Of Memories Past (0.0.5)

[telmo]

I've been playing around with creating my campaign for a while, and the first few scenarios of it are now available on the server (1.5.6+ svn)

There is still some plot to go through, so expect other 10+ scenarios or so when the campaign is complete.

This campaign is not complete, probably needs to be better balanced, and has some bugs (namely save files don't work past "clothes make the mage"). But it is still playable, and fun.

So, suggestions, criticism, bugs, comments, are all welcome.

EDIT: 0.0.5: Enough bug fixes that I decided to make another release. Among others:
- 3-4 scenarios added. Some are cutscenes, some are straight combat, and some I am not sure what to call.
- New terrain type for last scenario and upcoming scenarios
- Protagonist at level 3 stats changed, new animation added
- New terrain type
- Theodore cold attack as a red mage now actually slows enemies
- XP and AMLAs do not disappear between scenarios
- Timely arrival map and spawn patterns slightly changed
- Recall list removed for like a drop of dew
- Difficulty changed on later levels
- Village gold set to 0, instead of -1, in alduin initiation.

I do not expect saves to work flawlessly past "clothes make the mage", but they might. This is still in alpha, but hopefully with less bugs and difficulty closer to what it should be.

[Loci]

It's a lot longer than I would expect at version 0.0.2. I played through the first few scenarios and I thought they were pretty good overall. I noted down a few bugs/comments/suggestions:

Scenario 1:
Silvie shows up as a "Mage" instead of a "Mage Student" in the right-side description.
It would be nice if the objectives changed when the undead appear.
The exclamation point overlay doesn't appear to work.
The undead didn't appear interested in following my troops to the south--they just headed for the cave.

Scenario 2:
It would be nice if my party was healed at the start of the scenario, especially if siding with the bandits. Having three near-dead units in enemy territory with cavalrymen wandering around is not good.

Scenario 3:
If we're in such a hurry, the scenario should end when my mages are in the city, not at the end of all turns (this is generally good practice to make the campaign move faster--once the objectives are complete the scenario should end).
I don't think the spider-generation code was working quite correctly (several turns I didn't get any new spiders on Normal difficulty).
I kept expecting to find out what was driving the spiders out of their cave.

Scenario 4:
While I understand what you were trying to do here, it is frustrating to be given no clear directions. Please provide some indication of where I'm supposed to go--it shouldn't take 30 turns to stumble across a move_to trigger. Better yet, just play the back story and be done with it (clicking "end turn" every few sentences does nothing to draw the player into the story--trust me).

Scenario 6c:
The grypons appear to consist of two different gryphon sprites drawn on top of each other. This is quite distracting.
A previous scenario (6b?) already saved a "replay" leading to an overwrite prompt upon completion of this scenario.

Scenario 7:
I seem to be missing Theodore. The WML makes me think that he should be there, but he's not.

[telmo]

Yes, it still needs lots of polishing, though.

For scenario 1, I will look into the issue. The exclamation overlay does not appear because the role is only assigned to some types:

Code: Select all

 [role]
      role=bad_news
      type=Mage Student,Mage Protagonist
      x=11-20,12-20,14-20,16-20,19-22
      y=20,19,18,17,14-20
 [/role]

since 1.5.6 has a bug on the [role] WML. Silvie is declared pretty much the same way as François, so I am not sure why the unit description is different.

EDIT: no, that wasn't the issue. Modifying the code that assigns the exclamation point to use a role filter made it work for me. To be uploaded once some more bugs are fixed.

scenario 2: agreed with the healing.

scenario 3: the explanation for why the spiders get out of the cave should come up later in the plot. As in, not explained yet. But maybe that is too frustrating.

scenario 4: sure, I'll expand the area and/or add explanations. I was experimenting around with what you can do on non-scenario combats and not make it entirely automatic.

scenario 6c: the gryphons are new units made to be shown always on flight, even during the standing animation, but maybe because they are larger than an hex with wings extended, the graphics are not updated properly. I considered using a halo, but I am not sure of what is the right solution there.

scenario 7: if you took this branch on the campaign, Theodore should show up some turns late (turn 5 on easy, 4 on normal, 3 on hard). Do tell me if he actually does not show up.

[pinguinsteve]

Hi, i noticed in scenario four and seven that your gold income is actually decreasing instead the other way around when you occupy villages.

And if you keep the scenario four the way it is, try to get rid of the sound which comes up when you reach dusk. i was running around with theo for 30 rounds and everytime there was this annoying sound

[telmo]

The time of the day can be changed so that sound/night is not played every turn. Not sure of how to get rid of the war drums of a new turn, though.
I wanted to avoid people from mining infinite gold on that scenario; the way to do that used to be village_gold=-1, but now village_gold=0 seems to do what I want.
Both fixes will be on the next upload.

[pinguinsteve]

hi started this campaign all over again and in scenario 3 theo starts with zero HP, perhaps you can have a look at it.

Regards

[telmo]

Oops. The following:

Code: Select all

{VARIABLE Theodore_store.hitpoints Theodore_store.max_hitpoints}

should actually have been

Code: Select all

{VARIABLE Theodore_store.hitpoints $Theodore_store.max_hitpoints}

Update with this fix is coming soon. For now, just use debug and set his hitpoints back up, I guess.
EDIT: Uploaded. Bug and fix were on scenario 2, not 3. Thanks for telling about the bug.

[jani]

i think clothes of mage is too hard on easy because theodoran has 0 xp and needs 60 so he has to kill 7 ghosts and he can make max 10dmg. so maybe you could give him something like 30 xp it could go something like that at easy 30xp medium 15xp and hard 0xp.

[telmo]

Hm. He has no melee attack and his attacks are worse against ghosts, so yes, he is weaker on that scenario. But the code should add some experience to him:

Code: Select all

#ifdef EASY
{VARIABLE xp_bonus 43}
#endif
#ifdef NORMAL
{VARIABLE xp_bonus 38}
#endif
#ifdef HARD
{VARIABLE xp_bonus 32}
#endif

Code: Select all

{VARIABLE Theodore_store.x 20}
{VARIABLE Theodore_store.y 17}
{VARIABLE Theodore_store.hitpoints $Theodore_store.max_hitpoints}
{VARIABLE new_xp $Theodore_store.experience}
{VARIABLE_OP new_xp add $xp_bonus}
{VARIABLE temp $Theodore_store.max_experience}
{VARIABLE_OP temp multiply 0.9}
{IF_VAR new_xp less_than_equal_to $temp (
  [then]
    {VARIABLE Theodore_store.experience $new_xp}
  [/then]
  [else]
    {IF_VAR Theodore_store.experience less_than $temp (
      [then]
        {VARIABLE Theodore_store.experience $temp}
      [/then]
    )}
  [/else]
)}

That is, the experience he starts the scenario with should be his current experience plus a bonus, or 90% of the maximum experience, the smallest. Unless that were to be lower than his current experience, in which case it is not modified.

Then again, maybe for some reason this is now not working. Is he actually starting the scenario with 0 xp, and if so, can I look at a save file?

[docrock]

been playing through current version on 1.5.6 with default difficulty. so far things seemed to work pretty well (considering the version), just as stated before, please provide better descriptions of objectives (especially for that "night on the town" thing and the spider scenario) and generally clean up dialogues (like Silvie talking to herself in the beginning of that scenario versus the goblins).

one more thing, all of our heroes do have the same recall list all the time even when they are supposed to be fighting in parallel in different scenarios. did those units magically teleport from one battle to the other or are they all Kwisatz Haderachs and can be at more than one location at a time?

also, those plagued coming in every now and then are just kind of tomato surprise me thinks, as when you know where they will appear it is plain easy to position a pile of cavalry, dragoons and the lancer there and root them out before they can do anything. a bit more randomness might help there. same goes for the spiders. send in the horsemen, block their hole in the ground with a nice ZoC around it and kill them with all other units. too easy imho, especially after their chief-spider got killed on turn 3 by said horsemen which made the other spiders run around rather planlessly afterwards (AI of course, i know), but maybe the black widow should stick to that hole longer.

edit: played through the existing scenarios now. nice diversity, nice storyline, but overall difficulty was too low imho. the only tricky one is the clothes thing, though you also can win that one easily (and with lots of mages afterwards) by just having them sit on the mountains left of the starting location and cycling them according to their speed. with two or three waves of ghosts you're set. the elves in the last one are a joke. when will the AI learn that recruiting lvl2s is just silly if you have less starting gold than the enemy (the dwarves) anyways? just sit it out with fighters, use hard-hitters against mages and sharpshooters, all around white mage so they heal and you're ready for them. killed the elvish boss before the first undead even arrived anywhere near me.

[telmo]

The recall lists thing is a good point. How should the recall list units be divided, though? In general you can only recruit level 0 units, if the current leader is a mage type. I am considering making it such that units recalled in theodore's "solo" mission not be available on silvie's "solo" mission, but the player probably should be warned if this is going to happen. (At least Sir Johannes or Ivana can be understood to travel very very fast, but this excuse does not work for the other units.)

Dialogs need to be cleaned up in general. Some of them are reasonable, some not, and more reasons for that will be clear on the next upload. But I don't want to upload just a bunch of cutscenes and 2 playable scenarios if the save is not going to be compatible, so, probably not happening in 2008.

Would people rather prefer undead showing up at random points in the map?

The spiders come of a hole in the ground for a reason, not shown yet in the campaign; code-wise, which spiders are created is decided randomly. Not really sure how to change that. Maybe spawn many more spiders on turn 1, so the hole can not be surrounded so easily? Maybe the paladin could get mad at units that move too north, forcing them to move back (so no blue units up a certain point?) Suggestions are welcome.

[docrock]

ah lol, time-synchronous edit of my last post, plz read.

concerning recall-lists, is it possible to split sides at one point, store them and at a later point reunite them? that would solve the recall-list issue.

Would people rather prefer undead showing up at random points in the map?

not random-points but instead like two or three spawning areas, each of them like say 4 hex wide and high, would be my preference so the player has at least to divert sizeable portions of force to guard each of them.

concerning the spiders, i'd suggest to make the hole bigger, surround it with two layers of bad terrain not one (the cave type you are using) and divide it into zones, looking maybe like one big hole and one or two more small ones, all within the same area of cave-type terrain, so that it looks more like a real cave would do, with not only one entrance/exit and the spiders could that way group making them much more effective after the horsemen arrive (which should not be avoided i think, as this is actually a good "rescue them, men" way of doing things). maybe the spiders can be made to be on different sides, so over the course of action we do not get only one queen but say, from turn 1-10 queen1 spawns, from turn 11-20 queen2 and so on as to not make them leaderless so easily (dunno if this is possible storywise though).

btw, the thing for recall-lists also goes for gold. carryover for every character should be stored in a variable and applied accordingly i think (and/or added up at some point again).

[telmo]

Ok, replying to edit, then the last post.

Difficulty seems to be low in general for the campaign; I think I underestimated how good recalling many units is, at 20 gold each. Balancing is needed, yes.

The way that scenario was made was to make dwarves against elves going for 3 turns, letting both recruit level 2 units, then saving the position and stats of each unit. More for the flavor or "being recruited after the battle started" than anything else. And it needs to be made harder, like most late missions.

What do you mean by splitting sides? I believe units can be saved, removed from recall lists, and put back on recall lists, so something like that could be done. Do you mean a non-combat scenario with Theodore saying "everyone who wants to go with Silvie, cross the river, everyone else is going on a nice trip to the swamps with me" ?

More spawn points for undead, ok. I will try that. I will also experiment with a larger hole on the ground, thanks for the ideas.

[docrock]

about splitting sides, i'd say when our heroes split up the recall list should get some hard-wired mechanism applied at which units are distributed. like say: "the lancer is more likely to go with xxx" or so. so that each of the two hero-groups (or are there three? i don't remember correctly me thinks) gets it's share of good units, thereby making more recruitment of lvl0s necessary and thereby avoiding to change the balance too much as this would make the campaign much harder already.

and well, more spawn points, no, they come out to distributed that way, make it areas and concentrate the spawns there i'd say. like in the necromancer scenario not have them come in a nice kill-me-plz-line from the left but have a concentrated group of 2 or 3 or 4 (i really don't remember how many it were, you'd know better) spawn around one hex, in a certain area, like say, we have one area in the swamp straight west, one area in the swamp/wood area northwest and one area in the swampy valley north-north-east of the necro-starting position. each turn is randomly decided relative to which hex of which area ALL of the plagued are going to spawn next to each other. i hope that was comprehendible. again forcing the player to split forces and to actually move, thereby making things again much harder and having not to balance other things.

just my two cents of coz.

[lu_zero]

Quirks:

- I managed to level up both Silvie and Francois before they get in the island and that made re-leveling a bit annoying...

- Theodore's amla doesn't work apparently. (maybe there is a misnaming)

Beside that the rest is already quite fine and works pretty well.