You think epic adventures like This Wreckage and Project Y4 came out of nothing? Here are a few peculiar little projects from throughout the ages, which either never quite got finished or are a lot less finished in hindsight than I’d have argued at the time…
The Islands in the Sky Series
The Islands in the Sky series should be compatible with any version past 1.16; 2004 and 2005 may function with earlier versions but this cannot be guaranteed. Join the Empire as they strike ever deeper into Orcish territory in these singleplayer “aeon of strife” scenarios that were my first ever released maps.
If you fancy some commentary before you play any of the maps, read the post mortem.
Islands in the Sky 2004
A strange archipelago in the sky… Join an invading force as they attempt to take an important stronghold in a battle to end all battles…
Download: Islands in the Sky 2004 from Dropbox
Islands in the Sky 2004 Omega: Special Edition
A strange archipelago in the sky… Join an invading force as they attempt to take an important stronghold in a battle to end all battles…
Special Edition – with all the new data from IitS2005, in the classic 2004 setting!
Download: Islands in the Sky 2004 Omega: Special Edition from Dropbox
Islands in the Sky 2005
A strange archipelago in the sky… Join the Empire again and continue their fight northwards into the heavily-fortified Orcish homeland… The battle rages on.
Download: Islands in the Sky 2005 from Dropbox
Islands in the Sky 2006
A strange archipelago in the sky… Join the Empire again and help them push even further northwards – but an Orcish battalion from the front lines is intent on making your job much harder.
Download: Islands in the Sky 2006 from Dropbox
Say It With Nukes™ 
The only way to win is to make sure the Feral Machine doesn’t get unleashed until you have all the mercenaries and killed the second base. 
It’s funny because it’s a hotel that sells world-ending war machinery. 
There’s no kill like overkill! 
If you can’t stand the heat, jump off the edge of the world. 
Festive fun! 
The best way to win is to be a summoner. Those Spirit Wyverns ain’t half bad. 
They are islands and they are in the sky. I went into my figurative-titles phase much later. 
The original Feral Machines didn’t have spikes because I was rubbish at model/editing at this point.
The Island
The Island is a cult classic among my closer associates for its speech-synth voice acting. Barely five minutes long, but banter-packed nonetheless, it derives all of its jokes from its mechanical dialogue, half-hearted Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening parody and the strangest romance element ever before it splutters to an unsightly halt — when you meet the owl for the second time, it’s the end of the line.
The Island
A lonely traveller is washed ashore on a mysterious island… Discovered by a young woman who proceeds to take him hostage, he is soon cajoled into saving the island. But from what, he isn’t quite sure…
Download: The Island from Dropbox
The RDZ Micro RPG XK
An open-world RPG in a similar vein to what would one day become When the Freedom Slips Away, the RDZ Micro RPG XK is a crazy map replete with the particular brand of absurdist/surrealist/fourth-wall-melting humour that I wallowed in when I was a mid-teenager. It’s not exactly broken, but the central objective — to gain 15000 gold — can’t actually be met any way other than grinding respawning creeps. It’s got some cool elements, like that open-ended main quest, indoor areas, and a frosty setting.
The RDZ Micro RPG XK
A wanderer stops on the edge of a massive mountain range, to take some time out from his arduous trek to the north. As he attempts to raise the money to hire a guide to take him further, though, the world soon takes a turn for the worse…
Download: The RDZ Micro RPG XK from Dropbox
RDZWCMContest (The Island)
Back in the good old days of Clan WCM, we used to hold contests and do all kinds of fun community things. One of those contests spawned this hilariously absurdist take on my staple Expedition/Island thing. Bascule the Henrik lands on an island and the whole world is silent except for the music and him going “Heu!” and “Hai!” with every slash of his sword. The quest log is unused and all dialogue is in floating text triggered by selecting units again and again. The map is small but complete, though it could probably do with tightening up around the edges.
The Island
Somewhere in a parallel universe, Bascule comes upon a mysterious and wonderful tropical island…
Download: RDZWCMContest from Dropbox
Outpost ZX00
Born of my fascination with the singleplayer AoS mixed with my fascination for cramming a lot of stuff into a tiny space, Outpost ZX00 is an Unreal Tournament-esque experiment comprising four selectable arenas and three playable races. For each match, you pick an arena (arrow keys, then Escape) and a race and duke it out against a randomly selected enemy. It’s scrappy and positively ancient (it’s even got the original RDZ Industries “Twilight” and “HQ” models), but the idea (if not the execution) has some merit. The addition of some kind of meta-game between matches, a ladder of arenas perhaps Assault-style rather than symmetrical multiplayer affairs… Ah, well, it was never to be.
Outpost ZX00
Within the Wormhole, universes collide…
Upon a desolate planet, many forces battle amongst the shattered ruins of an ancient civilisation…
Choose a race. Choose an arena. Choose a game-type. And fight.
Download: Outpost ZX00 from Dropbox
Rao Dao Zao 
Could you upload your maps to Epicwar and Hive? If this website goes down, it will be lost… I can’t count the amount of fan made W3 websites that died…Now only with Archive.org it can be seen, and it’s a shame…
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These are “The Forgotten”, so to be honest, these are not worth saving. They are presented as historical curiosities only. Otherwise, I have invested a lot in this website and do not intend to let it crumble, as you can see from the very active blog (updated a mere 3 days ago).
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Hey RaoDaoZao, I’ve been your fan ever since I discovered This Wreckage. I came to download it again to play it for 10th time, I think. I don;t know, I stopped counting a year ago. I saw link to these maps, and have two questions about The Oasis. Will you ever release the Thrall Paladin in your models page? And my mind was blown by this… HOW THE HELL DID YOU USE BLIZZARD VOICES?!?! HOW?!?!
-tarik00555
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Hehe, it’s simple and cheap — I just extracted the in-game dialogue samples and did my best to chop out words and syllables and then ram them together again. Some sentences came out more convincing than others!
Well, I guess if there’s a desire for the Hammerite Thrall then maybe I can see about uploading him. I figured other people have probably done the same concept better, I’m just terrible about not-invented-here-ism in my maps.
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Damn… I thought you did some fancy stuff for the voices ’cause there isn’t a sign anywhere that they are choped or something else. And from what I’ve seen on Hive Workshop this Thrall with no wolf model is one of the better ones(except for the weapon). Thanks for the quick response!
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I dunno, there are a lot of really jarring tone-of-voice changes across individual lines, though I did try a bit to keep angry words together. Made actually writing the story bloody difficult.
Well, the hammer is just Thrall’s actual hammer with its handle stretched out. I am… often lazy.
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on the island contest map, i already 17000 gold but nothing happened. i dont know what to do next. help? 😀
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There is probably nothing to do next. None of these maps are guaranteed to be fully functional.
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nvm i just figured it out 🙂
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Sir, you gonna create a new map? 😀
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Who can say? Y4 R02 is the current project.
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Cool 😀 im looking forward to it!
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well, can you finish ‘the island’ rpg? I think it’s awesome and little bit funny
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Alas, no, it’s been dead for too long. I could never do it justice anyway, I’m not as funny as I used to be.
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I rather like your old maps. If the RDZWCM Contest Map is unprotected, mind if I screw around with its contents a little?
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As long as you don’t release anything without due credit (and a link back here), go nuts!
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Thanks man. I do have a question though; will the map break if I add another backpack, or will it act just the same? As in, do I need to copy the trigger for the other backpack?
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It won’t break, but I don’t think that backpack code is based on an array like the later stuff so you may need to unpick it a bit. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t work.
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