Removing mainline campaign(s)

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SigurdFireDragon
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Re: Removing mainline campaign(s)

Post by SigurdFireDragon »

nemaara wrote: 4. Making use of mainline factions/races. As an example, we do not have a campaign that really focuses on Saurians, and none on Dunefolk. We'd obviously want to look into mainlining campaigns for such races/factions for stronger worldbuilding.
Why not mainline one? There are a couple on the add-on server archives. One that seems like it might be a reasonable fit is viewtopic.php?f=31&t=32000Roar of the Woses, a saurian/naga campaign by Alarantalara.
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Re: Removing mainline campaign(s)

Post by Pentarctagon »

Adding another campaign that focuses just on the woses would be moving in the opposite direction of having a more connected set of campaigns though, wouldn't it?
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Re: Removing mainline campaign(s)

Post by SigurdFireDragon »

Pentarctagon wrote: November 30th, 2019, 4:45 am Adding another campaign that focuses just on the woses would be moving in the opposite direction of having a more connected set of campaigns though, wouldn't it?
Roar of the Woses really is focused on the suarian/nagas. I think the name could use improvement, it doesn't help paint a clear picture of what it's about. I have played it. The name aside, I think some here might think it a reasonable fit.
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Re: Removing mainline campaign(s)

Post by octalot »

Replying here to comments originally in the "A grand design for singleplayer mainline lore" thread.
Tad_Carlucci wrote: December 10th, 2019, 1:54 pm Given how quickly AOI went from "it's so poorly done, we should remove it" to a merge commit actually doing that, it makes me nervious to see someone talking about removing yet more campaigns.

Removing one campaign might be OK. Removing several sounds like a recipe for disaster. A "remove everything" event probably includes removing many (if not most) players.

Just because Wesnoth is a small team and can't devote a lot of attention to a lot of campaigns all at once is no reason to pull out the axe. Slow down, give people time. Let's start by dropping any discussion of "by 1.16". We've already dropped a campaign for 1.16. Unless we're either going to push 1.16 off by years and make it a "rewrite mainline" release, that's enough.
My understanding is that 1.16 is going to be pushed off for years to make it a "rewrite mainline" release.

I feel the AOI removal happened far too quickly, that there many are unanswered questions in the PR discussion, and that reverting the removal should be considered. But based on what happened there, I'm worried that we'll treat campaign removal as a difficult-to-discuss topic, ending with a mass-removal event just before 1.16 is released. I'd prefer to have a mass-removal (and even better a rejection-of-mass-removal) happen as part of the roadmap discussion in the next month or so, rather than an ongoing uncertainty about what will happen shortly before the next release.
nemaara wrote: December 11th, 2019, 5:23 am The stipulation is that AToTB would be removed because it wouldn't fit into the story arc, ..., and it doesn't leave an impression. I think the first thing players should encounter in SP is a strong story arc that leaves an impression before branching out into side stories. Starting off with side stories doesn't
If Wesnoth were a commercial game, I guess the SP could be sold as separate "Wesnoth: Turmoil of Asheviere" and "Wesnoth: Exodus of the Green Isle" games, with the rest of mainline becoming DLC. @nemaara, is that a reasonable understanding of your aims for removing campaigns (not that it's sold, just what the contents are)?
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Re: Removing mainline campaign(s)

Post by Tad_Carlucci »

Not too long ago we had a release years in the making. That wasn't too well received by the users. We probably want to avoid that.

What might be wiser is to split the repo so the mainline campaigns, SP and MP stand-alone scenarios and maps are separate from the code. We could then continue developing the code base and releasing 1.15, 1.16, etc., while continuing with the 1.14 family mainline until the rewrite of mainline is completed.
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Re: Removing mainline campaign(s)

Post by octalot »

What would be in 1.16 though? Almost everything that's player-visible which can be backported to 1.14 has been backported to 1.14.
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Re: Removing mainline campaign(s)

Post by nemaara »

octalot wrote: December 11th, 2019, 2:04 pm Replying here to comments originally in the "A grand design for singleplayer mainline lore" thread.
Tad_Carlucci wrote: December 10th, 2019, 1:54 pm Given how quickly AOI went from "it's so poorly done, we should remove it" to a merge commit actually doing that, it makes me nervious to see someone talking about removing yet more campaigns.

Removing one campaign might be OK. Removing several sounds like a recipe for disaster. A "remove everything" event probably includes removing many (if not most) players.

Just because Wesnoth is a small team and can't devote a lot of attention to a lot of campaigns all at once is no reason to pull out the axe. Slow down, give people time. Let's start by dropping any discussion of "by 1.16". We've already dropped a campaign for 1.16. Unless we're either going to push 1.16 off by years and make it a "rewrite mainline" release, that's enough.
My understanding is that 1.16 is going to be pushed off for years to make it a "rewrite mainline" release.

I feel the AOI removal happened far too quickly, that there many are unanswered questions in the PR discussion, and that reverting the removal should be considered. But based on what happened there, I'm worried that we'll treat campaign removal as a difficult-to-discuss topic, ending with a mass-removal event just before 1.16 is released. I'd prefer to have a mass-removal (and even better a rejection-of-mass-removal) happen as part of the roadmap discussion in the next month or so, rather than an ongoing uncertainty about what will happen shortly before the next release.
nemaara wrote: December 11th, 2019, 5:23 am The stipulation is that AToTB would be removed because it wouldn't fit into the story arc, ..., and it doesn't leave an impression. I think the first thing players should encounter in SP is a strong story arc that leaves an impression before branching out into side stories. Starting off with side stories doesn't
If Wesnoth were a commercial game, I guess the SP could be sold as separate "Wesnoth: Turmoil of Asheviere" and "Wesnoth: Exodus of the Green Isle" games, with the rest of mainline becoming DLC. @nemaara, is that a reasonable understanding of your aims for removing campaigns (not that it's sold, just what the contents are)?
You can ask Vultraz what the plan is for 1.16. I think it could be released with the completion of the HttT arc, doesn't have to wait for all of mainline to be done. That's just my suggestion, but obviously there's more that goes into a release than just SP.

I don't agree with a mass removal event for exactly the reason Tad said, where the few players still interested in SP would probably not be happy if campaigns were removed without replacements. That's why I'd only suggest removing more campaigns after specified arcs are done.

You're understanding right in your last paragraph (with a third Wesnoth: Legends of the North arc).

By the way, there's nothing that says this has to take years. The total active time I spent on Genesis (the time I was motivated to work on it) was about a year, give or take a couple months. Considering that it's probably 4-5 times the complexity of these proposed campaigns, I could in theory finish the HttT arc in a few months if motivated to do so (not counting the HttT rework).
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Re: Removing mainline campaign(s)

Post by Tad_Carlucci »

I would challenge the assumption that 'few' players are interested in SP, BTW. I would accept that most of the players we see are more interested in MP, but that's because they have to show themselves. All we know about SP is they downloaded a copy of the game ... and we might not even see that if it came bundled with a distro. I would posit that there are quite a few people who play SP. We just have no way to tell. I would also suggest that most people who stick with the game and end up playing MP started by running though the SP, first. And, by cleaning up the story-line, we're increasing customer retention. The evidence of that, of course, would be an increase in MP numbers and UMC downloads.
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Re: Removing mainline campaign(s)

Post by Aldarisvet »

nemaara wrote: December 11th, 2019, 4:17 pm I could in theory finish the HttT arc in a few months if motivated to do so (not counting the HttT rework).
That is great!
I think that is quite a generous suggestion actually and should be accepted given nemaraa ovbiously have some talents in creating stories.
I suggest to give carte blanche to nemaraa.

And about SP, of course players tired of almost nothing changes for many years. I know an opinion of Russian community at least.
It is SO obvious that to be alive project (to maintain interest for SP) Wesnoth should produce a new 'arc' or cluster of campaigns of good quality every 2-3 years. I think that presenting AA and all the hidden facts under Asheviere's rule would really be a bomb! Something that would revive a storyline that was frozen (what is equal to dead) for more than a decade.
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Re: Removing mainline campaign(s)

Post by octalot »

nemaara wrote: December 11th, 2019, 4:17 pm I don't agree with a mass removal event for exactly the reason Tad said, where the few players still interested in SP would probably not be happy if campaigns were removed without replacements. That's why I'd only suggest removing more campaigns after specified arcs are done.
The mass removal would be on the dev branch, based on the roadmap saying which arcs would be included in the next stable release. The only players who would see the time between removing stuff and adding the replacements would be those who are tracking the dev version.
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Re: Removing mainline campaign(s)

Post by Pentarctagon »

nemaara wrote: December 11th, 2019, 4:17 pm You can ask Vultraz what the plan is for 1.16. I think it could be released with the completion of the HttT arc, doesn't have to wait for all of mainline to be done. That's just my suggestion, but obviously there's more that goes into a release than just SP.

I don't agree with a mass removal event for exactly the reason Tad said, where the few players still interested in SP would probably not be happy if campaigns were removed without replacements. That's why I'd only suggest removing more campaigns after specified arcs are done.

You're understanding right in your last paragraph (with a third Wesnoth: Legends of the North arc).

By the way, there's nothing that says this has to take years. The total active time I spent on Genesis (the time I was motivated to work on it) was about a year, give or take a couple months. Considering that it's probably 4-5 times the complexity of these proposed campaigns, I could in theory finish the HttT arc in a few months if motivated to do so (not counting the HttT rework).
One of the few things I've found to be consistent is that these types of projects will almost always take more time than initially expected. Still, if the arcs can be done piecemeal, having 1.16 be released around, say, August 2020 with the first arc completed doesn't sound unreasonable.
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Re: Removing mainline campaign(s)

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octalot wrote: December 11th, 2019, 11:21 pm The mass removal would be on the dev branch, based on the roadmap saying which arcs would be included in the next stable release. The only players who would see the time between removing stuff and adding the replacements would be those who are tracking the dev version.
Hmm, you have a point. I haven't thought in great detail about every campaign that wouldn't make it into the final SP version, only the ones that wouldn't go into the HttT arc as I have it proposed (namely, DM needs to be reworked, and AToTB wouldn't make it in). So what you're saying is, remove those 2 campaigns first to make it clear that we're working on AA, TSG, and rewritten DM?

If I'm understanding you correctly, I don't mind doing things your way. (It's just that I would've chosen to remove AToTB and old DM after the arc was finished, but I don't feel very strongly about this either way, now that you point out it'd be on the dev branch anyway). Though, I think Vultraz will need to agree with either method, since he's the project lead.
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Re: Removing mainline campaign(s)

Post by Tad_Carlucci »

One question: when it gets to be early 2021 and you're still not done with your changes you think should go out near the end of Q3 of 2020 what is your plan? Do we do like we did for 1.13/1.14 and keep pushing out non-breaking 1.14 point releases and all the new features once again just languish for years?
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Re: Removing mainline campaign(s)

Post by Pentarctagon »

Personally, I'd say that December 2020 should be the limit of waiting for 1.16. Major changes like this should be done in a branch or a fork rather than incrementally on master anyway, so if it ends up still incomplete by then it's not blocking 1.16 either.
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Re: Removing mainline campaign(s)

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

Removing DM when it's "only" being rewritten might be a bit much. Sure, maybe all the actual scenarios will completely change, but perhaps some parts won't change as much (especially images, but possibly also maps, depending).
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