Undead Campaign: Despair and Decay

Discussion and development of scenarios and campaigns for the game.

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turin
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Post by turin »

Ken Oh wrote:I have to admit I haven't played all the way through IoA (had a pretty bad crash a few Dev verisons ago, haven't tried it since), but I'm pretty sure I read that Arendia is far to the north. I also don't know if histories are concurrent or what, since this takes place during HttT. I'm open to any ideas, if you're still cool for letting us use the map.
Err... no, Arendia is on the Old Continent. The hero would have to travel across the ocean to get to it. Sorry. :)
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Ranger M
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Post by Ranger M »

Ken Oh wrote:It takes place in Wesnoth but 1 (or 2) of the 3 alternate endings has the main character leaving Wesnoth to travel north, in order to forget all that happened there. I was orginally planning on either ending the campaign there there or, as a bonus, making one scenario where the main character encounters other peoples.

Then, Flava Clown asked if we could use the Arendia map for a scenario, which made it seem like a good plan to merge those ideas.

I have to admit I haven't played all the way through IoA (had a pretty bad crash a few Dev verisons ago, haven't tried it since), but I'm pretty sure I read that Arendia is far to the north. I also don't know if histories are concurrent or what, since this takes place during HttT. I'm open to any ideas, if you're still cool for letting us use the map.

EDIT: oops, i got sidetracked before answering the question. on page 3 flava clown said that he wanted to use the "saving trashan" map. again, i haven't gotten that far though.
Nope, Arendia is to the west on the old continent. However it could be reached by going to Green Isle, and then island hopping east (about two or three scenarios worth or travelling, if condensed, although it could very easily be made to be more) or going north, then west allot (over frozen wastelands IIRC, somebody mentioned this as the frost elves and the sidhe got to the old contienent, this would take many more scnearios as you would have to fight through the frost elves, and the sidhe/maurauders first too, although you could always stop there) So using arendia would all depend on how many scenarios you are willing to spend on it.


BTW, for timescale to find out how you could fit arendia in, see Turins history in the development forum.
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Post by Ken_Oh »

This is all not very crucial to everything. I'm quite flexable in the campaign's timeline, as far as scenarios not-necessarily happening right after each other. I could always put some story before the scenario like "After much wandering over land and sea and many encounters with hostile living creatures, you finally find a location that is worthy to build your empire." basically, this ending wouldn't even be a "real" ending because it, by design, totally doesn't jive with what really happened in HttT (Konrad and crew meet Undead at Weldyn along with the Queen).

Thanks, both of you, for the info. Either way, I'm going to leave this to Flava's discretion.

p.s. Inch: I meant to make note about your idea of the KISS way to balance WCs. I think that's a really good idea. I'll work with it and try to see if there is anything that can be balanced well. Who knows, maybe we can knock the cost back down to 6 gold. There were a few other things I was thinking about doing to make WC less powerful, like make movement onto a village take 2 points (to simulate the WC forcefully taking over the population) and retooling the defense values. I can't guarantee the losing HP thing will be in the final version, but I'm going to test it out.
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Post by Inch »

Here's a preview of the attack animation with some foot work + ranged and defend. May need glowy thingies for the magic attack.

Ken Oh: If you test it out could you upload a copy here for me to play with :)
Attachments
Tomented attack
Tomented attack
attack.gif (6.04 KiB) Viewed 3895 times
Tormented defend
Tormented defend
defend.gif (3.88 KiB) Viewed 3895 times
Tormented ranged
Tormented ranged
range.gif (6.07 KiB) Viewed 3896 times
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Ken_Oh
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Post by Ken_Oh »

Looking good!

Yeah, I always upload playable versions of my works in progress here. There's some things I need to consider first (plus I'm working hard on other scenarios).

The point of a KISS limitation is to make it so putting a WC on top of a village doesn't mean you're automatically invincible (i.e. you'll only lose if the turns run out). Like I said, it would be nice if I could balance this out so that this unit was balanced enough to be used in multiplayer. I don't have an ambition for it to be in multiplayer, I'm just using that as a reference to help me think about balance.

Making WCs lose one point per turn would make it so no WC would be able to move further than his HP allows. From there I could either leave the HP the same, decrease the HP + increase resistance or increase the HP + decrease resistance. Would a max range of 10 turns of moves (30 hexes on normal terrain) be too small for WC? That way WCs would have to leap frog from village to village, and not just be able to mass up at one end of the map and then move across.

I'll have to think about it. I'll test it on both A+A and HH maps, then mabye on some standard multiplayer maps.
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Post by Ken_Oh »

Alright. I finally got a day where I neither had work nor did I have to entertain my g/f, so I got to take a good hard look at the campaign.

Here's the rundown:

general
-Put a "saves" folder in the campaign just to make sure the testers can start from any scenario with a good recall list
-Added all the HttT units, portaits and unit images that I'll need
-I found out that facing values normal and reverse aren't used anymore, but n,s,ne,nw,se and sw, so I altered time_over.cfg accordingly. I just tested it and it works right now.
-Decreased exp requirement for WC to 16 (hardly any are going to level up either way).

A+A
-Changed some AI values for Smith's side to make him less aggressive. I'd like to make him even less aggressive still, but am having trouble doing so.
-Changed up the map some to make it easier at the very beginning, a harder in the middle and easier at the end. This is just testing and we can change it back if everyone likes the other way better.

HH
-Took some villages away from the cave dwarf area, so it's not crucial that you go there first

Isle
-Fixed the macro that raises Ligh (side problem)
-When Ligh is dead, it seems like units/human-loyalists/bowman-die-2.png doesn't exist in Wesnoth 1.1.5. Not only that, I can't even find it, so I just copied that image into the campaign folder until we can figure out what's going on
-Not sure if having Ligh killed by recruited units works right.

Elensefar
-Changed AI around so the humans are very defensive (they are trying to hold the city)
-Disabled recruitment of White Mages, just placed 1 for easy, 2 for normal and 3 for hard

Random Encounter
-Yes! First new scenario in a long time, but I almost have this one done. Just as soon as I can get the needed animation, I can finish it.
-I've figured out (with zookeeper's help) how to make Delfador move to a certain location and then put in a terrain mask trigger to hide the cave.

To-do list:
-Flava, look at Isle's Ligh code if he gets killed by a unit other than ???? and make sure it works
-Add some GUARD_UNIT elves to Elensefar's woods, some Thief units with directions to go to the north-west forest and I still need to work on that special event with the escaping horseman. After that, I the scenario will be done, except for some storyline stuff and balancing.

I think that's it. After 6pm tomorrow, I'll be out of town until Wednesday, so if I can't figure out that unit animation, then I'll see you guys in a few days.

EDIT: Oho, look at that, 512k cap on attachments. Looks like I'm taking out some of those portraits. We don't really need them until the final, final version anyway.

EDIT #2: The guys here http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11783 fixed my problem. I'm still having trouble putting in the 3rd variation of the lightning, but it's not crucial. Overall, the scenario isn't pretty, but at least it's functional.
Attachments
DaDv0.3.1.zip
(349.63 KiB) Downloaded 181 times
Last edited by Ken_Oh on June 18th, 2006, 7:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
bignall
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Post by bignall »

I just downloaded v0.3.1 In To Damn an Isle, the Ligh event doesn't work right. When he comes back alive, he says "3", and if I interpret the WML right, he's supposed to say "Master". Also, he comes back on the red side and starts attacking ????'s units.

Enjoying the campaign. I can't wait to get to the new scenario.
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Post by Ken_Oh »

Thanks for the feedback.

That's wierd because that's what I was getting before I changed it, but now you're getting it. Here's what I see in the scenario:

Code: Select all

{PLACE_CORPSE (Ligh) (items/bowman-die-2.png) (Undead Ligh) ( _ "Master!") 3}

{ARISE (items/bowman-die-2.png) (Undead Ligh) ( _ "Master!") 3 ($x1) ($y1)}

And the corresponding util file has:

Code: Select all

#define PLACE_CORPSE DESC IMG UNDESC MSG SIDE


#define ARISE IMG UNDESC MSG SIDE X Y

Unless I'm not seeing something, they look like they line up to me.

Anyway, I hope someone can rectify this, because I'm about to go on a little trip. See you guys later.
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Re: Bug re Disturbed

Post by flava_clown »

Truper wrote:I noticed that running version 0.2.1d under Wesnoth 1.1.5, Disturbed did not carry over the Rage ability he gained in the 1st scenario or his experience into the 2nd scenario.
he should carry the experience over, but not the rage variation. like Ken Oh said. it's some kind of an easter egg (mainly for Grey_Wolf_c). the raged variation is just too powerful. it would be too easy and someone one who don't know how to become it, would have a big disadvantage.

anyway, i made a new version this weekend and wrote already the forum entry as i knew that i would be in a rush today... so here it is. i'll save the whole page and read it later... i guess i am online tomorrow

btw... bignall is right, i saw this bug in the code and fixed it. the problem was that the msg and side was in a wrong order, so he said '3' and was side=master <- which ever it is ;)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Good moooorning Wesnoth...

okay straight to the business.
i've decided to don't waste my time with the idea from Inch unless Ken wishes it!
i was thinking a long time about it and came always to the conclusion that i don't like
this idea. however an old idea came back to my mind. why not using the 'unit counter' from
the campaign 'the heist'? so i did it and it works quite well. the replication will stop
working if there are 15 or more WCs on the battlefield. we can change the number to a better
fitting value or can set it depending on the difficulty, what ever the most want.
i know it's 'unrealistic' like this, but i don't give a rats a.. :twisted:
since i've tested this version from the beginning to the end, i found some other things which
i had to change/fix. i dunno how, but the slow-moving-villagers-bug made it back in.
to fix a bug twice is absolutly not what i want! btw. it was a hard time. it seems that the main goal from the devs for new wesnoth versions, is to piss people off. for me they reached it already with 1.1.3 i dunno why they are still releasing new versions. i had to spent the most time with waiting and not with playing. it feels like sitting on a good old c64 (i guess your little kiddies are to young to remember this piece of hardware, it was some kind of a computer, without hard drive and the like) every turn change means "go to get a cup of coffee (or tea)"...

erm, Inch can you please make a dead body for 'Ligh' (the trapper from 'Isle')? they removed the death image from the bowman which we used before. and the image i've made in a minute, looks not only 'unrealistic' but damn ugly. i hope you understand what i mean. when we kill ligh then an image will be placed where he was standing, to show that there is something that we can bring back to life.

btw am i the only one who had problems with crashes in 'TfoE'? it seems like a problem with one of the human units. it's not really reproduceable, but it happens only while the humans turn. there isn't an error message but a look in the 'stderr.txt' shows some problems with missing/wrong sounds.

Code: Select all

error display: could not open image ''
desperate attack by 'Bowman' 16,26
error display: could not open image 'attacks/.png'
error audio: Could not load sound file '': IDirectDrawSurface3::BltFast: Invalid rectangle
error audio: error playing sound effect: Tried to play a NULL chunk
error audio: error playing sound effect: Tried to play a NULL chunk
error display: could not open image 'crossbow-human.png'
the missing image is new, in the versions before the crash it was always just a sound problem. (this is from the latest version, where i was able to finish the scenario)

edit: file removed
Last edited by flava_clown on June 20th, 2006, 4:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Imagine there's no countries
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And no religion too
Imagine all the people
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Post by bignall »

Ken Oh wrote: That's wierd because that's what I was getting before I changed it, but now you're getting it. Here's what I see in the scenario:
Hmm... I started playing the campaign with 0.3, then installed 0.3.1 before I started that scenario, I thought. So, perhaps I was mistaken. I checked in 0.3.1 and it is as you say, but I remember when I looked at it that the 3 was before the Master. BTW, the new version Flava Clown put up does not include the new scenario.

So, I changed my last save from TfoE to let me go on to the Random Encounter scenario... but it doesn't really seem playable at this point (I realize it's the first incarnation of it). ???? was suddenly changed back to level 1 (he was up to level 3). I couldn't possibly survive long enough to get to the keep. Even if I had made it to the keep, my recall list was empty (I could recruit, just not recall all those wonderful high level units I worked so hard on). Perhaps all of this was intended, but it does make it difficult to play. I even tried hiding behind the guardians, but then they killed off the leader and the scenario ended after about 7 turns while I had gotten only one chance at a kill and sitll hadn't made it to the keep - very boring.
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Post by Ken_Oh »

Hey, just popping in to clear a few things up.

Bignail: About flava's version, it's not updated, but just contains some new features. That's because he doesn't have continual access to the internet and has to make changes blind while the rest of us are working.

Flava: In 1.1.5 the slowness between turns is a little less, but it's still prety long. I've tried to talk to someone about it but he acted like it didn't exist. I think it's when the game auto-saves because it only gets bad for me when there are more than 30 units on my side. I'm going to bring it up in the User's Forum. I hope you'll back me up.

I've also noticed occasional crashes during AI turns for all the scenarios, but that's just dev version blues.

p.s. that's funny how you mentioned c64. I grew up on that thing. Maybe we'll have to play some M.U.L.E. online sometime.
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Post by bignall »

I have to apologize... I try to make sure that my bug reports are accurate, but I messed up on this one. I must have had an old version of that scenario hanging around somewhere and it got used instead of the new one. I cleaned everything out and reinstalled 0.3.1. I replayed Isle again and this time it did work as it was supposed to. I then played through to the 7th scenario and I didn't lose my recall list and stayed a level 3, so it was not impossible... I will definitely look forward to your future work on that one :D .

You have a great campaign going here... I always look forward to the updates and play it again ;-). I'll probably have to start playing medium since I think I'm starting to have it too easy on Easy. I love all the little extras you put in - makes things much more interesting!

Oh, the days of the c64... I grew up with it too. And, I agree, 1.1.5 is terribly slow. That was the first thing I noticed when I started playing it. The units move much more slowly, and therefore choppier. The AI often takes forever to decide what to do (this is especially evident in TFOE). Saves and loads take forever, etc. You can definitely quote me in talking with developers.
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Post by Ken_Oh »

I started a thread here: http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11800

So, if you have any specifics to tell them, please fill them in there.

EP talked about not having a problem on a Mac. I'll go ahead and test it out on the mac that I have.

Hehe, bignail, I was about to suggest that you delete any old versions you have before trying to install a new version. Thanks again for the praise.
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Post by flava_clown »

aaaahh... that's why i was unable to find any problem with the ligh event, because everything is fine there ;) (but in 0.3test there was a bug)

okay lets make it quick, i've merge my changes with the latest official release. i've fixed also several new bugs (side colour in RE,...)
changed the delfador event a little bit, to make sure that he look at us while he talks to us. now he makes a step back before he hide the cave, i hope that's okay. i made us an own modify_unit macro where we can change 2 values (goto_x 1 goto_y 2 ... pretty usefull huh?) and some other things which i can't remember...

btw. i had never a c64 :twisted: i was one of these kids who've started with an amiga 500, the time where computer were female :P

edit: file removed
this is so embarassing :oops: i broke the wc.cfg and soulless.cfg in a way that the replication wasn't working if a wc, level up to a soulless. and if a soulless killed someone then he came back as a 'normal' wc.
did i wrote below something about new bugs?... however i found some other things to optimize/change/fix...
Last edited by flava_clown on June 21st, 2006, 12:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
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Post by flava_clown »

okay time to write some things, i was unable to write earlier.

hey Truper, you was right, the experience wasn't carry over. it was a bug, i have no clue why i used there a wrong variable. anyway it's fixed in 0.3.1a. thanx for your bug-report!

@bignall: see my version as a 'mod'. so when i release a new version then the name should show, which 'code base' i've used. so 0.3.1a is based on 0.3.1 and contains all the features/scenarios from there. but less old bugs, surely new bugs, maybe new events, changes here and there... if this is too confusing then i recommend to use always the 'official' release from Ken. which got only the changes, which Ken want to see in HIS campaign!
bignall wrote:The AI often takes forever to decide what to do (this is especially evident in TFOE).
i've realized this too, i've tried to reduce this a bit with #ifdef tags around the protection tags. because i don't know if it cause trouble to let the ai protect a unit which doesn't exist. i removed also the now unnecessary ifdef hard tag for the recruitment pattern. and several other changes there in the hope that it will help a bit. but it still needs hours. maybe because 2 enemys, 2-4 protection tags, too much units to control,...

while we talk already about TfoE, i've changed the radius to 15 (was 25, in older versions just 10) because the human leader went down and got killed there, before i was able to frag this b*tch. this happend already in turn 13. after the change i've tried it twice and one time he went down again. i dunno if the protection of the white mage is the cause. maybe the ai can handle only one protection, so if you say 'stay at home' and then 'follow the white mage', the ai just follow the white one and ignore the other order.
Ken Oh wrote:I've also noticed occasional crashes during AI turns for all the scenarios, but that's just dev version blues.
i have them only in TfoE and mostly on turn 8. wesnoth 1.1.2a (win) had a crash problem caused by 'wrongly saved' images. maybe some new attack images like the crossbow image from the stderr.txt are the problem. but if it's the ai turn, then we don't see these images and because that, this shouldn't be the problem. however i've 'resaved' some images with irfan view/pngout plugin. they have now a chunk more but some bytes less. i'll test if this helps.

btw. i've talked about 1.1.5, i've tried also the qcc (or was it gcc) version, but it made it even worst. flickering info texts in the menu and the scrolling was like a slideshow, it was a speed decrease not an increase. really unplayable. but i will comment on it in the other thread.

okay that's nearly all, but let me say, even if i hadn't a c64 i've spend some time on it and the loading of a game from a tape (dunno how you call it, i can't even remember the german name for it) was some what slow and also some kind of gamble. i was glad that my amiga worked with discs and had 1mb ram (kids, i really mean mb=megabyte not gigabyte) :twisted:
bignall wrote:I love all the little extras you put in - makes things much more interesting!
i think i can claim a bit of this praise for me :P

finally... oh Ken, i had to fix the slow-moving-villagers-bug a third time, but i wrote a comment, to make sure that you don't oversee it. the most changes are commented but not all, so be careful. i recommend the use of cs-diff! neat'n'helpful freeware ( http://www.ComponentSoftware.com/products/csdiff/ )

damn, i almost forgot... Inch, really nice sprites. i was about to use it in 0.3.1a but gave up with it as i saw how much work it would be, to get every single frame transparent. can you make/upload a package which contains every necessary, transparent single frame (png)?
is this sprite meant for the level one version?
Attachments
DaDv0.3.1b.zip
i am on my knees to apologize for my embarassing failure.

- wc.cfg and soulles.cfg fixed
- several other small fixes/changes
(252.72 KiB) Downloaded 178 times
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
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