Return To The Storm – Custom Campaign

[Sailor]

Howdy folks,

This is a custom campaign, work-in-progress, telling the tale of Holls Hammer, first daughter to King Hammer and Paladin of the Violet Rose. Included so far are the first eight missions, of an eventual sixteen.

TO PLAY THIS, YOU MUST FOLLOW THE "TO PLAY" INSTRUCTIONS BELOW! If you don't, the computer will follow the default ai behaviors and the maps will both not be a challenge, and you'll miss out on the fun of customized ai for the maps. You'll also miss out on a bunch of aesthetic changes too.

Download:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DIQJ0UFzMewVnQ4xNjttfMxaoluKtkuu

Features:

• 8/16 maps complete for Human Campaign
• Mission briefing images, telling the tale of Holls Hammer and the fall of the Vail Kingdom.
• Maps that are hopefully a new and fun Warcraft II experience
• Many units have stats and names tweaked.
• Each level has a custom ai, tailored for that level and meant to present an actual challenge.
• Included "karma challenge" for each mission, an optional *hard mode* for anyone who's up for it.

Features to come...

• The additional 8 levels for this campaign. Followed by an orc one if I'm feeling ambitious.
• Bio's for the characters discussed in the mission briefings to help keep that short and sweet while providing some additional grounding.
• (Hopefully) wholesale custom units, when I can figure out how to do that.
  I've drawn most of the characters myself, but most of the portraits are based on other artworks I've found online. My style's still too cartoony to match the WCII style. Need to credit the artists who's work the portraits are based on.
• Character voices are still the default... which isn't ideal for, say, my protagonist. Still unsure what to do about this.

To play:
In your main Warcombat folder, copy the War2Dat.mpq file somewhere safe on your computer and place the downloaded War2Dat.mpq file attached in its place. This will apply all the graphic, string, and ai changes. Keep in mind this may screw up the default campaign, but if you want to play that, just move the original War2Dat file back.

Then load the through the Custom Games option in Warcraft II, with all fields set to the map defaults. These are not yet added to the games default campaign.

Every mission comes with a briefing .PNG, read it before hand for some hack story telling and mission objectives!

Screenshots

[Vendar]

Hi, I replaced War2Dat.mpq with your version but it's not working correctly

Spoiler

Pls halp

EDIT: I understand that objective will stay the default and I have to read it from png files but still... there shouldn't be Uther portrait, right?

[Available]

I replaced War2Dat.mpq

war2patch.mpq is also better to temporarily move to another location

[Vendar]

I replaced War2Dat.mpq

war2patch.mpq is also better to temporarily move to another location

Fixed! Thank you 

EDIT: I have finished first 3 missions so far. First and second were ok... but third was just awesome  Interesting idea with gathering Feasants (why did you rename Peasant unit on Feasant?) and forcing AI to use only built Barracks with some waves. Good design here and something new 
I like new portraits but Axethrowers and Agrais seems to be a little broken. I like the idea with hero that gets stronger with every missions, like she is getting new levels 

I'm not sure if you are going to update it or anything but it would be nice to have new voices for your characters. It's weird when you click on Holls and hear male paladin voice.
Anyway, so far so good.

[Sailor]

Someone finally played these! 

Hey thanks man. If you're enjoying creative ai abuse, hope ya enjoy the upcoming ones too! Love any feedback, so let me know how they roll.

I'm currently tinkering with the new Trigger editor and embedding these in the game's default campaign atm. Hoping to re-release missions 1-8 with that sometime late this month along with the next four. Victory conditions will actually match what I want them too!

To your questions – I changed their name to 'Feasants' as a quick way to test I was changing the right stuff for unit names... and haven't bothered fixing that yet. Consider it a blunt sign that the mpq is loading correctly. Will fix down the road, but for now, gonna just enjoy it. I will check out the axethrower/Agrais's portrait tho- I think I've seen that bug a few times myself.

Also, I agree on the voices needing adjustments, but l likely won't get around to fixing that anytime soon. For now we'll have to be impressed by how surprisingly baritone Holls vocal chords are.

[Vendar]

Hello again 

Next three missions finished. I think I found some bugs. One with Axethrower's portrait - it happens when you previously select anything (f.e.: Barracks) and then click on Axethrower and there are two portraits at the same place: first one with your previous selected unit and Axethrower's on top of it (did you change troll Axethrower portrait to replace original background with transparency?). It seems like Blizz put multiple (at least) portraits at the same place on UI and well, that's weird 

Anyway, victory condition for mission 4 didn't work and I even killed all enemy units on map but I didn't get my win. I used cheat here to display full map.

AI plays odd here. It recruits units and move them on specific points on the map, completely ignoring the fact that my units are attacking them. Maybe instead of using "move" command you could use here "move+attack" or if it's not possible "patrol"?

Holls attack range. In this mission she has Range 2, in next missions she again has only Range 1

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Something wrong happened with AI in mission 5 too  It plays very aggressively for the most of the mission but suddenly it decided to stop and attack me with only 1 Grunt. It had resources, it had still it's gold mine. Don't know what happened.

Mission 6 was very fun and difficult at the same time. One small issue here was with Archers. In previous missions Archers has 50 hp, in this missions it's back to 40.

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Maybe you should make one empty map with only your custom units properties and copy-paste this map to keep your configuration in every single mission  I think it's the easiest way to do it.

Cool missions tbh  Every one with different gameplay. Interesting idea with only a single knight-hero that leads an army of Footmans, Archers and Ballistas .

EDIT: mission 7 is way too easy if

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you know how AI behave with repairing own buildings. Just damage any building above 50% hp and wait for AI Peons to slay them. Repeat until all AI's gold is gone.

EDIT 2: ok, I have finished today last mission too. Nice one  Ogres and Ogre-mages are even more op as usuall  All in all it was fun. One thing here: you forgot to give Holls spells.

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[Szwagier]

I will play soon your campaign 

[Sailor]

Means a lot to me that ya ran through those Vendar. Glad you enjoyed em'! Ogres, Ogre-mages, and Ogre Juggernauts have been beefed up considerably, yes . Wanted it to feel like more of a victory when you managed to take one down.

Thanks for all the notes too – will fix the stat differences. On ai behaviors, I'm hoping adopting Minstrel's improved ai script helps alleviate some of the kiting issues. Along those same lines, victory conditions should help with any bugged ends.

How'd you find the difficulty? I'm not an expert and I've played this way too much to really be a good judge of that. Did ya manage to win most on your first try or did it take a few?

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On mission 4 – odd, the victory condition should be default. There's a small crop of enemies towards the west that are easy to overlook perhaps.

On mission 5 – I'll double check that one. It's been awhile since I popped open the ai, but do recall wanting to give the player a break at a certain point.

On mission 6 – Thanks! Was fun to see a resuce-active comp could be given a custom script. Sadly tho that knight-hero led group will get over-run in roughly 10 min if left alone.

On mission 7 – Don't cheat! I'd like to think it's still a bit hard given the lack of wood. Maybe need to up the attack waves...

On mission 8 – Good catch. Will fix that too.

[Vendar]

How'd you find the difficulty? I'm not an expert and I've played this way too much to really be a good judge of that. Did ya manage to win most on your first try or did it take a few?

It took a few tries with mission 3, 6 and 8. Rest I won on the first or maybe second try. I think it's ok  It's not an insane difficulty (like in Alaunter campaigns) and that's also a good thing, cause it would be really depressing if I would have to try 20-30 times to beat some levels in every custom campaigns even with gamespeed slowed down
It's fun and that's most important.

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On mission 6 – Thanks! Was fun to see a resuce-active comp could be given a custom script. Sadly tho that knight-hero led group will get over-run in roughly 10 min if left alone.

I built them few Guard Towers and they helped me protect my kingdom. Very nice idea    Would like to see more allied AI tricks like that

[Vendar]

Part with "depressing" thing about loosing a game for 20-30 times was of course a joke     The fact is, your campaign is more difficult than original War2 campaigns (from expansion too), but still beatable with single or few tries 

If you have enough time you should try Alaunter campaign, it's really great and hardcore campaign. You can download it from here:

https://forum.war2.ru/index.php?topic=5045.0

[Sailor]

Ah perfect. Yeah, I'm not interested in making a hardcore mod, so that sounds just right to me.

I'll try that one out at some point!

[Sailor]

A couple people have asked what tools I'm using for this. Here's the current tools:

 

• ShadowFlare Mpq Editor - for adding/removing files from the game mpq files
• Puddraft - for map editing
• udtead - for unit properties
• Wardraft - for the custom AI
• Adobe Photoshop - for editing graphics