The Labyrinth Of Champions - A Multiplayer RPG

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

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Bob_The_Mighty
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The Labyrinth Of Champions - A Multiplayer RPG

Post by Bob_The_Mighty »

The Labyrinth of Champions is a multiplayer RPG map.

Five adventurers work together to survive Lord Hullon's deadly tournament - and claim their reward.

This is not just a kill/upgrade/kill/upgrade game. There is plenty of stuff to kill and some shops, but there's also puzzles, NPCs, traps and riddles - plus a kind of story.

It is on the campaign server for both 1.0.2 and 1.2

Let me know about bugs and things. I hope it is fun.
Last edited by Bob_The_Mighty on July 2nd, 2009, 9:22 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Kytin
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Post by Kytin »

I love RPG maps. I will definitely try this one out.
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Sapient
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Post by Sapient »

Congrats! I've been waiting for you to release this for a long time.
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/User:Sapient... "Looks like your skills saved us again. Uh, well at least, they saved Soarin's apple pie."
Becephalus
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Post by Becephalus »

KEEP IN MIND I THINK THIS IS VERY NICE AND ALL THESE CRITICISMS ARE GIVEN OUT OF LOVE :) It obviously took a ton of work, and is basically a 100X better version of something I was working on.

Might want a more clear map description/readme. Is the map cooperative or competitive (seems cooperative). What gpv? What income? What exp%? What era? If these are all meant to be default I suppose it is fine as is, but then why mention 100gp per player? If you don't want people to take evil heros make an era without them. In fact making a unit roster with just leaders you think appropriate would be ideal, regardless of faction. In a time of peace I could realistically see some famous orc coming to participate? Depends on how seriously you want to take things.

Also in the intro dialogue the sudden transition to the Lord being out of money seems abrupt, you might want another sentance to segue in. Mentioning in the beginign that he was not a rich Lord, or that the tournament was expensive (while that is implied the transition still seemed abrupt).

While the little village in the begining is cute, you might just want to spawn a menu and have the players select thigns there so they can cut right to the chase. Having it take 15mins until the actual start of the scenario is not good. Particularly if someone suddnely has to go or has connection problems, or someone does somethign stupid and immediately dies. By all means keep the village it is cute, but makign players move around turn by turn to buy stuff like that is just annoying.

More comments to be editted in as I test it.

Need to add a Full Heal between sections (perhaps at each tablet), probably half the time spent playing is spent standing around healing on villages, not ideal.


Because of the narrow corridorsfor combat and general lack of villages healers are much too strong. I would assume you want the selection of units to have interesting choices. Right now say a gladiator druid combo or gladiator white mage seems fairly invincible Compared to say a swordsman a ranger a steelclad etc. which if they don't do eveyrthing perfectly to juggle thier hp or sit and heal between every single combat will die rather quickly. Encouraging the player to take a few specific untis or be forced to sit and rest heal for 10 turns between each troll kill seems like a poor design. Mix up the terrain and fields of battle a little bit. So much of the fighting is in 1 wide coridors on grassland. Elves get destroyed here.

I am about halfway through now, ill post more as I continue.
Last edited by Becephalus on December 21st, 2006, 5:21 am, edited 6 times in total.
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Sapient
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Post by Sapient »

Egads! Give that pink general some team-color. How do you people make PBL files without reading that instruction?
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/User:Sapient... "Looks like your skills saved us again. Uh, well at least, they saved Soarin's apple pie."
Kytin
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Post by Kytin »

Played it last night. It was great. Really loved Torlic. Too bad he died. I lost my main character to that splitting mage, but Ruttle survived to the end. Only three of the five made it through (including me), but what kind of rpg would it be without risk?
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Post by commanderkeen »

You can keep going if people die? I was told if one person died, you all lose...

It's good fun and an excellent MP scenario, provided that the people you play with are playing for fun. If they play it to win, you'll end up getting annoyed with the "playing to win" player. Especially if they start screaming at the other players and telling them they're noobs.

I think that the upgrade parts could be improved too. When I played it (somehow before it was released) there were no labels on which village did what. This *was* a pre-release version, so if there are labels now, then don't listen to me.
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ivanovic
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Post by ivanovic »

I did just have a look at a game where this map was played. Here are some comments/bugs I saw:
1) Please copy over images from inside the campaigns. The way you are using them now does not work on every system. To be more precise: It does not work on non Windows systems. Copy the images over to the campaigns folder into an images folder and include it like it should be. (examples can be found in the configs of the mainline campaigns)
2) The keeps inside the cavewall looks wrong... Better replace them with a dwarvish keep. I think there is even an option in 1.2 to not have a leader for the enemy team at all.
3) Some of the "statues" in one room were pink. Please give them at least some color with the special macro. (You could for example give them the color of team9, here an example for the shock trooper: image="units/human-loyalists/shocktrooper.png~TC(9,magenta)")

In general the WML was rather difficult to read due to some clutter when using tabs and when not. Maybe parts like creating the monsters would have been nice in a macro to reduce the size of that file a little.
I hope these comments help you a little to improve the scenario.
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Bob_The_Mighty
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Post by Bob_The_Mighty »

Thanks for all the comments. I have spent a lot of time on making this scenario already, but I do want to polish it off. I am ready to release a new version with many of the changes people have suggested. However, there's one thing i can't figure out how to do.

I want to implement Becephalus' idea of having the players choose from a list of available heros - rather than choosing a faction and leader. Can anyone help?
Truper
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Post by Truper »

I know what needs to be done, but not how to do it. You need to create an era which contains only the units you want. You might try looking at the Extended RPG Era to see how it's done.
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Noyga
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Post by Noyga »

Or simply define the leaders in the scenario (if you want only one choice/slot).
This should enforce the leader types for each slot.
"Ooh, man, my mage had a 30% chance to miss, but he still managed to hit! Awesome!" ;) -- xtifr
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Bob_The_Mighty
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Post by Bob_The_Mighty »

I have just put the new version (1.9) of Labyrinth of Champions on the server. I have taken on board a lot of what people have said, and made quite a lot of changes:

- Created an era to ensure suitable champions are used.
- Added two hidden magic rings.
- Added numerous healing potions.
- Changed the prices of HP upgrade to make shopping quicker.
- Removed some of the dialogue in the shops for the same reason.
- The potion counter now also heals to full health.
- Fixed the error in the dialogue with ruttle that occured if torlic had died.
- Removed two of the troll corridoors.
- Redesigned the dwarf town to make shops more accessible.
- Added a couple of villages at crucial points.
- Added two new traps.
- Fixed the poison corridoor bug.
- Put messages for empty chests in bat trap room.
- Sorted out the issue with magenta unit images.
- Added lots of random bats to fight.
- Changed some of the terrain to make it more varied.
- Increased the hitpoints of Ultos and Koylti and the final opponents.
- Gave some creatures extra weapons to make fighting more challenging.

I hope you enjoy. Please give me feedback.
My current projects:
MP pirate campaign: The Altaz Mariners
RPG sequel: Return to Trent
MP stealth campaign: Den of Thieves
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Eleazar
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Post by Eleazar »

Bob_the_mighty, I must say, you are truly evil. :wink:

There's something intriguing about this thing, i feel the need to conquer it.

• Starting with 100 gold seems a bit tough, especially since many of the available characters don't seem to have a chance past the first bats, without some significant modifications. Alternatively you could make the first enemies easier, to make it easier to level up.

• anything to make the start-up quicker would be appreciated, for instance:
— • the ability to buy multiple items from one shop in one visit.
— • starting closer to the shops
— • fewer civilians in the way
— • WML that allows you to leave the shop after visiting, so you don't keep others from shopping.

Also when i tried to buy a ranged weapon, for a unit that didn't already have one, the shop took my money, but gave me nothing. caveat emptor, i guess.

• Some information about how the labyrinth works would be good to have in the introduction, people drop in for a MP game, and end up preparing badly. Also the intro makes it sound like a competition between human players, but in the portion i've explored, cooperation seems essential.

EDIT:
Also the benefit you get from the initial villages varies greatly depending on your unit. +1 to your attack strength is much more valuable if you have 5 attacks rather than 2. Have you consider allowing the player to purchase traits at the beginning? These are more of them to choose from and they are balanced to be more equally useful to different units.
Feel free to PM me if you start a new terrain oriented thread. It's easy for me to miss them among all the other art threads.
-> What i might be working on
Attempting Lucidity
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Jetrel
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Post by Jetrel »

Bob_the_mighty, I must say, you are truly evil.
Indeed. You've delayed the new mage images by another night. :x :P
Fie on thee.

My Dream Team for this map (e.g. what I played when I did my run-through):
• Fire Drake -> Inferno Drake "+1 to ranged damage? sweet!" "Red mage=lol."
• Elder Wose -> Ancient Wose - "Captain *crunch*" "Poison=lol."
• Lieutenant -> Grand Marshal "I'll put all the new troops on my side, thanks."
• Druid -> Shyde "Oh my portable healing/killing unit".
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Eleazar
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Post by Eleazar »

i made a prison gate graphic for you. (trust me, it looks good in context;) )

just place this directly over the ocean hex for a closed gate.
it's kind of a hack, but should work until the cave graphics are changed.

EDIT: i just beat it controlling all 5 characters. (OK, i save-loaded twice) It's pretty good. I think it could eventually be added to mainline, though for comparison, haven't played the other RPG maps out there.
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Feel free to PM me if you start a new terrain oriented thread. It's easy for me to miss them among all the other art threads.
-> What i might be working on
Attempting Lucidity
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