[Campaign] The Heart of Zoraan

[Geekio]

Caught in the midst of a bloody civil war, the noble heroes Goffrey and Fidela undertake a perilous adventure

to unknown shores in order to restore peace to their home and thwart a nefarious plot of world domination....

STORY​

The Heart of Zoraan takes place loosely within the WarCraft universe with many artistic liberties taken, shortly prior to the events of Reign of Chaos. The characters and factions most closely involved in the story are original, for the most part. Our story begins in the independent nation of Arrinor, which shares its eastern border with Stromguarde, where the young paladin Goffrey is tasked with escorting the Grand Master of his order to an important conference intended to ease political tensions as the Arrinoran people become increasingly divided on the question of joining the Alliance of Lordaeron. When the conflict unavoidably boils over and launches a full civil war, Goffrey and his fellow paladins set out on a journey to locate and retrieve the holiest of relics, the titular Heart of the First Paladin Zoraan, in the hopes that the people of Arrinor can be reunited by their common faith in the Holy Light.

Throughout their quest, Goffrey and his partner Fidela travel to eerie abandoned ruins, bustling port cities, and uncharted foreign wilderness, forming tenuous alliances along the way with all manner of colourful characters from sleazy goblin oil barons and swashbuckling pirates, to all-powerful warlocks and mysterious silent assassins.

GAMEPLAY​

While The Heart of Zoraan maintains the classic WarCraft 3 gameplay throughout - base building in most levels with a handful of micro-missions, I've come up with a few gimmicks to introduce some unique twists to the formula.

SIDEQUEST TAVERNS​

In several levels the player can find a tavern which acts as sort of a "mission board" for sidequests in the area. The player can get sidequests either by stumbling upon the questgiver, or by reading their public notice at the local tavern. The idea here is to make the world feel a bit more alive.

BRANCHING PATHS & VARIED FACTIONS​

Midway through the campaign, Goffrey finds himself in a situation where he must find a way to travel overseas. Depending which path the player takes, the next level will contain unique characters, locales, and challenges.

• Captain your own ship - command a vessel in naval combat using arrow keys to steer, firing broadsides and adjusting sail like in Sid Meier's Pirates!
• Tag along with a pirate crew - search for buried treasure and fight off sea monsters from the decks of a ship
• Hitch a ride on a Goblin zeppelin - fend off flying enemies like dragons and air pirates
• Stow away on your enemy's ship - sneak around belowdecks, keeping to the shadows and sabotaging enemy plans.

Throughout the campaign, the player will command multiple armies including a lightly modified Human tech tree, a custom Bandits tech tree, and Night Elves.

HERO ABILITY HOT-SWAP​

Making creative use of the Goblin Tinker's Engineering Upgrade ability, our hero Goffrey is able to switch out spells for alternate variants on the fly. For example, if the situation dictates that friendly forces are more in need of mana than armour, Goffrey can switch out his Devotion Aura for Endurance Aura. Similarly, Holy Light can be replaced with modified versions of Healing Wave or Rejuvenation as needed. Embedded below is a demo of this system in action. In the completed campaign, each alternate ability will have to be unlocked by finding its corresponding Glyph in each level.

This campaign is being developed on client version 1.27b.​

Earlier versions cannot be expected to work; later versions have not been tested.

Discord for occasional updates, screenshots, etc.​

Attached is the very first alpha version, which contains only one level. It's very rough around the edges but I'd appreciate anyone taking a look and giving feedback! I make no claim to be the best at this, and 90% of what I've done in this map was learned on the fly so I'm sure there's room for improvement.

CREDITS​

Spoiler

Currently implemented sound sets voiced by:
•Grand Master Archibald - Jadehope
•Lunara Quicksilver - Amisometimes

Models & textures by
•Ujimasa Hojo
•republicola
•Mechanical Man
•BROAD_SIDE
•Geekio

Many thanks to the community for providing the tutorials and resources that helped me get started.

 

[Tickles]

It's always nice to see a classic style campaign with a new story to tell. The plot seemed a little cliched at first, but I was eager for more towards the end of the map. I do think you would have more freedom with the world if it wasn't based on any Warcraft lore or geography. It seems like most of the characters, events and locations are your own, anyway.

The first thing I noticed was the dialogue grammar. It makes it much easier to follow the story when the dialogue is easy to read with proper grammar, so that was much appreciated. The quests were also straight to the point. I had a good idea of how to go about doing them, including the optional part of the ogre quest. By the way, nice touch with the crown quest. I had fun trying to milk gold out of it as long as possible. I'd love to see more double-edged quests like that sprinkled into future maps.

It pained me to see default abilities. I strongly suggest adding something different to them, even if it's as simple as making Holy Light also target self. With that as an example, you could call it Healing Light as an indicator that something about it was changed. The ability hot-swap seems like a great idea, but I would still make custom abilities a priority. Custom abilities and hot-swapping would be the cherry on top.

Overall, it seems like it's shaping up to be an enjoyable campaign. The ideas you have planned could require a hefty amount of work. Take it from someone who backs himself into a corner by basing every map he makes around a gimmicky style of gameplay - go light on the gimmicks! Trying to do too much or something complex makes it difficult to go back and fix or build on later, and the simpler gameplay of this first map was just fine. Pirate Goffrey does sound entertaining, though.

 

[Geekio]

Thanks very much for the thoughtful feedback, Tickles! This kind of input is exactly what I was hoping to get when I posted the map!

It's always nice to see a classic style campaign with a new story to tell. The plot seemed a little cliched at first, but I was eager for more towards the end of the map. I do think you would have more freedom with the world if it wasn't based on any Warcraft lore or geography. It seems like most of the characters, events and locations are your own, anyway.

I agree with you about the plot seeming cliched. I went into this project not thinking "I have a story and I want to tell it through a Warcraft campaign," rather "I want to make a campaign and that means I need to contrive a halfway-interesting reason for medieval people to fight each other." Regarding what you said about the world being based on Warcraft lore/geography, I don't feel that that has limited me too much. If I invented an entirely new setting, I would feel sort of obligated to completely avoid using vanilla units and assets, and it would likely end up just feeling like a crappy bootleg Warcraft.

The first thing I noticed was the dialogue grammar. It makes it much easier to follow the story when the dialogue is easy to read with proper grammar, so that was much appreciated. The quests were also straight to the point. I had a good idea of how to go about doing them, including the optional part of the ogre quest. By the way, nice touch with the crown quest. I had fun trying to milk gold out of it as long as possible. I'd love to see more double-edged quests like that sprinkled into future maps.

Whew, I'm always very critical of my own writing, so I'm glad to hear it wasn't too bad. Also very happy to hear you liked the crown quest - I've stressed a lot about trying to balance the damage vs gold. (Especially on all 3 difficulties!) Tentatively, I think you can look forward to more "double-edged" quests in future maps.

It pained me to see default abilities. I strongly suggest adding something different to them, even if it's as simple as making Holy Light also target self. With that as an example, you could call it Healing Light as an indicator that something about it was changed. The ability hot-swap seems like a great idea, but I would still make custom abilities a priority. Custom abilities and hot-swapping would be the cherry on top.

Well, it's not too late for me to modify those abilities. The good news is, every single one of them (even the default Paladin abilities) is technically a "custom" ability in the object editor, just with default values, so modifying the abilities wouldn't be a huge hassle - beyond having to learn how to do it. Broadly speaking, I do still want to keep the categories of "Healing spell, Personal shield, Aura," to avoid having to change too much stuff in the hot-swap system.

Overall, it seems like it's shaping up to be an enjoyable campaign. The ideas you have planned could require a hefty amount of work. Take it from someone who backs himself into a corner by basing every map he makes around a gimmicky style of gameplay - go light on the gimmicks! Trying to do too much or something complex makes it difficult to go back and fix or build on later, and the simpler gameplay of this first map was just fine. Pirate Goffrey does sound entertaining, though.

Yes, I've already discovered the dangers of planning too big. I had originally intended the Ogre quest to include an interactive dialogue to negotiate with them, but as I imported the 15th "[Character] Will Remember That" fade filter I sort of snapped out of it and went, "wait, this isn't a TellTale game, what am I doing?" and I scrapped that idea. The naval combat idea particularly is something I'd love to do, but it's not set in stone. I do intend to have a level where you captain a ship, but I may end up limiting the scope of it to just using normal unit movement instead of a custom ship control system. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Again, thanks very much for the feedback. Next major alpha release will include the second map and custom abilities.

 

[A]mun]

Sidequests from taverns sound interesting.
I'm not too sure about this ability swapping, sounds like a cool option at first, but might result in frantic back and forth switching to make the most of all the cooldowns.
Let me have a look.

 

[Geekio]

I'm not too sure about this ability swapping, sounds like a cool option at first, but might result in frantic back and forth switching to make the most of all the cooldowns.
Let me have a look.

If you're interested in seeing how it looks with all the spells available rather than just the one you can unlock in this first map, you can open the map Zor1.w3m in the editor and simply disable "INITGlyphResearchButtonCheck" and "INITGlyphBookCheck", then in Goffrey's unit properties just bump his level up to 10 and you'll be able to see a full spellbook. Next release will include a debug command so you can try out all the spells without having to go fiddle around with my messy triggers.

Please do let me know what you think when you've had a look, thanks for taking the time!

Next major alpha release will include the second map and custom abilities.

Amending this statement: I'm prioritizing custom abilities - yet another thing I'm learning on the fly - and when they're done I'll release a new version with the new abilities immediately rather than waiting until I finish the whole second map.

 

[trycex]

Hi Geekio, I tested your project.

First, looks like you inspiring in skyrim (I recognize the sounds and background music ).

The good:

• I really liked it and I understand most of the reference (he was the number 1!) and I enjoy the comedy.
• if the story is cliche, that doesn't mean that it will be bad, and I want to know what happend next.
• the terrain it's ok except for the fact that you use a lot of units and something feel small corridors but nothing too serious.
• The idea of choice your side quest in the tavern was good, and give the feeling of RPG.
• Change your spells sounds a interesting idea.
• This chapter promote the exploration.

The bad

• Maybe the first level except for the last phase is easy (?) unless you are bad in micro skill.
• Some dialogue are too fast(cinematics).
• What is the funtion of the pig? A scout? Too bad that I do that quest in the end.( the no violent choice)
• Smithy whatever his name is, he never come to my very time of need ungrateful bastard
• No qwerty spells?

Lasty i found a very dangerous bug!
I used save and load to test the ogre quest, i believe that the glyph system has problems, because when reload and change my spell, Godfrey lost their devotion aura, even lost the holy light spell in a moment. How that system works? This kind of bug can screw up one of the uniques of this campaign

I wish you good luck with this campaign and to fix the bug.

 

[Geekio]

Hi Geekio, I tested your project.

First, looks like you inspiring in skyrim (I recognize the sounds and background music ).

The good:

• I really liked it and I understand most of the reference (he was the number 1!) and I enjoy the comedy.
• if the story is cliche, that doesn't mean that it will be bad, and I want to know what happend next.
• the terrain it's ok except for the fact that you use a lot of units and something feel small corridors but nothing too serious.
• The idea of choice your side quest in the tavern was good, and give the feeling of RPG.
• Change your spells sounds a interesting idea.
• This chapter promote the exploration.

The bad

• Maybe the first level except for the last phase is easy (?) unless you are bad in micro skill.
• Some dialogue are too fast(cinematics).
• What is the funtion of the pig? A scout? Too bad that I do that quest in the end.( the no violent choice)
• Smithy whatever his name is, he never come to my very time of need ungrateful bastard
• No qwerty spells?

Lasty i found a very dangerous bug!
I used save and load to test the ogre quest, i believe that the glyph system has problems, because when reload and change my spell, Godfrey lost their devotion aura, even lost the holy light spell in a moment. How that system works? This kind of bug can screw up one of the uniques of this campaign

I wish you good luck with this campaign and to fix the bug.

Thanks for the feedback! Addressing all the negative points:

- Thanks for the point about the terrain being too cramped for that many units. I'll consider removing some units to both fix this and increase difficulty.

- I agree that it's fairly easy. I thought maybe that was just because I've played it a million times over while testing, but I can make it harder. (Also it does have variable difficulty! Is it still too easy on Hard?)

- Most dialogue is currently at the default 5 seconds out of laziness. I can go through and adjust it.

- The pig in the current release is basically useless. At some point I intend to give him a purpose, but it's a low priority right now.

- Smitty W. comes to your aid in a later level, so currently it seems like he never returns.

- QWERTY spells is a good suggestion! That's going in my to-do list.

- Thanks very much for pointing out this bug. I encountered it before and thought I'd fixed it. Will investigate. If you're curious how it works, you're welcome to open it in the editor and look at my (probably awful) work.

 

[trycex]

- Thanks for the point about the terrain being too cramped for that many units. I'll consider removing some units to both fix this and increase difficulty.

- I agree that it's fairly easy. I thought maybe that was just because I've played it a million times over while testing, but I can make it harder. (Also it does have variable difficulty! Is it still too easy on Hard?)

- Most dialogue is currently at the default 5 seconds out of laziness. I can go through and adjust it.

- The pig in the current release is basically useless. At some point I intend to give him a purpose, but it's a low priority right now.

- Smitty W. comes to your aid in a later level, so currently it seems like he never returns.

- QWERTY spells is a good suggestion! That's going in my to-do list.

-Also I don't remember saw any runes in the road.

-That happen to me sometimes when a test my project, sometimes feel easy but is that because i know what will happen, other people usually get rekt. I need to point that variable difficulty (choice before play the campaign) is bug (1.27 and others versions) and always will set to normal difficulty when go to next chapter or restart the level. I suggest create button dialogues and choice hard mode with triggers before the chapter starts.

-LOL

-The rebels in the last phase ignored the pig(maybe are pig lovers?) that why I thought was a scout.

-The reward come in later levels? nice!

 

[Geekio]

-Also I don't remember saw any runes in the road.

-That happen to me sometimes when a test my project, sometimes feel easy but is that because i know what will happen, other people usually get rekt. I need to point that variable difficulty (choice before play the campaign) is bug (1.27 and others versions) and always will set to normal difficulty when go to next chapter or restart the level. I suggest create button dialogues and choice hard mode with triggers before the chapter starts.

-LOL

-The rebels in the last phase ignored the pig(maybe are pig lovers?) that why I thought was a scout.

-The reward come in later levels? nice!

- What runes are you talking about? You mean to unlock the new spells, or something else? If you mean the things to unlock new spells, there's only one Glyph per map.

Spoiler: Glyph location

In this map it's inside Malgothar's cave. There's a narrow passage behind the bookshelf which leads to it.

- Thanks for pointing out that variable difficulty bug. I might try using Game Cache to store difficulty between maps, or just do the dialog like you say.

- The pig was based on the default Pig critter and is currently pretty much unchanged. That may be why they ignore it.


Also, regarding the bug where you lost devotion aura, I'm currently trying to reproduce it. If you remember, could you please direct message me and talk me through exactly what you did up to that point to help me track down the cause? The more specifics I have the better (particularly about what quests had already been done, in case they're related).

EDIT: I have reproduced the bug successfully. Now I just have to figure out how to fix it!

Thanks again for your feedback!

 

[Geekio]

Version 0.1.1 has been released.​

The new version is added as an attachment to the original post.

It's been a while since I first posted this campaign, and unfortunately progress is slow. I had thought about waiting til Map 2 was ready before posting an update, but that's gonna be a while longer. I have started work on Map 2, but the priority has been addressing some of the feedback on the first map.

Before I go on, I just want to note that I've realized after uploading the new version that in my excitement to publish the new spells, I forgot to set mana costs for a lot of them. Since the whole point of this build is to test spell functionality, I'm not too concerned about this. Being able to cast the spells rapidly just means you'll be able to test them rapidly.

It pained me to see default abilities. I strongly suggest adding something different to them, even if it's as simple as making Holy Light also target self. With that as an example, you could call it Healing Light as an indicator that something about it was changed. The ability hot-swap seems like a great idea, but I would still make custom abilities a priority. Custom abilities and hot-swapping would be the cherry on top.

I have finally put together a preliminary implementation of 10 Custom Abilities for Goffrey. Man, coming up with 10 original ideas was harder than I thought (and I bet some have been done before). They are as follows:

PASSIVE ABILITIES

• Strength In Numbers - Aura that improves health and mana regen based on the number of friendly units currently inside the aura.
• Inquisition - Bonus damage to enemy spellcasters based on their current mana at the time of the attack.
• Deus Ex Machina - Aura in which friendly units below a certain health threshold are granted a speed boost. Also, at higher levels, when Goffrey is attacked by an enemy while below that health threshold, the attacker is struck by lightning - lightning is on a cooldown so it can't be spammed.

TARGETED ABILITIES

• Charity - Goffrey gives some of his hit points to a target friendly unit
• Blinding Light - Temporarily reduces a target enemy's sight radius to practically nothing and makes them stumble around dazed. Works best on lone enemies.
• Sanctify - Channeled AOE damage, does extra damage to undead.

INSTANT-CAST ABILITIES

• Meditation - Goffrey stands still and meditates for 15 seconds to charge up a huge buff to his next regular attack. (I was sort of thinking along the lines of the Witcher games where you meditate and drink potions to prepare for battle)
• Divine Word - A battle cry that makes enemies flee, with a small chance to convert them to your side.
• Indulgence - Use gold to purchase a refill of mana.

ULTIMATE ABILITY

• Rapture - Up to 12 nearby friendly Priests are removed from play and combined into a powerful Ascended Spirit. Currently multiple Spirits can be in play at once, but I intend to change that.

Also thanks to trycex's suggestion, I have made sure the new spells have QWERTY keybinds.

I have mixed feelings about some of these spells, and I'm particularly annoyed with how Blinding Light turned out. I cut some corners because I couldn't figure out how to make it work on multiple targets at the same time, and I think I might end up having to redo that spell entirely. A lot of the others work as intended, but I feel like they're just not very interesting or not as useful as they should be. That being said, all of my spell ideas are pretty stagnant at this point and getting some feedback will be very helpful to get the ball rolling again.


Included in the Changelog file is a list of debug commands, including a command to instantly make all spells available (which would not otherwise be possible in Map 1) so you can try them out. I've never made custom spells before now so I'm looking forward to getting some feedback.

Thanks everyone for your interest in the project, I hope you enjoy playing around with the new spells!


EDIT:
Hotfix is out to address those spells missing their mana costs. Indulgence has been deliberately left with no mana cost because it costs gold instead.