My impressions

[charlieg]

Wow, what can I say. I just installed Wesnoth for the first time (0.6.1) and it was possibly one of, if not the, best Free Software games I've yet to play.

But for a few spelling corrections and a little polish on some of the grahpics, I would have thought this was a recent commercial 'pay to play' game. Absolutely superb!

One of the greatest things about it is that it feels really original. I don't pretend to be the most seasoned games player, but I've been playing computer games since the days of manic miner and the closest I could come to Wesnoth would probably be Battle Isle or the 3D RTS Warhammer series.

Little ways I'd like to see it improved:

• The graphics are great already but the scenery sometimes looks a little disjoint - smoother transitions between different types of tiles would give it a little more edge (sic).
• Two pictures per character - for some reason it looks a little odd when a smiling Konrad cries "They're destroying our home!"
• Slight usability improvements in-game such as being able to [skip] the introductory chats of a map, being able to instantly [skip] npc moves, being able to access the menu whilst npcs move, and having all options available in the menu (eg no 'quit' option)

I have to say that I am thoroughly impressed and this game really deserves the plaudits and accolades that will come it's way. Congratulations go to the developers on a job well done.

[charlieg]

I missed out two thoughts that I had:

• Rather than just castles, it'd be more 'believable' (sounds a little silly but...) to have camps as well. I mean, they don't just show up with a castle, do they? But you can make camp overnight!
• It'd look a lot better if the castles had a perimeter as opposed to being just tiled. Then you'd also have cool scenarios where units where under siege in a castle - and getting into the castle would be quite difficult.

[charlieg]

Hah, I keep thinking of them!

It would be useful to have units marked on the map overview somehow - probably just a colour pixel for each unit with the colour representing the team they belong to.

[Kamahawk]

Hello Charlieg, welcome to Wesnoth

First of all you can zoom through oponents turns by holding down "shift".

Second of all you can always edit you posts if you want to change or add more to them.

[Pushnell]

Wow, lots of ideas.

First off, thanks for trying Wesnoth & giving us your feedback. We're glad you like it so much I'm relatively new to the project, but I'll try to give a quick rundown of your ideas. (I'm not gonna quote your stuff, cuz this post will be too long.)

-In general, we need more/better graphics. There is a call for help out for graphics artists willing to contribute animations, new units, and even new story images. At the moment I'm not sure if the game engine supports multiple character images (the in-game story), but I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult.

-There are lots of usabliity improvements happening. The UI in general is currently under much discussion as to how it should evolve.

-Camps can be handled as the game stands today, it's just a matter of map design. However, there aren't any images for a camp-like setting, and of course no maps which would use such images.

-I'm not sure what you meant about castle perimeters, but if you mean moats & things like that, then that's also map design. If you play through the campaign, there is a level called Valley of Death which has a very moat-like map design.

-The unit indicators on the minimap could be quite useful. I'm not sure how difficult this would be to implement (again, I'm pretty new to the project) but perhaps someone else could comment on this. CVS is currently down for all but the main dev's (see the wesnoth Project link) or I'd take a look at doing this myself.


Please feel free to voice any & all other comments/questions

[fmunoz]

The game currently supports "multiple" character images , the main problem is that I'm too busy to draw new images or sprites ... If you can draw images with the same quality or better than the current one you are welcome to contribute
The missing sprites are around 50-100 now, and the missing/unfinished images are between 20 or 30.
Every sprite takes from 2 to 15 min to finsih, every image takes from 1h to 5h.... it's ok to ask for more images but you should keep in mind that it will take some time...

[methinks]

fmunoz you have no life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why not go over and ask at pixelation for help again?
It is not much work to write a proffesional thread on subject, I can do it and it never hurts to ask, maybe this time we will receive more help. I do not know what about Dogmeat, he seemed interested in doing music+sprites at the beginning. There are LOTS of talented people and making 2-3 sprites would not hurt, if only we could convince them.

[edit] nice ideas there, heh

[Dave]

Hi charlieg,

Glad to hear you like the game!

Gee...I don't have to answer anything at all, everyone else did already

Why not go over and ask at pixelation for help again?
It is not much work to write a proffesional thread on subject, I can do it and it never hurts to ask, maybe this time we will receive more help. I do not know what about Dogmeat, he seemed interested in doing music+sprites at the beginning. There are LOTS of talented people and making 2-3 sprites would not hurt, if only we could convince them.

Well, why don't you start a thread over there asking for help, methinks?

David

[methinks]

If only I have your blessing, I am doing it right away.

[charlieg]

In general, we need more/better graphics.

Ah, isn't that the bane of every open source project! I shall consider, time permitting, what I might be able to do to improve the transitions between terrain types but really I'm not an artist so no luck there.

There are lots of usabliity improvements happening. The UI in general is currently under much discussion as to how it should evolve.

Yes, I saw that not long after I posted. I should look into it further to see if I have any worthwhile opinions!

Camps can be handled as the game stands today, it's just a matter of map design. However, there aren't any images for a camp-like setting, and of course no maps which would use such images.

Cool!

I'm not sure what you meant about castle perimeters, but if you mean moats & things like that, then that's also map design. If you play through the campaign, there is a level called Valley of Death which has a very moat-like map design.

No no, I didn't mean moats. I meant the walls. At the moment, you just have a 'castle' tile, with little benefit to being inside it and the tile is just a hexagonal turret-like drawing.

I'm saying that lots of castle tiles together should form into one big castle, and if you are attacking somebody in a castle and you are not on a castle tile either (ie not in the castle!) then there should be additional penalties - capturing castles and keeps should be hard!

The unit indicators on the minimap could be quite useful.

Score 1 for me!

Whilst I'm thinking about it, a loading progress indicator when loading games would be useful, since a pause of 10 or so seconds can be a little disconerting.

[Dave]

I'm not sure what you meant about castle perimeters, but if you mean moats & things like that, then that's also map design. If you play through the campaign, there is a level called Valley of Death which has a very moat-like map design.

No no, I didn't mean moats. I meant the walls. At the moment, you just have a 'castle' tile, with little benefit to being inside it and the tile is just a hexagonal turret-like drawing.

I'm saying that lots of castle tiles together should form into one big castle, and if you are attacking somebody in a castle and you are not on a castle tile either (ie not in the castle!) then there should be additional penalties - capturing castles and keeps should be hard!

Well, there are two seperate issues here: (1) the graphics of castles, which...don't look great at the moment with a whole lot of castle tiles next to each other, and (2) the issue of making a castle harder to capture.

The graphics issue is something we have to work on, obviously, but I have little to comment on it since I'm not a graphics guy.

Giving bigger advantages to someone inside a castle vs someone outside is easy: just improve unit's defensive rating in castles. The bigger problem though, is once you're down to the stage where someone is attacking your castle, you usually don't have enough units left to keep them out of the castle, and thus any advantage the castle bestows is irrelevant.

I think a solution is to give advantage to units fighting in castles when their side controls the castle's Keep. That way, it will be genuinely hard to take a castle, even if the defender only has a few units left to defend it.

David

[Guest]

Giving bigger advantages to someone inside a castle vs someone outside is easy: just improve unit's defensive rating in castles.

But then if you have to units trading blows inside the castle, then they both have higher defensive ratings and that's slightly 'wrong'. Right?

But I can see the complications that doing it right would involve. (Discussed in end comments...)

The bigger problem though, is once you're down to the stage where someone is attacking your castle, you usually don't have enough units left to keep them out of the castle, and thus any advantage the castle bestows is irrelevant.

Not true - if there were an advantage to being on the inside of a castle, people might retreat to their castle in order to defend themselves.

I think a solution is to give advantage to units fighting in castles when their side controls the castle's Keep. That way, it will be genuinely hard to take a castle, even if the defender only has a few units left to defend it.

Using the keep like that is the easy way to do it and would work reasonably well.

The ideal way [WRT accurately depicting castle strengths] would be to have the castles with walls, turrets, and (at least one) gateways. The problem with implementing this is that you then have to start thinking in terms of 'one tile next to another' rather than just individual tiles like Wesnoth currently does.

Then usage of scenery would become more even key to battles.

However, all this would complicate gameplay and I think that part of the beauty of Wesnoth is in it's simplicity. Which is why holding the keep might be the best solution because it adds an extra dimension without compromising the simplicity of the game.

[Dave]

But then if you have to units trading blows inside the castle, then they both have higher defensive ratings and that's slightly 'wrong'. Right?

This is true, but since they both get higher defensive ratings, it kinda cancels itself out.

The bigger problem though, is once you're down to the stage where someone is attacking your castle, you usually don't have enough units left to keep them out of the castle, and thus any advantage the castle bestows is irrelevant.

Not true - if there were an advantage to being on the inside of a castle, people might retreat to their castle in order to defend themselves.

(1) the AI would not retreat to inside a castle, because that'd just be too plain hard to get the AI to do.
(2) the human player in the campaign wouldn't retreat inside the castle, unless it was a map where that was what the human player was meant to do (e.g. valley of death), since the human player generally has a time limit
(3) in a multiplayer game, retreating inside your castle will simply mean that the other player will gobble up all the villages, sit on them, recruit many troops, and then when they have enough to storm your castle, come and take it.

In fact, point (3) is a big reason why I am disinclined to make castles stronger: I think that one strategy in a multiplayer game should be to attempt a 'decapitation attack' -- to try to kill the enemy leader quickly and win the game even with less villages and gold. This strategy is hard enough to pull off already, but making castles more defensive would make it even harder.

The ideal way [WRT accurately depicting castle strengths] would be to have the castles with walls, turrets, and (at least one) gateways. The problem with implementing this is that you then have to start thinking in terms of 'one tile next to another' rather than just individual tiles like Wesnoth currently does.

Then usage of scenery would become more even key to battles.

However, all this would complicate gameplay and I think that part of the beauty of Wesnoth is in it's simplicity. Which is why holding the keep might be the best solution because it adds an extra dimension without compromising the simplicity of the game.

I do think that this is beyond the scope of Wesnoth, and even after its implementation, taking castles would still be a minor part of the game.

However I do like the suggestion of 'camps': this would give the player more of an impression of a base used to recruit troops in, but one which is not necessarily strong defensively.

David

[charlieg]

I do think that this is beyond the scope of Wesnoth, and even after its implementation, taking castles would still be a minor part of the game.

However I do like the suggestion of 'camps': this would give the player more of an impression of a base used to recruit troops in, but one which is not necessarily strong defensively.

I'm inclined to agree with the first point, and totally agree with the second.

Really (on the first point) I was just thinking aloud. Further reflection just indicated how unsuitable the idea was for Wesnoth.

[Dave]

I do think that this is beyond the scope of Wesnoth, and even after its implementation, taking castles would still be a minor part of the game.

However I do like the suggestion of 'camps': this would give the player more of an impression of a base used to recruit troops in, but one which is not necessarily strong defensively.

I'm inclined to agree with the first point, and totally agree with the second.

So, thank you for volunteering to draw us some 'camp' images *grin*

Seriously, if anyone would like to draw us some images of a 'camp', that'd be great!

David