Bland home invasion. Two players cooperative map.

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Bladget
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Bland home invasion. Two players cooperative map.

Post by Bladget »

# Bland home invasion
Cooperative map for two players. The objective is to kill an enemy leader who hunkered down in a large fortress, together with his allies. The enemy is controlled by a computer. Players select their faction freely.

The map has a specific feature. The enemy fortress has two impassable sets of gates. The gates can be opened by stepping on a specific cell. The cell is predictably guarded. There is hope that players need to cooperate and time when they open the gates. Otherwise enemy reinforcements might overwhelm them.

Additionally, there is a bonus objective. The side that defeats secondary enemy leaders receives a free powerful combatant under their control.

Download latest version from the official add-on server.

Simple map for half an hour of play with a friend.
Last edited by Bladget on September 11th, 2020, 1:33 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Bladget
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Re: Bland home invasion. Two players cooperative map.

Post by Bladget »

# Release 1.0.0

Apply minor changes after playtesting 0.1.0. Prepare for public release.

Submit map to the official add-on server.

* Add four more villages.
* Make gold and income customizeable for computer enemy team.
Last edited by Bladget on September 11th, 2020, 1:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Atreides
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Re: Bland home invasion. Two players cooperative map.

Post by Atreides »

I gave it a try. It should be noted that with the usual shuffle sides on this scenario doesn't work. :) No biggie. Anyways, it's not bland, it looks interesting and is quite hard as I got exterminated on my first two tries. Of course I'm a simply awful player. So there's that. :) I will retry it with a gold boost to suit my intermediate level, something I've recently learned is neccesary for most Wesnoth scenarios which are all by default set for the most expert players I've realized. Wish there was a note telling new players that. Not that new myself anymore but just thinking of brand new players getting frustrated. Hmmm I'm rambling. Oh yeah, wanted to say that this looks like fun.
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Bladget
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Re: Bland home invasion. Two players cooperative map.

Post by Bladget »

Release 1.0.1

* Add Wesnoth server ignore file.
* Add feedback metadata.
* Disallow shuffle.

Download latest version from the official add-on server.

Additionally, thank you for your feedback.

Regarding difficulty. I started to play this month myself. Therefore I am a new player as well. I did not expect it to be especially difficult. Remember that it's cooperative. Two humans should outsmart the computer enemy.

Player can receive reinforcements by killing secondary enemy leaders.

Also, I most often tested the game with "No randomness mod" enabled. After I played it with the add-on disabled, it turned out more difficult. Also, this map favours faction with efficient blunt damage, since the computer enemy is mostly undead.

If more people like the map I will make adjustable difficulty.
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Atreides
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Re: Bland home invasion. Two players cooperative map.

Post by Atreides »

BTW there's a typo in the text intro where it says something like "the undead the bandits". I guess it's missing an and or something since those seem to be the 2 types one has to fight. :) I built nothing but Dune burners for one of the 2 factions only to realize they faced bandits mainly! Hehe. Undead are my specialty so I know how to fight them but bandits I'll have to think about some more...

Oh I assume that if one chooses a custom era (like Era of Magic) it will mess up the scenario? I've only played it with default+dunefolk so far. I think that's why it is hard, I forgot how to play the standard units haha...
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Bladget
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Re: Bland home invasion. Two players cooperative map.

Post by Bladget »

Yes, I only tested in with default era. And yes that's a typo, it's supposed to be "undead and bandits". I put bandits there specifically to throw off a player who anticipated undead only. There was a warning however, as you just pointed out.
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Atreides
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Re: Bland home invasion. Two players cooperative map.

Post by Atreides »

I tried to update and now it is uninstalled. When I try to install it it downloads but remains uninstalled. Can't choose it from scenarios. The dir is actually there though on my disk. Not sure what's going on. Looked at the files and it all looks OK. I even purged the wesnoth cache but no difference.

While looking through the file I noticed that the computer factions/leaders are locked which I presume means players could choose custom eras for their sides vs the fixed undead/bandits. Nice. Will give it a try once I can get it running again. Using custom eras will naturally unbalance things a little as some are very weird! But we custom era fanatics are used to that hehe.
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Bladget
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Re: Bland home invasion. Two players cooperative map.

Post by Bladget »

I may know the reason. I have _main.cfg listed in _server.ign. Although I did play test it once again before and after uploading 1.0.1. I suspect it is a form of dirty-cache error. I try a hotfix.

I locked factions and leaders specifically instead of disallowing modification completely so that players may adjust the enemy income and starting gold, as well as see roughly what enemies they are to expect on the map.

I may be able to make an adjustment for specific era with a preprocessor macro. I saw it done in some campaigns. It depends.
+
I submitted a 1.0.2 hotfix.

Dunefolk era appears to define unit types with the same names as the Default era. Therefore I expect that the computer enemy to behave as expected. Player experience depends on their faction choice regardless of era. The map is not balanced.
+
I purged my ~data/add-ons/ completely. Then I downloaded Bland home invasion from the server. It run fine, at least after the 1.0.2 hotfix.
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Pentarctagon
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Re: Bland home invasion. Two players cooperative map.

Post by Pentarctagon »

Adding something to the .ign file means it doesn't get uploaded to the add-ons server. So if you add the _main.cfg there, you'll still have that file on your own computer, but nobody who downloads the add-on from the add-ons server will have it.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 little bugs
take one down, patch it around
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Bladget
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Re: Bland home invasion. Two players cooperative map.

Post by Bladget »

Yes, I understand that. Which is why I made sure by purging my add-ons directory content, after I uploaded the hotfix. Thank you.
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Atreides
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Re: Bland home invasion. Two players cooperative map.

Post by Atreides »

1.0.2 downloads, installs and runs great! I'm playing it with Era of Chaos and everything is OK, my 2 player fac's are EoC and the computer forces are still undead/bandits as expected. I retract what I said about it being hard, so far I've done as well as I usually do. :)
Spoiler:
p.s. I like the medieval feel of capturing a castle like peeling an onion layer by layer.
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Re: Bland home invasion. Two players cooperative map.

Post by Helbra »

One of the more enjoyable scenarios I've played so far. :D
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Atreides
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Re: Bland home invasion. Two players cooperative map.

Post by Atreides »

I've noticed something odd on starting a new game. The undead (but not the bandits) sides by default get a random faction. This is in spite of the scenario file having faction=Undead and faction_lock=true set.

Workaround is to manually change the random to the prescribed faction when starting a game.

Strange though. (Tried a few quick hacks to fix it, no joy)

Addendum:

The problem was that faction=Undead unexpectedly can only find the core faction if the add-on era includes default. So the Era Of Magic (for example) won't work with this scenario unless you do this:

Insert into sides 3 and 4

Code: Select all

        faction=Custom
        recruit=Skeleton,Skeleton Archer,Walking Corpse,Ghost,Vampire Bat,Dark Adept,Ghoul
Of course overwrite faction=Undead

P.S. Oh of course if you don't care you can still play, but the "Undead" will recruit EoMa units 8 - / . Or you can play the default era. It's a _very_ fine era... but if not for the add-on eras I'd have lost interest ages ago.
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