Mainline 'Scenarios' (together with campaigns)

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Re: Mainline 'Scenarios' (together with campaigns)

Post by name »

skeptical_troll wrote: 1) scenarios are easier to make than campaigns
2) I guess they wouldn't occupy much disk space
3) You can give to the player the possibility of using otherwise overlooked units, like khalifate, drakes, saurians etc.
4) You can develop particular tactical aspects, which players (like me) more attracted by the strategic side than the RPG side of the game would love.
5) With the authours' permission (I'm sure they'd be happy) you can even use material from the add-ons, like best scenarios in the UMC campaigns. This would save work and would be also an opportunity to showcase good add-on campaigns
6) It would be possible to briefly touch a wide range of moments in the history of Wesnoth not described in the mainline campaigns, giving a broader view on the world where the game is set.
7) With no gold/experience carryover single scenarios need not always have a turn limit.
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Re: Mainline 'Scenarios' (together with campaigns)

Post by Sire »

I just played Forward They Cried (downloaded the old add-on and ran it on the new version 1.12.5 without any problems). It is indeed a fun scenario. Near the end I was reminded of the turn limit and started rushing the enemy leader, but I accidentally left my healer out in the open and the leader came out to slay him. I promptly avenged the healer shortly thereafter. For the most part, it seems to be about experience management. If I did not lose some of my high exp units, it would have gone more smoothly, but luckily I managed to level up a Mage to become my much needed DPS to clear out the bridge and press onward. The only suggestions I have for whoever is maintaining the scenario is to add some music and maybe some victory dialogue, even if it is just "Go to your next assignment, soldier".

Back to the topic at hand, I'm going to recode my Woodcutters scenario back into campaign format instead of multiplayer. For the most part, it is working and is finished, I just need to figure out the code to stop the Goblins from moving any further after they stop on a forest tile to gather lumber. Then comes the usual balancing and polishing.

As for ideas for other scenarios and factions...

Outlaws - Pillage villages for gold to attack a fortified outpost to claim your territory. (Capturing villages will burn the village and give "x" amount of gold.)
Dwarves - Escort a caravan to the other end of the map. Perhaps they stole Drake eggs or have something of value to the Elves.
Loyalists - We currently have Forward They Cried, but for a more mechanically involved scenario, perhaps play as border guards evacuating peasants during an invasion. Go to villages to spawn a peasant, move the peasant to the safe zone, and save a certain number of peasants to win.
Drakes - Maybe the Drakes are in conflict with Mermen, Naga, and Sea Monster forces over a vital water supply.
Northerners - I'm currently working on a scenario for the Northerners, but another scenario could involve what happens shortly after they are born, separating true Orcs from Goblins. This scenario involves fighting in caves to recruit an army while defeating the other leaders.
Elves -A party of Elves investigate ancient ruins to uncover mysteries of the past.
Undead - Unleash a plague upon the city, and take back what is rightfully yours. Of course, you will attack a castle, because why not.
Khalifate- Gather precious materials to trade back home, but beware of hostiles and those who may guard such materials.
Current Projects: [Sire's Scenarios] || [Red Winter Reborn]
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Re: Mainline 'Scenarios' (together with campaigns)

Post by beetlenaut »

We could do some more non-traditional things that probably don't show up in any campaign too:
Dragon - Defend your cave against pesky knights and archers that keep attacking.
Ogres - Defend your tribe against Asheviere's army that is trying to enslave your people.
Wolves - Capture enough livestock to feed your pack, or fight to become the new alpha.
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Re: Mainline 'Scenarios' (together with campaigns)

Post by Lord-Knightmare »

Elves -A party of Elves investigate ancient ruins to uncover mysteries of the past.
Damn, that sounds cool. I can make a scenario involving this. Now, to the map editor! :mrgreen:
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Re: Mainline 'Scenarios' (together with campaigns)

Post by skeptical_troll »

Cool ideas here, as soon as I have some time I'll try out Sire's scenario.

I was thinking myself of having a go with a scenario with drakes: basic Idea is that you need to rescue some caged drakes captured by loyalists (that I think makes it harder than, e.g. outlaws) and escort them back home. So it would be a two-stages scenario, with some enemy reinforcements arriving later to make the retreat more difficult. Story hook could be that Ashviere (or some other evil human king/queen) wants to train drakes to fight for her.

It would be cool also to have a scenario where you play Nagas (maybe allied saurians or see monsters to have more units choice?) since they are rarely (never?) playable in mainline campaigns? It could be as simple as a territorial dispute with mermans, but I guess we can come up with something more original (preventing the construction of a Wesnothian bridge?)
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Re: Mainline 'Scenarios' (together with campaigns)

Post by Lord-Knightmare »

Okay, this has confused me for quite a while now...
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Re: Mainline 'Scenarios' (together with campaigns)

Post by Sire »

@ Lord-Knightmare

A cutscene is just a story element and is not considered as scenario. The way this is handled in mainline campaigns (using Delfador's Memoirs as an example), is that there are 19 playable scenarios, but 23 actual "scenarios" including story ones.

As for my opinion regarding cutscenes in mission packs, why not. Back in the day there were cutscenes for the old Command and Conquer: Red Alert mission packs (Counterstrike and Aftermath), so I don't see why they can not be included in Wesnoth. Of course, the introduction cutscenes were for a set of missions (I think three) and not just one, but whatever works.
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Re: Mainline 'Scenarios' (together with campaigns)

Post by Aldarisvet »

You can show cutscene in one map, then change the map of the scenario, and continue at another map and all in one scenario.
By saying "in one scenario" I mean that you have no need to press "end scenario" button after cutscene and start a new one.
There is no need in 'cutscene scenarios'.
Actually you can make a huge campaign using only 1 scenario .cfg file, alltime changing the map after some conditions.
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Re: Mainline 'Scenarios' (together with campaigns)

Post by Lord-Knightmare »

Forward They Cried is now playable on Wesnoth 1.12.5

There are some bugs on the Mac platform for the latest 1.13.2 release so, I will upload it to the 1.13 server later (probably when 1.13.3 comes out).
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Re: Mainline 'Scenarios' (together with campaigns)

Post by Kwandulin »

I started working on a single scenario campaign featuring the merfolk, Kai Laudiss and the battle of Tirigaz that is mentioned in the prologue of Dead Water.

The Battle of Tirigaz can be found on Wesnoth 1.12.5
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Re: Mainline 'Scenarios' (together with campaigns)

Post by DeCoolest_Cat »

I've been thinking of doing some stand-alone scenarios for about 2-3 weeks now, a bit after I played Sire's Scenarios. I thought of 4-5 ideas, but some of them go along with my current campaign, so they won't work.
beetlenaut wrote:We could do some more non-traditional things that probably don't show up in any campaign too:
Ogres - Defend your tribe against Asheviere's army that is trying to enslave your people.
I have an idea similar to this one myself. I was thinking you could play as a tribe of ogres defending your "land?" against loyalist troops attempting to capture ogres to train. Now the catch is that there could be WML taken from EI "capturing ogres", and have your ogres switch to the other side if surrounded. It would add a level of tactical play needed to successfully complete the scenario.

If you only want 1 scenario campaigns that this won't work. But I thought if you achieved your goal in defending you tribe for x amount of turns, an ogre would show up saying "Human have camp. Humans trap ogres in camp. Ogres must free ogres" and another scenario would come up where you must destroy the training camp and free the ogres inside it.... But if you fail scenario 1 you are INSIDE the camp for scenario 2. That ogre would run away and the rest of the tribe would come back to save you. You would therefore have to defeat the camp, but the leader (who can't die without failure) would be closer to enemy troops. So you wouldn't necessarily lose scenario 1 if you are captured, but scenario 2 would be much harder. Again, this part is optional if you don't want 2 scenario campaigns.
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Re: Mainline 'Scenarios' (together with campaigns)

Post by zookeeper »

DeCoolest_Cat wrote:If you only want 1 scenario campaigns that this won't work. But I thought if you achieved your goal in defending you tribe for x amount of turns, an ogre would show up saying "Human have camp. Humans trap ogres in camp. Ogres must free ogres" and another scenario would come up where you must destroy the training camp and free the ogres inside it.... But if you fail scenario 1 you are INSIDE the camp for scenario 2. That ogre would run away and the rest of the tribe would come back to save you. You would therefore have to defeat the camp, but the leader (who can't die without failure) would be closer to enemy troops. So you wouldn't necessarily lose scenario 1 if you are captured, but scenario 2 would be much harder. Again, this part is optional if you don't want 2 scenario campaigns.
Actually, I'd suggest reversing the difficulties, making the escaping from camp branch the "easy difficulty", and attacking the camp the "hard difficulty". If you're not playing so well and end up losing scenario 1, then you get the easier version of scenario 2 where you only need to escape, but if you manage to win scenario 1, then you get a shot at the intended, harder version of scenario 2 with a better ending.
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Re: Mainline 'Scenarios' (together with campaigns)

Post by DeCoolest_Cat »

zookeeper wrote: Actually, I'd suggest reversing the difficulties, making the escaping from camp branch the "easy difficulty", and attacking the camp the "hard difficulty". If you're not playing so well and end up losing scenario 1, then you get the easier version of scenario 2 where you only need to escape, but if you manage to win scenario 1, then you get a shot at the intended, harder version of scenario 2 with a better ending.
By harder I mostly meant that it was easier for the leader to die. I'm all down for your idea though. I still think other ogres should come to help you escape, and they would come differently with the difficulty. On easy difficulty that one ogre (who I'll call Ted), will already have escaped. On medium difficulty Ted will be outside of the camp, but not all the way. On hard, Ted will still be inside the camp. So maybe the difference between difficulties is 2-4 turns.
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Re: Mainline 'Scenarios' (together with campaigns)

Post by Inky »

Feedback for The Battle of Tirigaz version 0.1.1 - (maybe there should be a separate thread for this?)

Gameplay:
  • The whole battle takes place in the northeast corner of the map; I think there's some wasted potential with the rest of the map. There could be some more mermen + some enemies scattered around the rest of the map; maybe less mermen in the bay so the mermen outside would have to go help break the siege?
  • Blue orc's units (Redback's side) are way too passive. Most turns his units didn't move at all - this includes the wolf + orcs which showed up in the north (they eventually started moving south when my mermen moved onto land).
  • The battle is most difficult at the beginning due to the nagas which are good in water, so once you've gotten rid of the nagas it's trivial to kill the orcs by luring them into the water at day (and it's very easy to just retreat out of range and heal at night). Maybe add some periodic naga reinforcements to keep up the pressure?
  • The eastern orc leader can be lured into the water and killed on turn 2.
General:
  • At the beginning it takes way too long for all the mermen to move to the bay (I turned the acceleration to maximum and it still took some time; it would take minutes at normal speed) - maybe they should just start in the bay.
  • The fire ring for Kai Laudiss is useless - there aren't enemies weak to fire but resistant to impact; in fact the orcish assassins are weaker to impact than fire.
  • The fearless trait doesn't do anything for the neutral Leviathan.
  • Kai Laudiss never loses the dive ability.
  • When the naga hunter shoots arrows, the sprite completely disappears.
Story:
Spoiler:
Replay:
Killed eastern leader on turn 2, also killed naga leader fairly early. Got rid of the nagas and spent several turns healing since the blue orcs weren't doing anything. Assaulted orcs at day, finished turn 18.
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Re: Mainline 'Scenarios' (together with campaigns)

Post by beetlenaut »

Inky wrote:I'm surprised the scenario ends in a triumphant victory, and leaves out the event where Kai Ludiss gets killed by a poisoned orcish dart - doesn't this happen during the battle of Tirigaz?
Yes, and it's not really a spoiler since it is mentioned in the introduction of Dead Water. Actually, Dead Water describes this whole battle in detail, and this scenario doesn't match that description at all. We can have a battle between Tirigaz and Jotha, but perhaps this could be a different one 100 years earlier or later or something.

Actually, I do think it would be possible to do the battle mentioned in Dead Water, but only if the player played the orcs.
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