We want the Valley of the Statues & Mountain Pass in HTT

[Temuchin Khan]

I liked Valley of Statues precisely because it had nothing to do with the main storyline. For that very reason, I thought it made the world of Wesnoth seem more like a real place instead of just a backdrop for a story.

[Blarumyrran]

im all for it, forks never hurt.

[turin]

HttT is already, to put it bluntly, obscenely long. It's something like 22 scenarios, not counting the talking ones*. It doesn't need to be longer.

It might be possible to have those scenarios as side quests, but I really don't have an opinion one way or another on it.



*: Incidentally, I find the way mainline numbers it's scenarios rather irritating. If you look at Sceptre of Fire, you'll see it numbers talking scenarios as {number of previous scenario}t_{scenario name}.cfg... this means that the numbering of the campaign goes up to 9_Caverns_of_Flame.cfg (plus an epilogue), and the campaign is actually nine playable scenarios long. HttT, OTOH, has the numbering go up to 25, but... well, I think three of them are just talking, but I'm not 100% sure. My way isn't ideal, but it certainly seems more intuitive to me than what we use right now.

[zookeeper]

*: Incidentally, I find the way mainline numbers it's scenarios rather irritating. If you look at Sceptre of Fire, you'll see it numbers talking scenarios as {number of previous scenario}t_{scenario name}.cfg... this means that the numbering of the campaign goes up to 9_Caverns_of_Flame.cfg (plus an epilogue), and the campaign is actually nine playable scenarios long. HttT, OTOH, has the numbering go up to 25, but... well, I think three of them are just talking, but I'm not 100% sure. My way isn't ideal, but it certainly seems more intuitive to me than what we use right now.

Just for the record, I agree with this. Personally, I'd even prefer to go as far as completely hide from the player the fact that the talking scenario is a different scenario than the one right before or after it. One scenario name, one savefile, and so on. A talking scenario is like a story screen, from the player's perspective it doesn't really warrant to be treated as nothing but a short intro or outro of an actual playable scenario.

[santi]

Mythological wrote:

If nothing else, to prove that the developers are not always evil and arrogant despots to those who think so

I don't think anyone ever said or hinted at that. I do not see why the devs would want to deliberately harm the game. However, I do think that a number of their decisions, such as this particular one are cases of shooting oneself in the foot and some of the policies make no sense(you draft a policy with well-stated criteria that basically boil down to "unless
some dev think otherwise")
A particular example is the "quality issue"-there is no way the actual practice can be
considered compatible with quality concerns.
Similarly, the "obscenely long" issue, I do not get. What can be obscenely long about a n adventure campaign?
Anyway, all in all the nice thing about Wesnoth is you have a choice- such as playing it or skipping these scenaria. So please KEEP OFFERING the choice. After all people have put time and effort in these scenaria and many of us like their outcome, so give us the choice of playing them. Maybe we can have an engine modification where the user is asked
in the beginning by means of Radiobuttons to keep the full version, the version without
MP and VoS, or the version with one of them only.

Anyway, with Mythological's initiative a precedent is set: Does it mean that in the future such decisions will be adopted by general vote or just by dev vote?

[Mythological]

Mythological wrote:

If nothing else, to prove that the developers are not always evil and arrogant despots to those who think so

I don't think anyone ever said or hinted at that. I do not see why the devs would want to deliberately harm the game.

First, the quoted sentence was not serious ( you missed at the end of it ) and it was regarding to some other forum members who have antagonized themselves with some of the developers and forum moderators, some of whom wrote in other threads things similar to the ones in my quote ( I wont mention any names here , but you can search the forum for those posts if you don't believe me ) and even left the forums. However you wrote that this is the case where the developer and user opinion differs . It is not as simple as you say ( even if you might be generally right ) - at least one user posted against this idea, and some voted against it in the poll, while on the other hand I am in favor of the idea and few other developers are too, in one way or the other. Others don't care about the change e.t.c. Anyway, santi, we are on the same side about this issue and I don't see much point in any argument about details between us.

Anyway, with Mythological's initiative a precedent is set: Does it mean that in the future such decisions will be adopted by general vote or just by dev vote?

Of course it does not mean that. The decisions are, and they have to be ( otherwise there would be chaos ) made by the ones who actually do the work in mainline - the developers. However, that does not mean that in the future, in cases some developer is not sure what to do or when the agreement can not be reached the question can not be put in front of the wider public, like in this particular case.

[allefant]

Maybe we can have an engine modification where the user is asked
in the beginning by means of Radiobuttons to keep the full version, the version without
MP and VoS, or the version with one of them only.

Not sure someone suggested this already - but instead of the above, why not make them optional in the story with already existing WML constructs? Like, at the end of the previous scenario, have someone ask.. "Konrad, should we go through this valley even though it just will drag along our campaign and not advance the story, or take a shortcut over the mountain pass?" - then one option skips the valley scenario, for those who think this campaign is way too long, another option lets you play it for those who can't get enough

(Myself, I voted in the poll to bring both back - but then I'm not a standard player. E.g. I never played multiplayer, and when I play a campaign I usually save&reload a 1000 times to have nobody of all my carefully-named-at-recruitment-time units die despite my lacking Wesnoth skills )

[Theo]

Maybe we can have an engine modification where the user is asked
in the beginning by means of Radiobuttons to keep the full version, the version without
MP and VoS, or the version with one of them only.

Not sure someone suggested this already - but instead of the above, why not make them optional in the story with already existing WML constructs? Like, at the end of the previous scenario, have someone ask.. "Konrad, should we go through this valley even though it just will drag along our campaign and not advance the story, or take a shortcut over the mountain pass?" - then one option skips the valley scenario, for those who think this campaign is way too long, another option lets you play it for those who can't get enough

But for new players, we might want to give an incentive for getting through the optional levels, like "the valley has a much longer path, but there have been rumors of dwarvish berserkers in the area. Perhaps we can gain a few allies if we take this path etc."

[santi]

I also think we're on the same side. And I'm all in favor of those who do the work having the final say. When for example the original simple
map system has to be scrapped for a more complex one, that's ok
because there is a reason for it, even if it means more work for the
campaign developers.
It's only decisions of taste, such as to include or not these scenaria
(which basically involve no extra work by the devs) that I think
should be decided by the users. When there is disagreement on the merit
of a scenario, a fork as suggested should solve the problem and the
authors will probably be happy to comply.

[Jozrael]

The problem is that it doesn't include no work for the devs - the campaign has come a long way since the time of these 2 scenarios. However, in this instance, you are right that it doesn't impose upon any devs since one has already volunteered =)

[santi]

Just so that I understand it, with the linked-list structure of scenarios,
including or takingout a scenario is basically only a question
of whether the campaign is balanced with or without the scenario, right?
This is basically the extra work required or not?

[Mythological]

If done properly ( and it has to be done properly in mainline ) it is a little more than just balancing - the maps would have to be updated to the latest map format, some obsolete WML might also have to be updated ( but that is where wmllint comes in handy ) the numbers in the ids, next_scenario= keys and the names of the scenario .cfgs and maps of the next scenarios would have to be changed, and probably the looks of the maps would have to be improved. Not a big deal, but it is not neglectable either - f.e a single mistyped letter in a scenario id will break the campaign

[santi]

Mythological, thanks for the info.
I never understood why scenarios need to be numbered, e.g.
01Elves_Besieged.cfg, 02Blackwater_port.cfg etc.
Sure, it does not break the linked-list structure, since
every scenario states what the next one is, but it does not help either IMHO

Second, what I found out when trying to maintain 1.3.14 compatibility in maps, the new map structure with the header lines in each map breaks
position numbering in the WML, since everything is shifted by 1;
To remedy this, I set the relevant parameter to 0 instead of 1 in the map
, which works ok, but I am not sure if this is frowned upon or whether
there is any good reason to avoid it

Last, unfortunately wmllint is no 100% safe-somethimes it results in non-rectangular maps it looks like the leaders are shifted from their 1.2 vesion positions. But it would probably be a lot harder to do the new maps from scratch and any corrections it can do to WML is welcome, one will
have to test anyway.

[CIB]

or whether
there is any good reason to avoid it

Yes, the fact that 1.3.9 map format support is going to be dropped soon.