Death is a Circle (0.2.0)

Discussion and development of scenarios and campaigns for the game.

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Turuk
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Re: Death is a Circle, Version 0.1.0

Post by Turuk »

True, but it depends on the level of the person playing. That's one of the harder parts of designing a campaign, as you know the way people are supposed to play a scenario, but often they will approach it entirely differently.

If you make the mages come sooner, forcing the player south, that might help to have the player actually battle the Loyalists instead of stealing exp. Or maybe if the wall of corpses is smaller but the liches recruit more skeletons? The biggest thing is that there are so many allied troops that even with holy attacks, it takes the enemy a long time to cut through the ranks, which allows the player to get in the best position possible to sweep up the enemy units when they are low on hp.
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Re: Death is a Circle, Version 0.1.0

Post by orcish_orc »

Version 0.1.5 has been uploaded to the campaign server.

Changes:

*Dialogue, story text etc modified.
*Edited 1st scenario map
*Edited 2nd scenario (map, placement, recruit list, gold, dialogue)

I made the loyalist <--> 2 lichs swap in scenario 2. Spent some time today trying to balance it, but I guess I do need more eyes to look over it in order to truly balance. Right now I still have problems with AI stealing all my XP... stable, non-hackish multiple canrecruit=1 would be a godsend now.

My aim for this scenario, as it is, is to balance it such that if Mal Festo does nothing then the 2 lichs will lose and to have Mal Festo fight about half of the loyalist forces. Hoping to get a sort of co-ordinated, pincer-attack-on-loyalists feel here. Starting gold assumed to be ~120.

Also changed the dialogue and story text here and there, hopefully it is clearer now.

I'll release the edited 3rd scenario in v0.2.0. My plan is to split the enemies into three waves,

1) Cavalry wave
2) Lvl2 loyalist footsoldiers wave
3) Mages wave

to give it a better "holding scenario" feel.

Thanks to all who have provided feedback on v0.1.0! If you have time, please comment on the changes, such as whether the new scenario 2 is better (I certainly think so). Since scenario 1 did not change much, you could use :debug and :n to skip it.
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Re: Death is a Circle, Version 0.1.0

Post by jani »

okay

Scenario 1 was bit better i liked the map change coz now it was easier to complete whit onlly using walking corpses.

Scenario 2 was better too coz maybe its little harder now and now you can,t get 2 level 2 skeletons and one level 3 like i did last time.

Scenario 3 i liked the idea about cavalry wave and so on coz it really makes it more exiting.

scenario 4 dialoque is little bit easier to follow. nothing else to say.

scenario 5 well could you please tell me why is mal festo helping the elves and who is the lich whos comanding the ghosts. and why is mal festo helping the elves not the lich? and maybe you could add some kind of dialoque to this scenario coz if you think that the elves are fighting lich then suddenly other one pops up so wouldnt it be reasonable that the elves attack you too? and are you gona fix this to 0.2.0 too?
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Re: Death is a Circle, Version 0.1.0

Post by Turuk »

Scenario 2 is much harder now Orcish_orc, good job.

My only comments are the following

-With loyalists in the middle, and then the two mages that come behind you, it has been made much much harder. Add to the fact that fully half of the loyalist army came north first, and my troops got decimated. I made it to the end of the scenario with a total of 5 units. Only 2 of which were leveled.
-The event where the general becomes yours still has the old spawn point, down in the south at the old castle. My thought was that he should probably come back at his new location in the middle.
-One big problem I had with this was that with the loyalists in the middle, a great deal of time was spent fighting there, obviously. But then I killed my enemies, and it took 4 turns of doing nothing but moving Malus to the signpost. I know that's a goal that is supposed to be done at the same time as killing the enemy, but you really cannot sneak him past the Loyalists until they are dead.

Hope some of this helps.
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Re: Death is a Circle, Version 0.1.0

Post by orcish_orc »

First of all, does anyone know how to change the topic title (which is currently "Death is a Circle, Version 0.1.0"), I forgot that I would update the version number when starting this topic.

jani:

So you also managed to figure out how to steal XP in the old scenario 2...hmm...

Regarding scenario 5, no unfortunately I don't think I can fix it by 0.2.0. I'm still thinking of something to replace it with.

Turuk:

Ok I'll make the scenario easier and clean up the old code. Thanks.
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Re: Death is a Circle, Version 0.1.0

Post by AI »

Edit your first post in the thread.
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Re: Death is a Circle

Post by orcish_orc »

Ah, much thanks.
y0urb0ss
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Re: Death is a Circle

Post by y0urb0ss »

Hey. y0urb0ss here. Sorry for the extremely long afk.
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Re: Death is a Circle

Post by orcish_orc »

Yo.

He's the map designer in case you guys forgot.
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Re: Death is a Circle

Post by y0urb0ss »

This campaign started pretty early off in the year (probably June or July), where we came up with a suitable complicated storyline. I stopped working on it in the early August due to school (i believe orcish_orc did too :D), where this was after we were half done with the 3rd scenario wml, the 7th scenario map.

orcish_orc continued campaign making after exams (late octobers) and due to miscommunication certain portion of the story didnt go with the main storyline, especially the introduction (we have a book for undead spells?) and the complicated scenario 4 and 5. Due to a change in computers i lost the initial storyline so i had to redo portions of the conversations between the characters and the intro of each scenario thru memory work. I am further going to explain scenario 1-5 here for easy reference. (we do have the whole story after scenario 5, but saying it here will just spoil the fun :D) Get ready for a really long post.....

scenario 1 serves as an intro to the whole campaign, where it is just simply an ancient lich Mal Valros wanted the Apocalypse Orb (we later know it is for abominable experiments, from scenario2intro). scenario1intro sheds a certain information of a 'powerful being', which we do not know. We also see that necromancer Zolgon is the one that initiated this plan to get the orb. A basic idea of how powerful the orb is randomly shown throughout the 5 scenarios (and further 6-10). For example the ability to kill Immortals, its other name is called the immortality orb, and so on.

So Mal Valros sends you (Mal Festo) to go retrieve the orb, and for the first three scenarios is just like a wild goose chase, where you clash with loyalists. This is just to set a tone for an undead campaign. We also show that necromancer Zolgon really wants the orb, and at the 4th scenario it is clearly stated that Zolgon wants to take over the realm of the undead. We do try to make an impact towards the players that liches have problems in necromancy throughout this few missions.

Ok, now for scenario 4. Zolgon is a necromancer *not a lich*. When his sorcerer passes him the orb, Zolgon betrays Mal Valros and kills him with the orb. Though refering from the scenario4intro, the orb cannot destroy the living thus it transforms them to undead, where Zen and Zack are turned to liches. (we rename Zen and Zack to Mal Zen and Mal Zack after the transformation.)

Mal Zen and Mal Zack regroup with the other 3 liches after this betrayal, where Mal Zack tells the group to go find a lich which has good necromancy skills so they can learn and fight back against Zolgon. This lich (Mal Valen) is locked up in prison for practising 'life necromancy' which only necromancers can do. Saving this guy in prison is basically scenario 5 itself, where the wind is simply just a ghost army (orcish_orc probably confused this and threw in random undead units, and note that the lich is not commanding the undead units, he is locked up inside. I will probably redo the map for this scenario and scrap the elves, i only wanted elves in so that the other liches can practice their 'life necromancy' after the elves help them fight against the ghost army.) In the end Mal Zack (again) tell the others to go confront Zolgon by assaulting the undead fortress.

Ok, so i hope now the story will be clearer to understand :D . Phew tat was tiring.
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Turuk
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Re: Death is a Circle

Post by Turuk »

Tiring, but worth it, I just want to say I appreciate it.

I have played through what exists on the server so far, and I have already talked with orcish_orc about the seeming gaps in storyline and the jumping around of people and plot. Your explanation makes much more coherent sense, and so I hope to see the direction you take the campaign in now. :)
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Re: Death is a Circle

Post by y0urb0ss »

sorry for the double post erm orcish_orc will upload the changes soon we did redo some bugs and made changes to the storyline but we are still working on scenario 3 and 5. scenario 6 will be hell lot of wml. And we are going off for camp for 4 days GMT +8 from Monday to Thursday, so we will be back at Friday to work on this campaign. So forgive us if we never reply to questions during this period of time. Thankyou.

(and Turuk you do post really fast :D)
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Re: Death is a Circle

Post by Turuk »

Noted, I will check back on Friday and play the new version, and hopefully offer some feedback on the scenarios.

Ah, well, it's a very useful form of procrastination when working to check the forums. :lol2:
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Re: Death is a Circle

Post by y0urb0ss »

ok so far after working for probably an hour on map 3 and 5 i concentrated the villages towards the gate. Playtested it, and damn it was pretty difficult. Orcish_orc is not here yet so i will let him balance it a little after he comes back. For map 5 i radically changed the whole thing, and threw away the elves. So basically now you just use ur own army to fight the ghosts, then land on a certain tile to rescue the guy trapped in the prison. Will get my other friends to playtest this whole thing. Note: scenario 3, we may try killing off the other units and shroud everything outside the gate. Then end the mission. Plus we are making the other liches heroes, so if they die the mission ends. (last time the liches die without anything happening, then theres problem with the dialogue.) orcish_orc will probably upload this at maybe saturday, b4 we go for camp.
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Re: Death is a Circle

Post by orcish_orc »

Version 0.1.6 (minor updates only) has been uploaded to the campaign server.

Changes:

1) Removed old leftover scenario 2 code from 0.1.5, including General --> Grand Marshal bug, old spawn point
2) Removed win by moving to tile. Now just win by killing Sir Icery however you have a choice after killing him on whether to leave or stay and kill the rest.

I really can't remember when I decided that the orb came with a book. I guess it was while I was sleepy. :annoyed:

Turuk: I set the forum to email me when someone replies in this thread, so now my procrastination takes less time (check email rather than check email + forum).

Edit: y0urb0ss pointed out that the uploaded version doesn't seem to contain the changes. I passed my changes and my pbl to him and asked him to upload, did not see the changes either. :augh:

Edit2: It seems to work now. y0urb0ss has made some changes to the dialogue.
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