[UMC] custom campaign generator within a campaign

[Glory_to_the_Highest]

Hi all,

This is my first post on the Wesnoth Forums. I've been playing for only a couple months and so am very much a noobie.

I wanted to suggest a custom campaign, built into a campaign format. I apologize if this has been suggested before, but I looked a little bit and found only campgen, an old program that doesn't seem to be kept current.

I'm not a coder at all, but after playing a few mainline campaigns, I imagine that this would be relatively easy:

For each scenario of the campaign, offer a screen similar to the one available in the multiplayer game option, with some additional details.

These could include the ability to choose which units each player/ai can recruit, with any level of specificity: all level 1 units of all factions, all level 1's of a particular faction plus 3 specific level two's of another factions, etc.

In this way, a single player could choose this campaign, use the same units each time and "create" his own opponents, so that it could always be a challenge. The final scenario of Descent into Darkness shows the ability to have an endless repeat. Combined with the XP era or something similar, a player or players could keep an army going indefinitely.

Thanks for everyone's work to create such a great game!

Jacob Winkler

[Hulavuta]

Well at the risk of sounding like a jerk, it IS really easy, so easy that in all honesty, you could learn WML and code it yourself.

I think it would be a great thing to have, but unless you can really make a case to why the game absolutely needs this, I don't think that the developers are going to implement it themselves, considering a very long list of other important things that must be done.

However the community is generally very helpful about helping people learn WML, so it's not exactly a big deal to overcome.

[Gambit]

Here is a recent attempt at something similar. It was an in-game scenario editor.

[SigurdFireDragon]

Well at the risk of sounding like a jerk, it IS really easy, so easy that in all honesty, you could learn WML and code it yourself.

I wouldn't call it really easy. Maybe if just slapped together, but done well, it's likely to be a little bit more to it.

That said, I think I'll write it. OP's post has inspired me, and brought form to the vague notion of a custom campaign that has flickered in my mind.

Also, here are three user add-ons that have a few aspects similar to what OP suggests.

2p Campaign Battle System - This has a buch of different scenarios of varying difficulty, and it lets you pick which one to play next, letting you build your chosen faction at your own pace. (Can set the 2nd player to empty or AI for just one player. (for Wesnoth 1.8 )

Random Campaign - The multiplayer version is a 3 scenario that lets you pick era and configure most of the settings on the game setup screen, so you can adjust the difficulty of the campaign. (for Wesnoth 1.9)

Custom Faction - This Era will let you choose the recruit list & leader for each side set to 'Custom'. For use with a single scenario in MP (for Wesnoth 1.9)

[DEATH_is_undead]

Custom Faction - This Era will let you choose the recruit list & leader for each side set to 'Custom'. For use with a single scenario in MP (for Wesnoth 1.9)

http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php ... ts&start=0

[SigurdFireDragon]

I've posted an implementation of this idea on the 1.9 add-on server.
The thread for it is here: http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=34170

Below is a brief comment on OP's post and what I did about each point

I wanted to suggest a custom campaign, built into a campaign format.

For each scenario of the campaign, offer a screen similar to the one available in the multiplayer game option, with some additional details.

As I see it, the key element is being able to use the same army over and over again. This is done by using persistenceWML to save the army.
So I opted for using the the existing MP game framework instead of making it into a campaign on the Campaign tab. This allows indentical scenario setup compared to a regular mp game along all factors except for faction setup. I handle faction setup with a special map in MP.

These could include the ability to choose which units each player/ai can recruit, with any level of specificity: all level 1 units of all factions, all level 1's of a particular faction plus 3 specific level two's of another factions, etc.

I did implement a menu that allows selection of units, though not yet to this description. To allow selection for all units that are in core and what the player has downloaded, with selectable filters; requires some lua, and will take longer for me to do, but is intended.

In this way, a single player could choose this campaign, use the same units each time and "create" his own opponents, so that it could always be a challenge. The final scenario of Descent into Darkness shows the ability to have an endless repeat. Combined with the XP era or something similar, a player or players could keep an army going indefinitely.

The goal of using the same units each time and creating own opponents is indeed accomplish. Endless repeating was not done (not sure it's possible in my implementation), in favor letting the player use the existing mp game creation framework to launch another scenario when they want to play that Army again. As part of my implementation uses an Era to accomplish the task, XP era cannot be used with this, unless the code was added directly. Such is the tradeoff for implementing in this way.

[Glory_to_the_Highest]

Thank you so much!

I just checked out the 2p Campaign Battle System and it's awesome! I'm looking forward to checking out the other developments soon. Be blessed!