3P Campaign: The Haunted Woods v1.7.0 [Complete]

Discussion of all aspects of multiplayer development: unit balancing, map development, server development, and so forth.

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MrEPIC
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Re: MP Campaign: The Haunted Woods (v1.4.0) for 1.6 and 1.8

Post by MrEPIC »

Natasiel wrote:It is on 1.7.12+svn.
In the first scenario, buy your upgrades then rename Fioril to something else.
On the next scenario, your ranger got a random name and lost his upgrades.

Though the bug seems in the MP campaign engine and there are people working on it right now.

Sorry for the noise, still I'm eager to play your campaign later on. :)
Ah, thanks for reporting this. I'll put in unrenamable=yes until this bug is fixed in the engine, since it doesn't happen in 1.6.
3 player co-op campaign: The Haunted Woods (v1.6.19)
1v1 campaign: Tug of War (v0.4.0)
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Rigor
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Re: MP Campaign: The Haunted Woods (v1.4.0) for 1.6 and 1.8

Post by Rigor »

hi,
first i want to thank you for this very entertaining campaign, and secondly i wanted to ask u about the give unit function.
when does it cost 10 gold/5 gold/ 0 gold (tax) that would be very interesting :)

keep up the good work, and especially the good dialogue, SP campaigns mostly live from a neat overall ambience!
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Re: MP Campaign: The Haunted Woods (v1.4.0) for 1.6 and 1.8

Post by MrEPIC »

Thanks for he encouragement, Rigor, since I've been quite busy lately with schoolwork and haven't had the time to put in some of the changes that I'm thinking about. The give unit tax should be the unit's level times 5. Please tell me if it's acting any differently for you, since at around version 1.3, sometimes the tax would not do anything.
3 player co-op campaign: The Haunted Woods (v1.6.19)
1v1 campaign: Tug of War (v0.4.0)
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Rigor
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Re: MP Campaign: The Haunted Woods (v1.4.0) for 1.6 and 1.8

Post by Rigor »

mmmmh no. the tax is sometimes 0, sometimes 5 and sometimes 10. we even thought u have a certain amount of "free" control shifts because we had to pay nothing sometimes :)

ANYWAYS


Tesafilmchen, tekelili, Psychic and lots of other players (me too) who played it think that its HIGHLY unbalanced and un-wesnotish to let a unit that attacked already be controlled by the subsequent player who can either retreat it form the front or attack a second time, to give it on to the subsequent player, who can again attack or retreat this unit for a third time. all of these transactions would cost 5 gold per turn, and maximize damage 3x e.g. for a pimped lvl1 dwarfish archer with an attack of 10-4 with 77 HP (thats what i did at the start of the 2nd scenario, the long night).

BTW
i dont know whether anyone of u noticed this little glitch, but am i the first one who bought the potion of speed for the first scenario and rushed towards center and took all villages 2 turns later because one of my allies gave me all his gold ? :mrgreen:
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Re: MP Campaign: The Haunted Woods (v1.4.0) for 1.6 and 1.8

Post by MrEPIC »

A possible way I could think of limiting the effects of Give Unit is making it only work in the first few turns (4 for example) of the game, but please tell me if you think this should be added in. If this is done, I would also plan on removing the tax altogether.
Your strategy of buying potions of speed for the first scenario is a good one, but I believe that this wouldn't be game-breaking, since each potion costs 25 gold and the villages can only add 2 gold each turn (3 if it takes away upkeep of a unit). Thanks for telling me your thoughts, and I'd like to hear more as you play along.
3 player co-op campaign: The Haunted Woods (v1.6.19)
1v1 campaign: Tug of War (v0.4.0)
Tesafilmchen
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Re: MP Campaign: The Haunted Woods (v1.4.0) for 1.6 and 1.8

Post by Tesafilmchen »

thx alot for this entertaining campaign keep up the good work,

some things we stumbled upon:

-introduction: great dialogs :) but in my opinion the reaction of the elvish leader isnt very elvish (harmony etc. so why just kill him just out of a temper)
-the menu where to choose the difficulty is too big, im playing on 1024x768 (maybe reduce the picture size?)
-generally the shop menu should be a bit smaller (have to scroll sideways to read the description) or a linebreak for the description?
-pickpocket description says 5 gold per hit, but only 3 are given
-in the 4. scen where you have to defeat all "unknown" enemies the status table lists all races by clear name "Undead,Undead...Troll" maybe change that to ai#?
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Re: MP Campaign: The Haunted Woods (v1.4.0) for 1.6 and 1.8

Post by MrEPIC »

-My sister and I will revisit the dialog and storyline once we finish the last 2 scenarios.
-I can certainly do that.
-Originally, I had a line break, but sometimes error messages would appear about invalid characters at the start of the lines. Doing this still keeps the descriptions lined up neatly, and scrolling a little isn't too difficult, is it?
-Oops... I'll change description right away.
-That's a reasonable idea. I'll do that for the scenarios where enemies are hidden and it is not said what they are.
3 player co-op campaign: The Haunted Woods (v1.6.19)
1v1 campaign: Tug of War (v0.4.0)
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Rigor
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Re: MP Campaign: The Haunted Woods (v1.4.0) for 1.6 and 1.8

Post by Rigor »

MrEPIC wrote:A possible way I could think of limiting the effects of Give Unit is making it only work in the first few turns (4 for example) of the game
no :mrgreen: if i have this possibility ill use it of c and exploit it accordingly! only in our most recent game (Tesafilmchen,me,radament) we decided to let it be because its too powerful and actually, as a consequence, boring.

if u feel really sorry for your great invention make it work only once for each fraction per scenario and make it cost really lots of cash, like, 50 gold. again, i remind u of a pimped lvl1 unit with 10-4 attack...etc.etc (not to speak about lvl2). so one might think twice to use it deliberately to have an easy walkthrough through your campaigns. i just imagine this situation, where u fight an ancient lich and extra for this occasion, every teammember saved up 50 gold to kill it in one turn with something crazy, like a pimped silver mage who has lots of arcane resistance etc.etc. that would be ok, i guess, because it should be fun after all.

BTW, it would be nice to have an option at the start of this campaign "i have played this b4" for player1 because we have started the game three times already and when its as good as it seems, we will play it another 20 times, like world conquest :mrgreen:

do u need anyone for some dialogues? in the scenario after the long night the AI or the main characters dont talk so much and this might be a good time to start some chit-chat.
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Re: MP Campaign: The Haunted Woods (v1.4.0) for 1.6 and 1.8

Post by MrEPIC »

Rigor wrote:
MrEPIC wrote:A possible way I could think of limiting the effects of Give Unit is making it only work in the first few turns (4 for example) of the game
no :mrgreen: if i have this possibility ill use it of c and exploit it accordingly! only in our most recent game (Tesafilmchen,me,radament) we decided to let it be because its too powerful and actually, as a consequence, boring.
If you can only trade units in the first 2 or 3 turns, before combat takes place, then it would not be very exploitable...
Unless at the end of all of the first 3 turns, each player gives his units to the next, and they take every village on the map with this strategy. In order to counter this, a limit could be implemented that keeps trades each turn for each side down to 1. That way, each side would only be able to give 2 or 3 untis each scenario, and after the first couple of turns nobody could be traded. To me, this seems like the best way to keep the benefits of giving units, while keeping it from being exploitable. If you agree with this, or can't come up with a better way to solve this issue, then this will be included in the next version.
3 player co-op campaign: The Haunted Woods (v1.6.19)
1v1 campaign: Tug of War (v0.4.0)
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Re: MP Campaign: The Haunted Woods (v1.4.0) for 1.6 and 1.8

Post by Rigor »

the main question is: "what is it good for when only in the first turns u can trade units ?" "to trade units?" YES. we only used it because of offensive/defensive reasons. giving away any unit no matter what level and not getting it back is actually no problem for us.

exchange units: u can limit that feature to turn 2 only (where u recruited those guys u want to trade, not turn 1) as well and allow trading all units not just 1. although of course we would still exploit it (a little) because we would like to grab vills with slow guys quickly, but thats ok i suppose cuz we would trade them only one-way and not e.g. one elfish fighter goes to blue, then to green. in this case u can keep the tax that u installed same, it would be ok that way - we dont want to spend 50 gold for a crappy unit when we all start at the same place.

something else: you could make the scenario "the longest night" significantly harder if u allowed the AI to spam some lvl2 melee skels as well, not only archers and ghosts, and changed the leader to something lvl3-ish. i mean, we're playing difficulty suicide so... :mrgreen:

a small glitch happened when i used my speed potion with my leader (who has naturally 8mp): the first times i played that one, not only one lvl2 appeared on the east side, but also some lvl1 archers. in this case, where i wanted to occupy the keep in one woooosh all my speed potions MP vanished (and i was back to 8) and only one lvl2 archer appeared. yep, thats it already. i guess the event "dialogue" made that extra MP disappear because it doesnt tolerate this number: 15/8.

i hope to see ur next version on soon!
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Re: MP Campaign: The Haunted Woods (v1.4.0) for 1.6 and 1.8

Post by Rigor »

ah almost forgot about the other questions, did u think about them?
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Re: MP Campaign: The Haunted Woods (v1.4.0) for 1.6 and 1.8

Post by MrEPIC »

Rigor wrote:the main question is: "what is it good for when only in the first turns u can trade units ?" "to trade units?" YES. we only used it because of offensive/defensive reasons. giving away any unit no matter what level and not getting it back is actually no problem for us.

exchange units: u can limit that feature to turn 2 only (where u recruited those guys u want to trade, not turn 1) as well and allow trading all units not just 1. although of course we would still exploit it (a little) because we would like to grab vills with slow guys quickly, but thats ok i suppose cuz we would trade them only one-way and not e.g. one elfish fighter goes to blue, then to green. in this case u can keep the tax that u installed same, it would be ok that way - we dont want to spend 50 gold for a crappy unit when we all start at the same place.
I think what I will do for this is to only allow giving units until turn 2. There would be no tax, but only 2 units can be given each turn.
something else: you could make the scenario "the longest night" significantly harder if u allowed the AI to spam some lvl2 melee skels as well, not only archers and ghosts, and changed the leader to something lvl3-ish. i mean, we're playing difficulty suicide so... :mrgreen:
Perhaps on the harder difficulties I'll allow enemies to get stronger enemies and strengthen their leaders. This is not a top priority at the moment, however.
a small glitch happened when i used my speed potion with my leader (who has naturally 8mp): the first times i played that one, not only one lvl2 appeared on the east side, but also some lvl1 archers. in this case, where i wanted to occupy the keep in one woooosh all my speed potions MP vanished (and i was back to 8) and only one lvl2 archer appeared. yep, thats it already. i guess the event "dialogue" made that extra MP disappear because it doesnt tolerate this number: 15/8.
This is most likely due to the fact that this movement bonus only lasts for 1 move. The move is stopped if an event is triggered or if an enemy or friendly unit is seen.

@The question about dialog earlier: More and corrected dialog will be added in once I put up the last 2 scenarios. Then, I'll go back and change dialog and add more as well.

And yes, I should have the new version that includes these changes up fairly soon.
3 player co-op campaign: The Haunted Woods (v1.6.19)
1v1 campaign: Tug of War (v0.4.0)
Tesafilmchen
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Re: MP Campaign: The Haunted Woods (v1.4.0) for 1.6 and 1.8

Post by Tesafilmchen »

In my opinion this unit trade feature is really cool but the desired behaviour should be that the unit cant move again until the next round. As i am not familiar with the scripting etc. i dont know if it is possible. If it is you can remove the tax because there is no real advantage (in terms of gameplay) in giving a unit away. If not... well ... i dont like the idea of beeing limited to the first turns but as a workaround it will work (think of some "give away" shamans to support the dwarves ets.).
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Re: MP Campaign: The Haunted Woods (v1.4.1) for 1.6 and 1.8

Post by MrEPIC »

Tesafilmchen wrote:In my opinion this unit trade feature is really cool but the desired behaviour should be that the unit cant move again until the next round. ... If it is you can remove the tax because there is no real advantage (in terms of gameplay) in giving a unit away.
Sorry for the time it took for me to make a reply to this, but I've been away from my computer since Monday. Actually, this is not quite the most desirable behavior. The best behavior is for a unit to retain the amount of movement and the attacks it has left. And this is what I've done in 1.4.1. When you give a unit, its remaining movement and attacks are stored and are reset to this value at the start of the turn of the side that received this unit. All of the changes included in this version are listed in the changelog on the first page.
3 player co-op campaign: The Haunted Woods (v1.6.19)
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Re: MP Campaign: The Haunted Woods (v1.4.3) for 1.6 and 1.8

Post by Tesafilmchen »

seems we got ourselves a problem,
i updated the addon, then we finished beating up the trolls and undead. Next scenario, all recall lists are gone. I dont wanna start from the beginning so i could you give us the old addon (before removing tax etc) or is there another way of fixing this recall-list thing?
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