An Unnatural Winter (MP Campaign)

[Rhuvaen]

I will be away for the next 2 days or so.

Heh, no need to hurry, I'll need lots of time for the WML too. Anyway I can start working with what I have now, and that's good.

One more thing about the plot in general: there are a lot of things still undecided / not fleshed-out that could need some more detail. I didn't consider the plot a lot before starting this, it was always just a way to string some interesting scenarios together. The whole business about what the Force Behind It All is trying to achieve, for instance... I mean they knocked out the Sages because they are the early warning system, and they're changing the weather for some reason (probably world conquest, hmm?). But all of this is rather vague and stereotypical at the moment (and it doesn't bother me enough to re-think it). I'd be happy with suggestions and plot-lines if someone likes to delve further into this (as long as they don't change the flow of the scenarios too much).

[Truper]

Here's a 1st try at some dialog. I have named some people and places, but these names are very tentative, and easily changed. I've explained as much as I could, without the talking going on forever.... I have also made the assumption that the Elf leader goes with the wardens, and that the human leaders have been left behind. If you want to keep the option of who goes where, the dialog can be reworked once the option is more clearly defined.


Oswald: Why have you come to Norfort? I have never heard of the Wardens of the Pass of Nergen abandoning their post before!

Drake Player: We are trying to reach the Valley of Mists. We fear that something has happened to the Sages, and the Pass is blocked by the weather. We must find another way.

Oswald: Your coming may be lucky for us. We have been fighting with Goblins, of a kind we have never seen before. They started appearing with the first snows in the fall, and their numbers have increased as the weather has worsened. They have already captured the beacon we must use to warn the lands to the south of invasion. I must get that beacon back. Can you help us?

Elf Player: We will help you, for we have comrades that tarried in Helmsfar to help the people rebuild after an attack. They should be on the road by now, and the road must remain open so they can join us here.

Human Player 1: Here we are! (map centers on Helmsgate)

Oswald: The Goblins are not my only worry. The Orcs of the Grish tribe have been lurking about near the fort. I do not know what is keeping them here; they usually camp on the plains south of here this time of year.

Na'Grish: Brrrr! Endless cold and nothing to eat! Curse the treaty with the humans! If not for that, I'd take their puny fort, steal their food, and make a bonfire from their homes! But if I break the treaty, the king will have my head!

White Fang: Ha ha ha! We have no such scruples, Na'Grish! We'll take their fort ourselves, and mock you while you suffer!

Goblin: Come on boys! Our banner flies from their beacon, and now nothing can stop us!

[Rhuvaen]

Here's a 1st try at some dialog.

This is terrific!

I have named some people and places, but these names are very tentative, and easily changed.

I like them all and they can go in the scenario as-is.

I've explained as much as I could, without the talking going on forever....

This is one concern I also have, but I think for the introductory dialogue this is just the right length (there are a lot of sides in this scenario, nothing to be done about it!).

I have also made the assumption that the Elf leader goes with the wardens, and that the human leaders have been left behind. If you want to keep the option of who goes where, the dialog can be reworked once the option is more clearly defined.

I will just assign that dialogue to the other leader in the fort (if any), no problem at all. If there's no other leader in the fort, we could have an alternative dialogue by one of the leaders on the road (that they helped in Helmsfar, but are now there to help - but maybe they shouldn't be talking directly to the human leader in the fort because they're still some distance away - or really, anything you can come up with ).

Just a few minor inconsistencies (steming as much from the fact that a lot of this isn't properly written down yet):

We are trying to reach the Valley of Mists. We fear that something has happened to the Sages, and the Pass is blocked by the weather. We must find another way.

Well the Wardens know of another path to the Valley (that should be made clearer in the first scenario ): "the Path Below" (or another name you can come up with ). It's a lost dwarvish mausoleum that has an underground passage to the Valley of Mists. So maybe the last sentence could be: "We must find and travel the Path Below."

I must get that beacon back.

This might be misconstructed that it's a necessary winning condition to get the beacon back (it's a bonus goal). So maybe he could say "If we won the beacon back, we could warn Rumyr (which on the Wesnoth map looks like a town/city close to where this campaign is happening) and they would send us reinforcements." Or something like that.

(map centers on Helmsgate)

Helmsfar (the location of the first scenario) is quite a way to the north. Or what did you mean with Helmsgate?

Come on boys! Our banner flies from their beacon, and now nothing can stop us!

The banner flies from the former watchtower of the humans. The beacon is a different location (and yes, both should be mentioned in the starting dialogue).

I didn't imagine the Orcs and Goblins talking to each other, but I like the banter you came up with and am happy to have it that way.

[Truper]

If there's no other leader in the fort, we could have an alternative dialogue by one of the leaders on the road (that they helped in Helmsfar, but are now there to help - but maybe they shouldn't be talking directly to the human leader in the fort because they're still some distance away - or really, anything you can come up with ).

If none of the other leaders have gone ahead with the Drake leader, he can say the line himself. Just change it to: "I will help you, for I have comrades...".

Just a few minor inconsistencies (steming as much from the fact that a lot of this isn't properly written down yet):

We are trying to reach the Valley of Mists. We fear that something has happened to the Sages, and the Pass is blocked by the weather. We must find another way.

Well the Wardens know of another path to the Valley (that should be made clearer in the first scenario ): "the Path Below" (or another name you can come up with ). It's a lost dwarvish mausoleum that has an underground passage to the Valley of Mists. So maybe the last sentence could be: "We must find and travel the Path Below."

I think we need a name for the Dwarvish mausoleum. For now, let's call it Dwarrowmar. I'd suggest changing the last sentence to: "We must find the old Dwarvish tunnels under Dwarrowmar, they can take us to the Valley."

So maybe he could say "If we won the beacon back, we could warn Rumyr (which on the Wesnoth map looks like a town/city close to where this campaign is happening) and they would send us reinforcements." Or something like that.

I think that's fine, except that I would change the end to: "and maybe they would reinforce us.".

Helmsfar (the location of the first scenario) is quite a way to the north. Or what did you mean with Helmsgate?

I meant it as the name of the small fort in the NW where some of the leaders start. Fort on the road to Helmsfar = Helmsgate. I have a simple mind

The banner flies from the former watchtower of the humans. The beacon is a different location (and yes, both should be mentioned in the starting dialogue).

Ok. So just change beacon to watchtower there, and I'll try to think of a good way to mention the watchtower in the dialog.

[jb]

Ok, I think it's time to move this to PM's. There is something a bit awkward about working with raw ideas in public.

I'll send both you and Truper my revised map and notes.

[Rhuvaen]

I'm attaching an extremely rough development version of Unnatural Winter including the basics of the second scenario (alpha release - you have been warned!).

The allow_new_game=no key doesn't work - when I add it to the second scenario, I can ONLY start the second scenario and not the first (so it's doing the opposite of what it should ). Hm, maybe I should try the other way round then... hehe. (bug report submitted)

It IS possible to start with the second scenario (The Road South), but you won't have any starting gold, and the starting positions will be messed up. All other things can be tested this way, though.

I've also altered the first scenario so the starting positions for scenario 2 could get determined (couldn't do this with message options after all - simply because the player finishing up would get to make all the choices, so the players are chosen randomly with some modification by how much their leader is damaged).

There is NO balancing, a lot of the dialogue is still missing, there is no bonus gold etc, etc.

All the main events are in place however: the beacon, banner, goblin frenzy, gold restrictions, orc/human treaty and I would like to hear how these work out...

But mainly I'd just like to see if the whole thing throws up a lot of problems going from one scenario to the other.

I'm going to have no time this weekend for playing on the MP server myself , and the next week looks bleak, too. That's why I'm putting this out to all interested parties to test! Thanks.

And so much thanks to Truper and especially jb, who has put in a lot of work creating the map. Without their prodding and help, this wouldn't be done today!

[Truper]

We ran a couple of test games yesterday, and took note of the issues that came up. The first game was run under "challenge" difficulty, the second on "normal". Participating were myself, jb, Mythological and KriMzON. All the comments apply to the first map.

1. In the message that comes up after the first peasant is killed, "well-fed human" should be "well-fed humans".

2. None of us understood exactly what causes the peasants to spawn. North of the river, it appeared that they spawned when an enemy moved adjacent to their village. However, peasants south of the river spawned for reasons we couldn't determine. For instance, in game 1, 33,28 and 24,26 spawned peasants on turn 6 or 7 without any enemies nearby. In game 2, 15,26 spawned when a Pillager moved to 17,23. There were other examples, the above are just the ones I kept note of.

3. Dil Gaddyn's Nightstalk doesn't work.

4. There appeared to be no turn limit.

5. In game 1, player 1 got a Lieutenant as leader. In game 2, player 1 got a Shock Trooper. I thought I remembered from past experience that the leader was always a Lieutenant. Does the leader for side 1 change with difficulty?

6. The Wardens were able to recruit more than 6 Drakes.

7. When the scenario ended, it was the Drake Leader who said the "I will help here also" message, rather than one of the other leaders.

8. When the transition to scenario 2 happened, we all got the following error message: The game could not be loaded: load_game_failed: Atempt to de-serialize an empty unit.

We were playing under 1.2.2. Since Myth thought the de-serialize error is a bug in 1.2.2, we tried starting a 3rd game under 1.3.1. When we did that, we crashed to desktop with a C++ runtime error.

I've attached the replay from game 2. It was fun playing this again

[Rhuvaen]

We ran a couple of test games yesterday, and took note of the issues that came up.

Wow, this is useful, even though the replay went corrupt just before the end (before the Orcish leader died).

2. None of us understood exactly what causes the peasants to spawn. North of the river, it appeared that they spawned when an enemy moved adjacent to their village. However, peasants south of the river spawned for reasons we couldn't determine.

There's two mechanisms:
1. when a village is captured by one of the enemy sides
2. when a villager dies "nearby" (and I can only take "range" into account, not if there's a river in-between)
The problem now is that in the second case, a player-owned village could become "neutral". I'm going to change it so that player-owned villages don't spawn in the second case. I'm also going to reduce the range a bit for 2.

3. Dil Gaddyn's Nightstalk doesn't work.

I'm not sure if it's possible to make it work (add an ability to an already existing unit like I tried to do). I'll look into this again, and just remove it in case I don't see a chance.

4. There appeared to be no turn limit.

That's right. I'm handling gold in a special way. Players only keep gold they haven't spent + the gold bonus. So anything accumulated from village hogging isn't kept. I prefer this to having a turn limit here (but I'm open to suggestions for handling it differently). I know a turn limit could keep the tension high in the end game, but it can also cause a lot of unwarranted frustration (last turn's luck...).

5. In game 1, player 1 got a Lieutenant as leader. In game 2, player 1 got a Shock Trooper. I thought I remembered from past experience that the leader was always a Lieutenant. Does the leader for side 1 change with difficulty?

No. It works this way: there are predefined leaders (like the "Lieutenant" for side 1). But if the player chooses a different leader of the matching faction, he can keep it. In this case, Random chose the Shocktrooper for you. If you want to make sure you always get the default leader, you need to make a selection (choosing the Northerner faction, for instance, or selecting Lieutenant directly).

6. The Wardens were able to recruit more than 6 Drakes.

Sigh. I moved this out into a macro, but didn't change anything else. No idea why this isn't working now. It's really strange, since the recruit event gets called which adjusts the required xp, and Drakes get handled in the same event. I'll need to host a local game and look at the variables to check this out.

7. When the scenario ended, it was the Drake Leader who said the "I will help here also" message, rather than one of the other leaders.

That's simply and utterly wrong. This is very likely to be the cause of problem 8.

8. When the transition to scenario 2 happened, we all got the following error message: The game could not be loaded: load_game_failed: Atempt to de-serialize an empty unit.

Something went wrong with the leaders... in any case, I realise I cannot just delete the unused (empty-slot) leaders... . You don't have a text-encoded savefile from the end of the scenario?

We were playing under 1.2.2. Since Myth thought the de-serialize error is a bug in 1.2.2, we tried starting a 3rd game under 1.3.1. When we did that, we crashed to desktop with a C++ runtime error.

It's because it can't find a unit as leader in the recall list for one of the player sides. Unnatural Winter won't be converted to 1.3+ until it works under 1.2 .

Thanks for the great feedback and replay! I'll be able to do some testing myself this afternoon, and maybe get this fixed soon.

EDIT: BTW, yes, the saurians weren't supposed to cross the mountains. They're set-up that way so that the battle happens in the swamps. In your game, however, Dil Gaddyn's recruitment was messed up in the beginning (he didn't recruit decently until turn 5 or so...), and with so many scary Drakes in the south in daytime I guess they just went for the closer elves...?

[jb]

after the game i got a mysterious save file called the road south. when i tried to load it the game crashed. i can post if when i get home.

how does the transistion between scenario 1 and 2 work? will it load by it's self? and what will happen if there are observers?

[Rhuvaen]

after the game i got a mysterious save file called the road south. when i tried to load it the game crashed. i can post if when i get home.

Please pm it to me. I have already worked on the first scenario problems somewhat, and am also at that stage... there's a few things that wesnoth barfs on at the moment:
- variable names (some names with '-' and '[' don't load properly, but you can save them. I find that pretty wierd. The game doesn't create a proper array if you don't have sub-tags, so

Code: Select all

side_gold[1]

for instance ISN'T an array while

Code: Select all

side[1].gold

is.

- when I correct all the variable issues, and then load the scenario, it says there are no sides.

I think there might still be some inconsistencies between loading a save and simply continuing (I never tried the load/save thing with the MP campaign test scenarios). I don't know if the latest changes to savefiles had any impact on MP scenario-to-scenario transition.

I've switched to version 1.2.3 BTW, since 1.2.2 didn't save variables properly!

how does the transistion between scenario 1 and 2 work? will it load by it's self? and what will happen if there are observers?

The game loads the new scenario by itself (using next_scenario=xyz). I don't recall observers being kicked, and I think the server must keep some game id that stays the same even though a new scenario is loaded.

[Rhuvaen]

Ok, it's up and running... except that gold in scenario two is still botched up.

Still, if someone wants to test it, I've uploaded this onto the campaign server.

[Rhuvaen]

Ah - I've tested and uploaded version 0.4.0, then decided to make a slight change somewhere and introduced a typo by doing so. I was getting tired of typing!

0.4.1 has that corrected and will properly play (except the second scenario still being rough and raw - but I need a couple of days break from this ).

[jb]

Good, cause .4.0 wasn't working at all

I'll try to test this over the weekend.

[eyu100]

The second scenario has 0 turns.

[Rhuvaen]

The second scenario has 0 turns.

Did you play starting with scenario 1? What happened then? Did the dialogues come up, and the game then stopped with the defeat message after the first turn? Or did it just not start?

I'm asking this because scenario 2 has just the same unlimited turns setting as scenario - so it's not that. And it worked in hotseat....