Rise of the Elementalist campaign

[arobinson]

I've played some scenarios (I am currently in Defending the Guild) and I have some questions about the scenario Dwarvish Diplomacy :
1) Why Elania is in the recall list at the beginning of this scenario ? Should not she be on the map when the scenario starts ?
2) Is it normal that the trolls and the dwarves are in the same team ?

I think Dwarvish Diplomacy should have a little more turns (I've finished it in the 38th turn and the scenario has 40 turns...). Or some modifications on the map : the main path a little more larger (there are two bottleneck, as pointed by norbert) , the keep of the blue leader should not be in corner of the map : only two units can attack him when he is on his keep. For the green leader, three units can attack him when he is on his keep (his keep is on a side of the map).

1) Elania is in the recall list because of a bug, I need to fix it
2) Trolls and dwarves should not on the same team, copy & paste error.

Thanks for the feedback

[arobinson]

BTW 1.0.2 is available, from now on see the change log in the first post of this thread for version updates

[Kamamura]

I have just tried the "Rise of the Elementalist" campaign, and it's quite refreshing.

I have just a bit of feedback - the air elementals should be a tad weaker perhaps, but they should have the skirmish ability (feasible for an incorporeal swirl of air). That would make the units a bit more diverse and interesting.

[Tiptopdu]

Hello! I've just finished playing this campagne.
I really enjoy the story. And I didn't noticed any bugs wich is rare in a Wesnoth campagn. Congratulation!

OK, now, here are the critics :
- About the scenario : Just enough dialogues, not too much as in some other campagnes...
But... friendly units don't speak enough. It's just my opinion... As the result, the I-don't-remember-her-name' love declaration during one of the last scenario happens totaly out of the blue!
- About the "balancing" : it has already be wrote here, but some scenarios would need more turns or less powerful enemies, especially the map called "Protect the Guild". To overpass it, I had to save and load, save and load, and save and load again... Pfiu!

The last scenario : the idea is really really good. But, it's too long, without any difficulty and, finaly... a bit boring. I was near too let it be! And when, after defeating the undead army, I realised I will had to fight again against Vallin's army... Oh God! I don't know if it's possible, but it would be nice if you could limit the number of allied and enemy units. Or, maybe could you use a smaller map?

That's all folk (and sorry for the strange sentences and other faults, I'm not an english speaker!)

Byebye and thanks again for the game!

Tiptopdu

[turist]

First, let me state that I really liked this campaign, and I would like to give you a feedback from a casual player.

To begin with, I would like to highlight the points I enjoyed most:

1) Plot.
I appreciate that it is not the superhero-saves-the-world-in-a-HUGE-epic-battle style cliche.

Spoiler:

The civil "it's over, time to leave" end feels just perfect.

2) Units.
While I am not a big fan of adding more custom units than absolutely necessary, your elementals are quite well executed.

3) Gameplay.
You managed to avoid overly large maps, micromanaging too many units, and tedious exploration passages. Even though most of the scenarios were quite straightforward (I mean there were not too many strategic options), the overall feeling was enjoyable.

And now maybe some criticism. Please don't take it as an attack against your work; on the contrary, if I would not like the campaign, I would not have bothered to give you feedback.

As already stated by other people, I too did not like the ending, mainly scenarios 13, 14.

Spoiler:

In scenario 13: you cannot recruit, but have the whole recall list. The good
thing is that when the undead come after you, they are isolated in the corner, an you can easily defend the passage with two mages, so you can "park" units you don't need and avoid tedious clicking to all units. But then, the undead serve no real purpose once you know they are going to appear. Since most of the units will not be needed anymore, maybe make the
passage more difficult to defend so that you really have to loose units (frustrating, yes, but would add to the overall feeling).

The placement at the beginning is a bit of a problem: some of my units ended up in the cave wall and could not move.

Moreover, the dwarven forces are too easy to beat. Maybe at least one of the leaders could be recruiting?? Or just make the middle part of the map more difficult to defend and/or add a turn limit.

Spoiler:

The two "essence of" units are way too powerful making the play boring. I would consider significantly weakening them. E.g. the Vallins attack could be based on the ancient lich unit, with addition of "plague" and maybe better resistances (but certainly not as high as are now). I would, however, remove the "plague" from the wisps so that only units killed by Vallin become wisps: it would solve a problem with overly large army in scenario 14, and it is consistent with the plot; on the other hand, I would maybe make a unit of level L to become wisp of level L-1. Similarly, I would base Elania on a spectre unit, with maybe slightly higher resistances.

I would drop the parts of scenario 13 where Vallin and Elania have to leave the lower level: in Vallins case it only serves the purpose of building an army (which is more of a problem than a solution), in Elanias case it is just a boring walk with an invulnerable unit through a known map.

Instead, I would directly start scenario 14 by placing Vallin alone in the map. With wisps without plague, it could be a better challenge to build army while defending from the various enemies.

Instead of repeating the same thing wit Elania, I would consider adding another scenario: Vallin, driven by the blind hatred attacks the mages' guild. Elanias essence appears, and the objective is that Elania reaches Vallin. However, Elania would be controled by computer, and player controls the guild (previous Vallins recall list except elementals, and recruiting mages and peasants(?)). The idea is that the computer plays Elania in a kind of suicidical manner, so the player has to defend the guild while keeping Elania safe. There could be more options: e.g. whether to hold the base, and send sacrify units to cover Elania, or try to divert Vallins forces, etc.

[arobinson]

I appreciate all of the feedback. To let everyone know, if time permits, I would like to have this a part 1 of a two or three part series (have plot in mind for part 2 and a weak plot so far conceived for part 3). Before I start on part 2 I want to fix part 1.

As for the air elemental being too powerful, I was surprised by that statement a bit. I designed each of the units after a real unit, capped them off as lvl 2 and gave them advancements that should result in a close to level 3 unit. So the air elemental is based on the elven scout, crossed with the initial definition of the twister from the under the burning suns core campaign.

The water element is based on the elvish fighter, the fire after the human archer, and the rock after the human heavy infantryman line. The minor earth elements are simply mud crawlers with minor changes (like their race).

But I think I may swap the magical attack advancement on the air elemental with a skirmish, that would fit and possibly subtract one from the melee damage.

As ppl. have mentioned and I totally agree, the last two scenarios need work. At first I thought the ever growing wisps would be fun, based on the ooze mini campaign, but it is too easy, and gets too boring. Elania's essence needs some serious work, as she is quite boring, and I want to at least remove her ability to heal beyond her max HP. For the wisps I may weaken the level 0 wisp greatly, keep the plague only on the melee damage, but remove it from the ranged and make the resistances weaker across the board.

FYI, the dwarves do recruit on the last level, their keeps are hidden, but they don't have much income, especially when I purposely left out villages on that map, I'll have to think about that.

I also need to do some major work on the story/dialog as it is rough at this point. I want to revamp the scenario before entering the cave, I may even remove undead from that map and add mountain dwellers instead (trolls or orcs possibly).

I also wish to change the look of the elemental wizards so they stand out from the standard mage units, perhaps just a color change...

Keep the feedback coming, I may not keep responding though, but I am reading. Also feel free to vote (+1/-1) on other's feedback so that I know if a particular idea has merit or not (backing by more than one user).

[gitanomad]

Thanks for an extremely innovative and interesting campaign. However, I ran into a serious bug with the latest version. In the "The End" scenario, both Vallin and his essences became untouchable, and never missed any of their attacks on the enemy. By the time I killed Malrin, I had 120 units! Later, I had to to do a debug so that Elania could get to Vallin on the first turn before all the passages were blocked off with invulnerable essences. (Unit moves=999!)

Thanks again!

[arobinson]

Thanks for an extremely innovative and interesting campaign. However, I ran into a serious bug with the latest version. In the "The End" scenario, both Vallin and his essences became untouchable, and never missed any of their attacks on the enemy. By the time I killed Malrin, I had 120 units! Later, I had to to do a debug so that Elania could get to Vallin on the first turn before all the passages were blocked off with invulnerable essences. (Unit moves=999!)

Thanks again!

Are you running in debug mode?

If so, you will need to disable it. The campaign is hacked in debug mode to make it easier for me to test and is not meant to be played normally in that mode (I have ifdef blocks to change the logic if the game is running in debug mode)

If you are not, let me know as that would be a bug. Right now, I have side=1 as always hitting and never to be hit if debug mode is enabled.

[gitanomad]

Oops, yeah I forgto and left W. in debug mode after speeding up Elania's departure from the lower levels. I should have thought of that myself.

[arobinson]

Version 2.0 out with a much improved ending. Check out the change log for other changes (see the first post of this thread)

[shebillah]

A lot of the writing needs working on to feel more natural and less rushed.
Personally I had a hard time with the bomb scenario. I don't know for sure but it felt like I had tried every possible place. I started it again and put the bomb in place I thought I had already tried, yet I guess I didn't because it finally worked. I don't really see how putting the bomb where it's the hottest is a good idea because you'd get flooded with magma!

I notice that there's no music playing during the scenarios. Is there another add-on I need?

[arobinson]

A lot of the writing needs working on to feel more natural and less rushed.

Feel free to upload a patch for improvements, but I probably won't be interested in improving the dialog any time soon, and would rather write part II first.

Personally I had a hard time with the bomb scenario. I don't know for sure but it felt like I had tried every possible place. I started it again and put the bomb in place I thought I had already tried, yet I guess I didn't because it finally worked. I don't really see how putting the bomb where it's the hottest is a good idea because you'd get flooded with magma!

Well it kills the water elements and you need to back off

I notice that there's no music playing during the scenarios. Is there another add-on I need?

Nope, I didn't add any music. Actually I almost always play with the sounds muted, so my attention to sounds is lacking, I am sure, sorry. Once again, I would welcome patches to be contributed.

[shebillah]

The english part I'm good with, but how would I go about making a patch?

[arobinson]

The english part I'm good with, but how would I go about making a patch?

If anyone wants to help with the WML, the easiest way is for you to send a patch to this forum, but the changed file should suffice as well.

Using the posix diff command is the easiest way to generate a patch file. I use mercurial source control locally for my wesnoth work and it has the built in ability to create a patch, but it is not necessary (hg diff).

If you are an unfortunate windows user, you can use winmerge I think:
http://winmerge.org/

Diffutils has the command line diff:
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/diffutils.htm

Or cygwin to get a unix prompt on windows:
http://www.cygwin.com/

If you have "diff". Just open a command prompt in the Rise_of_the_Elementalist folder and run:

diff -u original_file changed_file

Or as I mentioned, you can just upload the entire cfg file and let me know what version of RotE you are using so I know what version to compare it to.

I made some story fixes lately, but I haven't had the time to really work on it and polish it up. I am thinking when I get all 3 campaigns done, I'll go back and polish up the whole thing. I have a baby due in a few weeks so that may be quite some time though.

[arobinson]

2.0.1 uploaded, felt like making a pre-pre-release of part 2 (just a trailer, the first scenario in the campaign, story only).