From Darkness to Light (FDtL)

[Eolith]

This is a new campaign based on the new era "The Dark Century." I have been posting my work on FDtL under Era and Faction Contributions with my era for a while, but it seems better to put it in this forum instead (most of the other users who are working with me indicated their agreement with this yesterday.)

FDtL is concerned with the plight of the remnants of an Elvish kingdom after the fall of Wesnoth. All that is left to the Elves is the forest that once contained their capital, and the Elves have too few warriors to defend it. As a result, they have accepted Human and Orcish refugees into the relative safety of the "Golden Wood." For most of a century nobody was brave enough to attack the Elf/Human/Orc alliance in the forest, until whole nations began to move south. Large Orcish tribes were fleeing before a powerful enemy, and several of these tribes happened to enter the "Golden Wood." Elvduil is forced to organize the defense of his home with the aid of an old wise woman, Evdokhia. And the story goes on from there.

I currently have a plan for 26 scenarios, although that length may change based on my ability to do the work. I currently have 6 scenarios completed that are being play-tested, and I am doing some testing myself before continuing with the seventh scenario. I intend to post the campaign here sometime during the next few days. If anyone is interested in helping out, whether with coding, art, or play-testing, please let me know. Questions and comments are welcome, and, in fact, desired since they will help to develop a high quality, challenging, and enjoyable campaign.

Thankyou.

[Turuk]

A few notes

-First scenario is interesting, having to balance the strategies of two sides and coordinate their efforts in order to win is fun
-It's a great scenario to use to milk exp. You have the settings as Difficult, Challenging, Exceptional, but I played through the first one on both Difficult and Challenging, and Difficult is not that difficult. As long as you use the terrain to your advantage, you will overcome the enemy leaders eventually. You have manpower and time to do so. I do remember ending Difficult with 4 level 3's just on red's side alone, plus at least 4 level 2's.
-Going into Scenario 2, it does not work, the error message pops up about an unknown Sage unit.

[Eolith]

-Going into Scenario 2, it does not work, the error message pops up about an unknown Sage unit.

Is it doing that again?!?!? I could have sworn I had fixed that. I will have to take another look at the coding.

-It's a great scenario to use to milk exp. You have the settings as Difficult, Challenging, Exceptional, but I played through the first one on both Difficult and Challenging, and Difficult is not that difficult. As long as you use the terrain to your advantage, you will overcome the enemy leaders eventually. You have manpower and time to do so. I do remember ending Difficult with 4 level 3's just on red's side alone, plus at least 4 level 2's.

I set it up that way intentionally. You will need the strong units later, as you run into more powerful enemies. You might find Scenario 5 Slave Revolt more interesting, though. That involves the clash of large armies. (I have not had the time to test it, so I don't know for certain that it works as I planned.) As for overcoming enemy leaders, I found it difficult to deal with the Walking Trees until I changed the map so they could not easily head south. Still, this is only the first scenario. I don't believe I included any in which it is easy to build back up if you suffered heavy losses in a previous scenario.

-First scenario is interesting, having to balance the strategies of two sides and coordinate their efforts in order to win is fun

I first came across a co-op campaign in Northern Rebirth, but there you cannot play as two players until something like the 6th scenario. Originally, you could only play as the Outcasts in FDtL until reaching the 4th scenario, but I did not like that so I changed it, partly because the Outcasts alone cannot beat all their enemies. After all, spears, nets, bows, and long knives are not much good against trees, while the torches used by the Arkadians scouts are.

I will try to find the time to test the campaign and find out why the second scenario is not working sometime this week. Hopefully I will also be able to post two more completed scenarios. It all depends on whether my schedule gets torn up again.

[Turuk]

Fair enough, I thought that might have been the reasoning for getting so many leveled units, but it was hard to tell as I could not get past the first scenario. I will check back here to download the fixed version to move on.

I compiled this list just for your notes, of all the missing graphics.

Scout->Raider->Pillager line is missing all three.

Lvl 2 Dark Hunter and Lvl 3 Cave Trapper.
Lvl 2 Dragon Hunter as well.

Lvl 2 Ranger Scout and Lvl 3 Ranger Farseer.

[Eolith]

Hopefully I will find time tomorrow to upload an update for FDtL. My schedule is kind of messed up, though, since Thanksgiving is this Thursday. *Sigh,* I am beginning to wonder if I am trying to juggle too many stories at once (at least three, two of which I am actively working on. That includes FDtL.) I have put FDtL on hold for a while, so I will try to reallocate some of my time to troubleshooting existing scenarios and creating new ones. I hope you like Assassins, because they are probably going to start showing up around the 8th or 9th scenario.

[Turuk]

When you get the update up, I will playtest more of it Eolith and tell you how it goes. Once I can get to Scenario 2 that is. Good luck with finding time during the holidays though, traveling home to visit family always leaves me swamped.

I think I may have found the problem why I cannot get into the second scenario though, it's because the Sage hero unit died around turn 12, but his death does not cause an end to the scenario. So when I finally won, I cannot go on because I do not have him. I am going to try and go back to test that out.

[Eolith]

Oh, ok. Thanks for letting me know. The game should be lost if Evdokhia is killed, but for some reason the utils do not work in-game. I will have to install the hero-deaths event in each individual scenario. Meanwhile, simply try not to get your heroes killed. Things might work a little better.

[Turuk]

Indeed, I just completely forgot that he was a hero, and so when he died I did not think much of it, but I realized he is the Sage that is causing the error. No problem, just edited my save to let me move on.

[Eolith]

Good. That is one problem I won't have to fix when I start working on this stuff during the next few minutes.

(39 minutes later...) I have an upload now with some fixes and scenarios 7, 8, and 9 added.

[Eolith]

Here is the latest update for FDtL. Scenario 10 is included, as are several new units. I redid unit stats again to help balance out some weaknesses. It may be a while until I can post the 11th scenario, because it is going to be the most complicated yet.

[Turuk]

Nice to know that this has not been abandoned. I will give it another run-through.

You should put it up on the add-on server Eolith.

[jani]

for which brach is this made for 1.4 or 1.5????
and please put it in add on server

[Turuk]

It is written for 1.4 Jani.

[jani]

kk ty turuk

[Eolith]

Ok, I will try to put these files on the Add-on sever tomorrow. I do not have time tonight. I am sorry that I did not reply sooner, but I could not reach the forum web site two days ago (too many users logged on) and I had no chance to check on it yesterday.

Oh, and I changed Scenario 10. I need a new macro because of a special event that occurs during the scenario (at least, a macro new to me.) I will need to replace one unit with another of a different team, but still in the same place. I have not yet managed to figure out how to do this. Also, Scenario 11 should have one enemy show up at a random time during the scenario, but I do not know how to code that in. I will warn you, though, the scenarios do get more complicated and confusing later on, both to play, and more so to code. I will need to remove some of the confusion issue once I figure out how to code this stuff correctly.