A Layered Topic

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Blaquestone
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Joined: January 7th, 2018, 5:39 am
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A Layered Topic

Post by Blaquestone »

Glad to Join the Community
I've been playing Wesnoth off and on for an unusually long time, considering I've never joined the forums nor even played online games. Every once in a while, I get the craving for exactly what Wesnoth offers, I binge on campaigns and vs. AI matches, and then somehow forget it ever existed almost as quickly as I'd remembered it. I've introduced my brother, my wife, and a variety of friends to it over the years, and have loved every step of the game's development each time I, myself, am re-introduced to it.

Reaching Out
Without dwelling on the whys, I've found myself needing to branch into different social groups. Essentially, I've suffered an almost hermitous level of isolation, and I'm sick of it. So I looked into and joined some online gaming groups, mostly through Discord, revisited some old haunts and friendships and such. One friend in particular loves turn-based strategy games, and we'd played a lot of the Heroes games in high school through college... He's living abroad, now, and I remembered Wesnoth when trying to find something new to play together. He's never played it, and as often as the game grows, it feels new again to me! So, I decided I may as well reach out into this community for the same reasons.

Love of Design
I've designed and released a (fun but completely unsuccessful) mobile game, have been having some fun working on a Pathfinder setting in my free time, and used to love creating Use Map Settings maps on the original StarCraft. I've messed around lightly with Wesnoth's editor before, and after playing a few matches, thought of something I would love to conceptually share with the Wesnoth community and see if it's worth pursuing.

"Hero" Progression, Persistent Campaign "World," & Player/Content Addition/Removal
Essentially, a really--big--project, but I'd be breaking it down step-by-step as I and whoever might help me would go. Reading through topics for the last couple of hours, I've seen persistent campaigns where players can continually cycle through scenarios... I've read different suggestions, complaints, and varied opinions about things I hadn't considered about Wesnoth. As I go forward with my concept, please understand that none of this is concerned with altering or adding to the main game in any way.

I enjoy the idea of a campaign where each scenario is a location in a small world. Travelling to the edge of the map ends the scenario where it was, and takes you into, or back into, the scenario you've traveled towards. Each scenario/location is populated with selectively randomized encounters and wandering creatures, based on the players' highest and lowest levels. Wandering creatures would just be random fights, while encounters are location-specific, story-based quest lines. An encounter may or may not begin when entering its location, but once it does begin, players are forced to see it through before leaving to a new location. Some encounters require the player having accomplished encounters in other locations before they are available.

The "Hero" character progresses differently than most units and has higher resistances. When a player starts playing in this campaign, they will start off answering which Class and Archetype they wish to play. Here is my example of a Class and its three Archetypes to help show what I mean: Wesnoth Arcanist; keep in mind that the 3-level progression is simplified, and that these represent the three milestones a Hero character reaches. I've read up on how a lot of people would enjoy a really customized, longer-term "Hero" unit, and how that would (and I agree) fundamentally alter Wesnoth as a game. From what I've read through, it does also seem possible to give single attacks multiple damage types, though it would be a complex process. Worst case, the attack lists shown can simply be expanded into additional attacks that give the variety described.

I'm interested in working with other members in the community to develop this idea if there is a want for something like this. I like the idea of starting small, with one repeatable scenario used primarily to test Classes/Archetypes, branching out to a second scenario and extending the loop, and eventually (if possible) adding the ability to bring in new players at different levels if a friend wants to "join the world" without everyone needing to start over. I'm very new to the campaign-creation side of Wesnoth, so I'm not sure how possible that is, but I know the Hero character is possible, and I'm looking forward to starting that while I learn the rest of what I need. ^_^

I look forward to chatting with you here on the forums and in the Discord!

EDIT: I should add that, I'm not sure how closely this resembles A Random RPG Adventure. Again, I've just become part of the community and even after a few hours of looking through a bunch of topics, I can't say I'm even 50% familiar with everything. :doh: There's a lot, and as far as add-ons are concerned, I've only played around with some of the custom Eras. I've only played through the mainline campaigns, and 90% of my playtime has been spent in AI matches.
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ForestDragon
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Location: Ukraine

Re: A Layered Topic

Post by ForestDragon »

Hello, welcome to the community! (btw, I'm not a moderator or anything like that)
Blaquestone wrote:Glad to Join the Community
I've been playing Wesnoth off and on for an unusually long time, considering I've never joined the forums nor even played online games. Every once in a while, I get the craving for exactly what Wesnoth offers, I binge on campaigns and vs. AI matches, and then somehow forget it ever existed almost as quickly as I'd remembered it. I've introduced my brother, my wife, and a variety of friends to it over the years, and have loved every step of the game's development each time I, myself, am re-introduced to it.

Reaching Out
Without dwelling on the whys, I've found myself needing to branch into different social groups. Essentially, I've suffered an almost hermitous level of isolation, and I'm sick of it. So I looked into and joined some online gaming groups, mostly through Discord, revisited some old haunts and friendships and such. One friend in particular loves turn-based strategy games, and we'd played a lot of the Heroes games in high school through college... He's living abroad, now, and I remembered Wesnoth when trying to find something new to play together. He's never played it, and as often as the game grows, it feels new again to me! So, I decided I may as well reach out into this community for the same reasons.
Well, I'd certainly recommend playing a few online matches every now and then (playing with actual players instead of the AI is a very different experience). Just log in to the official MP server, select the start match option, choose map/settings/etc. and wait for players to join.
quoting the campaign idea:
A user named Heindal already made two such campaigns: Five Fates, and Trader - Strange Legacy. They're really good, I recommend checking them out when you can.
Last edited by ForestDragon on January 8th, 2018, 8:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
My active add-ons: The Great Steppe Era,XP Bank,Alliances Mod,Pestilence,GSE+EoMa,Ogre Crusaders,Battle Royale,EoMaifier,Steppeifier,Hardcoreifier
My inactive add-ons (1.12): Tale of Alan, The Golden Age
Co-creator of Era of Magic
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Blaquestone
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Joined: January 7th, 2018, 5:39 am
Location: Ohio

Re: A Layered Topic

Post by Blaquestone »

While that's not exactly how I meant everything I envisioned, it does use a lot of core mechanics that further impress on me that what I'm thinking of is feasible, if extensive. I worked some on the beginnings of a central world map, took a screenshot and labeled it.
  • Image
I love the idea of, old-school RPG-style, having one player move a World Map Token through this map. The players would be able to switch who could control the World Token (it would bear their character's likeness when in control), and every turn the token ends (1 movement, never impeded) there is a low chance for a random encounter. Encounters would load separate scenarios with much smaller battle maps, and the players would have to work together to defeat the enemies. Fights in villages, cities, or other civilized regions might have houses built in to the map where players can recruit allied units, whereas random encounters in the wilderness will not. The lack of multiple players/entities on the world map should help keep movement from bogging down too much, and the rest of the game would take place in battle-maps and location-maps. So, if the players reach Rural Village 1, the party will be prompted on whether they wish to enter or not.
  • -It would be nice to leave villages uncontrollable, so colored flags aren't covering everything.
    -Pretty sure entering a village would be at the World Token leader's discretion.
    -"Save" points in the game itself would be neat, so that if the party does wipe, they are reset without having to reload the game.
Story encounters would be similar to random encounters, excepting the random element. For example, the first time the players enter Swamp Village 1, it may be under attack by some swamp creatures. After defeating that encounter, the citizens recognize the players' accomplishments and ask them to seek out the nest of these creatures and destroy it. At this point, if the party enters Swamp Village 1 before finishing the second scenario, there is a chance for a random encounter: more swamp creatures are attacking. Once the nest is destroyed, however, that random encounter will no longer appear. In this way, additional story encounters could theoretically be added as updates to the main game, allowing players to enjoy all of the exploration, grinding, and surviving of the current version, while eagerly awaiting future installments.

For this to keep it's entertainment value between updates, player progression would be slow, the ability to attract and keep some number of followers (who can/must also level up) is a possibility, and a good variety of locations/challenging random encounters the players may run into at each level.

EDIT: I did forget to ask, with this new input, is there a campaign out there that plays like this? I haven't ran across it in the stumblings I've done.
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ForestDragon
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Re: A Layered Topic

Post by ForestDragon »

Blaquestone wrote:EDIT: I did forget to ask, with this new input, is there a campaign out there that plays like this? I haven't ran across it in the stumblings I've done.
As I said in the previous post, A user named Heindal already made such a campaign called "Trader - Strange Legacy".
My active add-ons: The Great Steppe Era,XP Bank,Alliances Mod,Pestilence,GSE+EoMa,Ogre Crusaders,Battle Royale,EoMaifier,Steppeifier,Hardcoreifier
My inactive add-ons (1.12): Tale of Alan, The Golden Age
Co-creator of Era of Magic
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