How to make it a better storytelling vehicle.
first, let's post somewhere a review of the available scenarios. separate out those which consist of little more than a string of scenarios like this:
NARRATOR: And so, your people walked some more …
ONIONMAN: “We are here in Nigh Hinter. We need to get to Far Yonder, across turbulent and treacherous That River.”
CHEESE: “Then we shall go.”
ONIONMAN: “Here is a bridge which we can use to cross That River.”
SNAKE DUDE: “No! Sss!”
ONIONMAN: “Oh, woes upon us! There are Enemies on the other side!”
CHEESE: “Then we shall fight them.”
—&c.—
ONIONMAN: “A mortal wound?! My lady, I have failed you!”
CHEESE: “A main character slain. The story cannot continue.”
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if you have only one controllable player, then performing actions is far too tedious for these so–called RPG “eras”. i've only tried one Campaign which showed some attempt to work around that, but it did so rather badly.
can't we have a set of Events which advances the Turn if move-points and attack-points are both 0? i miss Avernum.
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in event of a deficit at conclusion of a scenario, losing from your recall some of those troops which lack the Loyal trait.
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chatter. if an enemy Cmdr doesn't move or attack during its Turn (
passive_leader=yes or otherwise), then what would it say?
doesn't need be a full
[message] thing, but i don't know what else would be used.
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i don't know about you, but what's with characters each shouting another from across the map?
too many scenarios have the Leaders do this from their keeps.
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“I had a name, once. Not a number.”
track each casualty by name. use that to inform sursequent scenarios and cutscenes.
this could be viewed but it would be perifluous to the
[statistics] report.
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make a proper inventory system.
each troop can carry a number of items; this does not include imbuements, enchantments, or other things which can't be exchanged or swapped. toxic sludge on your staff — no. mithril cloak — yes. you can define attributes to simulate slots where the items are being carried.
of course, most soldiers would have less free space in their pouches or sacks than would a supplier or a magician attaché.
you can access an inventory event by the contextual menu. here you can see the items and perform actions with them: handing to adjacent friends or enemies, setting on floor, combining, et c. each action take a Move point.
additionally, it would be nice to have a cartmaster and a cart. the cart can't attack or defend because it is merely a cart.
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and, unless an object really can't be hauled by something — not even with wooden poles and a big ark enclosing it —, let my peons collect for me the Crystal Skull or whatever if they get to its tile but cannot use it. i.e. usability of an grabbable shouldn't infer its portability.
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the dialogue method it has now is okay and has a decent style, but there is no legitimate interface for proper conversation.
i have no idea how you'd improve this. i expect it would be tedious and unproductive.
when there is a scripted bit of dialogue or whatever, choose the players for their proximity, not identity. i.e. don't have Prince Wilhelm reply to the Ice Princess if he's 20 tiles distant.
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where is the Examine or Inspect?
if you land on a curious object on the floor, a scripted event occurs.
otherwise, their images are rather terse and ambiguously undescribed.
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unless the other enemies all run away for some believable reason, don't have a scenario end when you kill the main enemy.
rather, give the choice to scour the area? surrendering and capture? undead controlled by a lich losing their motivational magic? et al.
limitations to the number of Rounds are used too often. either there is no reason given, or the reason is unbelievable (e.g. AOI, HttT).
the Objectives ought to be vague and simple: these are the conditions which conclude the scenario, meaning that nothing more can be done.
they are not conditions for Victory or Defeat. and, indeed, with the way that Wesnoth can't do a properly branching storyline on its Defeat function, there cannot be. if the campaign ends early, you revert or restart.
but i digress to more generic considerations.
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animated transitions.
the wesnoth terrain engine simply isn't made for showing us major story events. that leaves us with
[story] — which is really nothing more than a backdrop and a sprawl of text.
i'm not disparaging the style of
[story]. i'm saying that if you see the need to show the characters moving and interacting, then don't do it with the scripting within the constraints of the terrain engine. either write better
[story] segments, or add the ability to play videos in
[story] — preferrably a method with simply pipes through some other player, e.g. 'mplayer' or 'xine'.
scripting
[move_unit] and the like isn't something to be avoided. it is useful inside a scenario. however, if you want something major, or even a scenario which consists entirelly of
[message] and
[move_unit], then i recommend using another approach.
JRPGs get away with it for a number of aesthetic reasons that i won't discuss here. well, okay. here are a mere two things we could do with
[message]:
- allow it to zoom.
- a variable scroll_speed= — allowing either factor of user's preference
1.2*
or more absolute values
100
• indeed, the same thing for [scroll] and the like.
- letterboxing.
there. that was two more than i promised. please don't hurt me.
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most of this stuff is design 101 for even a semblance of a properly characterised RPG. i'm not saying that Wesnoth needs these things, either. i'm saying that Wesnoth ‘is what it is’.
