A Rough Life

Review and rate user-made single and multiplayer campaigns and scenarios.

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Samonella
Posts: 381
Joined: January 8th, 2016, 5:41 pm
Location: USA

Re: A Rough Life

Post by Samonella »

Elvish_Hunter wrote:I'm attaching the scenario here; feel free to test it and suggest any other improvement. :)
It looks great! Here are just a couple editing suggestions for Jeff's death event:
Jacques says, "I may not come alive out of this mess... but neither are you!" I think "...but neither *will* you!" is grammatically better.
Greedy Farmer says, "...Now no one can say that you don't deserve what's coming up!" Maybe it's clearer/more natural sounding as "...what's coming *to you*!"

Overall, though, I thought you did a beautiful job; none of it felt "shoehorned" at all. :D
The last few months have been nothing but one big, painful reminder that TIMTLTW.

Creator of Armory Mod, The Rising Underworld, and Voyage of a Drake: an RPG
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WhereIsBaodur
Posts: 26
Joined: July 28th, 2016, 6:40 pm

Re: A Rough Life

Post by WhereIsBaodur »

Hi! I wanted to thank who made this campaign and everyone involved. I've just finished it and it just might be the best Wesnoth campaing. I've played all the official campaigns a couple years ago, and only a few of them are as fun as this one (UtBS, NR...)

The first scenario was very challenging, I had to try it quite a few times. In the end I found a good way to do it (did it again just to be sure):
On round one, go to the small isthmus north east, near the peasant base. on the second you get to attack their base from the right/rear, getting to good ground and one village, while avoiding the goblins for just a little bit. you can take the camp, and with careful repositioning you get to keep the place and level up jaques. Then it's relatively easy to win (and the goblin impaler can be ranged attacked by jaques to soften him up)
With almost no reloading I managed to get to turn 30, thus getting a nice story message. No peasants nor bowmen survived :)
Violet-n-red
Posts: 49
Joined: June 27th, 2015, 2:38 pm

Re: A Rough Life

Post by Violet-n-red »

hello! i have a small issue: my lizard healer guy from the first desert raid got promoted and was able to heal poison, but the next time we went out into the desert with my squad, the guy got demote back to non-poison-curing form :( everyone else was transferred correctly
monsieurlebaron
Posts: 4
Joined: December 27th, 2018, 9:54 pm

Re: A Rough Life

Post by monsieurlebaron »

hello,

i'm blocked with this f*** dragon at the end of the chapter 'the day of reckoning"
i don't know how to kill him?
could you please help me.

thanks.
denispir
Posts: 184
Joined: March 14th, 2013, 12:26 am

Re: A Rough Life

Post by denispir »

Hello @Elvish_Hunter,

First, huge thanks for all the hard & great you do on Wesnoth, for all of us.

I am playing A Rough Life and had an issue in 08 The Shadow Lands (diff "normal"). I guess, combined factors of inattention, slightly misleading dialogs and "topography" (the mage's house is easy to miss at the very SE corner) let me firstly unable to end, meaning to get the book. Actually, we are searching for a book, there is this inaccessible central area, a temple at its core, everything looks obvious then: we need to find a way to get there. And unless I was even more inattentive than I think (or had drunk more than I remember, since I had beer aside ;)) nothing tells us to instead search for a guy called Luxor, a house (village), a silver mage, whatever... Thus, I had to explore the scenario source WML to find these (20,20) coordinates as key data. Then, all ended fluently. But I was then frustrated to read about the alternative code logic / playin path where I would have opened the gate myself and fought along with Luxor.

Since my issue was partly due to the map, I watched it with in mind the idea of maybe editing it. Since I was at it, I tried to improve it globally:
  • make it all arid, desertic, firstly desert constructions & fortifications!
  • (except for the cave floor walls which are here to make the center mount with temple inaccessible --but maybe change that to impassable mountains?)
  • structure it visually (maybe exaggerated)
  • embellish it (tons of details as you will see)
  • I wanted to add some skeletons (the dead things, not the units), I know sprites exist for Wesnoth but could not find them in the map editor. Maybe an add-on? (If so they can & must be added through code, no?)
  • Said map editor is now great! All is easy and fast.
  • etc...
  • All this in addition to making Luxor's house a little more notable, with a path leading to it! (and another, ruined house at the start of the path)
Maybe I did a bit too much, and the map is now too visually embellished/structured/diverse. But the gameplay "topography" is not altered, except for more rough edges (hills/monts) that should rarely play a role in movement and combat. tell me. See the result in attached file shadowlands_rerevisited.map ;). Edit: the coordinates of Luxor's home have changed to (19,20): your moveto [event] would need to adapt, and possibly some interface action as well (don't remember the details, and there are several playing pathes).

side notes:
  • When finding Luxor's house, the narrator message pretends it is Jacques who entered it but indeed it will be any unit of us...
  • "Choki" sounds strange to me for a dwarf name.
  • "Luxor" also sounds wrong to me but dunno why (phonetic connexion with luxury?) Maybe Loxur? Lokur? Lozur?
  • Make it so that we should first find Luxor before having beaten both enemies.
  • The end dialogue with Luxor is too much (3.5 screens of text by me), move some (info) of it to the first dialogue with him which is far shorter, actually so short that I felt frustrated by the lack of revelations.
Just to avoid double-posting (but why is it wrong? never understood), some impressions on the campaign...
  • The campaign, story, gameplay, are all great, big thanks to @Jacques_Fol!
  • All flows naturally and interestingly.
  • Challenge is well balanced, maybe a bit linear; slight changes making a couple scenarios more easy or difficult may be an improvement (read: rythm in challenge).
  • First time I played it, long ago, I stopped in one of the desert scenarios, but don't remember why.
...and its first scenario:
  • This very first scenario is always a difficult challenge, for me, by far the most difficult. As a game designer, I would introduce a prelude, significantly easier, where Jacques along with some of his ruffian guys has something to complete while fighting with village youngs, which would also avoid some of the back story and better deepen the peasant hate.
  • I play this first scenario by rushing for the nearest (south) enemy keep, kill all and mostly just stand fast on it. Usually Jacques advances, as well as 1-2 ruffians but they die nevertheless, though with the help of next houses (and muds) I still manage to reach the end turn (30?).
  • I choose this keep not for its proximity but because the muds obviously will & do help me all along, and this both by attacking and being attacked.
  • I simply don't understand the comment (obviously disguised advice) about the goblin leader... ??? (did not read in source)
Edit: I stepped on exchanges between Samonella & you about map improvements as well (his are rather great in the Rising Underworld). If you rather like my job here, even with critics, I could elaborate some other maps. Just tell me...

Thank you again,
Diniz
Attachments
shadowlands_rerevisited.map
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Ignatus
Posts: 4
Joined: May 20th, 2019, 12:53 pm

Re: A Rough Life

Post by Ignatus »

Thanks for the campaign! Just have finished it. Just my experience from some of the scenarios:
The first scenario is much a gift of luck. I firstly could not hold for 15 turns but then I made the goblins fight against the mud creatures hiding behind them in a house (one advanced to an adult form, yo!) and held for all the 30 at relative ease.

The Day of Reckoning scenario on hard difficulcy was really hard (maybe the desert episode was equally hard, can't remember it after over 500 turns of demolishing skeletons %\ Probably I'm the champion in it :lol: ) Actually, I could not get Kyoko from one passage to the another without some save scumming since the crowd of undeads blocked the entrance. Maybe one is supposed to start the scenario with more gold to fight some undead leaders before? When I tried to do so, I killed one and then another one finished what was left of my troops. Also, I was surprized when
Spoiler:
Also, in the Thirst scenario, I supposed there is a way of a pacifist run and tried to spare the ogres, but actually there probably is not since one of the ogres follows my elf by the bridge and wakes the trolls. Uh-oh!

Well, a good game!
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