[Historical] Northern Rebirth Going Mainline

This is the place for discussing development of mainline campaigns, reporting bugs in them and providing overall feedback.

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Dare2
Posts: 4
Joined: June 26th, 2007, 11:54 am

Post by Dare2 »

More on your campaign.

I got through Clearing the Mines by cheating - I edited the cfg and gave myself more gold. :oops:

Anyhow ...

The Pursuit is awesome. Big, but awesome. Congrats. That scenario has everything needed for good gaming experience. It has suspence, uncertainty about success, mystery, suprises. It has clearcut results. You feel you have achieved something when you clear an area, free prisoners, etc. This is the way a long scenario (in fact any scenario) should be in my books. Congrats.

The next scenario is a bit of a timewaster as far as I can see, good only for promoting a few units. At my level of experience there was no way I could get enough units out of the cave before the enemy were cramming to get in. Thereafter they were five cells deep and ten (diagonal) wide at all times, with others piling in. After my early (and tiny) gains near the cavemouth were lost it was a case of slogging it out in the two-wide entrance. Can something be added?

BTW: Storyline: What is the relationship between Father Marcus and Sister Theta? At first I thought they were father/daughter but now it seems they may be husband/wife?

In Clearing the Mines and in the initial scenario perhaps you could trigger something like "demoralisation" in the enemy when say a majority of warlords or the head honcho get nailed. Then apply something like "Across the harsh Sands" (in a very good - so far - elven campaign) where each turn some life force is lost. Only you apply it to enemy units. Or maybe enemy recruitment stops. This would reduce the mopping up and end the game a little sooner when all is said and done but the AI doesn't realise it.

Good campaign. Good enough that I keep trying.

(I am now stuck on the "settling disputes" scenario, too hard at the mo for this newb. And one or two quite funny bits of dialogue when a white mage cops it.)


Edit:

I think on the easiest level you need to scale down / ramp up a couple of scenarios:

Way to shorten things after mid-game in initial Scenario
Way to shorten things and newbie boost of gold in Clearing the Mines.
Settling Disputes - jury is out. I won't win this one unless there is a trigger. That darn allied dwarf is suicidal.
And add some additional quirks to the fillers above-ground?
palloco
Posts: 136
Joined: April 3rd, 2004, 9:28 pm

Post by palloco »

santi wrote:On Infested caves, has this been playtested on hard?
There is a walkthrough and Eleazar outlined a strategy, but I do not think it works on hard. I also tried this, but after I clear the north trolls, there is a door with just more undead....
I have no problem holding north and south with 3-4 rotating units at the chokepoints. I also get the mage quickly to the main front. The problem is that the undead arrive in force near my keep(it is advantageous to fight near the keep), as I can rotate units and send to the nearby villages for healing, while further east there are no villages until the main opening and there you stand no chance. The point is that the undead keep on coming in hordes: I can hold, but pushing east is out of question, as one quickly gets too many losses to continue. A couple of villages or a pinch point limiting the flux of undead east, or more turns might help
, but I really think the enemy has way too much gold on hard.
So again, has this been playtested on hard?
It seems not possible to win this map in nightmare level. I killed southern troll, and I probably woud be able to kill northern troll and southern undead by playing better, but I would need more turns to kill others. Northern undead get blocked in their cave with trolls.
I will keep trying but it does not seem to be possible after my first try.
gabe
Posts: 180
Joined: December 15th, 2006, 1:15 am
Location: an island in the pacific

Post by gabe »

I played Northern Rebirth for the first few scenarios a while ago. Now its going mainline (congrats). The first scenario with the all peasant army is crazy not in a negative way or anything and it fits the rest of the story but the problem I had was easily identifing Tallin amoungst all of the other peasants. Even with the crown he sometimes got lost in the crowd. Making him look different would have been a great help as that is the norm for most UMC have a unique sprite for the hero/leader. Even if it involved just color changes or something simple it would help even with the leveled up versions of Tallin.

If this has all ready been addressed or is stupid please disregard.
happy timezone traveler
Dare2
Posts: 4
Joined: June 26th, 2007, 11:54 am

Post by Dare2 »

Final feedback from me.

The game kept my interest. However at the easy level it is too hard so not a game for beginners. If this is going mainline I think you need to make the newbie level easier otherwise new wesnoth-ers will play the game and will become demoralised.

In the big scenarios with huge numbers of units the game slows down massively during AI turn and cursor movement can be a bit sluggish during own turns. Even with everything from sound to animation of AI move turned off the wait during AI is far too long.

I don't think it is a problem with my pc as I can play other games, including 3D and with lots of units, etc, without that sort of lag.

This is probably a problem with the engine however as I know zero about the scripting maybe there is something in there you can tweak?

"Showdown" is unplayable here on easist level so assuming the AI unit numbers are at least equivalent at the harder levels it is probably the same with them. Within a few turns the AI was so slow I watched a Wimbleton set whilst waiting for my turn and was still waiting when the match finished. Changing to windowed mode and watching processes showed 50% cpu usage and at times task manager thought the thing was not responding. :)

Assuming others will have the same issues, that slowness probably needs to be addressed before this can go mainline.

There are a few typos, you hit "o" instead of "p" a few times, usually after an "s". Forget where now but if you do a search for "so" in your cfgs I think you will find a few.

Resolve the hard and the slow, though, and this is a winner. Great storyline, some excellent scenarios, some good humour in the dialogue, and it engenders a desire to go on.

Cya
jonadab
Posts: 148
Joined: October 7th, 2005, 2:33 am
Location: Ohio
Contact:

Post by jonadab »

Dare2 wrote:The game kept my interest. However at the easy level it is too hard so not a game for beginners. If this is going mainline I think you need to make the newbie level easier otherwise new wesnoth-ers will play the game and will become demoralised.
I tend to agree that this campaign is hard compared to the other mainline ones (particularly HttT and TRoW). Playing on the same nominal difficulty level (normal/medium in my case) I find NR rather harder.

I am tempted to suggest merely renaming the difficulty levels, so that "easy" becomes "normal", "normal" becomes "hard", "hard" becomes "excruciating", and so forth. However, I've only played on normal/medium, so perhaps I am not seeing the complete picture.
I write Bible School materials:
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Angry Andersen
Posts: 205
Joined: September 15th, 2006, 1:22 pm

Post by Angry Andersen »

I have a minor suggestion:
In the very last scenario ('showdown' I think) all these lvl3 orc guards have no traits - that's like 30 identical lvl3 grunts and 30 identical lvl3 archers. Would it be possible to give them traits for a little bit more flavor?

This should also make them slightly stronger, which would allow for a minor reduction in the total number of orcs without changing the difficulty (a small contribution to solving the above mentioned speed-issue).
Taurus
Inactive Developer
Posts: 674
Joined: May 4th, 2005, 8:16 pm
Location: Canada

Post by Taurus »

Hello everyone

First of all, I apologize for taking so long to reply. I have been away camping for the past month so I haven't been able to get to a computer.

Thank you everyone for the valuable feedback, and I please don't be worried about it being old or outdated. I would rather hear an outdated comment, then no comment at all. I am also in the middle of rebalancing the entire campaign, so this feedback has come at prime time.

The most major issue that has been brought up, I feel, is the size of the scenarios, too much 'slugging it out' and consequently making the whole campaign slow down. Although this campaign will always have bigger then usual battles, I agree that some of them need to be toned down, or otherwise shaken up. I'll get on to it.

About infested caves - it is the process of a pretty major shakedown. The latest release should be playable, but it is still not optimized yet. It should be by the next release.

The difficulities, I agree, should be a bit more in line with the other campaigns. About the orcs in the last scenarios having traits - I agree, it's a good idea. It may not get done right away though, but it it is a good suggestion.

Another thing, I originally made this thread so that I could get feedback on the idea of Northern Rebirth going mainline. I think it has outlived it's purpose and should be locked. For further feedback, please post it in this thread:

http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic. ... 022#240022
Creater of the campaign, "Northern Rebirth"

Compleater of the campaign, "Son of the Black Eye"
Locked