The Earth's Gut for BfW 1.16

Discussion and development of scenarios and campaigns for the game.

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Anonymissimus
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The Earth's Gut for BfW 1.16

Post by Anonymissimus »

version 0.0.1(BfW1.7.2)
warning: long post, first I will write what I'd like to read if I'd want to play a campaign, and then as far as development is concerned

start idea:
515YW (short time before the start of HttT), the dwarves of Knalga send out an expedition to search for new minerals which they need to resist Asheviere's marauding orcs (to make weapons and armor), because they discover that their old deposits are getting fewer.

starting characters:
Hamel from NR and ThoT is the hero. He is lord of Knalga at the start of NR so he's a 'young' dwarf now. (Please tell me if this collides in any way with the mainline campaigns, since I haven't played NR far enough. Are Hamel and Konrad/Kalenz/Delador said not to know each other ? I plan to let them meet.)
Dulatus, a stalwart and your advisor unit.
Aiglathing, a healer unit.

scenarios:
01_The_old_home.cfg: story only and introduction, I prefer this way instead of long story texts
02_Towards_the_west_gate.cfg: goblins or orcs (depends on difficulty), easy warm-up
03_Breakthrough.cfg: some tougher orcs, a loyal mage joins the plot
04_Up_the_mountain.cfg: Tough one, the player can choose to fight a yeti (normal) oder even 2 (hard). The choice and result of the scenario also determines which scenario is the next one.
05a_Blowing_snow.cfg: Cross a mountain pass, fight monsters. Dulatus is removed from the plot but will rejoin later.
05b_Unknown_tunnels.cfg: Tunnel the mountain instead, fight trolls and undead. Dulatus is removed from the plot but will rejoin later.
06_The_great_gates.cfg: Find a possible place to mine, develop an alliance with Wesmere elves to clear it from enemies. This will be the almost only race which you don't fight against in this campaign. A loyal elvish shaman joins the plot.

Some following scenarios are already (and only) partly written, thus not published.
It happens that I make basic changes to the campaign that can cause old save games to be erroneous - like adding a save_id (probably). So be warned when downloading a new version.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
development:

This is my first and only wesnoth work. I'm at it since 10 months or so (with huge breaks). Well, it only makes sense if it somewhen gets published. But I may pause for several months and also I'm a perfectionist when it comes to programming, I'm testing everything, and I sometimes have some complex wml stuff there, so progress is incredibly slow.
I am primarily a programmer, I can and want to work out how to make something run. I'm a not-that-extraordinary-good story inventer, probably. The same goes for the dialogues. Also, English is a foreign language for me. I surely need corrections/suggestions for more elegant dialogues. I have problems to write dwarvish speak or "troll-ish" speak (required in following scenarios), so all dialogues are just "normal".
Also, I'm not an artist. All images and portraits are taken from various mainline and user made campaigns from the add-ons server. (This is legal since it's all public license isn't it ?)
The campaign name: I haven't yet had a better idea. The dwarven kingdom is what you build up in the campaign; but it could probably also be named "Hamel's story" or the like, since I recently have had the idea to give the hero Hamel's identity.^^
I know the campaign design tips http://www.catb.org/~esr/wesnoth/campai ... howto.html. The order of tasks given there does not work for me; I have at least 50% of all ideas while I'm writing the code for them, the wish to make a diverging campaign path for example came while coding scenario 4.
I do not yet have a really good idea how the campaign shall end, defeat of some dark underground lich and/or closing a portal where undead come from is what I have in mind so far.
Here are the plans for the following scenarios, as far as I can think of them at the moment:
07_The_bridge_is_broken.cfg: The heros descend deeper into an old mine system to reconquer it for the dwarves.
08_Lost.cfg: The leader of side 1 changes to Dulatus. You find yourself alone and need to ally with the trolls. Code for this one is already finished.
09_Unusual_allies.cfg: Help defend a troll village, to make them help you to return to Hamel.
10_Old_friends.cfg: Both parties reunite.
11_A_cry_for_help.cfg: Story only.
12_Wesnoth_soldiers.cfg: Wesmere elves are attacked by loyalists who mistakenly think Konrad is hiding in Wesmere.
For the following ones, I plan two meetings with characters from HttT; our heros get mages from Konrad to fight the undead they encounter (while granting him help to find the sceptre in return).
I also want to make something with the random map generator and/or with manual random underground map generation.

I must admit that one of my main inspirations for the campaign are the events gathered around Moria in Lord of the Rings by Tolkien (I've read the books twice.), like the friendship between darves and elves, the "death" of a main character (Mithrandir in LotR), and reconquering old mines. I'm worried about this, isn't this actually "stealing" intellectual content ? On the other hand, I see exactly this recommended in the campaign design guide. And there are so many games in the fantasy genre that make use of Tolkien's ideas, like nethack and slash'em if someone happens to know that, there's a monster called Balrog and so on; and they're all public licensed. I think I have woven enough own work and ideas into it so far...thoughts on that issue ?

The wish to make this campaign grew out of the fact that there are only three underground scenarios in HttT. I wanted to make a campaign that has some more, while the player has dwarves and mages. Since "Hasty alliance" is my favorite scenario in HttT, I want to include something similar in my campaign.

custom units:
the dwarf leader line: Should get better names. I don't like about SoF and ThoT that the leader unit is a normal dwarf lord so I created this unit.
dwarvish shaman:
Looks a lot like the elvish shaman yes; I want there to be (recruitable on normal and easy) a healer unit and it shall have the slow special. It has more hitpoints than the elvish shaman and resistances, but not as much like normal dwarves. I made it more expensive then, compared to the elvish shaman. It'd need better names and an association to dwarvish culture.

I've played the campaign very few times in a way a player does (on normal btw), that means without debug mode, so it can be of course everything from way too easy to way too hard. ;)
Last edited by WhiteWolf on January 18th, 2021, 7:53 pm, edited 13 times in total.
projects (BfW 1.12):
A Simple Campaign: campaign draft for wml startersPlan Your Advancements: mp mod
The Earth's Gut: sp campaignSettlers of Wesnoth: mp scenarioWesnoth Lua Pack: lua tags and utils
updated to 1.8 and handed over: A Gryphon's Tale: sp campaign
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TheJM
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Re: Campaign: Dwarven Kingdom (6 scenarios)

Post by TheJM »

Sounds interesting, certainly thought out. Are you going to upload it soon? (you could upload it here if you don't want to upload it to the add-on server..) I wouldn't mind doing a bit of play testing.

Your English is pretty good for it being a second language. If I notice anything that isn't right, I'll be sure to mention it though. Taking art from other campaigns is perfectly fine, even modifying it. It may be good to ask permission and/or credit the artist, just to be nice. :) The name is a bit generic, I think you would benefit from a better one. (lol, but don't ask me for one!)

As far as violating IP goes, I don't think this is a problem. It's ok to be inspired by another person's work, as long as you don't copy it word for word. Just because Tolkien writes about mines and dwarves doesn't mean you can't do something similar. :)

I would suggest changing the dwarvish shaman to something to do with runes. Like Runehealer, etc. Something like that.

I'm looking forward to playing through this!
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melinath
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Re: Campaign: Dwarven Kingdom (6 scenarios)

Post by melinath »

Stuff is GPL, not public license. You can use it as long as the thing you use it for is also GPL.

Tolkien similarity is not a problem in this case, I'd say. I wouldn't have even noticed if you hadn't said something.
Anonymissimus
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Re: Campaign: Dwarven Kingdom (6 scenarios)

Post by Anonymissimus »

Thanks.
TheJM wrote:(you could upload it here if you don't want to upload it to the add-on server..)
It'll be the server.
It may be good to ask permission and/or credit the artist, just to be nice. :)
I try to mention all sources in the credits.
projects (BfW 1.12):
A Simple Campaign: campaign draft for wml startersPlan Your Advancements: mp mod
The Earth's Gut: sp campaignSettlers of Wesnoth: mp scenarioWesnoth Lua Pack: lua tags and utils
updated to 1.8 and handed over: A Gryphon's Tale: sp campaign
m0ta
Posts: 18
Joined: March 26th, 2009, 11:58 am

Re: Campaign: Dwarven Kingdom (6 scenarios)

Post by m0ta »

melinath wrote:Stuff is GPL, not public license. You can use it as long as the thing you use it for is also GPL.
Hmm, what does the P in GPL stand for?
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melinath
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Re: Campaign: Dwarven Kingdom (6 scenarios)

Post by melinath »

Perhaps I misunderstood; my impression was that the OP was suggesting that Wesnoth is public domain and mistakenly called it public license. You are, of course, correct that GPL stands for Gnu Public License, and it's possible that's what the OP meant.
Anonymissimus
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Posts: 2461
Joined: August 15th, 2008, 8:46 pm
Location: Germany

Re: Campaign: Dwarven Kingdom (6 scenarios)

Post by Anonymissimus »

uploaded version 0.0.1
when playing normally and without debug mode, it'll cease after scenario 6
but it's all there, so one may browse the following scenarios and give comments but playing them is definitely not recommended
projects (BfW 1.12):
A Simple Campaign: campaign draft for wml startersPlan Your Advancements: mp mod
The Earth's Gut: sp campaignSettlers of Wesnoth: mp scenarioWesnoth Lua Pack: lua tags and utils
updated to 1.8 and handed over: A Gryphon's Tale: sp campaign
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StandYourGround
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Location: On a blue ball spinning through space at incomprehensible speed

Re: Campaign: Dwarven Kingdom (6 scenarios)

Post by StandYourGround »

dwarvish shaman:
Looks a lot like the elvish shaman yes; I want there to be (recruitable on normal and easy) a healer unit and it shall have the slow special. It has more hitpoints than the elvish shaman and resistances, but not as much like normal dwarves. I made it more expensive then, compared to the elvish shaman. It'd need better names and an association to dwarvish culture.
Sounds interesting, but calling it a "shaman" really sounds un-dwarf-like to me. Maybe a "Dwarf Healer" that does not use magic to heal, but simply "traditional" dwarvish medicines to heal wounds. As for the slowing attack, that could be achieved with a bolos type weapon that this unit could normally use as a climbing aid. That, or maybe the dwarf could simply use binding cloth that would have been used to bind wounds to enatgle the enemies. :lol2: The level 2 version of this unit could have heals +8 and cures as well, indicating that its abilities in dwarvish medicine have matured quite a lot.

Now, how would this balance with the fact that all other healing factions depend on magic and apparently haven't discovered medicine? Simple. The dwarves already have guns, why not pills and band-aids? :)
I will now resume lurking silently.
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melinath
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Re: Campaign: Dwarven Kingdom (6 scenarios)

Post by melinath »

StandYourGround wrote:Now, how would this balance with the fact that all other healing factions depend on magic and apparently haven't discovered medicine? Simple. The dwarves already have guns, why not pills and band-aids? :)
Dwarves have magic, too. Runehealer!
Anonymissimus
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Location: Germany

Re: Campaign: Dwarven Kingdom (6 scenarios)

Post by Anonymissimus »

According to the current depiction of dwarves in wesnoth they only have runesmiths - but not at the time when this campaign is set, they begin with runesmithing in ThoT again.
The idea with "modern" healing fits the description of the dwarves as the technologically most advanced race. :)
Anyway, I wanted to rename this unit line in any case. Other suggestions for names ?
projects (BfW 1.12):
A Simple Campaign: campaign draft for wml startersPlan Your Advancements: mp mod
The Earth's Gut: sp campaignSettlers of Wesnoth: mp scenarioWesnoth Lua Pack: lua tags and utils
updated to 1.8 and handed over: A Gryphon's Tale: sp campaign
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melinath
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Joined: May 20th, 2009, 7:42 am

Re: Campaign: Dwarven Kingdom (6 scenarios)

Post by melinath »

Oh, right. you're being lore-correct :oops: (yay!)

Perhaps: Dwarvish Medic
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docrock
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Re: Campaign: Dwarven Kingdom (6 scenarios)

Post by docrock »

been playing on BfW 1.6.4 with default difficulty. after "Zyan's Counsel" i get a "the game could not be saved" and BfW crashes. well, maybe due to a missing next scenario? still, grats on this great campaign so far. very good job, keep it up.
Postings may contain traces of sense.
The ministry of health warns:
Living is dangerous to your health and may finally result in death.
You are a Dwarvish Berserker: you're freaking crazy and enjoy it. (100% ...)
Anonymissimus
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Posts: 2461
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Re: Campaign: Dwarven Kingdom (6 scenarios)

Post by Anonymissimus »

"Zyan's Counsel" ??
There is no such scenario or name...is this the right thread for your post ?
Also, is the campaign donwloadable with 1.6, since I uploaded it with 1.7 ...?
projects (BfW 1.12):
A Simple Campaign: campaign draft for wml startersPlan Your Advancements: mp mod
The Earth's Gut: sp campaignSettlers of Wesnoth: mp scenarioWesnoth Lua Pack: lua tags and utils
updated to 1.8 and handed over: A Gryphon's Tale: sp campaign
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pauxlo
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Joined: September 19th, 2006, 8:54 pm

Re: Campaign: Dwarven Kingdom (6 scenarios)

Post by pauxlo »

melinath wrote:Perhaps I misunderstood; my impression was that the OP was suggesting that Wesnoth is public domain and mistakenly called it public license. You are, of course, correct that GPL stands for Gnu Public License, and it's possible that's what the OP meant.
To add a bit of nickpick ... The full name of this license is "GNU General Public License". And it is recommended to read it once before using it.
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docrock
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Location: the wild southern forests of germany

Re: Campaign: Dwarven Kingdom (6 scenarios)

Post by docrock »

"Zyan's Counsel" ??
There is no such scenario or name...is this the right thread for your post ?
Also, is the campaign donwloadable with 1.6, since I uploaded it with 1.7 ...?
wow, i managed to completely mess up on this, you are so right, this post does not belong here, plz ignore
Postings may contain traces of sense.
The ministry of health warns:
Living is dangerous to your health and may finally result in death.
You are a Dwarvish Berserker: you're freaking crazy and enjoy it. (100% ...)
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