The Hammer of Thursagan

[esr]

A new version 0.13 is available on the 1.3.x server. It is almost complete; 12 of 13 scenarios have been coded. The only one still missing is The Underlevels (#12), which Taurus is planning to do.

[tillea]

Hi,

thanks for the new release. I have a savegame from
scenario="09_Forbidden_Forest"
that I played with (I think) verison 0.6 - at least the
Eastern signpost was not reachable for the two protagonists
which seemed me to mark a reasonable end for the not
yet finished campaign. When loading this scenario while
having 0.12 installed there is no change in the behaviour.
I've thought I could continue from this point.

Is there any way to cheat foreward from this savegame
to reach the next scenario. And no, I deleted the other
savegames from previous scenarios and do not really
like to replay everything - even admittedly it was fun and
this campaign has some interesting new moves. Especially
I had some fun when hostile inhabitants came out of
each village in one scenario. This was a new move even
if I have to say that I do not regard it really logical that
those hostile citizens continue to come out of villages that
I take over from the enemy. My first idea was to let the
enemy take all villages and deal with those people and
afterwards I could savely take over without trouble.

Kind regards

Andreas.

[Weeksy]

to cheat forwards (warning, may break your campaign some) press : (shift+;) to open up a little dialogue. Type 'debug' and press enter. Then press : and type 'n' and press enter.

[tillea]

to cheat forwards (warning, may break your campaign some) press : (shift+;) to open up a little dialogue. Type 'debug' and press enter. Then press : and type 'n' and press enter.

Well, (shift+;) did not work for me, but at http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/CommandMode I learned that ':' would have the same effect. Unfortunately the 'n' command does not trigger the win event. Strangely enough I got the message

Code: Select all

Unknown scenario 10 The Siege of Kal Kartha

on a machine where I forgot to install the campaign when I tried to cheat so at least _something_ is working. To verify that cheat mode is working anyhow I tried to ask for more gold which also had no effect.

I'm using the latest Debian packages from experimental. Is it possible that cheat mode has to be enabled at compile time?

Kind regards

Andreas.

[tillea]

Hi again,

please forget my latest posting. I had to start wesnoth with --debug (which
solved the increasing gold issue) and moreover there was a typo in the next scenario tag of my savegame. There was a blank (' ') instead of an underscore (' ') in the scenario name. After changing this I was able to went to the next scenario.

Kind regards

Andreas.

[esr]

At Ivanovic's request I moved THoT to mainline SVN today. Future versions will be named by their svn revision level. I have deleted it from Wescamp.

The draft is almost done. All scenarios are playable and at least roughly balanced, except that Taurus is still wotking on Underlevels (#12).

[Mr. Wednesday]

Attempting to play with the r22361 Windows build (with an svn update a few minutes ago to get current data files) gives an error. It's complaining about a missing tag in the scenario 12 cfg on line 455.

Relevant info from stderr.txt:

Code: Select all

Dec 15 15:35:09 error config: Error loading game configuration files
Dec 15 15:35:09 error general: Error loading game configuration files: 'Missing closing tag for tag then at data/campaigns/The_Hammer_of_Thursagan/scenarios/12_The_Underlevels.cfg:455 included from data/campaigns/The_Hammer_of_Thursagan/_main.cfg:55 included from data/_main.cfg:8 at data/_main.cfg:169' (The game will now exit)
Missing closing tag for tag then at data/campaigns/The_Hammer_of_Thursagan/scenarios/12_The_Underlevels.cfg:455 included from data/campaigns/The_Hammer_of_Thursagan/_main.cfg:55 included from data/_main.cfg:8 at data/_main.cfg:169

[SkeletonCrew]

esr fixed it in commit 22400.

[Jami]

The quality of this campain is decent, but while I was playing though something bothered me fairly regularily on my playthough on the hardest setting. Because it was so subtle, it took a long time for me to figure it out.

This campain is really, quite boring.

Don't get me wrong, the plot is fairly decent. It looks well thought-out. But just look at scenerio's 1-10. There you are basically doing the same thing over and over, fight a foe, march east with slightly upgraded units, then fight slightly different foes. Nearly every scenerio is this campain is marching westward and whiping out every foe in your path. There are only three units you can recruit (Fighters, Thunderers, and Mages), and every scenerio has the same "bash past the enemy with your elite group and mop up with your two new recruits" mentality. Hell, you don't even really change marching direction. (For example, marching north to avoid a swamp, being forced to backtrack because the bandits raided your stores while the army slept. Defending a hastily-made encampment from a company of orcs who surrounded you while you're troops rested.)

In all, I don't feel that the gameplay of this campain has enough depth, especially when compared to Northern Rebirth, Decent into Darkness, HttT, TRoW, or even The Sceptre of Fire.

I would defiantly like to see some more units used. Allowing the recruit of some outlaws (especially since they are part of the Northern/Knarlgan Alliance!), or gryphon riders (Since having all of your units moving across a 40 hex map 4 hexes at a time get's old quite fast.

I personally feel this campain needs work, a lot of it. It's not that it's terrible, indeed, it's fairly well-written, but gameplay and tactical part is lacking.

edit: grr, I'm so bad at going back and editing my posts.

[Pugget]

I just finished playing through and have to partly agree with Jami. I did think some of the scenerios called for a different play style than I've found in other campaigns I've gone through, and I enjoyed those. A couple that stood out for me were:

The East Gate
The first level, due to a lack of money, lack of high level units, and speed of the wolf riders, forced me to fight an interesting town-to-town fight.

Mages and Drakes
I was pretty damn powerful at this point, but I very much enjoyed this map (and having a new unit to recruit)

The Underlevels
Honestly, only the first part of this scenario was interesting, and then it reverted to a long slog without much challenge. I think this was partly due to the bugs, as neither litch recruited anything, making getting from the top of the map to the end boss feel like 30 turns of moving units. But the first part of the level was great, particularly starting about 10 turns in when one is trying to take the first leader's command post. The design of the fortifications in this level is some of the best I've ever seen. The fight down the two hallways was also enjoyable, but I ended up with a split force and had to take 15 some turns to get them back together.

Then there was the not so good. Forbidden Forest was okay, but Fear was quite boring. Needs to be uped in difficulty quite a bit, at least on intermediate. High Pass felt like a defensive drill where one walks across the map surrounded by lvl 3 units, the AI to scared to attack most of the time. Same thing with Troll Bridge.

Overall, I think there is a lot of good here. I wish I had some more constructive comments, but I've never tried to put a campaign together, so I'm not sure what should be done with the more boring levels. Some of the issues may be due to the AI deciding not to fight at all. Never the less, some ideas: High Pass would be much more interesting if one had to take the Griffon base. There is a whole story arc that is left unexplained here, and it could add the variance Jami was looking for. In Fear, the episode really needs to live up to its name. Maybe put in waves of progressively harder units?

As far as bugs, I have three to report. First, the very eastern door, above one of the two litches in The Underlevels, is non-functional. This may be intentional, but just needlessly pisses off the player as he has to move a bunch of units back. Second, neither litch in the Underlevels seems to recruit until attacked, and only then if the player retreats. Finally, the Epilogue refuses to load and says "The file you have tried to load is corrupt." The WML traceback in the terminal says:

Code: Select all

Jan 02 13:50:39 error engine: SYNC: In recruit Great Mage: has checksum PmFQWShBa<DIvzOxjVbkbEk<FQ0MQUbGPt,9RHamAd1QxM0>cvWn<Pz-ykUh,H.teb5je9eqAP3nPAwn0ShB.-4qbGW+GnAfol2fMN.3S46diQk3ZHnAitz<Hn1wgV3n while datasource has checksum BG0HeSfDHbhKRnpz+Jj2pNe6gk<PdRm5<n1HFWI1QJgopl9lu<aiIijhks2r>krSnm9XlCBfS6nc0MtgjrqW.a8MbVW-R2e,pbRGKBUfhzkPXkRv8+H4MDaNYn>Wcf+L

Thanks for the new campaign ESR. I think it can be refined into something quite interesting.

[SkeletonCrew]

The last bug is know and will be fixed in 1.3.14.

[esr]

I read the previous two critical reviews just *after* an IRC conversation with Dragonking in which we worked out adding a Gryphon Rider and the ability to recruit Guardsmen. That should help the tactical variety a bit.

I was trying for unusual combinations -- Dwarvws fighting *with* orcs rather tha n against them, for examples. Or dwarves vs. drakes.

Some of the criticisms make me think of curses by the Random Number Gods. I've gotten absolutely *swarmed* every time I've played High Pass, for example -- that's why I thought it was in good shape.

Strange Allies (3) also seems very vulnerable to random swings in AI behavior. I'm not sure what to do about this sort of thing.

[thespaceinvader]

Just a quick note to you, ESR, to say have a look in Art Contributions if you haven't already. With eternal's able assistance, i've been doing some sprite and portrait art for the campaign.

EDIT: Also, is there an art needs list for this campaign somewhere? i assume that sprites, portraits and animation for the Masked Runemaster, and Unmasked Runemaster will be needed, as well as portraits and animations for the Annalist line sprites. But did you need anything else? I got the impression that the dwarves who oppose you should be masked too, but i think it would be easier just to add a cloth mask like the outlaws have to them. Presumably a portrait would be hepful there. And did you want a portrait made for ratheln, or would the current Red Mage one do?

[esr]

Art requirements are here: http://catb.org/~esr/wesnoth/thot.html.

[thespaceinvader]

Thanks. The masked portrait and sprite done so far are intended to be Karrag, by the way, not the Masked Dwarf.