reforged) because higher versions beyond 1.27 (I'm not sure about the recommended version for this campaign) is too buggy
 
Level 4
Joined
Jan 31, 2013
Messages
11
@Cristian23

Yea that is what happens when you load it into Reforged. This campaign is made to be run on WC3 Version 1.27, as it says on the front. You can download a client for that version on Hive.
 
Level 28
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May 14, 2021
Messages
1,111
Level 4
Joined
Jan 31, 2013
Messages
11
Actually, it's not only related to the wrong version of the game, as you said. If you see a lot of garbled textures, then your video card is most likely dying.
Sometimes, but in this case it is just a version issue. I saw the same, when I tried to load it in with Reforged. Suffice to say, WC3 used to be a lot more lenient about missing bones in models. Which was not necessarily a good practice though.
 
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