1.18 SP Campaign - Bad Moon Rising

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Duncan-Idaho
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Re: 1.14 SP Campaign - Bad Moon Rising

Post by Duncan-Idaho »

My thoughts on Bad Moon Rising:

Gameplay:

The gameplay of this campaign was honestly, fairly good... for the most part. The Ukians feel like hardy people used to the ravages of nature, everything from their weapons, to their magicians to their dogs, it all carries the sense of "people who carved their right to live here".

The variety of tools they have at their disposal is quite frankly excellent and while I seldom used the flaremen and with the small threat of undead, I'd say their role kinda feels on your army is insignificant, the dogs however were an interesting addition... the Attack Dogs were perhaps my most employed unit, not joking, their berserk nature made them both cheap cannon fodder and cheap to recruit and level. Being able to significantly weaken the units for others to finish off is a god send.

The Runners and Commandos came in second of my "most recruited unit list", they are absolutely phenomenal being this weird mix between Assassins and Cavalry, its nothing short of amazing what they can do when properly employed.

Meanwhile on the side of women... The Witches need a nerf, a strong used of the nerf bat for them. Due the advancement after they reach level three a determined player can just save scum and grind via skirmishes their units, to the point one can have a 199x4 unit. That's absolutely insane when coupled with the magical attribute of their attack. The only reason why I did not employ them more is because they have only 5 movement, and 5 movement on maps that are mostly forest or winter floors is kinda... of a no go.

Jumping of that last point, the Ukanians need a movement penalty rehaul, they are supposed to be these people who've adapted to living on winter, yet on ice (unless again, post level 3 advancement) they have very low bonuses, I get that for the sake of balance they shouldn't be too broken, but... I saw some low numbers, 30-38% on ice or snow fields.

The Primevals I honestly have mixed feelings about, they are these cool units with neat toys... but their presence is so brief by the end that I didn't quite got a handle of them.

My last point regarding Gameplay is that the Skirmishes with the ghost queen need to be reduced, when your encounter rate resembles Black Sigil: Blade of the exiled you know you have a problem. It took me an hour to reach the Copper Mines given I kept running onto her, dealing with her ambush units and so on and on.

Its honestly infuriating.

Story

The story exceeded my expectations. I don't come to Wesnoth expecting some grand space opera tier story and BMR is not one, nor as good as some of the stuff I've read (Dune, LOTR, Katzenbach's entire books, Dresden files, etc. etc. etc.) for what I assume is an amateur writing? This is fairly good and I'd gladly give it a rec to anyone seeking a nice story focused campaign to play.

My only quibble is that (and I fully admit this is personal bias) the characters drop like flies. The first leader gets ganked out of nowhere, the second one ends having to rush for the after life after his friend was devoured and became part of a collective and IDK if the last one survived at all given that I have yet to play Trinity. Adding some subtle foreshadowing to point that Lorenzon is going to die is something that could work. Its not easy, I am fully aware of that, but if pulled properly, your audience will feel like they were one step ahead.

As for the rest, I suppose my doubts will have to wait as I rush to play Trinity and see if it holds the answers I seek.
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doofus-01
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Re: 1.14 SP Campaign - Bad Moon Rising

Post by doofus-01 »

Duncan-Idaho wrote: October 16th, 2019, 7:03 pm There is a bug with the 3rd part of BMR, on Mt. Tien, Hrala Gareth isn't being recalled properly, she's never recalled in.

To be more clear after checkpoint if I get on an skirmish, she pops up, if I do the sidequest of the curiosity shop, she pops up, I get to Mt.Tien, she's missing.
Someone else reported a similar problem, it was difficult to reproduce, but there was something strange going on... I'll try to refresh my memory of it this weekend.
Duncan-Idaho wrote: October 17th, 2019, 2:21 am My last point regarding Gameplay is that the Skirmishes with the ghost queen need to be reduced, when your encounter rate resembles Black Sigil: Blade of the exiled you know you have a problem. It took me an hour to reach the Copper Mines given I kept running onto her, dealing with her ambush units and so on and on.
That damn RNG. Sometimes those skirmishes were difficult to test because they hardly ever happened. I did add some check so that you shouldn't get attacked immediately after one of them, it used to work.
Duncan-Idaho wrote: October 17th, 2019, 2:21 am umping of that last point, the Ukanians need a movement penalty rehaul, they are supposed to be these people who've adapted to living on winter, yet on ice (unless again, post level 3 advancement) they have very low bonuses, I get that for the sake of balance they shouldn't be too broken, but... I saw some low numbers, 30-38% on ice or snow fields.
Some of that might have been equipment penalty. For a long time, there wasn't any penalty, and that just meant you could have invincible super-soldiers march through everything. The system can still be gamed, but at least you need to make some choices now, and even mediocre armor has some value.

Thanks for the feedback. Hopefully you like Trinity, although be aware that it's not quite in the same style as BMR1-3. It's also in a fragile state towards the end, some perfectly logical decisions can get you trapped in a bad state. I am trying to get it cleaned up.
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Duncan-Idaho
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Re: 1.14 SP Campaign - Bad Moon Rising

Post by Duncan-Idaho »

Thanks for the feedback. Hopefully you like Trinity, although be aware that it's not quite in the same style as BMR1-3. It's also in a fragile state towards the end, some perfectly logical decisions can get you trapped in a bad state. I am trying to get it cleaned up.
Considering I am trapped on Moon I and the King keeps calling to an invisible unit and skipping to the next scenario works... until you finish it and the game auto loses on moon II b... you have an herculean task ahead of you.
That damn RNG. Sometimes those skirmishes were difficult to test because they hardly ever happened. I did add some check so that you shouldn't get attacked immediately after one of them, it used to work.
It goes like this: 1) Skirmish> 2) no skirmish and no real Movement Points> 3) Moves and instant Skirmish go to: 2).
Someone else reported a similar problem, it was difficult to reproduce, but there was something strange going on... I'll try to refresh my memory of it this weekend.
Its most likely a coding problem on the scenario, I tried supplanting one of the generic orcs with her and all signs point that the recall is borked up somehow, there is no recalling her because either she's not in the memory or she's not a valid unit in the list for your campaign.

Just in case I was missing a flag, I didn't kill on the map/mission before Tien the orc Chief until turn 20, no change.
Some of that might have been equipment penalty. For a long time, there wasn't any penalty, and that just meant you could have invincible super-soldiers march through everything. The system can still be gamed, but at least you need to make some choices now, and even mediocre armor has some value.
Yeah, see the witches case, 199 damage projectiles with 70% chance of hitting.

I don't remember honestly equipping much armor to my soldiers, but I suppose that could also be the issue. The Movement points is still kind of a dicey problem tbh.

Now that I've played Trinity, I think it would be advisable for you to add at least a few throwaway lines about the Great Enemy of Trinity on this campaign, he comes more or less out of nowhere and proceeds to... I don't wanna say retcon, but it feels like a bit of a retcon here, given the Kthon Echidna did not mention anything about him during this campaign.

The point I am trying to make (badly no doubt ;P) is that the next Big Foe feels out of place and out of nowhere.
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Re: 1.14 SP Campaign - Bad Moon Rising

Post by doofus-01 »

Duncan-Idaho wrote: October 18th, 2019, 4:01 am Considering I am trapped on Moon I and the King keeps calling to an invisible unit and skipping to the next scenario works... until you finish it and the game auto loses on moon II b... you have an herculean task ahead of you.
Skipping things probably will cause bugs, yes. That I will not try to fix.
Duncan-Idaho wrote: October 18th, 2019, 4:01 am It goes like this: 1) Skirmish> 2) no skirmish and no real Movement Points> 3) Moves and instant Skirmish go to: 2).
I don't know what that means. No real Movement Points?
Duncan-Idaho wrote: October 18th, 2019, 4:01 am Its most likely a coding problem on the scenario, I tried supplanting one of the generic orcs with her and all signs point that the recall is borked up somehow, there is no recalling her because either she's not in the memory or she's not a valid unit in the list for your campaign.
Of course. Figuring out why is the problem. ;)
EDIT: Earlier report of this https://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.ph ... 25#p646579
Duncan-Idaho wrote: October 18th, 2019, 4:01 am The point I am trying to make (badly no doubt ;P) is that the next Big Foe feels out of place and out of nowhere.
No, I see what you mean. Most of the characters in BMR wouldn't know anything about NBF, but Nemesis, Ares, and Echidna could say something about it.
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Duncan-Idaho
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Re: 1.14 SP Campaign - Bad Moon Rising

Post by Duncan-Idaho »

I don't know what that means. No real Movement Points?
Basically let's say each Commander has 6 MP, by moving and triggering the skirmish I am left with 0 to 2 MP forcing me to wait a turn, after I have 6 MP again and I try to move I enter immediately onto a skirmish.

Hence no real movement points, whenever skirmishes trigger I always have some MP left, but not enough to actually move towards my goal.
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Re: 1.14 SP Campaign - Bad Moon Rising

Post by doofus-01 »

doofus-01 wrote: August 24th, 2019, 11:46 am
Konrad2 wrote: August 19th, 2019, 7:13 am I never had Hrala. :/
I see... If I swap the [unit] tags that create Hrala and Grat, your West save gives Hrala but not Grat; whichever one is created first works, the second one doesn't. So for some reason, two consecutive [unit] tags no longer work? Hard to see how this could be a bug with this add-on, but also hard to believe this hasn't caused all sorts of mainline problems if it were really an engine bug. This will take some time to work out.

EDIT: inserting two [unit] tags in HttT seems to work just fine.

EDIT2: and getting to my own version of "West" from an old "Checkpoint" save seems to work just fine as well. If no one else has this issue, I'll have to assume there is something corrupt about your save-file. Not sure what else I can do.
I'll post my Checkpoint replay though, since now I have one that should work.
I found out the problem that Konrad2, and I think Duncan-Idaho as well, had with key units not appearing. Probably happens to non-key units too.

If a created unit has the same underlying_id key as another one, it can work if it's enemies on a map, but if it's team-mates & recall lists, one of them gets erased (it looks like the new one, but I've no idea if that's always the case). You can assign underlying_id, so I guess I could give Hrala (in this case) an unlikely number, but it won't stop the bug from showing up in other places, and I don't think I'll ever be able to hunt it all down.

The reason this happens is that you can bring units from Part2 to Part3, but the engine assigns underlying_id independently for each part, so your pal "Ukian Regular-873", who has been with you from Part2, will kill off Hrala in Part3 because they both have underlying_id=873. The problematic numbers will be different for different play-throughs. It won't happen in a standard campaign that doesn't carry over units from another one.

Probably a bug with Wesnoth, I don't think this used to happen pre-BfW-1.14. It looks like I can just add 50,000 to the underlying_id of the carried over units, make conflicts less likely. Unfortunately, that will only help if you start from the very beginning of Part3. Better than nothing though, so it will be in the next update.
Duncan-Idaho wrote: October 19th, 2019, 2:33 pm
I don't know what that means. No real Movement Points?
Basically let's say each Commander has 6 MP, by moving and triggering the skirmish I am left with 0 to 2 MP forcing me to wait a turn, after I have 6 MP again and I try to move I enter immediately onto a skirmish.

Hence no real movement points, whenever skirmishes trigger I always have some MP left, but not enough to actually move towards my goal.
Movement points shouldn't have any effect on skirmishes, and they don't when I test it.
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Duncan-Idaho
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Re: 1.14 SP Campaign - Bad Moon Rising

Post by Duncan-Idaho »

Movement points shouldn't have any effect on skirmishes, and they don't when I test it.
I'll upload a pic tomorrow to explain better, but no its not that MP affect skirimishes, is that I end with not many MP because Skirmishes tend to happen mid travel.

I think if I can capture it on picture or video it should make more sense.
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Re: 1.14 SP Campaign - Bad Moon Rising

Post by Konrad2 »

Maybe: Spend 3MP, get caught by a skirmish, have 3 MP left to spend, spend those and end turn. Sure, you spend 6MP, but it really doesn't feel like that.
Duncan-Idaho
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Re: 1.14 SP Campaign - Bad Moon Rising

Post by Duncan-Idaho »

https://imgur.com/a/9PTp3Fe

The images there showcase more or less the problem, given that skirmishes happen mid travel, the 6MP I have will end as 1 or 2 MP, forcing me to wait a turn and risk getting onto another skirmish with the ghost queen, again, leading me to the first problem. Thus making a journey to anywhere on the map a massive migraine.
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Re: 1.14 SP Campaign - Bad Moon Rising

Post by doofus-01 »

Thanks for the screenshots. Hrm :hmm: , the move points and turns shouldn't affect whether you get a skirmish or not. The turns affect where the "Cavalry" (enemies wandering the map) are, and what the time-schedule is, but otherwise a new turn has no effect. Or am I still not understanding something?
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Duncan-Idaho
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Re: 1.14 SP Campaign - Bad Moon Rising

Post by Duncan-Idaho »

doofus-01 wrote: October 21st, 2019, 3:31 am Thanks for the screenshots. Hrm :hmm: , the move points and turns shouldn't affect whether you get a skirmish or not. The turns affect where the "Cavalry" (enemies wandering the map) are, and what the time-schedule is, but otherwise a new turn has no effect. Or am I still not understanding something?
My point is that due to the stupidly high encounter rate and that movement on the world map still costs move points, getting anywhere becomes an absolute chore. Taking 30 to 40 turns to reach for example the copper mines because I am constantly getting onto skirmishes and then having to spend a turn to restore my movement points to proceed forward and then get onto an skirmish again.
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Re: 1.14 SP Campaign - Bad Moon Rising

Post by doofus-01 »

1.11.2 has been uploaded to the 1.14 server.
Biggest fix is the "underlying_id" issue mentioned above. There were a few minor fixes to P3 scenarios as well, more info here:https://github.com/doofus-01/wesnoth-Ba ... its/master
Duncan-Idaho wrote: October 21st, 2019, 4:57 pm My point is that due to the stupidly high encounter rate and that movement on the world map still costs move points, getting anywhere becomes an absolute chore. Taking 30 to 40 turns to reach for example the copper mines because I am constantly getting onto skirmishes and then having to spend a turn to restore my movement points to proceed forward and then get onto an skirmish again.
I'm not trying to be dense here, just trying to make sure there is no bug or API change. From what I can tell there isn't one, there is just this "spend a turn" thing which I don't understand.

One thing that occurs to me just now is maybe you are using deterministic mode or "save random seed". I haven't tested that, it's not the normal way to play, but maybe it affects the random skirmishes. :hmm:
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Re: 1.14 SP Campaign - Bad Moon Rising

Post by Duncan-Idaho »

doofus-01 wrote: October 27th, 2019, 4:09 am I'm not trying to be dense here, just trying to make sure there is no bug or API change. From what I can tell there isn't one, there is just this "spend a turn" thing which I don't understand.

One thing that occurs to me just now is maybe you are using deterministic mode or "save random seed". I haven't tested that, it's not the normal way to play, but maybe it affects the random skirmishes. :hmm:
By spend a "turn" I mean that I hit the "end turn" button or the shortcut ctrl+space to finish my turn after the skirmish.
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Re: 1.14 SP Campaign - Bad Moon Rising

Post by WackoJacko »

Hello,
I'm currently playing through part two and I think I'm having problems with Raenna. I believe you're meant to encounter her in the scenario when you "win" the female units (archers) however she never appears, just some random peasant. It doesn't seem to be affecting anything however there have been times when Lorenzon seems to be speaking to be having a one-sided conversation with himself when I believe he should be talking to her. I just want to know if this is a major problem before I continue on.

Also, with regards to the previous posts, I have reached the copper mines and haven't seen the Ghost Queen yet (besides the cutscene with Huric), is this intended? Or have i just not progressed in the story as much as the previous poster?

Thanks. :)

EDIT: I only bring it up because a defeat condition in Old Guardian is her death but she doesn't exist (I did recruit an archer named Raenna, who has since died, earlier in the game though, did this wipe out the main Raenna?)
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Re: 1.14 SP Campaign - Bad Moon Rising

Post by doofus-01 »

Hi,
WackoJacko wrote: November 13th, 2019, 12:22 pm I'm currently playing through part two and I think I'm having problems with Raenna. I believe you're meant to encounter her in the scenario when you "win" the female units (archers) however she never appears, just some random peasant.
You are right, that is where she should appear, with the archers. There is a random peasant at the very start, but one shouldn't show up later. Not having her will make the campaign broken. Can you send me the start-of-scenario save-file (not one of the auto-saves)? Though if you have an auto-save or mid-scenario save where the archers (and peasant) show up, that would be helpful too.

Thanks.
WackoJacko wrote: November 13th, 2019, 12:22 pm Also, with regards to the previous posts, I have reached the copper mines and haven't seen the Ghost Queen yet (besides the cutscene with Huric), is this intended? Or have i just not progressed in the story as much as the previous poster?
She only starts harassing you later on.
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