The Fall of Wesnoth Campaign version 0.0.12 released

[Huston]

You can not win scenario 4 since (apart from the ridiculous amount of enemies) when you reach the signpost the level does not end.

what difficulty level were you on?

[xbriannova]

I have played your campaign and I love it! It's a really early version, so I won't penalise it for anything. However, I will tell you what needs improving... and what doesn't .

Crippling issues:

1)The second scenario could not be loaded after my victory with the first. It mentioned something about an illegal character 'Co' or something. I didn't print screen it, sorry.

Minor issues:

1)There is no music for the first scenario. It would really help if it does. Try selecting some of the darker or heart-pounding tracks that would really reflect the final days of the mighty Wesnothian kingdoms.

2)The orcs were rather tactless in their assault. Try to improve their AI such that they would make calculated assaults. I don't really like it either that they're attacking so aggressively in broad daylight. The way I see it, if I were them I'd pressure a single point during the night to break through the peasant hordes. But then again, all this might be a good thing. See my list of praises to understand what I mean.

3)The character dialogues seemed one dimensional. Try to add more personality to them.

4)When the turn limit ends, a prince comes to the rescue with his army. There is nothing wrong with that, but what I hate is the composition of his army. It seems to consist of one unit of each type of soldier. It seems weird in the sense that it invokes a feeling of chaos and mismanagement. Wesnoth is falling because it lacks soldiers, but there's no mention of the drop of quality in professional Wesnothian armies.

Good features:

1)Your map design is superb. I like it.

2)The AI seems to fit well with the typical orc mentality- they seem to underestimate the peasants, and therefore they did not bother with tactics and neither did they fear battle during the day. I think it could work out this way. If you want it to be harder, however, you could always adhere to what I said in the Minor issues section.

3) The way the battle goes has a nice feeling to it- it seems to inspire a sense of dread, the fact that Wesnoth is really falling. The way I was winning at first, but victory was quickly slipping away when many peasants were killed off simultaneously and those who were on the verge of advancing died off. Nice. Well done. Splendid . In case you're interested to know, out of about a dozen of those who could have leveled up, only 2 did managed it. A woodsman leveled up twice to become a trapper and a peasant advanced into a spearman.

I can't wait for the next update to this thrilling campaign on the whole .

[Huston]

1)The second scenario could not be loaded after my victory with the first. It mentioned something about an illegal character 'Co' or something. I didn't print screen it, sorry.

should be fixed, just be sure you have the Wesnoth 1.7 Terrain Pack installed (you are on 1.6 right?)

1)There is no music for the first scenario. It would really help if it does. Try selecting some of the darker or heart-pounding tracks that would really reflect the final days of the mighty Wesnothian kingdoms.

it does have music but you will not hear it unless you have the UMC Music installed(required for music in both this and rebellion)

3)The character dialogues seemed one dimensional. Try to add more personality to them.

This is something the great rings needs to address.

It never gets there since you kill everyone just before. The filter goes directly in [kill].

You can not win scenario 4 since (apart from the ridiculous amount of enemies) when you reach the signpost the level does not end.

fixed i also removed some orcs from scenario 4

In the following scenario Gwadoc turns back into a level 1 Sergeant with no XP even so I leveled him in the first scenario

should now be fixed.

and version 0.0.9c is uploaded.
it is just a bug fix first 5 scenarios are still all that is done. i am hoping to have scenario 6 published before the end of the week.

[TheGreatRings]

I have played your campaign and I love it! It's a really early version, so I won't penalise it for anything. However, I will tell you what needs improving... and what doesn't .

Thank you. For the criticisms as well as the praise. However, I'm mostly just going to address those aspects of your post that relate to the writing, as that's what I've been working on.

Minor issues:

1)There is no music for the first scenario. It would really help if it does. Try selecting some of the darker or heart-pounding tracks that would really reflect the final days of the mighty Wesnothian kingdoms.

I played the first scenario, and it had music. So this makes no sense to me.

2)The orcs were rather tactless in their assault. Try to improve their AI such that they would make calculated assaults. I don't really like it either that they're attacking so aggressively in broad daylight. The way I see it, if I were them I'd pressure a single point during the night to break through the peasant hordes. But then again, all this might be a good thing. See my list of praises to understand what I mean.

They were tactless indeed. Truth be told, I'm a little disapointed with the first scenario, as I find its a little too easy. Just spam limitless peasents, and line up along the river bank to butcher orcs. I should have forseen this when writing it, I suppose.

I might add another ford somewhere, and make the river less wide, personally. However, I am rather ignorant and inexpereinced when it comes to balancing, and any changes in that respect are up to Huston.

However, I would add that this is a first scenario, so I'm not sure it should be extremely difficult.

3)The character dialogues seemed one dimensional. Try to add more personality to them.

Could you elaborate? It would help if you provided some specific examples of dialog that you found disapointing or problematic, or some suggestions for improvements. Right now the most I can say is that I'll keep this critique in mind, but that its rather vague.

Thanks for bringing this up though, as one of my priorities while writing this is to make the characters more complex and believable.

4)When the turn limit ends, a prince comes to the rescue with his army. There is nothing wrong with that, but what I hate is the composition of his army. It seems to consist of one unit of each type of soldier. It seems weird in the sense that it invokes a feeling of chaos and mismanagement. Wesnoth is falling because it lacks soldiers, but there's no mention of the drop of quality in professional Wesnothian armies.

I'll keep that in mind, though the composition of the force wasn't really my decision. In hindsite, I might have suggested a pure cavalry force. Balance doesn't really matter since it doesn't actually fight, and a fast response force rushing to the aid of a besieged village would make more sense as a predominantly cavalry force. What do you think of this idea?

2)The AI seems to fit well with the typical orc mentality- they seem to underestimate the peasants, and therefore they did not bother with tactics and neither did they fear battle during the day. I think it could work out this way. If you want it to be harder, however, you could always adhere to what I said in the Minor issues section.

I'm actually disapointed to hear you say this, even if you meant it as a good thing. While their is a certain mentality common among orcs, I would like to downplay or avoid the racial steriotyping that exists in so much of fantasy writing. Little teaser here: the orcs' society will play a big role later on.

Though to be fair to the orcs, if you were in their place, would you be scared of a few peasents?

3) The way the battle goes has a nice feeling to it- it seems to inspire a sense of dread, the fact that Wesnoth is really falling. The way I was winning at first, but victory was quickly slipping away when many peasants were killed off simultaneously and those who were on the verge of advancing died off. Nice. Well done. Splendid . In case you're interested to know, out of about a dozen of those who could have leveled up, only 2 did managed it. A woodsman leveled up twice to become a trapper and a peasant advanced into a spearman.

Glad to hear this. Though, I have to ask if you were neglecting your villages if you only managed to recruit a dozen guys.

I had no trouble in terms of running out of peasents, but I ran into the same issue in trying to level units. The peasents die so easily to the orcs' attacks. If you've played the previous campaign "Rebellion During the Dark Ages," I was trying to immitate the experience I had with that campaing, which was that the individual fights were not too hard to ultimately win, but tended to involve heavy casualties due to unfavorable terrain and higher-level enemies. A high body count, I think, also fits the idea of a collapsing Kingdom slowly being overrun.

[Huston]

i'm not really sure how to make the ai perform better but i do know that it should be performing the best currently on hard. has any1 other than soliton managed to kill the leader for scenario 1?


For future feedback please include the difficulty level you were playing on(this way i know which to balance better)

[xbriannova]

I was playing on Normal difficulty and I didn't kill the enemy leader.

Whoa ! I didn't expect two guys to reply me and in such great detail . I'll take my time to reply.

should be fixed, just be sure you have the Wesnoth 1.7 Terrain Pack installed (you are on 1.6 right?)

it does have music but you will not hear it unless you have the UMC Music installed(required for music in both this and rebellion)

Oh yes, silly me. I kinda ignored the warning at the start that I don't have them. I thought they would be automatically installed but I guess I was wrong.

Thank you. For the criticisms as well as the praise. However, I'm mostly just going to address those aspects of your post that relate to the writing, as that's what I've been working on.

Cool, no problem.

I played the first scenario, and it had music. So this makes no sense to me.

Yeah its no fault of yours. I didn't get the technical aspects right.

They were tactless indeed. Truth be told, I'm a little disapointed with the first scenario, as I find its a little too easy. Just spam limitless peasents, and line up along the river bank to butcher orcs. I should have forseen this when writing it, I suppose.

I might add another ford somewhere, and make the river less wide, personally. However, I am rather ignorant and inexpereinced when it comes to balancing, and any changes in that respect are up to Huston.

However, I would add that this is a first scenario, so I'm not sure it should be extremely difficult.

Personally, I think you should do what you want. I have zero experience before I started working on a campaign, and yet I'm handling everything from coding to images to mapping and writing. I think anyone should be able to do the same, especially when that someone is more experienced than me. I mean, face it, I failed advanced mathematics and I had borderline in art when I was in secondary school/grade 7-10. I never liked math topics like logarithms and anything else harder than graphs and algebra and my drawings resemble nothing of an adult's. You should be able to make a difference in any field in the development of The Battle for Wesnoth if I could.

Regarding difficulty, it all depends the way I see it. If this entire campaign is meant for beginners then the first scenario should be easy. If its meant for the experienced, then it should be of average or hard difficulty. The way this is going, I think it's fine the way it is.

Could you elaborate? It would help if you provided some specific examples of dialog that you found disapointing or problematic, or some suggestions for improvements. Right now the most I can say is that I'll keep this critique in mind, but that its rather vague.

Thanks for bringing this up though, as one of my priorities while writing this is to make the characters more complex and believable.

It's the Orcish leader I found peculiar. Look at his lines... "Those aren't just any reinforcements! That is The Prince's personal battalion!" "The human traitors are few and ill-prepared. Take them by storm and bring me their captain's head. Put the men in chains and the women and children to the sword. Attack!" "The cursed humans fight better than expected."

It could be anyone saying that and if it weren't for the portrait I would have thought that it was some Human. It lacks personality and it doesn't exhibit any special racial speech patterns and orcish conventions. Regarding personality, there's nothing in the dialogue that shows anything special about him. I can't tell if he's bloodthirsty or unusually kind. The only thing I can tell is that he's there to lob off human heads and maybe he's a little brutal and merciless but that's it.

What I would suggest is to perhaps allow him to stress a few words. For example, if you want him to be the typical bloodthirsty orc, you could have done it this way...

"The CURSED humans fight better than expected!"

Or maybe you could add additional dialogues that would showcase his character. For example, you could have him say,

"Yes. Yes! Chop them to pieces! Break them apart!!!" or

"KILL them all!!! Our wolves are hungry and these cattles will do fine!" or

"You FOOLS! How DARE you let those human whelps push you from the shore!" when the player is on the verge of winning.

When an Orcish unit first encountered a Human unit. Although, that might make him sound a little dim so you'd have to tweak that sentence a little. Look at how Orcs talk in the mainline campaigns. You don't have to follow some of the stereotypical lines though. I don't like them either- the dialogues that seem to depict Orcs as really idiotic or straightforward when in the world of Wesnoth, they are particularly cunning and brutal which doesn't mean they had to be stupid as a tradeoff.

Here's how I try to express the personality of my characters... These lines are taken from my campaign:

Code: Select all

	  [message]
		speaker=Buckanwald
		message= _ "What? Oh, nothing... Just urm... Join the rest in battle. Good work."
	  [/message]

Code: Select all

        [message]
            speaker=Buckanwald
            message= _ "But sir, I am but a-"
        [/message]

Code: Select all

        [message]
            speaker=Maldor
            message= _ "Marauders! Raise the alarm! Lord Chetallion has been assassinated!"
        [/message]
        [message]
            speaker=Buckanwald
            message= _ "What! T-to arms!"
        [/message]
        [message]
            speaker=Aldryn
            message= _ "What are our orders milord?"
        [/message]
        [message]
            speaker=Buckanwald
            message= _ "Ur... Erm..."
        [/message]
        [message]
            speaker=Aldryn
            message= _ "Sir?"
        [/message]
        [message]
            speaker=Celith
            message= _ "South of our command centre lies a thick river. We should form a line on the northern banks and concentrate our forces on the fort overlooking the bridge."
        [/message]
        [message]
            speaker=Buckanwald
            message= _ "Alright, thanks. Reinforce the south! A-arm the villagers, gather any local militia!"
        [/message]
        [message]
            speaker=Eryhan the black
            message= _ "Hah! A mere lad put in the stead of the commander? Victory's as good as ours! Pillage the villages, leave no man alive!"
        [/message]
        [message]
            speaker=Celith
            message= _ "Buckanwald, order some men into the forests to the south-east as well, to halt the advancements of the bandits and to protect the villagers dwelling there."
        [/message]

Sir Buckanwald, as you can see, if a relatively new and young officer for the Guardian Order and it shows from how he is usually uncertain and nervous. This is more obvious as his advisor had to help him from time to time when advisors are meant to be consulted when the circumstances are tough.

In order to create a personality, there must be speech patterns. In this case, Sir Buckanwald thens to stutter and drag his sentences as though he was thinking really hard to no avail as he was caught off-guard with his superior assassinated all of a sudden. You should introduce speech patterns, and some mechanisms in order to showcase the personality of your characters.

I'll keep that in mind, though the composition of the force wasn't really my decision. In hindsite, I might have suggested a pure cavalry force. Balance doesn't really matter since it doesn't actually fight, and a fast response force rushing to the aid of a besieged village would make more sense as a predominantly cavalry force. What do you think of this idea?

Sounds like a good idea to me . If you want, you could have a pure infantry force trailing behind them.

I'm actually disapointed to hear you say this, even if you meant it as a good thing. While their is a certain mentality common among orcs, I would like to downplay or avoid the racial steriotyping that exists in so much of fantasy writing. Little teaser here: the orcs' society will play a big role later on.

Though to be fair to the orcs, if you were in their place, would you be scared of a few peasents?

I'm actually saying mostly the same thing as you... I think the way the Orcs act is a good thing because an army of peasants is usually not much danger at all, not even to a Human army. I wasn't saying that they were acting the way they are because they are stereotypical orcs, but because they regard the army opposing them to be hardly dangerous and they were supposed to be right.

Glad to hear this. Though, I have to ask if you were neglecting your villages if you only managed to recruit a dozen guys.

I had no trouble in terms of running out of peasents, but I ran into the same issue in trying to level units. The peasents die so easily to the orcs' attacks. If you've played the previous campaign "Rebellion During the Dark Ages," I was trying to immitate the experience I had with that campaing, which was that the individual fights were not too hard to ultimately win, but tended to involve heavy casualties due to unfavorable terrain and higher-level enemies. A high body count, I think, also fits the idea of a collapsing Kingdom slowly being overrun.

No, no! You're misunderstanding what I said. I didn't recruit a dozen guys, I was saying that about twelve of them were on the verge of leveling up. I didn't neglect any villages.

Anyway, then you've done well with this campaign. All the elements are there to bring that sense of dread I experienced. Cheers.

[TheGreatRings]

Regarding difficulty, it all depends the way I see it. If this entire campaign is meant for beginners then the first scenario should be easy. If its meant for the experienced, then it should be of average or hard difficulty. The way this is going, I think it's fine the way it is.

I believe we were aiming for moderate dificulty. Not a beginer campaign, but not one of the very hardest ones either.

I was also trying to immitate the experience I had playing the prior campaign, Rebellion During the Dark Ages. Specifically, I found that I could win without too much difficulty, but that I tended to suffer very high losses due to bad terrain and high level enemies.

It's the Orcish leader I found peculiar. Look at his lines... "Those aren't just any reinforcements! That is The Prince's personal battalion!" "The human traitors are few and ill-prepared. Take them by storm and bring me their captain's head. Put the men in chains and the women and children to the sword. Attack!" "The cursed humans fight better than expected."

It could be anyone saying that and if it weren't for the portrait I would have thought that it was some Human. It lacks personality and it doesn't exhibit any special racial speech patterns and orcish conventions. Regarding personality, there's nothing in the dialogue that shows anything special about him. I can't tell if he's bloodthirsty or unusually kind. The only thing I can tell is that he's there to lob off human heads and maybe he's a little brutal and merciless but that's it.

As before, I'm trying to avoid the racial steriotyping so common in fantasy. That's not to say that I'm ignoring cultural differences between, say, the orcish hordes and Wesnoth, but if the orc leader doesn't sound like any other orc, that's all for the best.

What I don't want is for him to lack personality. But like you said, I was writing him as warlike and vengeful, and perhaps a little bit dismissive of the peasent's chances.

What I would suggest is to perhaps allow him to stress a few words. For example, if you want him to be the typical bloodthirsty orc, you could have done it this way...

"The CURSED humans fight better than expected!"

Or maybe you could add additional dialogues that would showcase his character. For example, you could have him say,

"Yes. Yes! Chop them to pieces! Break them apart!!!" or

"KILL them all!!! Our wolves are hungry and these cattles will do fine!" or

"You FOOLS! How DARE you let those human whelps push you from the shore!" when the player is on the verge of winning.

When an Orcish unit first encountered a Human unit. Although, that might make him sound a little dim so you'd have to tweak that sentence a little.

I don't know, I can't think of any other campaign that emphasizes words that much, and I'm concerned it might seem a bit melodramatic. Maybe do it, but a little bit less than above.

Look at how Orcs talk in the mainline campaigns. You don't have to follow some of the stereotypical lines though. I don't like them either- the dialogues that seem to depict Orcs as really idiotic or straightforward when in the world of Wesnoth, they are particularly cunning and brutal which doesn't mean they had to be stupid as a tradeoff.

Indeed. If all orcs were stupid, its hard to explain them having technology like crossbows, or being a credible military threat to the elves, Northern Alliance, and humans of Wesnoth.

Here's how I try to express the personality of my characters... These lines are taken from my campaign:

Code: Select all

	  [message]
		speaker=Buckanwald
		message= _ "What? Oh, nothing... Just urm... Join the rest in battle. Good work."
	  [/message]

Code: Select all

        [message]
            speaker=Buckanwald
            message= _ "But sir, I am but a-"
        [/message]

Code: Select all

        [message]
            speaker=Maldor
            message= _ "Marauders! Raise the alarm! Lord Chetallion has been assassinated!"
        [/message]
        [message]
            speaker=Buckanwald
            message= _ "What! T-to arms!"
        [/message]
        [message]
            speaker=Aldryn
            message= _ "What are our orders milord?"
        [/message]
        [message]
            speaker=Buckanwald
            message= _ "Ur... Erm..."
        [/message]
        [message]
            speaker=Aldryn
            message= _ "Sir?"
        [/message]
        [message]
            speaker=Celith
            message= _ "South of our command centre lies a thick river. We should form a line on the northern banks and concentrate our forces on the fort overlooking the bridge."
        [/message]
        [message]
            speaker=Buckanwald
            message= _ "Alright, thanks. Reinforce the south! A-arm the villagers, gather any local militia!"
        [/message]
        [message]
            speaker=Eryhan the black
            message= _ "Hah! A mere lad put in the stead of the commander? Victory's as good as ours! Pillage the villages, leave no man alive!"
        [/message]
        [message]
            speaker=Celith
            message= _ "Buckanwald, order some men into the forests to the south-east as well, to halt the advancements of the bandits and to protect the villagers dwelling there."
        [/message]

Sir Buckanwald, as you can see, if a relatively new and young officer for the Guardian Order and it shows from how he is usually uncertain and nervous. This is more obvious as his advisor had to help him from time to time when advisors are meant to be consulted when the circumstances are tough.

I was trying to do something similar with Gwadoc and the spearman in the first scenario, with Gwadoc being the younger and more inexperienced officer, and the spearman being an older and more experienced soldeir who's advising him. Maybe I should have made it a bit more obvious.

In order to create a personality, there must be speech patterns. In this case, Sir Buckanwald thens to stutter and drag his sentences as though he was thinking really hard to no avail as he was caught off-guard with his superior assassinated all of a sudden. You should introduce speech patterns, and some mechanisms in order to showcase the personality of your characters.

My only concern here is going too far and making a character seem charicatured or cartoonish. Sort of the litterary equivalent of an actor who gives a really hammy performance.

Sounds like a good idea to me . If you want, you could have a pure infantry force trailing behind them.

Distances were an issue here. The nature of the force determines how fast it could move, which in turn determines how much ground it could cover in the time the scenario takes. It comes uncomfortably close to pinning down specific distances on the Wesnoth map, which to the best of my recolection has never been done before.

I'm actually saying mostly the same thing as you... I think the way the Orcs act is a good thing because an army of peasants is usually not much danger at all, not even to a Human army. I wasn't saying that they were acting the way they are because they are stereotypical orcs, but because they regard the army opposing them to be hardly dangerous and they were supposed to be right.

Yes, exactly. I wanted the Gwadoc character to seem like an exceptional commander as well, which maybe works better if his first act is to pull off a victory that almost everyone would have thought impossible.

I was also, quite frankly, inspired by the first scenario of Northern Rebirth (a favorite campaign of mine), which is likewise level zeros against orcs.

No, no! You're misunderstanding what I said. I didn't recruit a dozen guys, I was saying that about twelve of them were on the verge of leveling up. I didn't neglect any villages.

Oh, ok.

Yes, its dificult to level troops when most of your men die so easily. However, you should still try. Even though the troops from this scenario are not recallable immediately, they will be so later in the campaign, I think, so having leveled a few now might make things easier later on.

[Nikolaj]

Hi,

I just played the first scenario (on the easiest level) and enjoyed it greatly. Great map!
There was a problem though. As I finished the scenario, the prince came and everything, the orcs retreat, but then instead of victory, it says I've been defeated. I loaded the last turn again and tried over with the same result.

I use Mac (Leopard version) and the latest version of Battle for Wesnoth.

[Huston]

ok. i will see if i can loate the problem. expect an update tonight around 12 am eastern time zone

[Nikolaj]

Thank you for the quick reply. I can't seem to find it in the add-ons section though.

[Huston]

yes. i'm sorry i could not find the problem. i will keep looking.

[Nikolaj]

Take your time We all have social lives too

[Huston]

one new prob to deal with before bugfix release

[bvanevery]

"Breaking a Siege" dies with illegal character in game map 'Dw'. Wesnoth 1.7.3.

"And So It Begins" says the victory condition is "Hold out until the end of turns". However, on Turn 25 if I haven't killed the orc king, I am defeated. In that particular saved game, I do have him completely surrounded. It seems odd that the reinforcements show up, the orc king orders a retreat, and then I'm defeated. Is he trying to run away and then unable to? Did the scenario designer assume that I wouldn't be able to kill the orc king? Or is it a simpler bug than that? Anyways, if I kill the orc king, then I can go on to the next scenario.

[PhotonX]

After the second scenario I get:

Error

Map could not be loaded: [path]