I'm glad to see you redid this with the no glitch. I'm pretty sure it should be a standard for anybody trying to do this type of run. Ironically it gives it a hardcore Ironman kind of vibe because you have to beat the level on the try or have to reset. Keep up the good work man. Your videos are awesome
Thank you! While I agree with you in general, its weirdly easy to play this game for a long time and not even realize the glitch exists! WC2 gives you a lot to do which makes it hard to focus on exactly what the AI is doing, and the effects of the save glitch aren't consistent across different levels depending on where you reload and what level you're on! The AI can legitimately run out of resources, pathfinding jank can also sometimes cause the AI to behave in similar ways as it would with the save glitch, and the save glitch doesn't even always turn off the AI! In one level here, it even caused the AI to send more (or at least straight up different) attack waves than it would have! So it is easy to figure out that this AI is jank in this game, and its easy to identify that it can do different things sometimes, but identifying the cause of this was not obvious at all before I watched my footage, and even then I wasn't 100% sure before I confirmed it. I've obviously played this game a lot as a kid, and I only vaguely suspected something was off before a couple weeks ago!
@@redwings13400 so here's some interesting stuff. The first thing is the strategy of cutting off their resources early game is a very common strategy when playing multiplayer teams. Things like towering their gold mines is basically necessary and encourages you to attack earlier. One of the major reasons the expansion existed was to encourage players to rush and attack more often which translated very nicely to the multiplayer scene. Warcraft 2 is one of the few strategy games that does not let the AI cheat in terms of resources. If you beat their economy you should win. Admittedly no amount of good strategy is going to overcome the fact that you are using the worse unit on the worse faction. I think that's what makes these runs so enjoyable.
Only 2 major tragedies occured here. First for all the brave footman that died, and second that the hidden song "I'm a medieval man" wasn't made the national anthem of the glorious Republic of Footman.
Respect! I watched the previous video, but gotta admit I cringed a lil when you mentioned the bug, as yeah, broken AI makes it way less fun. Super happy you dug down and did it properly, have my like! Making a new sub out of me :)
Thank you! I appreciate that! I've been fascinated by the effects of this glitch over the past few weeks! You would expect it to just turn the AI to passive mode, and sometimes it does that, but the glitch is so much more complicated than that! Its fascinating! But yeah, its also broken, and while I felt like it was interesting enough to put in one video, I needed to make a change for this one. Someday I'll probably try to beat the other campaigns again without the save glitch, and I might do a follow up video eventually.
Thank you! Aside from botw (wasn’t a huge fan but I do respect it) and wow (which I haven’t played but it’s too thematic to not use), all of these songs are from some of my favorite games. Glad you approve!
Hey, thank you for this, it was really amusing to watch, both from a technical and a story standpoind. I love your pseudo-fanfiction style of playing - same goes for your War3 videos. You are definitely improving and I'll keep following your channel 😊
@@redwings13400I was thinking about this: do you accept suggestions for future videos? Maybe you know Haemimont games, they made some great strategies back in the day. Two of them are Tzar - Burden of the Crown, the other is Rising Kingdoms. Both have gameplay somewhere in-between Warcraft 2 and 3. They might be fun to explore, as I believe Blizzard games are done to death by now. Either way, good luck to you!
@@FeatherBed-sc6vd I can’t promise I’ll make a video on it, but I’ll definitely take a look! I haven’t heard of these games before, and they sound fun! I appreciate the suggestion! :)
I know the pathfinding in this game is jank as all hell, but I still really like the enemy team ai's. The variety in how different nations will behave makes the beyond the dark portal campaign very interesting. Another thing I found with the AI as a kid, at least on the slow fps low graphics PSX port of Warcraft 2, is some cheats, most notable the infinite mana cheat, applied to you and all the AI nations as well. So if you're playing against humans with paladins, they can send two Paladins who will be nigh-immortal as they spam healing on eachother and 2V50 your whole base. sorry too ramble but all the observations you're learning about the AI here and in the previous video got me all nostalgic with my childhood experiences with the AI in this game.
Rambling is fine! :) I also like that aspect of the campaign too. Its fun facing a bunch of different enemies with very differentiated strategies, both in composition and in frequency of attacks. Definitely gives the AI some personality! :) Learning about the AI and how its specifically scripted is one of my favorite parts about these challenge runs. I love whenever I do something unusual in the level, and then the unusual thing pays off because the devs just assumed the player would never do what I'm doing, and the AI isn't adjusted for that behavior! :D
The cheats affecting ai, makes glitteringprizes one of the most challenging cheats in the game. If used at the start of the game the ai goes absolutely insane so quickly making any level immediately harder.
If you have acces to the original dos version, some dos elulators, like dosbox pure, have the "save states". You can save the game by virtually coping the entire "computer" for later.
Just wanted to say that I thoroughly enjoyed watching your WC2 videos tonight. Thank you. I never knew that saving and reloading could glitch the computer, but recalling sometimes where this game was super difficult and sometimes where it was noticeably easier, I guess I'm not too surprised.
Yep! I was in the same place before I watched my footage, I definitely realized the ai could be really weird in this game, but had no idea what was causing it. Thank you! :)
Upon the Shadowed Seas is clearly the most memorable mission of this run. It's not a particularly hard mission by BtDP standard, but it's intended to be a naval mission, and footmen only makes it almost impossible. It's insane how you managed to pulled it off.
Thank you! I think if I didn’t mishandle those attacks against yellow, it was doable in a much less dramatic fashion. That said, I make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes leads to the most tense situations and the best stories! It’s always an amazing feeling when I’m on the brink and manage to somehow claw my way back in to a level. Very weirdly, I think level 3 was actually the hardest level of the run! I had such a narrow window to destroy orange in that level before it just became infinitely more difficult! Though im gonna guess that if I had banned flying machines, some of the later levels would have gotten much, much harder. I used them because I hate just not knowing the terrain of the map, but it’s hard to overstate how much they help when it comes to managing death knights.
Hey redwings, I've seen you partaking Admial Iddy stream on deathless Beyond the Dark Portal, and mentioned the no save glitch, and as a programmer, that inspired me to do some tests on the glitch itself. I'm not sure if you have contact with MFromAzeroth, but he's pretty knowledgeable about the inner workings of the game, and I guess giving these hints might help you out on figuring it out on what the hell does the glitch save does and why does that happens. I'll give you a bit about the information I have from what I tested in the human mission (xHuman 2) and used the "on screen" cheat to check what the A.I. would do after each save. From what I've observed the change only happens after the reload, and the behaviour seems pretty consistent after that same reload. Looking at the red Orc base, it starts sending 3 Ogres towards you. If you save reload right after the start the level, it sends 2 ogres and a catapult (?). One thing that also changes, and that is not a red Orc base behaviour is that all of them stop building towers. Red orc base normally build 2 extra towers right after the start and yellow follow suit right after with 3 towers in line. The Black Orc builds some towers as well but do take a while. Further saves seems to go through some sort of cycle. From what I've observed they, independently seem to change from all their peons gathering gold and go to lumber and vice-versa. Given the knowledge that some AI's are configured to work around some type of unit (like yellow as a Dragon Only base) whenever we reset they seem to cycle through some loop of AI's. I'm unsure which loop is it, or if the deactivated AI configurations are included or not. And the last thing I've observed is that they never go back to their full state (I'm unsure on this, but I've saved multiple times and didn't notice anything, but I may be wrong). That's what I could gather from my endeavor, I don't have too much free time to play games, but I would love to help with anything if you're interested! Thanks once again for the great videos, they are pretty fun to watch.
Nice! Yeah, that matches with what I've witnessed! I haven't done specific tests on the save glitch, but this is really good information that I appreciate you posting here! I've only contacted MfromAzeroth through youtube comments, so I'm not close with him or anything like that. He just randomly found my WC3 videos, made a glorious video response to one of them, then I felt compelled to check out the rest of his channel. I've just been including him in my recent videos because his videos are really informative and explained some things really well that were relevant to my wc2 challenge.
29:00 I was not a big fan of that level when I tried playing it. Once I had established some sort of base defence, I tried to send my forces to invade only for the enemy dragons to reroute and go after my forces and then there were submarines in the way and massive amounts of enemy soldiers wherever I landed. You are right it is the weirdest level out there. I feel like maybe it shouldn't have the base-building part and be more like the Orc equivalent. Second-weirdest level goes to the one where you play as the Orcs in the Human campaign but keep the Human UI and all the sounds are the Orc ones... the level of scripting involved... I still don't quite understand it even after watching M From Azeroth's video about it...
That’s fair! The level definitely has its flaws. The safest way to do it is just to wait in your base until black runs out of money (it doesn’t actually take that long), but the fastest way to do it is to just ignore the base section altogether. Red feels like they are just there for decoration, and you can pretty much bypass the white base too. It’s a weird level and it has some major issues, but I feel like there are some really cool ideas in it. I just like the idea of creating levels with really limited and weird tech options available, and of blurring the lines between a base/non base level. The level is really flawed but I think it’s really cool at the same time. :)
@@redwings13400 I do like that idea though where you start with basic forces and can liberate buildings to upgrade them like finding a Church to turn your troops into Paladins or finding the Blacksmith to upgrade the weapons. But the way that particular level seems to be set up is you're supposed to reinforce your army with extra ships and stuff and the enemy will drop dragons in that you can't really defend against since they'll go after your mining and not your shipyards where your only rebuildable AA can be. There was a custom map where there was a similar concept where you had modded Human units to be stronger than normal and you could do the same thing except they didn't give you enough resources to build Transports if you went with map defaults and if you gave everyone high resources, the Orcs would build a base. There was even a sequel to it where you had to liberate a fortress and if you destroy the only Orc building on the map, it triggered a massive siege on the fort as the Orcs went "all in" with their passive troops. Have you considered playing some of those custom "campaigns" with Footmen/Grunts Only? Like maybe as a miniseries?
@stylesrj haha I know what you’re talking about! I was always so confused when I loaded that level up and I just couldn’t progress. I always wondered if I was missing something! I doubt I’ll play those maps, but who knows. Maybe someday :)
about 30 years ago i had so much fun with this game. got so good, i beat 2 computer nerds at my highschool, and one of them even had a cheat code, that gave him resources..back then we used link. . would love it if they did a 4k remaster of this.
The audio is definitely better here, good job, keep working on it, I can hear some clicking noises still at the end of every sentences, but it's a lot better both the quality, and the words are clearer
Thank you! I used audacity for this and tried to cut out some of those sounds, and also followed a tutorial which taught me how to balance out the sounds a bit more. Unfortunately I still don't have easy access to a perfectly quiet recording place, so its still a struggle to get all of it. I'm glad this was better!
@@redwings13400 I'm happy that I helped. One small suggestion, you could count "one" or up to two in your head before talking and after pressing the record button, so when you have to cut the clicks, it's way easier and you have more room to cut the click. Same thing when you stop recording, just wait one sec before clicking, it gets super easy then to find the clicks on audacity, they will be always the same and they will be super visible in the timeline
Yeah, I really appreciated your comments, and am trying my best to learn how to do this! :) Unless I'm misunderstanding you, I already do this one. I don't think the clicks you hear are my mouse or anything to do with my computer. I know they exist and hear them too, but they're weirdly consistent so I think it might be a background air conditioner, or maybe me moving a little, or something like that? I'm not really sure, but most of the time you hear them I'm definitely not touching my computer. I generally record by doing a few very long takes, but whenever I mess up (very frequently), I just stop for a few seconds, restart the sentence, and edit out the mistake. So the click is not me pressing the record button or touching the computer, since I just don't do that very often in my recording sessions.
@@redwings13400 Maybe it's a lip smack? Let's say you wet your lips before certain sentences, that can make a sound, try to maybe understand where it comes from, or you a filter on audacity to filter it out if you can't really spot the source. Keep the good work, I'll keep watching videos!
I never get bored. Just because you might get bored doesn't mean I would. There's a catch. I had to be that bored to learn how to overcome boredom itself.
@@taramaforhaikido7272 hehe yeah I usually have a low tolerance for boredom, unless something hooks me in so hard that it earns the boredom as a necessary expense to become something awesome.
2:04 At that moment i was afraid you were showing my comment, that says that I was bored by challenge runs. Everything looks the same and because of restrictions, there is no creative stratagies used. I deleted that comment a few minutes after I wrote it. So it seems like I was not the only one who was bored.😅
Haha don't worry about it! I like the restrictions because it creates unique game states that you don't normally see in these campaigns, so its different in that way. Limitation breeds creativity, and I'm learning a lot about the game that I never would have discovered otherwise. I'll admit there is a bit of repetitveness to the levels though. I try to speed through the less interesting levels and spend more time on the unique scenarios.
Seen through the whole video, I'm now fully convinced that elf/troll only run would be extremely hard. Footmen are tough and honourable. Also they swing their swords really fast with furious rage. Archers are slow and clunky and have no staying power. Also I got a feeling that catapults and towers would obliterate then without some tight micro
Definitely some fair points there. Lower attack speed and lower health would be pretty massive downsides to archers and trolls. Cannon towers would be massive pains as they’d one shot multiple archers every time they’d fire. It’s not all bad though. Dragons and gryphons would be trivial so you would only need to build towers for ground paths. Upgraded archers beat destroyers 1v1 with superior range, but cannon towers would still probably be required against even medium numbers of battleships. Walls would probably not be quite as annoying because you wouldn’t need to destroy them before destroying what’s behind it.
Challenge idea: can you beat Warcraft 2 with just towers :D But in all seriousness, great job, this was awesome to watch (and I love Warcraft 2)! Edit: Is that Celeste music in the background?
With just towers? I doubt it. Even if you're allowing attacking with peasants/peons too in order to make enemy catapults manageable, I think the biggest issue with this would be opposing cannon towers and naval landings. Cannon towers would be horrifying because, well, you can't outrange them, and your peasants/peons wouldn't be able to attack in to them with any sort of efficiency whatsoever if they were guarded. Even if you could find a clever way to route around all the cannon towers and avoid them until everything else is destroyed, naval landings would be ridiculously absurd. I think a lot of levels would be possible, but not every level. Also, yep! I used music from a lot of different games I really enjoy in this video. Summit is such a good soundtrack! :D
@@redwings13400 Thanks for the reply! It does sound pretty much impossible to beat towers with towers now that you mention it. Didn't think of this challenge seriously, but it's a nice imagination exercise :)
@@redwings13400 I love when a good song hit in a challenge run (I'm sure that the footman were shouting "SHAW" and "GARAMA" at their enemies, for example at 13:54) but I wonder : do you use music of only the game you played / you knowed ?
Thank you! I've gotten several requests for an archer only run. If I had to guess, I imagine it would probably be easier than a footman or grunt only run, but I haven't tried it, so I can't say for sure. Naval landings and splash damage would be really challenging to deal with, and its true that archers/trolls can get overwhelmed by melee units really quickly. Their stats are very bad, and its possible I'm overestimating them. Still, the ranged attack would make it easier to focus fire and have units not get stuck, would make dealing with walls significantly easier, and they would never be scared of dragons. I'll probably try it at some point, and if its interesting enough to make into a video, I might do that!
The thing that would be important about archer only is that there is a frame delay for ranged when switching targets, which actually makes excessive micro detrimental. Additionally while they're good on an open field to hit more than footmen ever could, in more narrow places you'll probably do worse damage. And of course archers stop at max range to fire, so shooting any tower en masse would bunch a ton behind the rest too.
Archer only would be harder, because as opposed to WC1, Archers are REALLY weak, they'd be easier to tech into. (not affected by blacksmith upgrades), but their DPS is WAY lower than footmen, and they have the aforementioned issue with targettting (so, either meticulous micro, or abusing chokes.), that would turn dragons into non issues though. Orc version would even have the added benefit of healing (even if its SLOW)
So what's that save glitch? What does it do? I kinda noticed that when loading a game - the AI stops being ultra agressive and I had no trouble beating the mission against 3-4 AI opponents...
Ah - so that's what it was... I guess I didn't made this up when I was playing the game before... Good to know. Thank you for elaborating in the video!
I go in to the save glitch more in my only grunts video, but basically, the game gets really weird when you save and reload. Its not a super consistent effect, and it can go in to a ton of different modes, but very generally the AI can forget to get upgrades, forget to harvest lumber, forget what script its running, load a new attack pattern script, never advance in tech, etc. This glitch can often trivialize the campaign, but because the AI has so many other ways it can break too, and because the effect is so maddeningly inconsistent depending on when you trigger it, I didn't actually learn about it until I watched my footage for beyond the dark portal grunts only. As far as I know this save glitch is present in both campaign and melee maps.
@@redwings13400 Atrocious... I was lied to all these years by those cheeky AIs that I won glorious battles in the name if Azeroth! I need to rerun all campaigns and show them all without reloads :D
Haha welp. I think my thought process here was that I was referencing my grunt only video, where the orcs strategy was to rescue mages from alterac to convince humans to abandon the footman. Therefore, khadgar is from alterac in my lore.
@@redwings13400 yes, it was the nicest game ever, it makes me appreciate the mouse and keyboard erryday the worst one is starcraft 64 But the 64 port has a secret level only on that one
Hmm... You know, that's actually a really good question. I think its because I'm bad at this game, lol. I was hyperfocusing on the cannon tower at the time, remembering it stopped my attempts to take this gold mine in previous attempts, and just assumed it would be able to target peasants that were long distance mining. In retrospect, I probably could have done that to get myself a couple more footmen.
![เป็นไปได้ไหม - WanMai [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/_6lZ6b3_7Vo/mqdefault.jpg)
Redoing the run with no glitch is almost as honourable is being a footman. Great work!
Thank you! :)
I'm glad to see you redid this with the no glitch. I'm pretty sure it should be a standard for anybody trying to do this type of run. Ironically it gives it a hardcore Ironman kind of vibe because you have to beat the level on the try or have to reset. Keep up the good work man. Your videos are awesome
Thank you! While I agree with you in general, its weirdly easy to play this game for a long time and not even realize the glitch exists! WC2 gives you a lot to do which makes it hard to focus on exactly what the AI is doing, and the effects of the save glitch aren't consistent across different levels depending on where you reload and what level you're on! The AI can legitimately run out of resources, pathfinding jank can also sometimes cause the AI to behave in similar ways as it would with the save glitch, and the save glitch doesn't even always turn off the AI! In one level here, it even caused the AI to send more (or at least straight up different) attack waves than it would have!
So it is easy to figure out that this AI is jank in this game, and its easy to identify that it can do different things sometimes, but identifying the cause of this was not obvious at all before I watched my footage, and even then I wasn't 100% sure before I confirmed it. I've obviously played this game a lot as a kid, and I only vaguely suspected something was off before a couple weeks ago!
@@redwings13400 so here's some interesting stuff. The first thing is the strategy of cutting off their resources early game is a very common strategy when playing multiplayer teams. Things like towering their gold mines is basically necessary and encourages you to attack earlier. One of the major reasons the expansion existed was to encourage players to rush and attack more often which translated very nicely to the multiplayer scene. Warcraft 2 is one of the few strategy games that does not let the AI cheat in terms of resources. If you beat their economy you should win. Admittedly no amount of good strategy is going to overcome the fact that you are using the worse unit on the worse faction. I think that's what makes these runs so enjoyable.
Only 2 major tragedies occured here. First for all the brave footman that died, and second that the hidden song "I'm a medieval man" wasn't made the national anthem of the glorious Republic of Footman.
Hehehe
It’s a glorious song. I generally try to avoid songs with lyrics in my videos, but I think we can headcanon that in
Celeste - summit at the end is perfect!
There’s something about summit that just makes me feel so inspired and motivated! It’s an amazing track!
I'd just like to say I enjoyed watching your video and learning more about Warcraft 2. I hope to see more, keep up the good work. Also praise Danath.
Thank you! Praise Danath :)
So that how I did actually complete some missions playing BTDP prior to knowing the channel (though yet fairly recently).
Respect! I watched the previous video, but gotta admit I cringed a lil when you mentioned the bug, as yeah, broken AI makes it way less fun. Super happy you dug down and did it properly, have my like! Making a new sub out of me :)
Thank you! I appreciate that! I've been fascinated by the effects of this glitch over the past few weeks! You would expect it to just turn the AI to passive mode, and sometimes it does that, but the glitch is so much more complicated than that! Its fascinating!
But yeah, its also broken, and while I felt like it was interesting enough to put in one video, I needed to make a change for this one. Someday I'll probably try to beat the other campaigns again without the save glitch, and I might do a follow up video eventually.
Thank you for the hours of nostalgic entertainment! You've convinced me to play through these campaigns again myself. Keep up the great work! :)
:) Thank you!
The only thing they fear is Danath
Props to you for biting the bullet and doing the glitchless run!
Thank you! :)
the performance is huge, but the playlist is incredible too, hollow knight, celeste, divinity... the best of the best for those honorable footmen!
Thank you! Aside from botw (wasn’t a huge fan but I do respect it) and wow (which I haven’t played but it’s too thematic to not use), all of these songs are from some of my favorite games. Glad you approve!
Hey, thank you for this, it was really amusing to watch, both from a technical and a story standpoind. I love your pseudo-fanfiction style of playing - same goes for your War3 videos. You are definitely improving and I'll keep following your channel 😊
Thank you! I appreciate that! :)
@@redwings13400I was thinking about this: do you accept suggestions for future videos? Maybe you know Haemimont games, they made some great strategies back in the day. Two of them are Tzar - Burden of the Crown, the other is Rising Kingdoms. Both have gameplay somewhere in-between Warcraft 2 and 3. They might be fun to explore, as I believe Blizzard games are done to death by now.
Either way, good luck to you!
@@FeatherBed-sc6vd I can’t promise I’ll make a video on it, but I’ll definitely take a look! I haven’t heard of these games before, and they sound fun! I appreciate the suggestion! :)
The narration was good, and the silly theatrics at the end made me lol.
hehe, glad you enjoyed! :)
Praised be the path of the footman and grunt
Praise
I know the pathfinding in this game is jank as all hell, but I still really like the enemy team ai's. The variety in how different nations will behave makes the beyond the dark portal campaign very interesting.
Another thing I found with the AI as a kid, at least on the slow fps low graphics PSX port of Warcraft 2, is some cheats, most notable the infinite mana cheat, applied to you and all the AI nations as well. So if you're playing against humans with paladins, they can send two Paladins who will be nigh-immortal as they spam healing on eachother and 2V50 your whole base.
sorry too ramble but all the observations you're learning about the AI here and in the previous video got me all nostalgic with my childhood experiences with the AI in this game.
Rambling is fine! :)
I also like that aspect of the campaign too. Its fun facing a bunch of different enemies with very differentiated strategies, both in composition and in frequency of attacks. Definitely gives the AI some personality! :)
Learning about the AI and how its specifically scripted is one of my favorite parts about these challenge runs. I love whenever I do something unusual in the level, and then the unusual thing pays off because the devs just assumed the player would never do what I'm doing, and the AI isn't adjusted for that behavior! :D
@@redwings13400 Ah yes, always fun in these runs when you decide to go for the non-obvious gold mine.
The cheats affecting ai, makes glitteringprizes one of the most challenging cheats in the game. If used at the start of the game the ai goes absolutely insane so quickly making any level immediately harder.
If you have acces to the original dos version, some dos elulators, like dosbox pure, have the "save states". You can save the game by virtually coping the entire "computer" for later.
That’s interesting! I don’t think I’m going to use that, but it’s good to know there’s a way to bypass the save glitch if I need to!
Just wanted to say that I thoroughly enjoyed watching your WC2 videos tonight. Thank you. I never knew that saving and reloading could glitch the computer, but recalling sometimes where this game was super difficult and sometimes where it was noticeably easier, I guess I'm not too surprised.
Yep! I was in the same place before I watched my footage, I definitely realized the ai could be really weird in this game, but had no idea what was causing it.
Thank you! :)
Upon the Shadowed Seas is clearly the most memorable mission of this run. It's not a particularly hard mission by BtDP standard, but it's intended to be a naval mission, and footmen only makes it almost impossible. It's insane how you managed to pulled it off.
Thank you! I think if I didn’t mishandle those attacks against yellow, it was doable in a much less dramatic fashion. That said, I make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes leads to the most tense situations and the best stories! It’s always an amazing feeling when I’m on the brink and manage to somehow claw my way back in to a level.
Very weirdly, I think level 3 was actually the hardest level of the run! I had such a narrow window to destroy orange in that level before it just became infinitely more difficult! Though im gonna guess that if I had banned flying machines, some of the later levels would have gotten much, much harder. I used them because I hate just not knowing the terrain of the map, but it’s hard to overstate how much they help when it comes to managing death knights.
This was great, and you deserve more subs!
Thank you! :)
Very cool. Seriously. Keep it up. I love your warcraft 2 material. Try with archers!!
woot! grats on the success without the glitch~
Thank you! :)
Hey redwings, I've seen you partaking Admial Iddy stream on deathless Beyond the Dark Portal, and mentioned the no save glitch, and as a programmer, that inspired me to do some tests on the glitch itself.
I'm not sure if you have contact with MFromAzeroth, but he's pretty knowledgeable about the inner workings of the game, and I guess giving these hints might help you out on figuring it out on what the hell does the glitch save does and why does that happens. I'll give you a bit about the information I have from what I tested in the human mission (xHuman 2) and used the "on screen" cheat to check what the A.I. would do after each save.
From what I've observed the change only happens after the reload, and the behaviour seems pretty consistent after that same reload.
Looking at the red Orc base, it starts sending 3 Ogres towards you. If you save reload right after the start the level, it sends 2 ogres and a catapult (?).
One thing that also changes, and that is not a red Orc base behaviour is that all of them stop building towers. Red orc base normally build 2 extra towers right after the start and yellow follow suit right after with 3 towers in line. The Black Orc builds some towers as well but do take a while.
Further saves seems to go through some sort of cycle. From what I've observed they, independently seem to change from all their peons gathering gold and go to lumber and vice-versa. Given the knowledge that some AI's are configured to work around some type of unit (like yellow as a Dragon Only base) whenever we reset they seem to cycle through some loop of AI's. I'm unsure which loop is it, or if the deactivated AI configurations are included or not.
And the last thing I've observed is that they never go back to their full state (I'm unsure on this, but I've saved multiple times and didn't notice anything, but I may be wrong).
That's what I could gather from my endeavor, I don't have too much free time to play games, but I would love to help with anything if you're interested!
Thanks once again for the great videos, they are pretty fun to watch.
Nice! Yeah, that matches with what I've witnessed! I haven't done specific tests on the save glitch, but this is really good information that I appreciate you posting here!
I've only contacted MfromAzeroth through youtube comments, so I'm not close with him or anything like that. He just randomly found my WC3 videos, made a glorious video response to one of them, then I felt compelled to check out the rest of his channel. I've just been including him in my recent videos because his videos are really informative and explained some things really well that were relevant to my wc2 challenge.
29:00
I was not a big fan of that level when I tried playing it. Once I had established some sort of base defence, I tried to send my forces to invade only for the enemy dragons to reroute and go after my forces and then there were submarines in the way and massive amounts of enemy soldiers wherever I landed.
You are right it is the weirdest level out there. I feel like maybe it shouldn't have the base-building part and be more like the Orc equivalent.
Second-weirdest level goes to the one where you play as the Orcs in the Human campaign but keep the Human UI and all the sounds are the Orc ones... the level of scripting involved... I still don't quite understand it even after watching M From Azeroth's video about it...
That’s fair! The level definitely has its flaws. The safest way to do it is just to wait in your base until black runs out of money (it doesn’t actually take that long), but the fastest way to do it is to just ignore the base section altogether. Red feels like they are just there for decoration, and you can pretty much bypass the white base too.
It’s a weird level and it has some major issues, but I feel like there are some really cool ideas in it. I just like the idea of creating levels with really limited and weird tech options available, and of blurring the lines between a base/non base level.
The level is really flawed but I think it’s really cool at the same time. :)
@@redwings13400
I do like that idea though where you start with basic forces and can liberate buildings to upgrade them like finding a Church to turn your troops into Paladins or finding the Blacksmith to upgrade the weapons. But the way that particular level seems to be set up is you're supposed to reinforce your army with extra ships and stuff and the enemy will drop dragons in that you can't really defend against since they'll go after your mining and not your shipyards where your only rebuildable AA can be.
There was a custom map where there was a similar concept where you had modded Human units to be stronger than normal and you could do the same thing except they didn't give you enough resources to build Transports if you went with map defaults and if you gave everyone high resources, the Orcs would build a base.
There was even a sequel to it where you had to liberate a fortress and if you destroy the only Orc building on the map, it triggered a massive siege on the fort as the Orcs went "all in" with their passive troops.
Have you considered playing some of those custom "campaigns" with Footmen/Grunts Only? Like maybe as a miniseries?
@stylesrj haha I know what you’re talking about! I was always so confused when I loaded that level up and I just couldn’t progress. I always wondered if I was missing something!
I doubt I’ll play those maps, but who knows. Maybe someday :)
So what I learned from this run is that death knights really, REALLY love gnomes.
Haha yep! xD
nice work! Can't wait 'til you play through World of Footman
Thank you!
Lol, is that actually a thing?
@@redwings13400 lol I imagine it could be but it would take some heavy modding of World of Warcraft on some private server to achieve
hey, good job with the footman siege through the missions !
Thank you! :)
about 30 years ago i had so much fun with this game. got so good, i beat 2 computer nerds at my highschool, and one of them even had a cheat code, that gave him resources..back then we used link. . would love it if they did a 4k remaster of this.
The audio is definitely better here, good job, keep working on it, I can hear some clicking noises still at the end of every sentences, but it's a lot better both the quality, and the words are clearer
Thank you! I used audacity for this and tried to cut out some of those sounds, and also followed a tutorial which taught me how to balance out the sounds a bit more. Unfortunately I still don't have easy access to a perfectly quiet recording place, so its still a struggle to get all of it. I'm glad this was better!
@@redwings13400 I'm happy that I helped. One small suggestion, you could count "one" or up to two in your head before talking and after pressing the record button, so when you have to cut the clicks, it's way easier and you have more room to cut the click. Same thing when you stop recording, just wait one sec before clicking, it gets super easy then to find the clicks on audacity, they will be always the same and they will be super visible in the timeline
Yeah, I really appreciated your comments, and am trying my best to learn how to do this! :)
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, I already do this one. I don't think the clicks you hear are my mouse or anything to do with my computer. I know they exist and hear them too, but they're weirdly consistent so I think it might be a background air conditioner, or maybe me moving a little, or something like that? I'm not really sure, but most of the time you hear them I'm definitely not touching my computer. I generally record by doing a few very long takes, but whenever I mess up (very frequently), I just stop for a few seconds, restart the sentence, and edit out the mistake. So the click is not me pressing the record button or touching the computer, since I just don't do that very often in my recording sessions.
@@redwings13400 Maybe it's a lip smack? Let's say you wet your lips before certain sentences, that can make a sound, try to maybe understand where it comes from, or you a filter on audacity to filter it out if you can't really spot the source. Keep the good work, I'll keep watching videos!
This is very, very entertaining to watch!
I dont know why, but it is.
Will you do an archers only run too?
Thank you!
I'm not sure about archers only! I've gotten several requests for it, so maybe I'll try it sometime!
I never get bored. Just because you might get bored doesn't mean I would.
There's a catch. I had to be that bored to learn how to overcome boredom itself.
@@taramaforhaikido7272 hehe yeah I usually have a low tolerance for boredom, unless something hooks me in so hard that it earns the boredom as a necessary expense to become something awesome.
2:04 At that moment i was afraid you were showing my comment, that says that I was bored by challenge runs. Everything looks the same and because of restrictions, there is no creative stratagies used.
I deleted that comment a few minutes after I wrote it.
So it seems like I was not the only one who was bored.😅
Haha don't worry about it! I like the restrictions because it creates unique game states that you don't normally see in these campaigns, so its different in that way. Limitation breeds creativity, and I'm learning a lot about the game that I never would have discovered otherwise.
I'll admit there is a bit of repetitveness to the levels though. I try to speed through the less interesting levels and spend more time on the unique scenarios.
Seen through the whole video, I'm now fully convinced that elf/troll only run would be extremely hard. Footmen are tough and honourable. Also they swing their swords really fast with furious rage. Archers are slow and clunky and have no staying power. Also I got a feeling that catapults and towers would obliterate then without some tight micro
Definitely some fair points there. Lower attack speed and lower health would be pretty massive downsides to archers and trolls. Cannon towers would be massive pains as they’d one shot multiple archers every time they’d fire.
It’s not all bad though. Dragons and gryphons would be trivial so you would only need to build towers for ground paths. Upgraded archers beat destroyers 1v1 with superior range, but cannon towers would still probably be required against even medium numbers of battleships. Walls would probably not be quite as annoying because you wouldn’t need to destroy them before destroying what’s behind it.
Alleria's true crime was being an elf.
lol!
Probably, yeah
NEVER TRUST AN ELF!
Loving these WC2 challenge runs. Have you checked out the fan-made widescreen patch? It got me playing again when it released a while back.
I've seen it, but haven't tried to download it. Looks pretty cool!
Praise Danath!
Arthas is jealous of the true ultimate footman :D
4:28 lol. Their Temple of the Damned is enclosed.
lol yeah. The two trapped death knights is a thing that consistently happens to black on this level, and its crazy that the devs didn't catch that!
Challenge idea: can you beat Warcraft 2 with just towers :D
But in all seriousness, great job, this was awesome to watch (and I love Warcraft 2)!
Edit: Is that Celeste music in the background?
With just towers? I doubt it. Even if you're allowing attacking with peasants/peons too in order to make enemy catapults manageable, I think the biggest issue with this would be opposing cannon towers and naval landings. Cannon towers would be horrifying because, well, you can't outrange them, and your peasants/peons wouldn't be able to attack in to them with any sort of efficiency whatsoever if they were guarded. Even if you could find a clever way to route around all the cannon towers and avoid them until everything else is destroyed, naval landings would be ridiculously absurd.
I think a lot of levels would be possible, but not every level.
Also, yep! I used music from a lot of different games I really enjoy in this video. Summit is such a good soundtrack! :D
@@redwings13400 Thanks for the reply! It does sound pretty much impossible to beat towers with towers now that you mention it.
Didn't think of this challenge seriously, but it's a nice imagination exercise :)
@@redwings13400 I love when a good song hit in a challenge run (I'm sure that the footman were shouting "SHAW" and "GARAMA" at their enemies, for example at 13:54) but I wonder : do you use music of only the game you played / you knowed ?
With the ironic exception of WoW (and also Zelda BOTW), every song I used in this video is from a game I have played through and greatly enjoyed! :D
28:35 ah, a fellow monty python enjoyer
Hehe. I’m not super in to it but I have enjoyed what I’ve seen from them. That song just felt right for this moment.
I really like this. Could you do an archer only run or is that impossible?
Thank you! I've gotten several requests for an archer only run. If I had to guess, I imagine it would probably be easier than a footman or grunt only run, but I haven't tried it, so I can't say for sure. Naval landings and splash damage would be really challenging to deal with, and its true that archers/trolls can get overwhelmed by melee units really quickly. Their stats are very bad, and its possible I'm overestimating them. Still, the ranged attack would make it easier to focus fire and have units not get stuck, would make dealing with walls significantly easier, and they would never be scared of dragons.
I'll probably try it at some point, and if its interesting enough to make into a video, I might do that!
The thing that would be important about archer only is that there is a frame delay for ranged when switching targets, which actually makes excessive micro detrimental. Additionally while they're good on an open field to hit more than footmen ever could, in more narrow places you'll probably do worse damage. And of course archers stop at max range to fire, so shooting any tower en masse would bunch a ton behind the rest too.
Archer only would be harder, because as opposed to WC1, Archers are REALLY weak, they'd be easier to tech into. (not affected by blacksmith upgrades), but their DPS is WAY lower than footmen, and they have the aforementioned issue with targettting (so, either meticulous micro, or abusing chokes.), that would turn dragons into non issues though.
Orc version would even have the added benefit of healing (even if its SLOW)
Draw steel bois
:)
So what's that save glitch? What does it do? I kinda noticed that when loading a game - the AI stops being ultra agressive and I had no trouble beating the mission against 3-4 AI opponents...
Ah - so that's what it was... I guess I didn't made this up when I was playing the game before... Good to know. Thank you for elaborating in the video!
I go in to the save glitch more in my only grunts video, but basically, the game gets really weird when you save and reload. Its not a super consistent effect, and it can go in to a ton of different modes, but very generally the AI can forget to get upgrades, forget to harvest lumber, forget what script its running, load a new attack pattern script, never advance in tech, etc.
This glitch can often trivialize the campaign, but because the AI has so many other ways it can break too, and because the effect is so maddeningly inconsistent depending on when you trigger it, I didn't actually learn about it until I watched my footage for beyond the dark portal grunts only.
As far as I know this save glitch is present in both campaign and melee maps.
@@redwings13400 Atrocious... I was lied to all these years by those cheeky AIs that I won glorious battles in the name if Azeroth! I need to rerun all campaigns and show them all without reloads :D
46:20 oh 💩
🦶⚔ 🛡 power
:)
Kadgar got what he deserved he was true evil.
No magic will be permitted in the republic of footmen! :D
It's a long time since I've heard this pronounciation but it seems your Alleria is actually made of lyrium. That's a good thing... I hope
Pfft, it’s not how I normally say it but it just came out that way lol
Wait... 0:28 Khadgar isn't from that hive of scum and villainy, Alterac..!
Haha welp. I think my thought process here was that I was referencing my grunt only video, where the orcs strategy was to rescue mages from alterac to convince humans to abandon the footman.
Therefore, khadgar is from alterac in my lore.
@@redwings13400 hehe...I wondered exactly that later... 😆 good stuff! 👍
According to my 10 year old self this is mostly possible
Tbf i also had this game on the ps1
Did you play this game with a PS1 controller? That sounds so hard!
@@redwings13400 yes, it was the nicest game ever, it makes me appreciate the mouse and keyboard erryday
the worst one is starcraft 64
But the 64 port has a secret level only on that one
i like so much that AI is fair in this game. No money cheats.
It’s definitely a different experience! It opens up a lot of strategies that wouldn’t be otherwise viable!
In Chapter 5, why didn't you just long distance mine the gold on purple's Island as soon as you killed all their ships?
Hmm...
You know, that's actually a really good question.
I think its because I'm bad at this game, lol. I was hyperfocusing on the cannon tower at the time, remembering it stopped my attempts to take this gold mine in previous attempts, and just assumed it would be able to target peasants that were long distance mining. In retrospect, I probably could have done that to get myself a couple more footmen.
@@redwings13400 No worries, I was not even sure you could long distance mine until you were doing it with the last peasant.
If you do anymore videos about Blizzards game, try Starcraft: Terran Campain with ONLY marines. Totally doable 😊
Grant has already done that one, so I’m probably not going to do it. It does sound fun though :)
This is a wery silly idea as a challenge :)
Lol this is true. Hope you enjoyed!
Hero😅
:)