When the Freedom Slips Away is almost half as old as me — I finished it in 2006, making it 14. I was 16. I was still in school!
Time makes fools of us all, and much as I don’t like what Blizzard have done with Warcraft III: Reforged, I have to concede that it is now the “official” way to play maps and, since I’m still alive enough to deal with the situation, I feel compelled to do what I can to keep my seminal works in good order.
So I give to you: When the Freedom Slips Away Gold, a huge raft of bug fixes, a few compatibility tweaks, and some Known Issues that I can’t touch.
Head over to the download page to get it!
I have not made any design or balance changes, because I want this map to stand as it was. The authentic way to play is still in The Frozen Throne with patch 1.26, so if you can stomach a parallel install then I strongly suggest you do. (Needless to say, if you are playing in Reforged, then you should play with the original graphics.)
It has been hard to resist making bigger changes because of course I know so much more now than I did then, but any greater changes would make the map into something different and I am not comfortable with that. It was made when I was still a teenager, just finishing school, and it’s the first major hit I ever had. I’m still proud of it, warts and all, and I hope it still has some value in the world of today.
Changelog:
ART - Fixed backpack model that broke in Reforged - Fixed missing Shield of Fire attachments in Reforged
- Fixed loading screen in Reforged - Fixed broken normals in Dragon's Tooth mesh - Fixed a grammatical error in the Pig's intro conversation - Fixed a grammatical error in the Myrmidon's final conversation - Fixed a grammatical error in the conversation with Lord Kirby after defeating Pyraeus with Balthasar - Fixed a spelling mistake in the Chapter 2 "Survive" quest description - Reduced size of floating text comments TECHNICAL - Removed all DestroyTrigger usages - Tidied up some location memory leaks in Base Camp attack, Chapter 1 "Showdown" attack - Added system to reissue orders of Thirlmir attackers so they don't get stuck so much - Removed all buffs from Kirby and Scheisen for cave retreat to prevent issues with cinematic - Replaced spotty demon repulsor with periodic reissuing of attack orders - Added failsafes to Scheisen death cinematic in case the Chapter 2 intro unskips the Chapter 1 outro - Fixed pig arriving at raft cinematic activating the wrong skip trigger - Removed intant-use rune items to avoid shadows appearing on loading a saved game TWEAKS - Moved the portal blocker at the end of chapter 1 and Kirby's position so that fights tend to occur in the more spacious area, ordered Kirby to retreat a little at each wave - Reduced Henrik's animation cast point so he feels more responsive - Removed the rocks that block the entrance to the Murloc beach so it is immediately accessible - Moved the rock that blocks the archeological dig site so you run into it (or not) much sooner - Moved Chapter 1 showdown cave barman out from the rocks a bit so he is more obvious - Reduced range of rock-throwing villagers - Reduced battle music timeout - Removed Escape menu - Added website link to map description - Updated website link in credits, added sequel link
Reforged has made changes that are beyond my ability to fix. If you choose to play in any version after 1.26, you may see these problems:
- Preview image does not show in lobby
- Loading screen is black
- Some units do not have shadows
- Some trees use the wrong textures
Rao Dao Zao 
I just played through the map. Sadly, the game still reezes on the same part, when Lord Scheisen dies. Am I doing something wrong?
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You’ll need to give me more details than that, I’m afraid. What do you mean by “freezes”? When does it stop — in a cinematic, after a particular line of text? On taking some action in the game? What did you do before it happened?
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During the cinematic. Lord Scheisen goes “Argh…!”, he dies, and then nothing happens. It just hangs on that moment. The game doesn’t completely freeze – rain continues to fall, fires continue to flicker, I can minimize the game and quit from it – but nothing proceeds from there.
I tried using the steel sword/shield instead of the sword/shield of fire and refrained from using Throw Rock. Same thing happens every time. (Incidentally, one time I, inadvertently, had Henrick die, got the game over screen, and had the dog I’d summoned kill Scheisen afterward. Same thing pausing happened there.)
I’d be happy to keep trying and report more details. I’m just not sure what might be relevant.
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Hrmm, that should be enough for now, thanks. I will investigate.
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Do you try to skip the cinematic by hitting the Escape key? I see here that the skip trigger is never actually turned on, so if you tried to skip then I suspect the map would just “stop” in the way you’ve described. Or, indeed, had you skipped any previous cinematics?
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I did skip previous cinematics. This particular one won’t let you skip it.
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Ok, I misread your last message. The issue happens every time, whether ESC is pressed or not. The problem comes with whatever is meant to come after Schiesen’s death never being triggered. I just did a run in which I didn’t skip any of the cinematics (also refrained from using any items or skills during the fight, just in case that might somehow make a difference) and the same hang up happens. Pressing ESC does nothing. The game can still be minimized, though.
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Just watched the full cinematic on Youtube. So, to clarify: whatever is supposed to trigger Henrik’s line, “And so it ends. Goodbye Schiesen. The Empire could have used a warrior such as you,” never actually happens. Instead, Schiesen goes, “Argh…!” he collapses, and then the game just sort of sits there. It doesn’t freeze, but the cinematic doesn’t progress further, and it never goes to Chapter 2.
This same problem happened with the previous version of the map.
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This is the strangest thing. After Scheisen dies, there are no changes in triggerwork, no actions I can see that would fail so consistently for you but not for anyone else. I was mainly asking about previous cinematics being skipped because, in the past, I have not disabled some skip triggers properly and so they have interrupted subsequent cinematics (the system is not much of a system, it’s very manual so it’s quite easy to make mistakes).
But if it’s not skipping-related (as that’s the only intentional way a cinematic could just “stop” like that), the only other thing that has that kind of symptom is an infinite loop… But I’ve looked at the cinematic and the nearby parts and I just can’t see anything that would result in that behaviour. I might try just deleting all the actions and recreating them from scratch, maybe WC3 has got itself into a fankle with a variable somehow…
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