WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Discussion and development of scenarios and campaigns for the game.

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vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

I see, it is something I overlooked. Necromancers seem to have the plague attack capability, I thought only the walking corpse had that. Oh well..
Last edited by vghetto on April 2nd, 2020, 11:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
SimpleNewt
Posts: 3
Joined: March 5th, 2020, 11:21 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by SimpleNewt »

Introducing an enemy catapult and the orcs draining the moats sound like fun ideas which I might opt to implement.
This! Orc sappers coming in and trying to disrupt your defenses would be awesome, really amps up the feel of a massive horde siege. Maybe make the moats you dig or water tiles surrounding a palisade a different flavor of water tile (color? I dunno, there's multiple versions in the editor) so that the orc sappers can find the tiles that would make sense to fill. Or just do it in a sensible way that I could never imagine.

Thanks for all the work you've put into this thing so far, and here's hoping it only gets better!
OTna
Posts: 27
Joined: April 26th, 2019, 1:41 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by OTna »

Regarding the assasin/cold winter calamities: Well, why not make another difficulty (called 'dead man walking' or 'vain glory') and only put those super hard calamities there? I already suggested some really simple solutions to solve them so it's not like they are completely unbeatable.

Also, if you are not confident with dialog writing, then how about having me help out with that? I have already envisioned a complete scenario and believable reasons as to why so many races/calamities are out to destroy the player's small, harmless town. It will directly tie in with the main campaigns' lore and even serve as a sequel to the last major campaign of the game (you know, that one where everywhere is a pile of sand due to a certain apocalypse?). This is also why I want to implement the calamities with the assasin/khalifate/crazy mage/teleporting warrior as they will give dialogs that contain major plots of the writing I have in mind.

When you said that you don't want to do carryover between seasons, did you mean that you want all of the end-game calamities to only last a season/the leaders will only be able to recruit at the start of the season they spawned? In my opinion, having to fight those calamities while being under the effect of 'all loyal units still have an upkeep of 1 gold' will only work and give you the pressure of being under siege if the calamities run for almost the entire year (as it means only a large town can survive and a small town must die since it failed at expanding - which is the purpose why the pioneers set off to this land in the first place). Otherwise, the end-game calamity will just be another summer calamity.
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

SimpleNewt wrote: March 18th, 2020, 1:28 am This! Orc sappers coming in and trying to disrupt your defenses would be awesome, really amps up the feel of a massive horde siege.
What I'm think of is having the troll shamans dry up the moat if they happened to use their fire attack on top of it. I'll probably start working on this next. As for the catapult unit, I need to look around at other mods and see if there's already such a unit. If I find it i'll add it right away to the outlaws side most likely.
toannghe1997 wrote: March 19th, 2020, 11:13 am ...
I'd love it if people helped out with the dialogue, here are the main characters of the game, these get reassigned to other units if they happened to die:

* Your leader: Hero
* Swordsman: Advisor
* Cavalryman: Cynic
* Bowman: Fool
* Trade Caravan
* King's troop or help
* Enemy side leader
* Enemy side buddy or sidekick.


If it's appealing and other are for it, I don't mind adding them in. The tougher ones will go into a nightmare difficulty as suggested.

About the carryover, the main [event] blocks happen in the summer. In the autumn, only a small number of events get carried over. And these are:
* The Gryphon protect nest event gets carried over to the autumn, but it won't be carried to the season after that. In fact, gryphons gets killed at the end of autumn.
* The Lich being allied with the undead gets carried over, but it won't be carried over in the winter, so if they happen to still be around by then, they will start fighting with the other undead side
* Also, the Lich's ability to randomly spawn undead units gets taken away in the autumn.
* The ability to recruit new units get taken away for saurians and loyalist in the following season.

The reason I'm doing that is to ensure that calamities get cleared out before the start of the following summer calamity, otherwise you'd have loyalist/dwarves/drakes/saurians allied with the undead or trying to protect a gryphon nest, etc.

I'm not for the idea of having a calamity that is specifically targeted on ending the players game. Whatever is offered should be beatable. That is why I added the orcs without the ability to recruit or being allied with the other orc side.

Edit1: Forgot to mention the caravan and the king guard as characters
Last edited by vghetto on April 2nd, 2020, 11:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
OTna
Posts: 27
Joined: April 26th, 2019, 1:41 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by OTna »

Instead of having the troll shaman does that, I think that it's better to have a new weak orc unit (goblin that is called 'peon') designed to march towards the player's town. This unit would undoubtably have to move into a water/swamp tile once he gets near the town and he would immediately make swarm + drain swarm until it becomes a normal flat tile. Because this unit is programmed to behave like a normal enemy unit, it would not prioritize disabling the moat completely and instead march forward at any given opportunity and get killed instead, which is... appropriate, given their intelligence. Like I said before, giving each enemy warboss several peons (cost 0 gold each) and have them respawned whenever one dies would be ideal to represent the 'we have reserves' fighting style of the orc. This makes it ultimately easier for them to get to your town but you can still kill them off easily since your walls are surrounded by the final mud tiles (which is completely opposite if the troll shaman were to do it since now the orcs get to you more slowly but it's harder for you to defend since the mud surrounding your town is gone).

There is a simple solution to the carryover problem:
-Make it so that all the remaining enemies from the calamity leave once winter (or the season after the season that calamity supposed to end at) of that year ends. This would solve the problem of over complicated AI allying with one another.
-During the end-game calamity, Only wild animals will spawn (this also means no summer calamity then), except for the renegade calamity where different groups of outlaws will still spawn and ally with the renegade (the outlaws will either have no leader or the leader would yield little to no gold when killed).

I understand that all players should be able to beat the game, so how about only amping up the difficulty of the calamities on the super hard difficulty that I mentioned before? That way, those who specificially choose the option know what they're getting themselves into and everyone can still enjoy the grind.
dolorousedd
Posts: 9
Joined: February 16th, 2020, 10:55 am

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by dolorousedd »

just remember we're the vocal minorities and just update and improve the game as you see fit, no rush no pressure
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

Thanks, it's fine. User input and the cool ideas are very helpful to me.
I'm currently fixing the bridge layouts code and I'll upload it once I figure it out. This might need backporting to CotF as well.
There were some other changes made in the latest version. I'll list them once I'm done with the bridges.

Edit1:
Norrec wrote: February 21st, 2020, 8:31 pm Can you tell me what determines the way Bridges are made, is it random or do you need to follow some rules?
Because mostly it goes top to bottom, while i was trying to make it, technically, left to right
Updated the bridge code, you can now build a bridge next to castle wall or farm field. the precedence is as follows, if there is land (or bridge) to the north or south of the hex then the bridge is up down |, otherwise it's / followed by \. if there is only ground (or bridge) to the north-west and south-east then it's \. But in most cases / will take precedence over \.Hope that made sense
Last edited by vghetto on April 2nd, 2020, 11:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
OTna
Posts: 27
Joined: April 26th, 2019, 1:41 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by OTna »

Ohh nice. Now I can really build my dream impregnable fortress!
Also, what I suggested was the end-game content, which should only be focused on once you're already finished creating the rest of the game. So like dolorousedd said, you should work steadily towards how you imagine the game should look like at your own pace (especially if this 'little' add-on is going to become the wesnoth equivalent of grim world ;) )
ThinkSome
Posts: 28
Joined: July 9th, 2019, 9:33 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by ThinkSome »

I have two bugs to report:
  • Ground labels are cleared when the seasons change
  • There is no gold income on the seasons change: finish turn 36 -> start turn 1.
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

ThinkSome wrote: March 23rd, 2020, 4:13 pm I have two bugs to report:
  • Ground labels are cleared when the seasons change
  • There is no gold income on the seasons change: finish turn 36 -> start turn 1.
Thank you for the bug report. I'm not sure how to deal with the ground labels issue, we'll see.

Edit1:
Norrec wrote: February 18th, 2020, 10:43 am And if posible can you make the labels permenat, they tend to dissappear each season
I implemented something to that effect since this came up more than once.
To label a farm move your hero over to the farm and right click. The name will carry on to the next season. To delete a name just leave the textbox empty or destroy the farm.
Note: regular wesnoth labels using alt+l cannot be carried over to the following season. see viewtopic.php?p=653274 for the terse answer.
Last edited by vghetto on April 2nd, 2020, 11:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
ThinkSome
Posts: 28
Joined: July 9th, 2019, 9:33 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by ThinkSome »

Is it just me or are the elvish raids pretty much the strongest of them all, by far? I like how the game warns me about orcs, undead and bandits, but they are nothing compared to this.

Here, counted 676 gold worth of elves, luckily I've spawned with that lake in between:
elves.png
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

ThinkSome wrote: March 24th, 2020, 2:06 pm Is it just me or are the elvish raids pretty much the strongest of them all, by far?
Elvish raids are not that bad but they could get annoying, that is why I enforced the quotas on them recently.

At the beginning of the campaign you can cut down 5 trees free of charge, no elves will spawn. After that is as follows on the normal difficulty.
You have the leader + sidekicks + extras. The number of sidekicks in the first year is 6 and it will increase by 1 every year.
That is the bare minimum. Then add the extras on top of that which depend on how many trees you've chopped down. They are roughly the number of trees killed times 1.5, rounded up.
Cutting down the big pointy trees is equivalent to cutting down 5 regular ones.

After they spawn, the extras counter gets reset to 0. But if you kept cutting down trees, there's a chance that a new group of elves spawn right away with their leader + 6 sidekicks + extras and join in with the first group. Every season that is limited with the quota system to 2 groups in the first year and it will increase by 1 every year.
For example, after you've used up the first free 5, say you chopped down 5 more trees, that will give at least 15 elves. 10 trees -> 22 and so on.

I'll include music or some sound when they spawn to hold off cutting down further trees until you deal with that group first.

Any other ideas or suggestions are welcome.

Oh, one more thing. Planting trees will reduce the extras counter and might bring it down to 0 or negative. They won't spawn at all then.
ThinkSome
Posts: 28
Joined: July 9th, 2019, 9:33 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by ThinkSome »

Ahhh alright. I was cutting down trees like mad at start, to make room for my city. I'm actually still cutting them like mad... no wonder I'm getting visitors every 5 turns ... heavy inf doesen't complain.

I wish I was warned about this in advance.

Also, converting water->land cost 10 and takes 4 turns, while building a bridge is much more expensive and not much faster (3 turns). Perhaps land-filling should be adjusted in cost?

Also, the cost and time to cut down trees seems excessive to me (if I imagine how much time it would take to actually fill in same-sized part of a lake with dirt).
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

I started a brand new playtesting game to see how everything will pan out with those changes, so far so good.
Here is the replay from the first scenario
Attachments
WF-A New Beginning replay.gz
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Last edited by vghetto on April 2nd, 2020, 11:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
ThinkSome
Posts: 28
Joined: July 9th, 2019, 9:33 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by ThinkSome »

Another bug(?): at the start of winter, some projects were disrupted, but others not. It seems that chopping down trees on flat terrain and mudding watter was, but trees on hills and converting muddied water to flat was not.

The onset of winter could also be made gradual, i.e. on turn 30 of autumn, begin freezing 10 tiles per turn from top to bottom of the map. There was also no warning that my workers wouldn't be able to do anything* during winter (seems they can still chop down trees).

Another thing: Have you thought about having the buildings provide further training for units? E.g. a heavy infantryman could enter an armorer building to improve his damage or strikes (in return for experience) or improve resistance (in return for gold and movement point),
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