Warcraft 2.5 - Human Campaign

[deepstrasz]

Hello, if you intend to do more of these, please put them in the same thread, as in, here.

 

[Elafiel]

Hey - in that case I've already messed it up, because I posted the second one separately just yesterday. My apologies. Not sure if it was a general bork, twitter-induced brainrot, or the fact that I haven't used a forum in a good while, but it somehow seriously didn't occur to me to do that. Amazing.

So I'll just delete the separate thread for the second one and repost it here, then. I'll do it soon enough. And thank you for having patience with me.

 

[Elafiel]

Warcraft 2.5 - Human - ACT 1 - Mission 2 - Ambush at Tarren Mill

"Elven ranger Naradeen Starfeather has arrived at Tarren Mill with a handful of her archers after escaping an ambush by orcs and trolls. She immediately enlists the help of the locals in rescuing the rest of her fellow survivors, and captain Williams is happy to be of service.

-Break into the orcish prison to north-west, rescue all of the elven captives and bring them back to Tarren Mill alive.
-No more than 4 captives are allowed to perish.
-Protect the Tarren Mill Town Hall at all costs.
-Avoid killing more than 2 of the 3 Horde leaders in the area, lest you cause the enemy to panic and slaughter the captives."

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Substack article:
Warcraft 2.5 - ACT 1 - Ambush at Tarren Mill

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NOTE: Upkeep has been disabled. There is none, just like in Warcraft 2, so you're not punished for making lots of units... which should be reassuring to you, because you will be doing classic Warcraft 2 long distance mining. What can I say, I'm a fan of that flavour of pain.

 

[Elafiel]

I've done a little update of the first mission. Fixed a few little things, increased the effect of the command aura (10 -> 15%), and - most importantly - aesthetically improved the environment. I don't remember what I did wrong when I was first making that map, but the editor stopped automatically alternating between different versions of doodads, so some stuff - like the trees - ended up being monotonous and I didn't really notice until later. It should hopefully be all better now.

 

[CGCyan]

Are you gonna make more maps?

 

[Elafiel]

Are you gonna make more maps?

Well, likely I will. I do really want to make more, because it's very enjoyable to me. I have other stuff I should be working on right now, so I may end up splitting my attention, but I've already been thinking about ideas and concept for the third mission, Southshore. By now I have a rough idea of what to do with it, so it's just matter of time, I think. In fact, I've simultaneously been thinking about the 4th as well...

 

[Navy45]

These maps are quite well crafted, I hope you keep making more of them !

One issue I had was that the order of the maps is not explicitly stated in-game. For now it's not a big issue, but once there are a lot, it would make playing them in order much harder.

1st map :
It'd be nice if after you lose the first goldmine, a peasant mentioned another one being in the south east guarded by ogres, because it's very easy to go in the wrong direction and spend most of the mission without gold income.
The raider attack on the second gold mine is very punishing, maybe have a few less raiders. (something like 4 is already quite threatening considering how thinned your forces are)
The priests in the gnoll camp get rescued during the fighting in range of the guard towers so they tend to die quickly. Maybe have them recue once all gnolls are defeated.
Why does the hero start with Abolish Magic ? Also his abilities seem to be at strange positions in the command card.
Despite accomplishing all quests, there was no victory screen.

2nd map :
I haven't finished this one, but a big problem is that the elven prisoners can get rescued by the owl scout, making you instantly lose the mission.
Also, the hero seems to have 4 abilities but no ultimate. Is that normal ?

 

[Elafiel]

Haven't been here in a while, hence the late response. I've been very busy. The good news is that the 3rd one is almost done now.

Thank you for the feedback. It's almost midnight here, so I may do a more detailed response later if necessary, but I'll see what I can squeeze out now, exhausted, starting from the end, because that's of greatest concern to me by far.

I overlooked that you can rescue the prisoners with the scout, so I'll have to fix that in the triggers, so that only ground units can do that. The funny part is that I already ran into that issue with the dwarf quest on the same map, but it still didn't occur to me with the prisoners and I didn't randomly run into it. A good catch, thanks a lot. I'll get on that soon enough.

Secondly about that map... the level cap is 12 and the abilities are on purpose, yes. 4x3, you get something for every level. I hand-pick the abilities for every map with the encounters in mind. Silence is massively useful on the second one, whereas an actual ultimate like Starfall would be overpowered and trivialize lots of fights. The bottom line is, I don't follow standard Warcraft 3 design, particularly when it comes to heroes. They're just whatever I make them for the mission.

On that note... regarding the first mission hero... 1) yes the ability buttons are a bit disorganized. I'll be honest, I just didn't want to deal with it at the time. They're all visible, they all work, that was enough for me. I wasn't going for maximum polish. It may get fixed at some point. 2) The abolish magic is there purely to give you a way to counter Bloodlust in that mission. I just decided to give you a bit of agency over that. I like little ways of making things easier for players, who are paying attention. The same reason you have Silence on the second one - tons of Bloodlust there. Basically - unless I have completely borked - if you encounter a tool, it's probably there to address something specific. I even made the Kobold Geomancers available as mercs on the second mission just to give you another way to counter Bloodlust, as they do dispel.

The priests in the gnoll camp are that way on purpose. It's a skill check. A skilled player will notice them before getting too close and pull the enemies away, killing them first before going in. The tower is meant to push you to do this as well. Why would you fight under a tower, when you can pull then enemies away and kill them without being fired upon? And that way the priests will be okay even if you don't notice them. So ye, it's a skillcheck. I'm designing it with veterans in mind, explicitly so. And I've also been playing WoW for so long that aggroing enemies in a controlled manner is just second nature to me and I kind of assume it in other players. You'll notice a lot of my design is relying on this - if you just A-move your stuff into the meat grinder, it will often cause you trouble, and by GOD in this third mission I'm making now if you just A-move into everything, you'll die over and over.

Lastly about the priests... they're not essential for the mission, so if you mess up with them, it's meant to be taken as a lesson for future missions or attempts - "hey, pay attention, control the fight".

Yes, the expansion wave is very punishing, potentially game-ending, since if you lose it, they should start redirecting towards you main. I'm on the fence about it. You aren't really supposed to be taking that expansion - it doesn't make tactical sense, because you can barely defend your main, so to spread yourself thin like that is a bad idea. But at the same time, RTS players don't even think about expanding. They see an expansion and they just do it. So I think I'll instead add a warning about the expansion. As in, when you clear the ogres, the hero remarks that setting up a base there is likely to provoke the orcs even further, so that you have some idea of what's coming. There's a difference between difficulty and just being sadistic as a map maker, I get that. So yeah, I'll do something about this. However, I don't want to reduce the number of them, because the hero is really beefy and he just annihilates the raiders when he's present and has some levels. That's the reason I used so many. They're so bad against the hero.

This also answers the other thing about the second mine... no attention is given to it because realistically you shouldn't be taking it until the latter half of the mission. It's not really a macro mission, it's a scavenging mission, and when you collect all the gold spread around the creep camps (in various boxes, too), you get plenty to get you to where you can safely expand. Basically, if you wipe out the bandits and gnolls, you can easily expand, because then attacks are coming from a single direction only and you can just camp your hero and army in a single choke point. That's one way to do it.

Also, I admit... I never intended for these maps to be played through smoothly on the first attempt. I'm really going for that oldschool RTS experience, where reloading or trying again was very much a part of it. It's really a design philosophy thing and you can look at it this way... if you're given sufficient info by the map to finish it smoothly on the first try, then you're essentially just mechanically fulfilling what is requested of you. However, if there's supposed to be a significant element of the player exploring and figuring things out (that's what was always fun for me, personally), then he can't be given sufficient info. And if you combine this aspect with some measure of actual challenge... then you get maps, which may take a few attempts. I do realize this doesn't have mass appeal, it's a niche thing... just the way RTS games used to be.

Remember those C&C: Tiberian Dawn no build missions, where it was all trial and error, and you just had to keep reloading until you found the right way to do it? Yeah, those were a proper pain in you-know-where, and definitely too far, having very little tolerance for error. I'm using a similar approach, just trying to be more reasonable about it. And another thing I do freely admit... while making these, I am obsessing about the difficulty of them. As in, I don't want them to be too easy. I look at it this way: I've never actually been good at RTS games, despite loving them. I've never had success in ladder play in Warcraft or Starcraft. I'm bad and I know what it's like to play against good players. I love watching good players go at it as well. Watching people like Giant Grant smash through these games is one of my favourite things to do. So what I constantly think about when in the map editor is them. "Would a highly skilled player actually find any degree of challenge / enjoyment in this?"

And the only way for me to be able to say "yes" to that, is for there to be things to go wrong and things to figure out the hard way.

About the order of the maps... well... somehow I was assuming that only people, who were really into Warcraft 2 would bother playing these at all, so this honestly didn't occur to me as a real issue. To them, the names would make it obvious enough. And then the actual file names also state "ACT 1 Mission 1", et cetera, which is what I was relying on otherwise. But sure, I could include a chronological list of missions in the description of the bundle. That's not difficult to do.

Lastly, before I finally get to go to bed... what do you mean about no victory screen? The victory condition trigger doesn't work for you? I've play-tested that one so many times and it always worked. Farms, barracks, peasants, lumber... a slight time delay, because it checks the conditions every several seconds, iirc... aaand "Victory!". I'll try replaying it when I get to it, because it's weird. Trust me, I wouldn't post it if I wasn't able to get a victory in my play testing, so I'm wondering what could possibly break the victory condition triggers.

That's all for now, I'm totally spent, tired as hell... I'll continue with this another day. Fixing things and finishing the 3rd one - Southshore.

 

[Elafiel]

Oh and speaking of Southshore... here's a little sneakpeak. A goblin refinery I made for the mission, purely as set piece, to make it look nice and faithful to the original. Took me a few hours, I won't lie. But I do absolutely love these composite structures you can make in the editor. One of my passions for sure. It's like Legos. ^^

 

[Navy45]

Lastly, before I finally get to go to bed... what do you mean about no victory screen? The victory condition trigger doesn't work for you? I've play-tested that one so many times and it always worked. Farms, barracks, peasants, lumber... a slight time delay, because it checks the conditions every several seconds, iirc... aaand "Victory!". I'll try replaying it when I get to it, because it's weird. Trust me, I wouldn't post it if I wasn't able to get a victory in my play testing, so I'm wondering what could possibly break the victory condition triggers.

Really ? Maybe the order of the quest completion matters ? I believe I completed the barrack, then the wood, then the farms, then the peasants. I had waited about a minute after accomplishing all the objectives so I doubt the delay's the reason.

 

[Elafiel]

Really ? Maybe the order of the quest completion matters ? I believe I completed the barrack, then the wood, then the farms, then the peasants. I had waited about a minute after accomplishing all the objectives so I doubt the delay's the reason.

I tried it again and the mission completed for me normally.
I checked the triggers...

...and I really don't see how this would get broken by something else in the mission.
The only thing to be mindful of here, is that all of these must be true simultaneously. If you build 12 farms, then complete the other tasks, but one of the farms is lost in the meantime, it won't complete. Yes, if you hit 2500 wood, it will tell you that part is done... but if you then start building the farms with it and stop harvesting, it won't complete, because you'll be under 2500.
And my God, I really don't feel like making a set of triggers that dynamically changes the quest status based on how much stuff you have. It would also be really annoying, if you keep going over and under the threshold.
But yeah, I'd suggest that you just quickly try it with cheats. Give yourself resources, fast building and just get everything. If it doesn't complete, then something is definitely broken, but I've no clue what.
If anyone else sees something potentially problematic, I'm happy to take advice.

Anyway.
Added the warning message for the second mine:

When you kill the ogre warlord, the hero says this.
I'll upload the new version before I go to bed.

Looked at the ability buttons, btw, and tbh I'm fine with it.

The two active abilities are up front, where you'd want them, the rest is all passive. And one has to be in the second row one way or another. It ended up like this incidentally, but I'm not sure I want to mess with it.

I'll fix the second map tomorrow (probably). Right now I seriously need some sleep.

The third one is finished now, so that's coming as well.

EDIT: Actually, nevermind, the second mission prisoner rescue problem is such an easy fix I couldn't go to bed with it unaddressed. It's done now. Just added one line, the same as in the dwarf quest. So it should be fine. You can't even trigger it with a stray footman or something. It has to be the hero.

If you find anything else that is legitimately broken, lemme know. I'm really grateful for this one, because it was such a major oversight.

 

[Navy45]

The only thing to be mindful of here, is that all of these must be true simultaneously. If you build 12 farms, then complete the other tasks, but one of the farms is lost in the meantime, it won't complete. Yes, if you hit 2500 wood, it will tell you that part is done... but if you then start building the farms with it and stop harvesting, it won't complete, because you'll be under 2500.
And my God, I really don't feel like making a set of triggers that dynamically changes the quest status based on how much stuff you have. It would also be really annoying, if you keep going over and under the threshold.

Yeah that's probably what happened. Since the quest was completed, I probably didn't check how much lumber I had at the end.

I think the simplest way to avoid this would be to use a boolean variable. When the player reaches 2500 lumber, set the variable to True and in the victory condition, check if the variable is true instead of checking the player's lumber stockpile. That way, you can take away the lumber once the player reaches 2500 and the quest will count towards victory no matter what.
Granted, in theory, that could be annoying if the player needs lumber, but in this mission, since gold is in so few supplies and your peasants have nothing else to do except gather lumber, I doubt it will be an issue.

 

[Elafiel]

Yeah that's probably what happened. Since the quest was completed, I probably didn't check how much lumber I had at the end.

I think the simplest way to avoid this would be to use a boolean variable. When the player reaches 2500 lumber, set the variable to True and in the victory condition, check if the variable is true instead of checking the player's lumber stockpile. That way, you can take away the lumber once the player reaches 2500 and the quest will count towards victory no matter what.
Granted, in theory, that could be annoying if the player needs lumber, but in this mission, since gold is in so few supplies and your peasants have nothing else to do except gather lumber, I doubt it will be an issue.

You're right, it could be done like that. I'd only add one thing - an action to remove the 2500 once you hit the threshold (as in, it's been sent away to help the war effort). And then the mission could be completed regardless of your current lumber status. The point being, the 2500 is not yours to use.

I may potentially rework it to be like that.

EDIT: Okay, two more updates to the existing maps, both of them. The lumber trigger for the first mission has been revamped as discussed, using a boolean variable and removing the lumber. Plus some other little stuff.

EDIT2: A mission 3 post with an article coming later today.

 

[Elafiel]

Warcraft 2.5 - Human - ACT 1 - Mission 3 - Southshore

"Kul'Tiran admiral Sutherland arrives in Southshore, dispatched there to drive the orcs out of the region by the Grand Admiral himself. They are rumoured to have found something that is of great interest to them on an island to south-east, and the high command wants the place investigated and their presence eliminated.

-Raze the island base to the south-east.
-Protect your Town Hall at all costs.
-Use your resources wisely. "

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Substack article:
Warcraft 2.5 - ACT 1 - Southshore

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NOTE: I know that naval combat in Warcraft 3 is something of a pain, so despite the naval nature of most Warcraft 2 campaign maps, I don't think I'll be doing all-out naval combat very often. For now I intend to work around it to some extent, and to adapt the maps to be less naval-oriented going forward. This will inherently involve sacrificing some faithfulness to the original - chiefly in the geographical layout of the maps - however I am not convinced that it would be fun to play.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

ok so i played all 3 levels took me around 4-3 hours to beat them its a nice change of pace on how wc2 remakes are made most notable remakes are helldoom and lord perenolde the 2nd ones both are good in their own ways but this adds a unique spin off onto how wc2 in wc3 is kind of like CSW but for pre-reforged there is few things to point it tho

1-models: this is a minus tbh all units are the wc3 era units NOT the wc2 era there is plenty of wc2 models scars of conflict pack is a great source for wc2 maps and mods although i think this is in its early stages and models will get replaced when the whole thing is finished or i hope so its immersion breaking to have footmen in their 3rd war era armor not the wc2 one same for grunts with the 1 shoulder pad armor and not the wc2 one the 2nd war has its own feeling and charm to it that isnt complete until accurate era models are implemented.

2- insane overhaul: what is normally so simple and fast is turned into a making a real military outpost like mission 1 with all the unique twists and each map has a unique hero to it normally in wc3 campaigns the player character is the same throught the entire campaign while in few occasions we get to be someone else it mostly follow 1 character here each mission has a hero that is unique to the mission alone you played as a tank in the first mission? well in the 2nd you are an elven ranger in the third you are a melee support dude really nice idea and you get to think who you will play as in the next mission.

i like this take on wc2 with the wc3 balance and mechanics implemented in it , bear in mind some wc3 lore plz shamans were replaced with warlocks who got killed by doomhamma so the horde must not be fielding all that much spell casters till the magi and DKs come into play also in mission 3 the storm bolt and holy light spells have the same hotkey plz fix this i was forced to unlearn storm bolt so i can heal.

i like the details of the towns we are in either it be hillsbrad , tarren mill , or southshore something the remakes of helldoom and perenolde dont do is fleshing out these places using wc3 doodads the towns are always left looking similar to wc2 ones which lacked all what could make a town look like a town keep it up man im really looking forward to see this being fully done and made oh yeah and if you could consider adding the briefings from wc2 you can take a look at how lord perenollde the 2nd did it , they are an important piece of wc2 . keep going!

 

[Elafiel]

ok so i played all 3 levels took me around 4-3 hours to beat them its a nice change of pace on how wc2 remakes are made most notable remakes are helldoom and lord perenolde the 2nd ones both are good in their own ways but this adds a unique spin off onto how wc2 in wc3 is kind of like CSW but for pre-reforged there is few things to point it tho

1-models: this is a minus tbh all units are the wc3 era units NOT the wc2 era there is plenty of wc2 models scars of conflict pack is a great source for wc2 maps and mods although i think this is in its early stages and models will get replaced when the whole thing is finished or i hope so its immersion breaking to have footmen in their 3rd war era armor not the wc2 one same for grunts with the 1 shoulder pad armor and not the wc2 one the 2nd war has its own feeling and charm to it that isnt complete until accurate era models are implemented.

2- insane overhaul: what is normally so simple and fast is turned into a making a real military outpost like mission 1 with all the unique twists and each map has a unique hero to it normally in wc3 campaigns the player character is the same throught the entire campaign while in few occasions we get to be someone else it mostly follow 1 character here each mission has a hero that is unique to the mission alone you played as a tank in the first mission? well in the 2nd you are an elven ranger in the third you are a melee support dude really nice idea and you get to think who you will play as in the next mission.

i like this take on wc2 with the wc3 balance and mechanics implemented in it , bear in mind some wc3 lore plz shamans were replaced with warlocks who got killed by doomhamma so the horde must not be fielding all that much spell casters till the magi and DKs come into play also in mission 3 the storm bolt and holy light spells have the same hotkey plz fix this i was forced to unlearn storm bolt so i can heal.

i like the details of the towns we are in either it be hillsbrad , tarren mill , or southshore something the remakes of helldoom and perenolde dont do is fleshing out these places using wc3 doodads the towns are always left looking similar to wc2 ones which lacked all what could make a town look like a town keep it up man im really looking forward to see this being fully done and made oh yeah and if you could consider adding the briefings from wc2 you can take a look at how lord perenollde the 2nd did it , they are an important piece of wc2 . keep going!

Thank you for the feedback.

First the really important thing - I didn't notice the hotkey issue in mission 3, so I'll fix that soon. I'm glad you noticed that. In my play-testing I was only using the hotkey for Holy Light, not for Storm Bolt, so I never noticed they're the same. Somehow even though I had both abilities, I was always able to use Holy Light. And I manually clicked Storm Bolt like a total scrub.

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Regarding the other stuff, I'll start with what is the easiest for me to answer - that is the lore-inaccurate stuff, such as the ongoing presence of shamans. First, I'll quote myself from the description of the project:

"Lastly, just to be clear... none of these will be wholly consistent with official Blizz lore, and that is on purpose. In my mind the lore has already been ruined by numerous layers of retcons, and I simply do not care to adhere to it. Consider this a sort of fanfiction love-letter to 2 and 3."

This is one part of it. I am, in fact, taking a sort of fanfiction approach, making stuff up as I go. It's not meant to be perfectly faithful to what was in the original Warcraft 2 or to what Blizzard today says was back then (retcons). It's an alternate version of it. But do not misunderstand, I don't change things simply to rewrite lore - no I have a much better reason.

And that's the second part of this. I change things for the sake of gameplay. Because - as I have been stating in the various posts about the project - I am going for the design philosophy, where gameplay comes first and things like lore are largely subjugated to it. That's how I made the decision to include shamans. At first I didn't want to, because it was lore-breaking, but it was also clear that it would make the gameplay objectively better and more varied. So in the end, I just went for it and put them there.

Look at it this way - the original early campaign maps in Warcraft 2 could get away with incredibly low unit and mechanic variety due to being so short and simple. You could complete them within minutes. But if it's going to take an hour to finish the map, you can't just be fighting endless hordes of grunts. Enemy casters are perfect for adding variety and challenge at the same time. They give you something to snipe / target down, something to dispel or work around, et cetera. They introduce an element of skill, which isn't there if you're just fighting ten grunts.

And the problem with the official lore is, as you have pointed out, that the Horde shouldn't have many casters at this point in the war. The shamans are gone, the warlocks are also largely gone, but the ogre-magi aren't there yet and neither are the death knights. If I were to be lore-accurate, I wouldn't be able to use the necrolytes, or the warlocks, or the shamans, or the ogre-magi (yet)... I'd pretty much only have troll casters to work with. And I don't care for that. I just wanted to make something that plays nice and looks cool, so I ended up going for sort of... "Horde Allstars", kind of thing. Where they'll have stuff from Warcraft 1 - warlocks and necrolytes and demon summons - but also stuff from Warcraft 2, meaning death knights and ogres, AND some Warcraft 3 units on top of that. Basically anything that's not strictly from Kalimdor. No Tauren or any of that. But all the trolls and shamans and so on. Because I feel like this is going to be the most fun to face against. Lots and lots of enemy variety and mechanics. That's why I gave them troll priests with healing, too, even though in none of the games they had healing. Because it's a good gameplay element.

And while it is indeed inconsistent with Warcraft 2, it's not a total lore ass-pull either, as in WoW there are actual orcish Dark Shamans. The first ones I recall came in TBC. For example, the Bleeding Hollow Dark Shamans in Hellfire Peninsula. I remember those clearly and it's why I was ultimately okay with putting the shamans in. If actual fel orcs can have evil shamans, then there can be evil shamans fighting alongside warlocks and deathknights. I like the idea a lot. Orcs using dark magic to forcefully bend the elements to their will and use them destructively. It's perfect.

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Regarding the custom models... I'll be honest, the beginning I planned on making the entire thing using solely the original Warcraft 3 assets, aside from the soundtrack, but I'm open to considering and potentially implementing some custom models once the missions are done. I like the idea, even, so thanks for bringing it up. Although again, I am more interested in variety than in perfect consistency - as in, I'd probably use both models side-by-side. I'm not really bothered by stuff looking different, because official retcons have done the damage already anyway.

But also because worrying about it doesn't make sense to me. To use one example, Warcraft 1, 2 and 3 each have only one grunt model (aside from the fel orc grunt in 3), because they're simple RTS games. However, in terms of the actual world, the Horde didn't have some sort of uniform. It was a bunch of disparate clans, and not only would grunts from different clans look different (much more than just a different colour), but specific grunts within a single clan would also look different, because they would be using individual gear - not uniforms. So I see no reason to enforce one specific look for them. No, if I could, I'd use several different models for them, which are cycled automatically like doodads. So that they look like a ragtag warband of barbarians.

So yeah, thank you for the suggestion, as I didn't previously consider using custom models, but you probably still won't be pleased, because if I do end up using them eventually, it will be more to spice things up, rather than to perfectly adhere to Warcraft 2 aesthetics. It's like what you pointed out with the humans towns... if I make it Warcraft 2 accurate, it will be very plain and boring. So I'm doing things my own way instead. That's why - for example - there aren't just troll axethrowers, but also priests, headhunters, shadowhunters, witchdoctors and so on.

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To be clear about faction design, my intent is to not have two traditional factions - Orcs and Humans - but instead two groups of subfactions, which may be present or absent based on the mission in question. So your own forces may be comprised of general humans, specialized humans (Dalaran mages, Silver Hand paladins, etc.), elves, and dwarves and gnomes, but there isn't a single unit roster / techtree that will be linearly expanded over the course of the campaign. No, on some missions you will have the support of the elves, but not the dwarves. On another map you will perhaps have neither - only actual human forces. I'm really going for variety and for mixing things up... and going for it hard.

The same goes for the enemy. It's multiple branches of orcs, it's their demonic allies, it's death knights and necrolytes with undead minions, it's trolls, ogres, goblins, ... the whole thing. Because again, I don't want you to fight the exact same faction over and over in every mission. That gets stale. Just like with the heroes I keep switching up, I want to be able to tap into different themes. I haven't gone all-out with this yet, but in mission 3 you have seen the first glimpses of it - a troll encampment, and a heavily goblin-themed island complete with sappers and landmines. This means that no matter what I do, it can never be fully visually consistent with the original.

Which is okay, I think. Personally, rather than adhering to one specific version of Warcraft, I just view this whole thing in that "allstars" way - a total mash-up of the whole RTS franchise.

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In any case, I'm glad it's been enjoyable so far. Keep going I certainly will, at whatever pace I can manage.


EDIT: Just remembered I forgot to respond to the thing about Warcraft 2 briefings... it's impressive that this can be done, but it would prove to be rather confusing with how different my missions are. It wouldn't fit at all. Like when they tell you in the briefing that you can now build a Foundry, which is required to make transport ships. It would work for some missions, but not for others, and thus it would cause problems.

But again, things like loading screens and briefings can be easily improved later on with custom artworks and other assets. That's something for the last polishing touches, for now it just needs to be decent and functional.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Thank you for the feedback.

First the really important thing - I didn't notice the hotkey issue in mission 3, so I'll fix that soon. I'm glad you noticed that. In my play-testing I was only using the hotkey for Holy Light, not for Storm Bolt, so I never noticed they're the same. Somehow even though I had both abilities, I was always able to use Holy Light. And I manually clicked Storm Bolt like a total scrub.

-----------------------------

Regarding the other stuff, I'll start with what is the easiest for me to answer - that is the lore-inaccurate stuff, such as the ongoing presence of shamans. First, I'll quote myself from the description of the project:

"Lastly, just to be clear... none of these will be wholly consistent with official Blizz lore, and that is on purpose. In my mind the lore has already been ruined by numerous layers of retcons, and I simply do not care to adhere to it. Consider this a sort of fanfiction love-letter to 2 and 3."

This is one part of it. I am, in fact, taking a sort of fanfiction approach, making stuff up as I go. It's not meant to be perfectly faithful to what was in the original Warcraft 2 or to what Blizzard today says was back then (retcons). It's an alternate version of it. But do not misunderstand, I don't change things simply to rewrite lore - no I have a much better reason.

And that's the second part of this. I change things for the sake of gameplay. Because - as I have been stating in the various posts about the project - I am going for the design philosophy, where gameplay comes first and things like lore are largely subjugated to it. That's how I made the decision to include shamans. At first I didn't want to, because it was lore-breaking, but it was also clear that it would make the gameplay objectively better and more varied. So in the end, I just went for it and put them there.

Look at it this way - the original early campaign maps in Warcraft 2 could get away with incredibly low unit and mechanic variety due to being so short and simple. You could complete them within minutes. But if it's going to take an hour to finish the map, you can't just be fighting endless hordes of grunts. Enemy casters are perfect for adding variety and challenge at the same time. They give you something to snipe / target down, something to dispel or work around, et cetera. They introduce an element of skill, which isn't there if you're just fighting ten grunts.

And the problem with the official lore is, as you have pointed out, that the Horde shouldn't have many casters at this point in the war. The shamans are gone, the warlocks are also largely gone, but the ogre-magi aren't there yet and neither are the death knights. If I were to be lore-accurate, I wouldn't be able to use the necrolytes, or the warlocks, or the shamans, or the ogre-magi (yet)... I'd pretty much only have troll casters to work with. And I don't care for that. I just wanted to make something that plays nice and looks cool, so I ended up going for sort of... "Horde Allstars", kind of thing. Where they'll have stuff from Warcraft 1 - warlocks and necrolytes and demon summons - but also stuff from Warcraft 2, meaning death knights and ogres, AND some Warcraft 3 units on top of that. Basically anything that's not strictly from Kalimdor. No Tauren or any of that. But all the trolls and shamans and so on. Because I feel like this is going to be the most fun to face against. Lots and lots of enemy variety and mechanics. That's why I gave them troll priests with healing, too, even though in none of the games they had healing. Because it's a good gameplay element.

And while it is indeed inconsistent with Warcraft 2, it's not a total lore ass-pull either, as in WoW there are actual orcish Dark Shamans. The first ones I recall came in TBC. For example, the Bleeding Hollow Dark Shamans in Hellfire Peninsula. I remember those clearly and it's why I was ultimately okay with putting the shamans in. If actual fel orcs can have evil shamans, then there can be evil shamans fighting alongside warlocks and deathknights. I like the idea a lot. Orcs using dark magic to forcefully bend the elements to their will and use them destructively. It's perfect.

------------------------------

Regarding the custom models... I'll be honest, the beginning I planned on making the entire thing using solely the original Warcraft 3 assets, aside from the soundtrack, but I'm open to considering and potentially implementing some custom models once the missions are done. I like the idea, even, so thanks for bringing it up. Although again, I am more interested in variety than in perfect consistency - as in, I'd probably use both models side-by-side. I'm not really bothered by stuff looking different, because official retcons have done the damage already anyway.

But also because worrying about it doesn't make sense to me. To use one example, Warcraft 1, 2 and 3 each have only one grunt model (aside from the fel orc grunt in 3), because they're simple RTS games. However, in terms of the actual world, the Horde didn't have some sort of uniform. It was a bunch of disparate clans, and not only would grunts from different clans look different (much more than just a different colour), but specific grunts within a single clan would also look different, because they would be using individual gear - not uniforms. So I see no reason to enforce one specific look for them. No, if I could, I'd use several different models for them, which are cycled automatically like doodads. So that they look like a ragtag warband of barbarians.

So yeah, thank you for the suggestion, as I didn't previously consider using custom models, but you probably still won't be pleased, because if I do end up using them eventually, it will be more to spice things up, rather than to perfectly adhere to Warcraft 2 aesthetics. It's like what you pointed out with the humans towns... if I make it Warcraft 2 accurate, it will be very plain and boring. So I'm doing things my own way instead. That's why - for example - there aren't just troll axethrowers, but also priests, headhunters, shadowhunters, witchdoctors and so on.

------------------------------

To be clear about faction design, my intent is to not have two traditional factions - Orcs and Humans - but instead two groups of subfactions, which may be present or absent based on the mission in question. So your own forces may be comprised of general humans, specialized humans (Dalaran mages, Silver Hand paladins, etc.), elves, and dwarves and gnomes, but there isn't a single unit roster / techtree that will be linearly expanded over the course of the campaign. No, on some missions you will have the support of the elves, but not the dwarves. On another map you will perhaps have neither - only actual human forces. I'm really going for variety and for mixing things up... and going for it hard.

The same goes for the enemy. It's multiple branches of orcs, it's their demonic allies, it's death knights and necrolytes with undead minions, it's trolls, ogres, goblins, ... the whole thing. Because again, I don't want you to fight the exact same faction over and over in every mission. That gets stale. Just like with the heroes I keep switching up, I want to be able to tap into different themes. I haven't gone all-out with this yet, but in mission 3 you have seen the first glimpses of it - a troll encampment, and a heavily goblin-themed island complete with sappers and landmines. This means that no matter what I do, it can never be fully visually consistent with the original.

Which is okay, I think. Personally, rather than adhering to one specific version of Warcraft, I just view this whole thing in that "allstars" way - a total mash-up of the whole RTS franchise.

-------------------------------

In any case, I'm glad it's been enjoyable so far. Keep going I certainly will, at whatever pace I can manage.


EDIT: Just remembered I forgot to respond to the thing about Warcraft 2 briefings... it's impressive that this can be done, but it would prove to be rather confusing with how different my missions are. It wouldn't fit at all. Like when they tell you in the briefing that you can now build a Foundry, which is required to make transport ships. It would work for some missions, but not for others, and thus it would cause problems.

But again, things like loading screens and briefings can be easily improved later on with custom artworks and other assets. That's something for the last polishing touches, for now it just needs to be decent and functional.

a nice detailed response i see now what you going with that is focus on gameplay which is pretty fine in the end im playing a game not a movie so gameplay being top notch is a big plus oh yeah i like the part where missions are quite long you know im the kind of guy that likes lengthy missions it gives you ample time to use everything you have build affection to things in the game world etc.

btw i forgot to say that ur missions are quite a challenge the first mission forced me to care for every footman cuz i couldnt train all that much really punishing for making any mistake now thats good to see i also like the fences in mission 1 which can be used as a choke point to kill da orcs i guess they werent placed there just for looks i mean being attacked by 3 grunts in the first wave is something then the second wave is 7 grunts like thats huge the campaign would be far more difficult had i played on vanilla wc3 balance (im using my own modded version of the game) considering that footies kinda suck on base wc3 which u need to spam vs orcs in order for them to work.

about the models i think that this project is still in early development phase so thats fine and yeah the horde has many clans it would be dope if we fight a unique clan each mission i dont think its possible in wc3 to have the same unit looking different like having 3 models for grunts and a random model is given to every grunt trained tho you could give unique models in ROC and TFT like the priest looking different but thats from game to game.


and the issue of storm bolt and holy light came to my attention when i picked storm bolt after maxing holy light this prevented me from casting holy light quite fast making me lose many soldiers in the process your campaign being very tight on resources makes losing a soldier kinda big deal (most fatalities in my playthrough were foot soldiers either swordsmen or footmen i was constantly training new footies with little investment in towers) .

 

[Elafiel]

a nice detailed response i see now what you going with that is focus on gameplay which is pretty fine in the end im playing a game not a movie so gameplay being top notch is a big plus oh yeah i like the part where missions are quite long you know im the kind of guy that likes lengthy missions it gives you ample time to use everything you have build affection to things in the game world etc.

btw i forgot to say that ur missions are quite a challenge the first mission forced me to care for every footman cuz i couldnt train all that much really punishing for making any mistake now thats good to see i also like the fences in mission 1 which can be used as a choke point to kill da orcs i guess they werent placed there just for looks i mean being attacked by 3 grunts in the first wave is something then the second wave is 7 grunts like thats huge the campaign would be far more difficult had i played on vanilla wc3 balance (im using my own modded version of the game) considering that footies kinda suck on base wc3 which u need to spam vs orcs in order for them to work.

about the models i think that this project is still in early development phase so thats fine and yeah the horde has many clans it would be dope if we fight a unique clan each mission i dont think its possible in wc3 to have the same unit looking different like having 3 models for grunts and a random model is given to every grunt trained tho you could give unique models in ROC and TFT like the priest looking different but thats from game to game.


and the issue of storm bolt and holy light came to my attention when i picked storm bolt after maxing holy light this prevented me from casting holy light quite fast making me lose many soldiers in the process your campaign being very tight on resources makes losing a soldier kinda big deal (most fatalities in my playthrough were foot soldiers either swordsmen or footmen i was constantly training new footies with little investment in towers) .

So I've just fixed the hotkeys - changed Storm Bolt to B, so hopefully that should be good. I do understand your frustration, because yes - I do specifically design it so that resource management is important and necessary. During play testing I always do a "perfect" playthrough, where I minimize all losses as much as possible using the fact that I know all the triggers, item placements and everything, and at the end I take note of how many resources I have left. That's how I tune it... whatever resources I need for a perfect playthrough + some extra resources on top of that as a buffer / margin for error. There will be some missions with more abundant resources later, but not this early on.

At the same time I also remembered another thing I forgot to fix earlier. The Elven barracks actually didn't have a pathing requirement "buildable", so you could put them down anywhere you wanted. (because that's how the original campaign building is) So I changed that in both mission 2 and 3 - now they are like all normal buildings.

Oh and the spawn triggers for the first mission have multiple layers to them - both periodic and specific events. The standard periodic wave is 3 grunts, yes - but if you collect a certain amount of wood, for example, you trigger an extra wave of 6. Or, if 30 minutes has elapsed and the orc base is still standing, you get additional periodic waves, which are much larger and designed to wear you down and kill you. So there's a soft time limit there to make it a little spicier for the turtling types. The reason I gave you Endurance Aura, is so that you can quickly move around the map and return to base if you're attacked. It's a small map, so I could afford a relatively high frequency of attacks, really keeping you on your toes.

But yeah, it's good to hear the challenge is welcome. I was hoping it would be. I highly doubt any newbies to the genre are going to be stumbling upon this and randomly playing it, so I'm designing entirely with veterans in mind.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

So I've just fixed the hotkeys - changed Storm Bolt to B, so hopefully that should be good. I do understand your frustration, because yes - I do specifically design it so that resource management is important and necessary. During play testing I always do a "perfect" playthrough, where I minimize all losses as much as possible using the fact that I know all the triggers, item placements and everything, and at the end I take note of how many resources I have left. That's how I tune it... whatever resources I need for a perfect playthrough + some extra resources on top of that as a buffer / margin for error. There will be some missions with more abundant resources later, but not this early on.

yeah it just adds a bit to the desperate situation the alliance are in

At the same time I also remembered another thing I forgot to fix earlier. The Elven barracks actually didn't have a pathing requirement "buildable", so you could put them down anywhere you wanted. (because that's how the original campaign building is) So I changed that in both mission 2 and 3 - now they are like all normal buildings.

i didnt notice it XD all campaign specific buildings have this ability to be built on anything.

Oh and the spawn triggers for the first mission have multiple layers to them - both periodic and specific events. The standard periodic wave is 3 grunts, yes - but if you collect a certain amount of wood, for example, you trigger an extra wave of 6. Or, if 30 minutes has elapsed and the orc base is still standing, you get additional periodic waves, which are much larger and designed to wear you down and kill you. So there's a soft time limit there to make it a little spicier for the turtling types. The reason I gave you Endurance Aura, is so that you can quickly move around the map and return to base if you're attacked. It's a small map, so I could afford a relatively high frequency of attacks, really keeping you on your toes.

But yeah, it's good to hear the challenge is welcome. I was hoping it would be. I highly doubt any newbies to the genre are going to be stumbling upon this and randomly playing it, so I'm designing entirely with veterans in mind.

thats actually pretty cool i didnt take out the orc base as it was too well defended and the fact that raiders behave differently in my game made fighting them pretty scary with towers and warlocks thats too risky i barely won having spent whatever left of my resources on peasants to win so attacking the base is suicide , for a first mission i was blown away tbh.



and btw i found this tiny spelling mistake

 

[Elafiel]

yeah it just adds a bit to the desperate situation the alliance are in

i didnt notice it XD all campaign specific buildings have this ability to be built on anything.

thats actually pretty cool i didnt take out the orc base as it was too well defended and the fact that raiders behave differently in my game made fighting them pretty scary with towers and warlocks thats too risky i barely won having spent whatever left of my resources on peasants to win so attacking the base is suicide , for a first mission i was blown away tbh.



and btw i found this tiny spelling mistake View attachment 465086

Fixed the typo, thank you.

And yes, I can't really account for players running modded versions of the game in terms of balance, but with an unmodded game you can definitely crush the orc base, once the hero is leveled up and you have researched Defend. But it's not necessary.

Well, off I go to work on mission 4.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Fixed the typo, thank you.

And yes, I can't really account for players running modded versions of the game in terms of balance, but with an unmodded game you can definitely crush the orc base, once the hero is leveled up and you have researched Defend. But it's not necessary.

Well, off I go to work on mission 4.

great i hope mission 4 be ready soon cant wait

 

[Elafiel]

great i hope mission 4 be ready soon cant wait

Weeeell, I don't think this counts as "soon", but... hopefully what is there will make up for it. Believe me, this was a big one in many ways. I've been really busy IRL, too, so this was really the best I could do.

With that out of the way...

Warcraft 2.5 - Human - ACT 1 - Mission 4 - Attack on Zul'dare

"Captain Wardley - an old, highly respected veteran of king Terenas' army - has been dispatched with troops and transport ships to conduct an assault on the now vulnerable orcish base on the island of Zul'dare. Before commencing the attack, he was supposed to rendezvous on a nearby peninsula with archmage Arminius Bitterwhip, who was to bring a small detachment of Dalaran support troops - however the archmage appears to be late...

-find Arminius and join forces with him
-defeat the orcish leaders on Zul'dare
-keep captain Wardley alive by any means necessary"

-----------------------------------------------------------

Substack article:
Warcraft 2.5 - ACT 1 - Attack on Zul'dare

-----------------------------------------------------------

ABOUT:
There are 81 possible hero builds for this mission.
You start with a small army, but everything else you have to earn in some way - you have no base, no resources, no hero, nothing. Work your way up from the dirt and take the fight to the orcs.
In my estimation you should have about three hours of content ahead of you, given a messy first playthrough. Mine was messy as well, as I was exhausted after work and even had to reload despite it being my own map.
For the first time in this project I had to resort to using the SharpCraft / JassNewGen editor, due to the sheer amount of doodads used. There's a lot of eye-candy there.
Hopefully this is a fitting finale to ACT 1.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Weeeell, I don't think this counts as "soon", but... hopefully what is there will make up for it. Believe me, this was a big one in many ways. I've been really busy IRL, too, so this was really the best I could do.

With that out of the way...
View attachment 468273


Warcraft 2.5 - Human - ACT 1 - Mission 4 - Attack on Zul'dare

"Captain Wardley - an old, highly respected veteran of king Terenas' army - has been dispatched with troops and transport ships to conduct an assault on the now vulnerable orcish base on the island of Zul'dare. Before commencing the attack, he was supposed to rendezvous on a nearby peninsula with archmage Arminius Bitterwhip, who was to bring a small detachment of Dalaran support troops - however the archmage appears to be late...

-find Arminius and join forces with him
-defeat the orcish leaders on Zul'dare
-keep captain Wardley alive by any means necessary"

-----------------------------------------------------------

Substack article:
Warcraft 2.5 - ACT 1 - Attack on Zul'dare

-----------------------------------------------------------

ABOUT:
There are 81 possible hero builds for this mission.
You start with a small army, but everything else you have to earn in some way - you have no base, no resources, no hero, nothing. Work your way up from the dirt and take the fight to the orcs.
In my estimation you should have about three hours of content ahead of you, given a messy first playthrough. Mine was messy as well, as I was exhausted after work and even had to reload despite it being my own map.
For the first time in this project I had to resort to using the SharpCraft / JassNewGen editor, due to the sheer amount of doodads used. There's a lot of eye-candy there.
Hopefully this is a fitting finale to ACT 1.

OMG im hella excited to try this lets see how hard this is

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

ok so it took me 3 hours to beat mission 4 there is tons of content in this single mission it has to be the hardest so far it starts off pretty slow until you get archmage bitterwhip then the game starts picking up a bit faster and i gotta say the enemy you face really deals massive amounts of damage most of the time no matter how much you micro a 100 hp footman is a dead footman cuz chaos dmg ignores defend.

there is so many doodads if there was an achievement for destroying 1000 doodads this mission alone would earn you that achievement and you know what bitterwhip makes the mission the best so far his dialogue is so rude he is so bored and done with life he roasts everything he sees 10/10 best player character so far if i have to rank them it would be 1-bitterwhip , 2-the ranger from mission 2 , 3-the admiral from mission 3 , 4-the guy from mission 1 , one mistake i have done was selling the gem of true sight when i stepped into the pirate main island i got demolished well i had to use water elemental as a mine clearing machine same for the little island to south with no way to battle the enemy ships i tried to pull of a naval landing of some sort? well not so much of a naval landing but the plan was to reach the shore with a transport ship with 2 peasants and da captain then mass teleport and build a base from there 2-3 tries and it worked having creeped the whole map and mined every gold mine out there it was pretty ok for the most part but in the last bit there was this 3 flying daemons and 2 fel hounds that were invulnerable also the high elf barracks has the same hotkey as the human barracks that is B , the starting base could use some improvement such as making the tents give food cuz i destroyed them in order to set up a base.

 

[Elafiel]

ok so it took me 3 hours to beat mission 4 there is tons of content in this single mission it has to be the hardest so far it starts off pretty slow until you get archmage bitterwhip then the game starts picking up a bit faster and i gotta say the enemy you face really deals massive amounts of damage most of the time no matter how much you micro a 100 hp footman is a dead footman cuz chaos dmg ignores defend.

there is so many doodads if there was an achievement for destroying 1000 doodads this mission alone would earn you that achievement and you know what bitterwhip makes the mission the best so far his dialogue is so rude he is so bored and done with life he roasts everything he sees 10/10 best player character so far if i have to rank them it would be 1-bitterwhip , 2-the ranger from mission 2 , 3-the admiral from mission 3 , 4-the guy from mission 1 , one mistake i have done was selling the gem of true sight when i stepped into the pirate main island i got demolished well i had to use water elemental as a mine clearing machine same for the little island to south with no way to battle the enemy ships i tried to pull of a naval landing of some sort? well not so much of a naval landing but the plan was to reach the shore with a transport ship with 2 peasants and da captain then mass teleport and build a base from there 2-3 tries and it worked having creeped the whole map and mined every gold mine out there it was pretty ok for the most part but in the last bit there was this 3 flying daemons and 2 fel hounds that were invulnerable also the high elf barracks has the same hotkey as the human barracks that is B , the starting base could use some improvement such as making the tents give food cuz i destroyed them in order to set up a base.

The important thing first - I need you to tell me exactly what happened with the invulnerable units. Where was it? The warlock fight? If so, then it must be something irregular or intermittent, but I do believe you. I have tested it a bunch of times and once it has happened to me that one of the warlocks in the blademaster group was running around invulnerable. So I made the region for them larger and added a pause and it never repeated. The warlock boss never gave me issues. But that doesn't mean it can't do that.

One thing that occurs to me, is that maybe I forgot to pause the warlock boss fight units. If so, then they could leave the region before they get their invulnerability removed. I'll check that, because that's an awful bug and I hate it.

The hotkeys for barracks will be changed, thanks. I overlooked that.

As for the starting base, I did consider making the tents a food choice, but it seemed to go against the core idea - which is having to establish everything from scratch. In fact, I specifically wanted the player to have to tear down and clear out the camp to make space for the actual base, because it's quite symbolic and fitting.

I did expect that someone might try to push through the main blockade and get on the island with mass teleport, which is why I added multiple ways to trigger the daemon spawn event - so hopefully that worked as intended, because without the annoying aerial attacks it wouldn't be the same. Though the "easy" path is to go in from the top. That's where you're also guided to go, as per the "go get the zeppelins" advice. But yes, I specifically made it so that there are multiples ways to get on the island.

That aside, yes, 3 hours sounds about right. I took me that on my sloppy, sleepy playthrough as well. Though I did have my hero die multiple times and other such setbacks. I just figured that this roughly compensated for the time a new player would take exploring and figuring things out. That thing with you selling the gem gave me a good laugh, though. A good thing you took the elemental, although there are other ways of detecting stealth on the map. ^^ I try not to be too cruel, so I made sure to include some redundancy. The water elemental technique didn't even occur to me, but hey! It's a great a idea.

And yes, I do realize all the stone-bashing in this mission is kinda annoying, but this won't be something I repeat constantly to the same extent. It just occurred to me as one way to add difficulty. Warcraft 3 sadly doesn't really have walls per se, like Warcraft 1 did, so stuff like destructible rocks ends up being the next best thing. Plus, I thought it synergizes well with the hero, because it puts extra emphasis on spell choice. Blizzard has the best DPS, but can't destroy rocks, while Flame Strike is worse for pure DPS, but does clear rocks, which is hugely helpful. While Frost Armour - the last choice for the 1st slot - gives your units extra durability while they're being shot at as they clear the rocks, so it still helps. +7 extra armour on footies with defend, and suddenly those skeleton archers aren't doing much damage at all.

Lastly, the damage output of certain encounters is indeed quite extreme, which is how I offset allowing the player the spam clerics. Smaller encounters you can easily do deathless because of all the healing, so then on the major encounters I gave them stuff like Carrion Swarm or Cleave, so that spamming hordes of units doesn't really work and you have to lean on the hero a lot. I will admit, I actually managed to forget I gave the pirate captain Cleave, so he ended up slaughtering something like two control groups of my units, lol. That was great. I hit him with Sleep, surrounded him with my army, attacked him... and everything died and I had to run to my boat with the hero with almost no hp left.

Well, thanks for playing - I'll go look into that invulnerability bug, because it annoys me.

EDIT: I looked and I can't find anything glaring. There is a trigger to pause all the units in the warlock boss encounter and make them invulnerable at the beginning of the game, and to unpause them and make them vulnerable when the player gets close. The same as with the pirate boss and the blademaster, using the same system. I copied the triggers between encounters and just changed the details, as always. This really annoys me and I may have to test it a few times. For now I at least tried swapping the trigger actions (so that it's remove invul first, then unpause, not the other way around) and making the region larger for that encounter as well.

EDIT 2: I just replayed the orc base section thrice. Added an overpowered hero there in the editor just for testing. Every time the invulnerability was removed from all units. So I legitimately dunno what to do. Of course, I played with my aforementioned "updates" already included, but I doubt they did much of anything.

EDIT 2: I just replayed the orc base section thrice. Added an overpowered hero there in the editor just for testing. Every time the invulnerability was removed from all units. So I legitimately dunno what to do. Of course, I played with my aforementioned "updates" already included, but I doubt they did much of anything.

EDIT 3: The updated map has been uploaded, I added a few other little touches, fixed the hotkey, but I dunno if the intermittent bug has been addressed at all. If and when you can, please give me more info. I don't want people to be getting this experience.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Spoiler: well

this is the units im talking about (and that bloodfiend counts too)

 

[Elafiel]

Spoiler: well

View attachment 468650
View attachment 468649

this is the units im talking about (and that bloodfiend counts too)

Did they come at you on their own, before you even approached that part of the base, or did they just stay invulnerable after you initiated the fight?
Based on the screenshots I'm assuming the former, but I'd like to have it confirmed.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Did they come at you on their own, before you even approached that part of the base, or did they just stay invulnerable after you initiated the fight?
Based on the screenshots I'm assuming the former, but I'd like to have it confirmed.

they stay invulnerable after i reached the warlock even after he got killed too

 

[Elafiel]

they stay invulnerable after i reached the warlock even after he got killed too

Sorry, it took me a while to get back to you.
Right, so the trigger to make them vulnerable must have somehow not worked properly... which is an irregularity, but it generally does work properly.
And I may not be knowledgeable enough about the editor to resolve this, unless it can be reliably replicated.
So far I only have one hypothesis, which I'm going to test.
I'm not sure if perhaps the "pick every unit in a region" action doesn't have a unit limit. I have included no player distinction, so the trigger picks everything in the region, including player units, because they are already unpaused and vulnerable, so it makes no difference if it unpauses them and makes them vulnerable. But if there is a hidden limit to the action, then the presence of a large number of player units could interfere with the trigger, I suppose.
Actually, I have one more idea I want to test.
I'll try a few things and get back to you.

EDIT: Okay, no, all of my theories were wrong. It can't be too many units, because the trigger works immediately, as soon as the first one enters the region. And even when I have multiple scouting owls in the region when that happens, it works perfectly, removing the invulnerability both from them and from all the enemy units. No matter how many times I restart the map and repeat this section (with testing heroes placed in the base), it always works as intended. I think I may not be able to replicate the issue.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Sorry, it took me a while to get back to you.
Right, so the trigger to make them vulnerable must have somehow not worked properly... which is an irregularity, but it generally does work properly.
And I may not be knowledgeable enough about the editor to resolve this, unless it can be reliably replicated.
So far I only have one hypothesis, which I'm going to test.
I'm not sure if perhaps the "pick every unit in a region" action doesn't have a unit limit. I have included no player distinction, so the trigger picks everything in the region, including player units, because they are already unpaused and vulnerable, so it makes no difference if it unpauses them and makes them vulnerable. But if there is a hidden limit to the action, then the presence of a large number of player units could interfere with the trigger, I suppose.
Actually, I have one more idea I want to test.
I'll try a few things and get back to you.

EDIT: Okay, no, all of my theories were wrong. It can't be too many units, because the trigger works immediately, as soon as the first one enters the region. And even when I have multiple scouting owls in the region when that happens, it works perfectly, removing the invulnerability both from them and from all the enemy units. No matter how many times I restart the map and repeat this section (with testing heroes placed in the base), it always works as intended. I think I may not be able to replicate the issue.

hmmm is it possible that something broke cuz i played the map through the editor (it refused to appear in the map selection from the in-game)

 

[Elafiel]

hmmm is it possible that something broke cuz i played the map through the editor (it refused to appear in the map selection from the in-game)

lol, like me, then
I always test them from the editor. And once - with the second one - I also noticed it didn't want to show up in-game, but I thought that must be some weird issue on my end. But if it's not... well, then I'm lost, because I've absolutely no clue why it would do that. Which is really annoying.

So I just checked. The 1st, 3rd and 4th are all showing for me in-game, only the second one still doesn't. God knows why, I don't even know how I'd begin to find out, since I've made them all the same way, and - in fact - the 3rd and 4th were made by copying 2nd and using it as a foundation.

However, it gets worse. I've found out that if I launch 4th mission from inside the game, it flat-out doesn't work. The music plays and there's a black screen. That's it. It's completely broken. Yet if I launch it from the editor, it works perfectly, as always.

I'll be honest, I'm getting really fed up with this crap. I love working in the editor, but these sorts of incomprehensible random bugs are seriously making me want to quit. Just the fact that I can launch the same map from the editor and from the game, and from one it works while from the other it doesn't is ridiculous. How many of the people, who downloaded some of these maps, actually got to play them, and how many were just met with some sort of nonsense like that, but didn't say anything, because - obviously, naturally - most downloads don't result in feedback?

If the fact that I can play-test it with no issues doesn't even guarantee that others will be able to load it up and launch it in-game, then making these does feel like a waste of time.

 

[deepstrasz]

I think these should be in a campaign file or at least properly renamed so that you'd know which is the order the missions have to be played in.

1. In chapter 1 there's a wolf between trees trying to get to your units while your units to it. Can't reach it without attacking/harvesting the trees. Tried circling around but the rock chunks seem to have huge HP plus even if they crumbled there's no certainty that the wolf is reachable normally.
2. Some of the ogres had their HP lowered for some reason.
3. After killing the ogres you essentially kill your peasants mining the kobold mine. Or perhaps a coincidence. Anyways, too grim and unforgiving.
4. Lumber Harvesting shouldn't be there is you can't reach the Keep.
5. Why no cinematic mode? It looks weird without it.
6. Naradeen's abilities should be properly positioned in the learn ability menu to reflect their position after you learn them. Same for the Knight Commander.
7. Not sure if intended but there's space between trees that you can go through even with the elf ranger.
8. Took a while for the gate to fall to Ballistae. Was almost going to give up, well after trying the tank if it came to be mine, thinking there might be some other way to open it.
9. Apparently there's no base AI, units appearing out of thin air in chapter 3.
10. Would have been nice if Wardley had a hero inventory.

Overall, a nice remake, appreciate the lore expanding intention but it feels like playing Warcraft III, not Warcraft II and I don't mean the unit stats and resources mechanics necessarily but the general vibe, not really feeling the second game. It's still playing Warcraft III's human. At least, you've got the old school experience right. Not that it's always a good thing.

Approved.

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[Pandaprewmaster325]

lol, like me, then
I always test them from the editor. And once - with the second one - I also noticed it didn't want to show up in-game, but I thought that must be some weird issue on my end. But if it's not... well, then I'm lost, because I've absolutely no clue why it would do that. Which is really annoying.

So I just checked. The 1st, 3rd and 4th are all showing for me in-game, only the second one still doesn't. God knows why, I don't even know how I'd begin to find out, since I've made them all the same way, and - in fact - the 3rd and 4th were made by copying 2nd and using it as a foundation.

However, it gets worse. I've found out that if I launch 4th mission from inside the game, it flat-out doesn't work. The music plays and there's a black screen. That's it. It's completely broken. Yet if I launch it from the editor, it works perfectly, as always.

I'll be honest, I'm getting really fed up with this crap. I love working in the editor, but these sorts of incomprehensible random bugs are seriously making me want to quit. Just the fact that I can launch the same map from the editor and from the game, and from one it works while from the other it doesn't is ridiculous. How many of the people, who downloaded some of these maps, actually got to play them, and how many were just met with some sort of nonsense like that, but didn't say anything, because - obviously, naturally - most downloads don't result in feedback?

If the fact that I can play-test it with no issues doesn't even guarantee that others will be able to load it up and launch it in-game, then making these does feel like a waste of time.

i thought it was just me who was facing this issue of 2nd mission being not there in-game i mainly thought it was cuz of me modding the game that must have messed up something but nope i think its a worth try to make a campaign file that way the missions can all appear i hope you continue the remake it will be interesting to see it complete

 

[Elafiel]

I think these should be in a campaign file or at least properly renamed so that you'd know which is the order the missions have to be played in.

I deliberately didn't make it a traditional campaign, so that each one is playable independently of the others. Play order has been brought up already in this thread and it's a non-issue. Each file name contains which act it is, what mission number it is and the name of the missions as well. Zero ambiguity there.

If the filename says Mission 4, you play it fourth. That's it.
But because of the aforementioned feedback, I did actually make it even more obvious.

This is right at the very top. The play order is clear.
A campaign file would be convenient for someone intent on playing it all and in order, but that's hardly a concern at this stage. I wanted to include that as an option once all the individual missions are finished.

In chapter 1 there's a wolf between trees trying to get to your units while your units to it. Can't reach it without attacking/harvesting the trees. Tried circling around but the rock chunks seem to have huge HP plus even if they crumbled there's no certainty that the wolf is reachable normally.

There are many wolves placed among the trees. Which is on purpose. You need to harvest a lot of lumber for an objective and your peasants may get attacked by wolves while doing so. It would be better if they weren't occasionally visible, but LoS blockers are crap, and I didn't feel like going for more sophisticated tricks. In a way, it serves as a foreshadowing. During play-testing I only addressed those wolves, which distracted enemy attack waves.

Some of the ogres had their HP lowered for some reason.

Yes, that's on purpose... do I really have to reveal everything here? I wanted people to figure some things on their own. But okay. In the beginning of mission 1, there are captive elves inside the ogre mound, whom you can rescue if you go there immediately. As soon as the day breaks, the ogres wake up and slaughter the captives. So you just have a small window of time to rescue them. If you do, the ogres also wake up, so you have to fight them, but it's doable and you can avoid losses and have a larger army immediately. This is just one of the little fun details I added for people to find, because I like oldschool design. Among hundreds of players, one is bound to stumble upon it by accident by exploring down south in the very beginning. Alternatively, a player could also find the ogres low on hp and wonder if a battle had taken place there... maybe it could be a motivation to find out what happened there. Or one could complain about it, yes.

After killing the ogres you essentially kill your peasants mining the kobold mine. Or perhaps a coincidence. Anyways, too grim and unforgiving.

Yes, that's on purpose. When you gather a certain amount of gold, you trigger the mine collapse event. You're denied the easy mine, lose some peasants and are forced to scavenge. That's the entire point of the mission. I have repeatedly said I've designed it with veterans in mind. It's a back to basics design. How do you make a mission, where you have no tech tree and your only objective is to build stuff, interesting and challenging? You heavily restrict resources and inconvenience the player to the point that even building some farms is an issue. The entire project was an exercise in taking these simplistic premises of the original and doing something more with them. You say that my rendition is too grim and unforgiving, I say that the original is too boring, empty and devoid of danger.

Lumber Harvesting shouldn't be there is you can't reach the Keep.

???
That sentence makes absolutely zero sense to me.
The first mission has a lumber goal because 1) your peasants have something to do while they can't mine gold, 2) it's thematic, 3) it presents another thing to worry about, like the wolf attacks, and 4) it's actually used for the triggers. Certain thresholds of wood harvested trigger attack waves, so that the more you accomplish, the more they harass you. This is also the case with some other objectives.
Again, I hate that I have to give all of this away just to justify something so basic as requiring the player to chop some trees.

Why no cinematic mode? It looks weird without it.

The latter three missions utilize it.
The first one doesn't because 1) this whole thing was a learning process, I've mentioned it before, I've learned things mission to mission, and 2) my design philosophy has shifted over time. Originally I wanted to deliberately avoid cinematic mode because it's very "Warcraft 3" and wanted more of an oldschool approach, where such things don't happen. Later I changed my mind on that. If I were to continue, I would eventually go back and update mission 1, aside from others. And regardless of all of this, it's still a trade-off, because cinematic mode disrupts the flow and takes control away. I was already uncomfortable using it that much in mission 4 and would have preferred to get away with using it less.

Naradeen's abilities should be properly positioned in the learn ability menu to reflect their position after you learn them. Same for the Knight Commander.

Yes. Again, I've talked about it in this thread. I am aware that aspect could be improved and I chose to let details like this slide for the time being, focusing on actually getting some missions out. The intention was to, once again, return to this later, when the missions are out and playable. It's not even just this, there's so much little stuff that could use attention. Things like building descriptions. Barracks, for example, use the default description, even though they will never be making riflemen, as those will come exclusively from a special dwarf building. And even though they will, instead be making clerics and catapults (aside from footmen and knights), inspired by Warcraft 1.

There are tons of details like that you could rightfully point out. And in all honesty, at this stage in development it just doesn't matter to me. At all. I don't care to perfectly polish a map, when most of the missions aren't even out and playable. In fact, right now I'm at a point where the most basic stuff isn't working properly and nobody can tell me why. One mission won't show up in-game for no discernible reason, another will work perfectly when launched from the editor, but doesn't work at all when launched in-game. At least for me. Sorry, but things like button positions are the last thing on my mind right now. What is front and center on my mind, is potentially abandoning the project, because I can't even guarantee that the missions can be launched normally. Which makes me not want to bother making more missions, because it takes so much time.

Not sure if intended but there's space between trees that you can go through even with the elf ranger.

It may or may not be. Depends on where. The ranger has by default an awkwardly large collision box, which interfered with my map design, so I intentionally made it smaller, so that she wouldn't get stuck in certain tight places. As a consequence, squeezing between trees in certain places could be an issue.

Took a while for the gate to fall to Ballistae. Was almost going to give up, well after trying the tank if it came to be mine, thinking there might be some other way to open it.

The gate has very high hp on purpose, so that you can't rush it and don't accidentally rescue the captives while the cannon tower is still up. I made it so that you absolutely cannon rush in and sneak the captives out without defeating the defenses. And I don't see why would you give up, when the game displays a health bar for the gate. It's clear that it's taking damage, it just has a bunch of hp.

Apparently there's no base AI, units appearing out of thin air in chapter 3.

Yes, there's no base AI. Mission 5 was supposed to be the first one featuring that. The whole Act 2 was suppose to move in a different direction, where it's more about actual base-to-base combat. This is entirely on purpose. In the original, mission 4 was the only one of Act 1 to actually feature a base AI. The rest as completely passive. And I chose to finish the theme and leave the whole Act 1 like that. It has a cohesive theme, the missions all play a certain way, it all makes sense. Act 2 was to have themes of its own and to play differently, more like you'd expect. But yes, all attack waves in Act 1 are directly spawned in, either on timers or in reaction to events, and often conditional on some enemy unit on building being alive, so that you can disabled them.

Would have been nice if Wardley had a hero inventory.

He's not a hero, because he's supposed to not increase in power in order to remain vulnerable, as he's your only direct lose condition. And also because having two heroes simultaneously is something I intended to introduce in Act 2.
As for just giving him the inventory by itself... I've already given the regular troops backpacks right from the get-go, so that you can grab anything you come across before you get the archmage. Again, it was a conscious decision. I thought the commander would have his underlings carry around things he has no use for.

The rest of it... well, I've explained it to death both here and in the related Substack posts. There's a reason I didn't call it a Warcraft 2 remake, but Warcraft 2.5 instead. The intention was always "Warcraft 3 mechanics, but focused on a more oldschool RTS experience, not an epic narrative / RPG-lite + using Warcraft 2 campaign as a basic template / inspiration".

Well, thanks for reviewing the bundle. And since you didn't mention any of it, I'm also assuming that somehow all the maps loaded and launched as intended for you... at which point I just don't know what to think.

------------------------

i thought it was just me who was facing this issue of 2nd mission being not there in-game i mainly thought it was cuz of me modding the game that must have messed up something but nope i think its a worth try to make a campaign file that way the missions can all appear i hope you continue the remake it will be interesting to see it complete

Perhaps that could help, yes. But I do still want for the missions to be playable individually, so it does remain a problem.
I may return to this, perhaps, but for a time I'll probably focus on other things. There's some writing I really need to get done. But if I for some reason can't write, I'm likely to continue with this.
The most likely scenario is probably that I'll take a break and return to work on Act 2 later.

 

[deepstrasz]

es, that's on purpose... do I really have to reveal everything here?

You don't need to do anything. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't an issue. Plain and simple.

I deliberately didn't make it a traditional campaign, so that each one is playable independently of the others. Play order has been brought up already in this thread and it's a non-issue. Each file name contains which act it is, what mission number it is and the name of the missions as well. Zero ambiguity there.

That's OK, I just prefer a chronological order of sorts but it's not necessary here I guess. As for the file names, I was referring to naming them in a way that in the game they show up from mission 1 to 4 rather than mixed.

You say that my rendition is too grim and unforgiving, I say that the original is too boring, empty and devoid of danger.

It can be abused though by learning which amount is the culprit of the boom so that you'll only send one peasant instead. I lost like at least 6 peasants.

That sentence makes absolutely zero sense to me.

Indeed. I worded it improperly. I meant that you have the Harvesting Lumber upgrade shown but it cannot be researched.

There are tons of details like that you could rightfully point out. And in all honesty, at this stage in development it just doesn't matter to me. At all. I don't care to perfectly polish a map, when most of the missions aren't even out and playable. In fact, right now I'm at a point where the most basic stuff isn't working properly and nobody can tell me why. One mission won't show up in-game for no discernible reason, another will work perfectly when launched from the editor, but doesn't work at all when launched in-game. At least for me.

It's on you if you want to rush some potentially sloppy work. Although the best thing would be to polish then continue to the next. If it doesn't matter to you, it doesn't mean it doesn't matter to others. Usually, playing nicely refined maps/games is a pro from players on said product/work.
As for the invisible map. I could try helping out somehow or you could ask in the World Editor Help Zone if you haven't already.

And I don't see why would you give up, when the game displays a health bar for the gate. It's clear that it's taking damage, it just has a bunch of hp.

Oh nice. I usually don't play with those shown and I didn't think to activate them then xD

Well, thanks for reviewing the bundle. And since you didn't mention any of it, I'm also assuming that somehow all the maps loaded and launched as intended for you... at which point I just don't know what to think.

I played them on 1.30.4. Yeah. All seemed to work fine, I guess.

I appreciate the extensive reply although a word of advice would be to come out less defensive and less methodical with details. I was definitely not asking for this, mostly trying to make sure stuff worked properly.

 

[Elafiel]

You don't need to do anything. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't an issue. Plain and simple.

That's OK, I just prefer a chronological order of sorts but it's not necessary here I guess. As for the file names, I was referring to naming them in a way that in the game they show up from mission 1 to 4 rather than mixed.

It can be abused though by learning which amount is the culprit of the boom so that you'll only send one peasant instead. I lost like at least 6 peasants.

Indeed. I worded it improperly. I meant that you have the Harvesting Lumber upgrade shown but it cannot be researched.

It's on you if you want to rush some potentially sloppy work. Although the best thing would be to polish then continue to the next. If it doesn't matter to you, it doesn't mean it doesn't matter to others. Usually, playing nicely refined maps/games is a pro from players on said product/work.
As for the invisible map. I could try helping out somehow or you could ask in the World Editor Help Zone if you haven't already.

Oh nice. I usually don't play with those shown and I didn't think to activate them then xD

I played them on 1.30.4. Yeah. All seemed to work fine, I guess.

I appreciate the extensive reply although a word of advice would be to come out less defensive and less methodical with details. I was definitely not asking for this, mostly trying to make sure stuff worked properly.

I've renamed and reuploaded the missions, as I finally understood you meant the internal mission names the whole time - what gets typed-in in the mission description. I honestly didn't even notice that is what the site displays most prominently. I also accidentally bumped the thread / sent notifications with the first upload, so apologies for that.

I'll get to the rest of it later, gotta go now.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Perhaps that could help, yes. But I do still want for the missions to be playable individually, so it does remain a problem.
I may return to this, perhaps, but for a time I'll probably focus on other things. There's some writing I really need to get done. But if I for some reason can't write, I'm likely to continue with this.
The most likely scenario is probably that I'll take a break and return to work on Act 2 later.

its actually possible to have all maps available from the start in campaign so that you can pick whatever you wanna pick , for act 2 dont rush it act 1 was very fun to play it captures the bad situation the alliance find themselves in but with enough determination and skill humanity comes on top! quite fitting for the wc2 soundtrack too as it has that "rise up humanity" vibe to it i look forward for when next act drops as we still need to cleanse the land of the filthy black bloods

 

[Elafiel]

its actually possible to have all maps available from the start in campaign so that you can pick whatever you wanna pick , for act 2 dont rush it act 1 was very fun to play it captures the bad situation the alliance find themselves in but with enough determination and skill humanity comes on top! quite fitting for the wc2 soundtrack too as it has that "rise up humanity" vibe to it i look forward for when next act drops as we still need to cleanse the land of the filthy black bloods

In that case that's fair enough, and I'll get to it if I keep going with this.
I'm glad you liked it regardless of what happens next. At least I've for once made something that was enjoyable to someone.

It can be abused though by learning which amount is the culprit of the boom so that you'll only send one peasant instead. I lost like at least 6 peasants.

Scripted events can be abused and always have been abused in games. In the original Supreme Commander, I always abused the fact that securing a specific objective is the only thing that expands the battlefield and exposes new enemies, but there's no timer to force you to rush - so I always delayed it, built up my forces in advance as much as possible, and then steamrolled whatever came next.
If someone wants to play the map multiple times to figure this out just to save a few peasants, even though you can lose many more than 6 and still finish it just fine, that's on them.

Indeed. I worded it improperly. I meant that you have the Harvesting Lumber upgrade shown but it cannot be researched.

I recall that oversight, just forgot to remove that. In fact, you missed one - the backpack upgrade was also there, even though you couldn't get it. It's fixed now.

I played them on 1.30.4. Yeah. All seemed to work fine, I guess.

Okay, in that case I won't bother delving into this unless I get mass feedback of things not working.

 

[Saen Tarr]

Date of next map? It's impressive!

 

[KI60]

First things first, I hate the Kobold Mines. In the first mission, I restarted the mission after losing almost all of my peasants. In the 4th mission, the first like five waves they only came in a small group of four, then suddenly the whole gang came outside for one wave, they were really tedious to deal with.

First mission:

• The raiders wave to the down right base was really punishing for me.
• I had the same thing like someone before me when I finished all of the things on the bucket list for the main quest it took around a minute to show me the victory popup.
• I like the random wolves in the woods.
• All in all I enjoyed the first mission.

Second Mission:
- I don't think I have any problems with this mission, it was tough early with my unlucky timings when I was leaving the base, but later on is was smooth sailings.
Third Mission:

• I like the hero a lot in this mission, he's very tanky and packs a punch, with him alone and some recovery time he solos the island with the alchemist.
• That one wave with the big heavy ship, forgot the name, but the big ship and two smaller ones is somewhat hard when it comes out of nowhere.
• Also it sucks when they destroy your shipyard, you don't have a way to build new ships.

Fourth Mission:
- Haven't yet finished it, just rescued Arminius, and wanted to complain about that one kobold wave where there is 10 of them

 

[LovG]

I enjoyed this campaign though overall it was a bit slow paced for my taste.

Mission 1 and 2 really enjoyed them. 3 didn't like it so much (mostly because of the long-travel-island- and the constat attack of the incursors) and 4 took me for ever to finish it. There's just too many obstacles to advance, too many destructible to kill and while you are at it, you have to do it in a really clustered area while beeing attack by a bunch of powerful enemies. That makes it really slow-paced and isn't as fluid.

I enjoyed having to think how to spent my ressources since they were really limited.

About the invulnerable orcs on 4th mission: I don't think is necesarry to be honest. I didn't know how to remove the invuln. stat, but then just got near them and the trigger worked fine and they became vulnerable.

On final note, I liked the suddenly unexpected things that happened every now and then, (like the kobols) that was something I hadn't seen in a while.

Looking forward to see what's to come.

 

[Blackmore Holmes]

Thank you very much for sharing your project comrade!!
Your maps look more incredible than those used in other hive campaigns.
I will be very attentive to news.

 

[Elafiel]

Hey-hey, people, it's your (definitely not) favourite cervine warlord mapmaker.
I took a break, as I said I would, because I really needed it. I still have much more to do than the time to do it and I wanted to shift my attention to other things, but seeing that there's some enthusiasm here for my questionable creations, I may end up carrying on with map 5 (which I already started working on before I took the break).

Date of next map? It's impressive!

I never really have any set dates - my schedules and free time shift day to day, and I'm not always able to work on these. And they do take many hours to make as well. I don't want to promise anything, as I know I likely won't keep the date.
In truth, I also had to take the break because I hyperfocused on making maps so much that it messed up my sleep schedule, as I ended up working late into the night many times, which in turn derailed my productivity (outside of my day job) in general. That's another reason I don't want to give dates, because then I'll just have a reason to stay up until 2 AM making triggers and placing thousands of doodads.

First things first, I hate the Kobold Mines.

Good, nay, excellent!
Everyone (by which I mean every oldschool WoW player, I guess) hates kobold mines, and I wanted to stick to that trope, because it's just a core part of Warcraft. Coasts and lakes full of murlocks, mines infested with kobolds, furry conventions in Silverpine... ^^

Also it sucks when they destroy your shipyard, you don't have a way to build new ships.

Hmm, this is something I didn't think of when making the mission. Or rather, I forgot I used a shipyard, which is a normal building and not invulnerable like the usual goblin shipyard. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I don't want to let the player build shipyards like in Warcraft 2, as I don't want the navy to be a core part of one's army. So I could just make it invulnerable. But that would make it easier, then, and remove a failure condition.
I'm not sure for now, but I may increase the shipyard's defensive stats, perhaps, to make it less susceptible to getting blown up by a surprise attack.

overall it was a bit slow paced for my taste

That's entirely fair. I'm more of a methodical player, so it shows in my design.

That makes it really slow-paced and isn't as fluid.

Yes, mission 4 in particular is made to be a slow grind. That's basically its theme. Which, of course, isn't for everyone.
The good news for you is, that I intended to switch the themes around, so 5th should be more open and fluid again. Less of a "methodically grind your way through entrenched positions" and more of a "defend against strong attacks, avoid unnecessary encounters and choose where to strike".

I don't think is necesarry to be honest

Sadly, it was a necessary inclusion.
I wanted to create specific encounters, which can't easily be cheesed and abused.
Without the units being "paused", they could accidentally aggro or intentionally be aggroed from distance. If I paused them and leave them vulnerable, they could be abused even more easily (with things like flamestrike from afar).
Basically, in my initial play-testing it was a mess, so I decided to make some encounters paused and invulnerable until the player gets close. The pirate boss, for example, would either come running at you as soon as your started traversing the beach and clearing out the mines. And you could reveal the area with items, too, and shoot at him / cast spells. It was bad. That's why I opted for this solution.

On final note, I liked the suddenly unexpected things that happened every now and then, (like the kobols) that was something I hadn't seen in a while.

That's good to hear, honestly.
I know more that in recent times devs (and players) tend to condemn this sort of oldschool design as "unfair", but the way I see it... why does a game need to telegraph every punch from a mile away so that you can comfortably prepare for it? Did DOOM blatantly telegraph every monster closet / spawn in?
It's a fine line to walk between exciting and aggravating (and it's always going to be a bit of both), but I do try to strike the balance.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback. Hopefully I'll find some time to work on the 5th this weekend.

EDIT: It's late, I'm tired, and I forgot the last guy, Blackmore Holmes - thank you as well. I can't say how my works stack up to those of others, as I used to play lots of custom maps on BattleNet a long, long time ago (Island Defense, LegionTD, Castle Fight, etc.), but things have probably changed a lot since then. And I have very little experience with custom campaigns, but those that I've seen were very advanced compared to my dabbling.