Warcraft 2.5 - ACT 1 - Attack on Zul'dare
the fourth Human mission of Warcraft 2 re-imagined in Warcraft 3
[ THE GOODS ]
First, a link to download the map:
https://www.hiveworkshop.com/threads/warcraft-2-5-human-campaign.352688/
All future campaign maps will be posted in the same thread.
[ THE LEARNING PROCESS ]
Last time I mentioned that the process of making these maps became more of a grind than anything else, once I got the hang of it... but of course, me being me, I then had to push things again. This one took a long time to produce not just because I was so busy IRL or even because it's so full of content, but in no small part also because I was learning again.
The main thing this time was coming up with a system to allow the player to heavily customize the hero in the mission – chiefly by selecting what spells he is going to use. I had multiple ideas for achieving this and have gone through a few partial implementations before finally settling on a dialogue trigger system... at which point I had to come to grips with how this works and iron out a few bugs resulting from my inexperience. It was yet another battle and – just like in the beginning – I was almost considering giving up at one point, and simply going with a simple pre-determined hero instead.
But again, because I have a hard time letting things go, I eventually made it work – and thus there are a total of 81 different builds available to the player in this mission, as there are 3x3x3x3 abilities to choose from. Or to put it differently, four slots, each with three unique mutually exclusive choices. Leveling them up works as well, although given the limitations of the world editor, it had to also be implemented via dialogue window triggers. However – with countless hundreds of hours of custom maps under my belt from back in my teenage years - I would say that the final result is legitimately good regardless. I am quite happy with it.
[ THE OVERVIEW ]
Looking back, I do find one thing to be somewhat amusing.
Originally, in Warcraft 2, the first act of the campaign was essentially a tutorial – a learning experience for the player. There wasn't any challenge or difficulty in it, it existed largely to familiarize new players with the game.
Yet somehow things have ended up being inverted here. None of the missions I have produced are designed to teach new players. As I've said before, what I had in mind was challenge and engagement. My target audience are RTS veterans. But the actual creative process itself was very much a learning experience for me and it clearly shows in the missions themselves. If you put the first one and the fourth side by side, you can clearly see how far I've come in many ways. Whereas in the original campaign, the design was consistent throughout.
And I wouldn't dare to say that by now I already know everything I'm going to need... that I've finished the tutorial, so to speak. Rather, it appears that every step of the way I will be learning and learning, until the whole process will culminate in the final mission, which will – essentially – be the purest "final form" of what I set out to do.
It's like I'm building up towards something step by step, developing techniques and understanding, and adding it all on top of what is already there. Granted, I'm still not sure whether I'll actually get that far, but finishing act one is already an achievement for me – and likely constitutes about 6 hours of reasonably intense gameplay for anyone so inclined. It's as much as entire campaigns in some games have to offer, which I am pleased with simply because I managed to achieve what I set out to do.
I am very much looking forward to act two because of the change of tileset – I'm rather tired of making winter maps due to how restrictive they are when it comes to appropriate doodads, aside from other things. The "Lordaeron Winter" tileset NOT having a dirt cliff – only grass and snow – is a travesty I was grappling with the whole time, particularly when dealing with water. Snow under water is stupid enough to be unthinkable for me, so I had to go with grass, and tried to pass it off as seaweeds, but it's still dumb. Much like the fact that you cannot swap cliff types between tilesets. I'm just so done with this winter crap that it's not even funny. I think mission four is close to me visually perfecting the formula, and I'm happy with it and ready to move on to the badlands.
So get ready for [ P E A K B R O W N ] !
Note: I had to finally bust out the SharpCraft / JassNewGen for this one, due to the sheer amount of doodads used. So I hope the visuals are appreciated. I love both making these sceneries and looking at them, but I'm not sure whether it's the same for others.