The Fires of Pride (0.3.0)

[perseo]

Well, I'll post it in the workshop post. (Reepur has reason, I abandoned it). And I'll post here the final version.
Reepur, I didn't mean black, I mean darker colours (I didn't now the word to mean more dark colour of the same).
What about this shield?

[Mountain_King]

A nice campaign so far, albeit a tad easy in some areas (and insanely hard in others). The story's pretty nice. I'm kind of curious how you could make this fit in with something from mainline, as I was a bit disappointed to find out the elf's name wasn't Ila'alion.

[sw_emigre]

Hi Joram, and congrats for all your hard work. It really shows!

I have two thoughts:

1. Elendar's dialogue through the first 4 scenarios kind of makes him unlikeable. Our heroes don't need to be paragons of virtue, but he's not the type of guy I'd want to grab a pint of mead with after work, to say nothing of slaying orcs with him. Maybe soften the arrogance a bit?

2. I'm playing 1.9.4, medium, and I can't get past the 4th scenario, Orcs in the Woods. I finished Dragon in 11 turns, which I thought was OK, but I'm entering this fight with just 154 gold, and after 3 attempts, I'm not even close. I think this could be corrected (if others are also struggling) by any of the following:

Switch the starting time of day to dawn. Level 1 units (my ally's, or the scouts I send to hold the river) are wrecked by 2-3 hits.

No assassins, or at least less of them. They slaughter level 1 units, especially with no real place to retreat and heal (nor do I have enough units or time for that)

Make the map a bit bigger, so the scout's will have the ability to hit and run/heal

The ally's combat moves suck. He completely abandons his leader, which is sort of silly, but what's worse is that in the first 2-3 turns, the rangers and others all jump out into plains territory, and get crushed. They are pretty useless when I've played. Maybe make it so that there's a range of forest around the keep, and they won't stray from there (since they are supposed to defend their guy anyway?

And is there no chance for shamans?

I liked the first couple of scenarios, as they do let the scouts roam, and that's unique to Wesnoth. I just don't know how I will get to see the rest of the campaign!

Peace,
sw

[Joram]

Public Service Announcement #1: (NOTE: There are certain spoilers here regarding what I've already created; if you haven't played what is currently online, then you may find out some things you didn't want to; on the other hand, if you haven't already played what's online, what are you doing here?)

Greetings, my faithful fans and followers (hereafter addressed as "my FFF"),

Owing to a very large amount of real life work, I will probably make little to no progress on this project till the end of the semester. What spare time I do have will probably go towards writing on my hobby novel, which I'm afraid takes priority. Rest assured that I haven't abandoned this, and intend to continue working. To that end, here are my current thoughts and plans:

#1 - The last two scenarios I'm in involve fighting undead with elves. Normally not a problem, but I haven't allowed Shaman's, which means that it devolves into a plinking fest where you try to finish of your enemies with your minuscule damage while trying to avoid dying. Obviously, we need some Arcane, Fire, or impact damage, or these scenarios will be maddeningly boring.

I have reasons for not including shamans (which you will find in the "Complete Plot Summary That Joram's About To Edit Into The First Post", hereafter referred to as "CPSTJATEITFP"). I may eventually do so, particularly if the plot changes around. However, my idea currently is to give the player a certain small number of Loyal Elvish Lords at the beginning (say, 3 or 4). These should help alleviate some of the tedious undead fighting later on. However, I will undoubtedly need to change Elendar to some other unit or else he will be overshadowed.

#2 - Difficulty is all over the map. I apologize for that. I've played it enough that I have certain tactics for each scenario, and don't have much trouble (barring the last one, which not even I can do). However, it is difficult for me to gauge how my FFF will be able to handle it. I will probably tone down all the difficulties moreso than they are, erring on the side of too easy.

#3 - I've decided that being all secretive with my plot is silly. It's rather an... unusual plot, that does some strange things, but whatever. I therefore will soon set about creating the CPSTJATEITFP, and put it into the first post for my FFF to read. It will hopefully be up later this afternoon. I would ask that you not talk about any of the stuff in it unless you include it in Spoiler tags, or PM me directly.


Anyway, that wraps it up. Thank you for playing.

[perseo]

i'm very happy seeing that you're here working again in your good campaign. I believed that you abandoned it and I though "what a pity!"

[tr0ll]

this looks like a great story! i cant wait to play it. in the meantime, one thing in the preamble irks me:

In the old days, before the comings of humans to the great continent, a mighty elf warrior attempts to undue the vengeance that his rival has taken. As he struggles to save the one he loves, he must come to terms with the consequences of his anger, folly, and pride.

i think it should be "undo"

[Joram]

What? You presumed to correct me? ME? I'll have you know I meant to have a nonsensical word in there! It makes me look smarter!

Hehe. Thanks for bringing the typo to my attention. I'll get it fixed as soon as possible (which actually might not be for a while yet, due to the next paragraph).

My computer is currently busted, and I'm having to scrape out assignments in campus labs that don't have the right applications, so this project will probably have to wait till the end of the semester (about May 16ish, give or take a few days for me to recover). In the meantime, I'm glad that there is still some interest in it.

[Joram]

Finally got my comp fixed, so I corrected that typo when I uploaded it to 1.9.6 server. Didn't have time to test it thoroughly (just a debug/cheat run in 5 minutes through the first few levels), so I'm hoping that nothing'll break going from .5 to .6

I'm gonna try and get a nice update out next week that will solve some of the core issues afflicting this piece of junk. Till then, nothin' to see here.

[sur.nhm]

Well, I'll playtest it when I'll get home.
Edit: it still doesn't show the Effing portraits. (Wesnoth 1.9.6+SVN, r 49468 on Xubunu 10.10)

[Joram]

*sighs*

I have absolutely no idea what's wrong with the, um, ... effing portraits. I'll have another exhaustive look through later, but right now, I have 2 take-home exams, 2 final projects, a homework assignment, and an exam all due today, so you'll forgive me if this is pretty low on my priorities at the moment.

But man, that bugs me. Cause they are ALL showing up great for me.

[Neuromancer]

I played the campaign on Normal, ceasing up on third scenario. The first and third scenarios are both large, tiring battles and the second seems to be very hard to beat with tight turn limit, too many flanking saurians, high-hp trolls and partially unknown objective. In scenario 1 I would:
Redesign the whole scenario to incorporate said flanking attack (I was reading the introductory dialog between the heroes and when they started debating strategy I was like "I cannot wait to execute this flanking attack!" but as the game started I was dissapointed: "Oh. So this is another 'defeat the enemy leader' scenario.")
Add one or two more recruit tiles to the two proxy keeps
Create some more villages around the western and northern shores of the lake (When I was making the push to the keep, I ended up with lots of wounded soldiers mid-advance, but there was noplace to heal them)

Next, I would make scenario 2 less big.

About story: Im not into these kinds of things, but if others like it, I guess not a problem.

[Velensk]

Played on 1.8 on normal a while back actually.

I stopped playing on the second scenario due to unclear objectives to the point of being frustrating. I killed every enemy on the map save the Troll leader and poked around in various mountains and I still have no idea what I was supposed to be doing.

I was not having much fun with the story when I stopped, there might have been more incentive to look at the sceanrio cfg to figure it out if I hadn't found almost every character irritating, including the main one (though I presume he gets better later).

The first scenario was fair to play though very very typical.

[tr0ll]

1.9.6 normal

I also don't like the main character, but i am hoping by the time i get through the campaign either something will happen to make him more humble or he will suffer a tragic turn which still lets me win as a player. It is a story after all and so it should be acceptable to "tell it like it is". Kinda like DiD which really threw me but makes sense in the end.

Scenario 2 was winnable on my 3rd try once i figured out a strategy of quickly wiping out the west saurian then the east saurian and then holding off the trolls while searching the central mountains with scouts. I think there are enough dialogue hints about where to look if you understand english well, so possibly the translations will help non-english players.

Then i got to the next scenario and no matter how i recruited and recalled and rushed i could not prevent the allied elf from being mobbed. I will wait for a better player to attempt it in case i missed something before suggesting it needs rebalancing. Maybe it is a change in 1.9.6 AI or something, the orcs do rather well at winning

[Eugen]

I love the main character Keep up the good work, Mr Joram!

[Boldek]

1.8.5

I really enjoyed the campaign, please finish this!
the scenarios where not too hard, not too easy, "the dragon" was a little disappointing, as there was not an extra scenario where you kill the dragon, and "orcs in the woods" was just a bit of a near scrape. other than that, I thought the campaign was pretty easy and fun. however, I was really no match for the skellies, because I just didn't have the time to upgrade my soldiers, and marksmen get EATEN ALIVE by skellies and ghosts.
tr0ll, I did play it on easy, and probably did not face the fury of the forces of evil, but I suggest sending scouts into the town as fast as you can, even if it means half the battle line gone. [/tr0ll]

I have a bad feeling I know what's gonna happen to the elf vampire girl, but please at least let the main char slice up the lich-jerk, or I will probably pull my hair out. overall, this has been one of my favorite campaigns of all time, and I beg you, on bended knee, to hurry up and finish!