Dwarven Campaign

[DarkOx55]

Hello,
Awhile ago I decided to try my hand at making a campaign and since then, I've managed to finish three scenarios. The campaign centers on the Knaglan Alliance and on how that Alliance came to be formed.
I'm very much a newbie when it comes to WML (and Wesnoth in general) so any comments on the scenarios, balance or storyline would be greatly appreciated.
I should also note that the scenarios might not play exactly like those found in the Heir to the Throne campaign, in that the first has no villages at all (as you can only recruit dwarves and I thought it was too boring having slow-moving dwarves head towards villages). The second has about twenty (as the goal is to defend a village, but I thought it looked silly having many dawarves defend a single tile of village). As such, do not worry overly much if you have a lot of very little gold at the end of the first or second scenarios.
The third is the scenario that's the most different as I tried to make it an RPG-style map where you have to complete various quests to recruit thieves to your cause. Again, I don't know if the style works with Wesnoth, so any feedback would be great.
Thanks,

DarkOx

[turin]

First of all, it is usually better not to name file names with spaces in them. It actually makes a difference for non-windows users.

Second, Thumbs.db is a microsoft office document. So what exactly is it supposed to do? it won't be obtained when wesnoth runs.

I'll actually try playing it tomorrow.

[quartex]

Interesting campaign. Cool use of custom graphics, like the mines and boulders. My main problem is that the game crashes at the end of level 2. I beat level 2, and the get to the point where the mages put the town to the torch, and then the screen flashes red, and then the application crashes and quits. (is there something wrong with the kill command?)

Until then I had a lot of fun. I actually thought defending the town in level 2 was going to be a pain, dwarves suck on roads or forest it seems, and are pretty bad in tundra. So I decided to try fleeing to the mountains. It actually worked really well, even though the dwarves move really slowly and it took a while to reach the mountains, the tundra slowed down the enemy units so that most of the only attacked my rearguard. And they got distracted by capturing all my villages, so I managed to reach the mountains and actually counterattack a bit.

Anyway, once the crashing bug is fixed, I'd be interested in trying the third level. I really like the end of scenario 2 (I read the rest of the dialogs by opening the scenario tile) and I love the dialogs for your scenario. You write better prose that anything else I have seen, the plot itself may not be incredibly unique, but I love using the narrator as a way of commenting on each scenario, and how you drop details about the dwarves and their culture, the description really adds a lot to the atmospehere of the campaign.

I'd love to post my replay once I can actually finish level 2 without crashing.

[Dave]

This campaign looks very interesting and promising. The first scenario was nice and challenging, but not ridiculous. It was a little confusing what the aim was (I figured that since I had to 'destroy the mining operations' moving onto the mines would do something....but it didn't So, I just killed the enemy leader. Managed to level-up a fighter and a thunderer. (and the new advanced thunderers are cool!)

Second scenario was challenging, although I did manage to level up quite a few units, including getting my Steelclad from the first scenario to a Lord. Definitely NOT the kind of scenario that Beserkers do well in

The third scenario was an interesting concept. I'm afraid I didn't really like the "italian criminal" theme of the text, but other than that it was fun.

David

[DarkOx55]

turin- I don't know where the tumbs file came from, apparently it appeared when I zipped the dwarven campaign folder. Feel free to delete it if you like, its not supposed to do anything. Thanks for pointing out about spaces in the name, I wasn't aware of that at all.

quartex- I had that error as well and I believe its linked to 0.7.3 as when I upgraded to 0.7.5 the crash disappeared. I'm glad you enjoyed what you could play though and thanks for taking the time to comment on the campaign!

Dave- The maffia idea is only for one of the quests and I wasn't entirely sure about putting that one in; as Wesnoth clearly doesn't have a race of italians. I couldn't think of anything much more interesting however, and decided to try it, though perhaps it didn't work out. I'll look into changing the event however, and see if I can't make it more 'Wesnothish' and still try to pull out a joke or two.

Thanks for both trying out the campaign and taking the time to comment about it

[turin]

Hm...just played. It was fun, but a problem and a question.

1: why do you get so many units at the beginning of the second scenario? personally, i think half that number would have probably worked fine. most of them ended up in the back without fighting at all, so you could probably reduce the number of free people by 30-50% and not have any real problems.

2: do you get to keep the units you level in the second scenario? it says they die, which kinda stinks...i mean, i actually think i could have, given enough turns, come back and won that scenario if the mages hadn't arrived. (yeah, probably wishful thinking). but i had 3 thunderguards and 3 steelclads- are they just gone noe?

[quartex]

turin, I don't know, but I think they should be dead. I classic meta-gamming assumption of most computer games is that if you complete the scenario then your side wins. It's cool to see your side get massacred even though you finished the scenario. Okay I admit that it is bad becuase it undermines all the progress the player makes, but the army is only 2 scenarios old, so you aren't losing that much, and it's really unexpected and original, so I think it is really cool. You'll have plenty of time to create a new army.

I don't know if this is possible, but it might be cool to pick the most experienced unit at the end of the scenarios and have him pop up several scenarios later, to say that he managed to hide and survive the massacre and tell the story of what happened. I don't think saving one unit is possible with the current scripting language, but in truth, if everyone did die, who survived to tell the tale?

DarkOx55, thanks, I'll update to 0.7.5 and try again.

[Dave]

Well there was a comment I was going to make that was kinda nullified when all my units got massacred -- I think that putting a scenario like this in this early would unbalance the campaign. Some players would be able to level-up masses of units, and others would struggle to survive. The levelling potential is huge, if you're skillful and lucky, since you're fighting so many level 2 units.

But, since your units die, it kinda nullifies that.

In one way, it would be kind of cool if the game made your most skillful unit survive the battle and come back later or something -- but otoh this would just lead to players trying to get one unit as high as possible.

Oh and yeah, that bug would appear in 0.7.3. but should be fixed in 0.7.5.

David

[quartex]

It depends on when in the campaign that one unit came back, and how he came back. He could be rallying a second dwarven rebellion, and come to help the thieves/outlaws. If it's late enough that you already have time to build up some level 2 or level 3 thieves/outlaws, then whether the dwarf was level 1 or level 3 might not make a huge difference. I suppose if someone tried hard enough they could get one unit to level 3, there are enough enemies.

Anyway, level 3 was sort of fun. The initial choice seemed a bit lopsided, I tried several times but had trouble killing the thugs with the thieves. The thugs just have a much stronger attack, and the thieves are weaker, if I played as the thugs I would often have 3 thugs survivem but if I played as the thieves I would only have 1-2 thieves survive, no matter how I tried.

My main annoyance was the huge size of the map and the slow movement rate, I spent turns just wander around trying to find something (I initially went SW and found nothing), wasting turns. I started over and had fun with the godfather (although getting teleported was confusing, I had no idea where my guy went). My main annoyance was that i ran out of turns, I was midway through trying to find the two thieve's hideout when I realized I had only 5 turns left and I was going to die before I could reach the castle.

Also in the dialog boxes, units were talking that i didn't have (something I know you can't fix). But throughout the level I kept rushing around, worrying that i wasn't finding the right guys (still haven't found the gypsies) and running out of turns too fast. I think you should incease the # of turns and decrease the size of the map to make it move faster, I spent too many turns marching back and forth.

Of course maybe you want to make it so the player can't get all the encounters and have to choose a few of the them. But I think compressing the map will help prevent the player from getting frusterated wandering through the wilderness, not finding any encounters at all.

Oh and we need to get you a better church graphic.

[turin]

turin, I don't know, but I think they should be dead. I classic meta-gamming assumption of most computer games is that if you complete the scenario then your side wins. It's cool to see your side get massacred even though you finished the scenario. Okay I admit that it is bad becuase it undermines all the progress the player makes, but the army is only 2 scenarios old, so you aren't losing that much, and it's really unexpected and original, so I think it is really cool. You'll have plenty of time to create a new army.

I don't know if this is possible, but it might be cool to pick the most experienced unit at the end of the scenarios and have him pop up several scenarios later, to say that he managed to hide and survive the massacre and tell the story of what happened. I don't think saving one unit is possible with the current scripting language, but in truth, if everyone did die, who survived to tell the tale?

DarkOx55, thanks, I'll update to 0.7.5 and try again.

just because the army is 2 scenarios old doesn't mean it is little. i had 3 steelclads and 3 thunderguards. and i'm pissed to have lost them.
its not actually all that original, just unexpected. and annoying. yeah, you lose all your units, so you have to start over. basically, you make the first two scenarios pointless, which i think is a pointless thing to do. if thats how your going to do it, get rid of the first two scenarios.

[quartex]

It hurts your gameplay experience in favor of the plot. I can see why you'd be annoyed, since part of the fun of wesnoth is building up and army. But think of it as a prologue to the main campaign.

Many strategy games have several campaigns where you control different armies (like Heroes of Might and Magic or Warcraft). I wonder if it would be possible to have a wesnoth campaign where you are actually controlling two different armies, on alternating levels, so that each army exists seperately. The reason why i ask about this feature (to have several simultanious armies) is that it would be really cool to create a campaign where the storylines of each army interweave with each other. We are starting to get campaigns with branching levels (where different victory conditions can lead to different levels), imagine if the actions of one army affected the other, imagine if at one point the armies met and fought side by side on one map. Altghough creating branching storylines can be a lot of work, I just think that having the actions of one group affect the other could add a lot of the storyline potential of a Wesnoth campaign.

You could have humans and elves fighting against each other or allying against a greater orc/undead menace. You could have control two opposing forces and choose to cheerfully erradicate each other or work towards an alliance (leading to two very different campaign endings).

[Boucman]

with the new recall manipulating WML, it can be done, just remoe all previous recalls, and change it for the other army...

BTW, Dave, does the AI handle recall ? can it be given a recall list ?

it the two armies meet, it would be nice to fight the army you've grown up yourself...



aarg, this great mage is blasting through my army, but if I kill it I wont have it later

[Darth Fool]

with the new recall manipulating WML, it can be done, just remoe all previous recalls, and change it for the other army...

BTW, Dave, does the AI handle recall ? can it be given a recall list ?

it the two armies meet, it would be nice to fight the army you've grown up yourself...



aarg, this great mage is blasting through my army, but if I kill it I wont have it later

Man, you guys are evil I love it!

[Dave]

BTW, Dave, does the AI handle recall ? can it be given a recall list ?

it the two armies meet, it would be nice to fight the army you've grown up yourself...

The AI doesn't handle recall and can't be given a recall list.

However, with the new WML manipulation, the scenario designer could hand-craft their own recalling sequences.

Every turn just pop a few units out of the array....

David

[turin]

It hurts your gameplay experience in favor of the plot. I can see why you'd be annoyed, since part of the fun of wesnoth is building up and army. But think of it as a prologue to the main campaign.

The prologue to the campaign is the opening storyline, right? they're not actual scenarios.

I just had an idea, though. At the end of the second scenario, say : "But some of the dwarves escaped from the burning city..." and select your 4-8 most advanced units to be recalled later in the campaign (when the thieves and dwarves allign). So, yeah, most of your units die, but chances are your best ones are still alive, and you can get them back later on.