1.8 SP Campaign: Bad Moon Rising 1.0.4

[lostnumber]

any idea where the userdata folder is? It is not in my wesnoth directory (or at least not that I can find). I vaguely seem to remember it saying it was putting the saves somewhere else during the install

[lostnumber]

LoSts Dialogue Fixes for BMR Part 2

Introduction

Spoiler:

“When Weldyn decided it needed to direct its resources elsewhere, Ukiah was left to fend for itself”
-Why? What period of history is this set in? Give us an event or occurrence that caused Weldyn to stop paying attention, even if you just come up with it arbritrarily and it has nothing to do with canon Wesnothian lore. It will give the world a greater sense of depth

“The horses and stables, scholars and libraries, all prove too difficult to maintain and defend.”
- Marked for my reference

“The Ukians could not hope to overpower the orcish raiders, so they relied upon early warning and fast tactics.”
- “overpower” Marked for my reference
- “fast tactics” is an odd phrasing/word choice. I get the general idea of what you are trying to say, but those two words do not go together well. Consider instead: superior tactics, rapid response, swift reaction,

“Sentries would keep an eye upon orcish military manauvers and send messages via torch semaphores. Local raids would be forseen by the Ukian dogs, who could smell even a single orc up to several miles away (provided it was upwind). Whenever the orcish attackers arrived at the Ukian settlement, they would find it abandoned.”
-change ‘upon’ to ‘on’
- specify a noun who the sentries send messages to: Ukian Towns, other sentries, the Ukian military, etc (you only need one)
- ‘Manauvers’ should be ‘maneuvers’
- Suggest a re-write of the entire 2nd sentence to: “Smaller raids could be detected by specially trained Ukian dogs, who could smell a single orc from up to several miles away (provided it was upwind).
My reasoning: Sentries would be less likely to spot the movement of smaller bands of orcs then they would large armies (essentially I am switching ‘local’ for ‘smaller’). That would probably be the dogs job. I added the ‘specially trained’ to add just a touch of background about the animals, since you haven’t described them much.
-Change ‘whenever’ to ‘when’

Final paragraph:
“Sentries would keep an eye on orcish military maneuvers and send messages to Ukian towns via torch semaphores. Smaller raids could be detected by specially trained Ukian dogs, who could smell a single orc from up to several miles away (provided it was upwind). When the orcish attackers arrived at the Ukian settlement, they would find it abandoned.”

“One day, a nobleman from Weldyn (most likely a minor lord with little hope of attaining much real power) rode with his army up from the south. His forces had the horseman and mages to help the Ukians push the orcs back and create a safe territory where there was no need to constantly break camp to flee an orcish raid. The Ukians were grateful and when the nobleman married one of their own women, he became their king and she their queen.”

- I would add ‘in court’ to the end of ‘attaining much real power’. Clearly he had pretty good hopes of attaining power, since he brought his army and became the king of his own nation. Rather he didn’t have hope of advancement in the royal court of Weldyn.
- move the ‘up’ to directly after ‘rode’ – “Rode up with his army” Changed my mind, I like it better how it is.
- need a comma between ‘territory’ and ‘where’
- King/Queen is a royal title and as such should probably be capitalized. You have it capsed later on, so be consistent one way other the other.
-need a comma after ‘grateful’

“… There were no doubts about Prince Huric’s skill in and dedication to military matters, but there was cause for grave concern about what sort of ruler he would be.”
- Grammatically speaking, this is a really tough one to get right, since ‘skill’ needs an ‘in’ and dedication needs a ‘to’. However I would suggest breaking the rules and just picking one or the other. The flow will be much better, and no one will ever notice. “dedication and skill in military matters” would sound better methinks

“Huric spent much of his time sword-training and wolf-hunting with his small circle of friends, and showed no interest in the mundane offices (such as crop storage or village sanitation) necessary for the survival of the kingdom. The vile nature of his friends was further cause for alarm, as he seemed oblivious to the terror they wrought upon the lower classes. His aging parents began to despair of what would happen to the kingdom after they passed on, for no matter how unfit to rule, Huric was sure to be King. Not only was he their son, but he had a firm grip upon the military and it was unlikely he could be overthrown.”

-change offices to ‘operations.’ Crop storage is a function of government/a task, not an office.
- “vile” flagged for personal reference (I feel like there is a better adjective to be found here)
- Stylistic suggestion: instead of saying it was unlikely he could be overthrown, perhaps you could say “it was unlikely that anyone would dare challenge his rule.” This is a suggestion, not a correction

"There was a brief period of hope, when Astreya, daughter of one of King Orwyn’s old officers from the south, caught Huric’s eye. Despite what could be expected based on the cruel and disgusting behaviour of his consorts, Huric courted her with an honest sincerity and charm that none had thought him capable. He began to think about the future, no longer did he go hunting and providing cover for his criminal friends. Once Huric and Astreya had married, the old King and Queen were content to pass on, feeling the small kingdom was finally in good hands.

Several significant revisions for this one.

- if you are going to refer to the King by name (King Orwyn) I would suggest you do it somewhere earlier in the story. We are now about 4 paragraphs in from when the King was introduced and this is the first time we hear his name.
- “Despite what could be expected based on the cruel and disgusting behaviour of his consorts” I would re-write this from scratch. It just doesn’t work. It should be Huric’s behavior that informs our expectations of him, not that of his friends. Why would the disgusting behavior of his buddy make people think him incapable of honest courtship? I have some disgusting buddies and I can be a romantic. “despite what could be expected” is also a very awkward phrasing in general
- you need an ‘of’ after capable, as in “capable of." Or you could say "Honest sincerity... of which none had thought him capable"
-after the word ‘future’ you need some kind of connective other then a comma. Whether it’s the word “and” or a semicolon. Or you could start a new sentence: “He began to think about the future. XXX”

- “hunting and providing cover..” the hunting part works, but you can’t use “providing cover” in that verb tense. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t want to have to whip out my grammar textbook, it just doesn’t work. I would completely re-write the portion of the sentence “and providing cover for his criminal friends” its not specific or descriptive enough, it doesn’t really fit with what you’ve established about his friends (they are vile and terrorize the populace, but you never said anything about Huric “covering” for them) and it simply sounds awkward.


"Huric's cruel and irresponsible reign caused a lot of tension. There most likely would have been a rebellion, for this time Huric did not command the full loyalty of all of the military. Astreya's brother, General Maskov, was not part of Huric's inner circle and enjoyed popular support. If it had not been for the increasingly aggressive orcish assaults, Huric's rule would have been challenged. Huric was well aware of this."

-"Caused a lot of tension" Amongst who? Specificity is often an easy way to strengthen your writing without a lot of effort. We are logical beings and certainly we can guess in general terms who you are talking about, but it takes so little effort to add a subject that its almost always worth doing. Consider-- "Huric's cruel and irresponsible reign caused a lot of tension amongst the Ukian citizenry." Easy, simple, and it provides us with a better transition into your next sentence about rebellion, because we know with more clarity what group of people you are talking about.

"There most likely would have been a rebellion..." you are setting up a logical structure here and then not completing it properly. Correctly phrased this form is: "There most likely would have been XXX... BUT YYY prevented it." However you dont tell us what Y is (the Orcish attacks) until two full sentences later, when you introduce it as part of an entirely new logical structure.

You have both parts to the idea, but they flow awkwardly and you repeat one of them twice. part 1 is "There most likely would have been a rebellion..." and part 2 is "if it had not been for the increasingly agressive orcish assaults." You can see how these are clearly tied together and in fact you could just plop those two fragments next to each other to form a completely coherent sentence. However instead of doing that, you essentially give us part 1, then some other stuff, then part 2, then part 1 again when you say "Hurics rule would have been challenged." Get rid of one of those Part 1s and better establish the relationship between 1 and 2.

You also are obviously going to want to talk about Huric and his relationship with Maskov. This content COULD feasibly remain in the middle if you re-worded your sentences and made it flow better. Alternatively you could also choose to have it come before you talk about Huric's rule being challenged (Basic Structural Example: General Maskov enjoyed popular support. If it weren't for orcish attacks, he would have challenged Huric's rule). I'll leave this choice up to you


"While Huric dealt with the orcish threat, one person from the old regime still maintained some power. Minister Duval, who was charged with the details of implementing Royal policies, did not think it wise to direct all resources to the military. This put him in constant conflict with Huric, a position in which no one could be expected to live for very long."

"While Huric dealt with the orcish threat"
Nothing is grammatically wrong with this sentence, but the logical connection between your two conjuncts is weak. What does Huric dealing with the orcish threat have to do with Minister Duval retaining power? There are a ton of different alternatives you could use to "while Huric dealt with the Orcish threat." Something as basic as "during this period of unrest, one person from the old regime..." I'll leave it up to your imagination.

"who was charged with the details of implementing Royal Policies"
-Too Jargony and non-specific. What details? What policies? Was he in-charge of spending/taxation? Oversight of public works? etc etc. You dont have to kill us with details but paint us a slightly more detailed picture of why exactly Huric and Duval were in conflict.

"In such a grim and charged environment, some of the people of Ukiah were open minded to the words of a stranger who came to one of the northeastern villages, promising salvation from the orcish menace and the heavy hand of Huric..."

"Charged"
-Consider an alternative adjective, as charged does not fit all that well here. Perhaps a word having to do with conflict, violence, or unease would be appropriate.

"Some of the people of Ukiah were open minded..."
Tagged for my own personal reference, something about this bugs me and I'm not sure what.

Orders

Spoiler:

No fixes! Did I scare you with the first spoiler?

Interlude

Spoiler:

"Cantwell and Lorenzon led a small force to Gornath, a town to the Northeast Edge of Ukiah.
-Replace the word 'to' with 'at'

"Gornath was near the Northern Range, Mount Wynn was just visible on the horizon."
-I'd make this a compound sentence and insert an 'and' between Northern Range and Mount Wynn

"hardy crops"
-Marked for my own reference (when I do this it usually means that there is nothing wrong with the sentence as-is but I want to have a go at a re-write

Enough is Enough

Spoiler:

"and which one of them has a spine?"
-Marked for my own reference

Cantwell:
"Huric gave me specific orders to do what was necessary. The orcish hordes are constantly crashing against our defenses, we cannot abide this treacherous rebellion! Innocents will die, sure, but many more will die if we allow this poison to spread!"

Excellent dialogue here (part of why I like your campaign so much). However two problems
- Your tense is off in the first sentence. You say "do what was necessary" when Cantwell is talking about an ongoing event.
- 'what' should likely be 'whatever'
Suggested revision:
"Huric gave me specific orders to do whatever is necessary to... XXX" XXX to be replaced by your choice of wording, such as "restore order" or "crush this rebellion" or "insure stability" etc etc

More soon

[lostnumber]

since I JUST played all these levels I dont really want to replay them, but I'm having a little bit of trouble organizing what bits are part of what level, in terms of the in-between level narration pieces. Maybe if I can find my userdata folder (which I'm assuming has downloaded campaigns) I can take a look directly at the source text for the first few levels

[Pyrotics]

any idea where the userdata folder is? It is not in my wesnoth directory (or at least not that I can find). I vaguely seem to remember it saying it was putting the saves somewhere else during the install

The default install (for windows anyways) has the radial for locations set to the My Documents folder on your computer, that's where you will find your wesnoth data, specifically it should be something along the lines of Documents->My Games->Wesnoth (for Vista anyways). You can just do a search in your documents directory if you're having trouble. This is, of course, assuming you can't find it int he base wesnoth directory (where it was installed).



I'm now having an issue with the Ukiah map after the scnario "West", it's finding an Unknown unit type (which I assume means there's something wrong with Belleros not spawning, but I can't be certain).

[lostnumber]

try this savefile Doofus

[doofus-01]

since I JUST played all these levels I dont really want to replay them, but I'm having a little bit of trouble organizing what bits are part of what level, in terms of the in-between level narration pieces.

Understandable. The dialogue for the skirmishes is at the bottom of <userdata>/add-ons/Bad_Moon_Rising/utils/skirmish.cfg (I think, will check). I basically tried to keep it generic enough that different characters could say the lines without it being weird, but some character specific lines could be used. I also hope to get more possible lines, so the skirmishes are less repetitive, but there are other things to work on first.

If you were referring to the intro scenes, the parts with no units & hex maps, those should be at the top of the scenario .cfg files. For some, I had them in a separate file, but that should not be the case for too many anymore. I think utils/intro.cfg is one such separate file.

I'm now having an issue with the Ukiah map after the scnario "West", it's finding an Unknown unit type (which I assume means there's something wrong with Belleros not spawning, but I can't be certain).

I've been working on that part recently, and thought it was working. But maybe I broke something. I may be able to figure this out easily, but could you post your save-game just in case? Thanks.

try this savefile Doofus

I'll look at it this evening, thanks.

[Pyrotics]

I think I might have lost my save somewhere, I was moving files around earlier (as I do with my saves to keep my load list small), and I might have accidently copied over it or something... hmm. Sorry?

[doofus-01]

I think I might have lost my save somewhere, I was moving files around earlier (as I do with my saves to keep my load list small), and I might have accidently copied over it or something... hmm. Sorry?

That's OK. I'll just keep in mind that there may be a problem there.

---------------
Version 0.9.4 just got uploaded. It includes a few bugfixes (such as the Goblin Knight mentioned above) and a system that should make it clear that you need Archaic Era if you don't have it installed.

[lostnumber]

been busy with school and the GF, I'll get back to dialogue at some point in the next week or two

[doofus-01]

0.9.5 went to the server. There were some bug-fixes in Part III, after the Mt. Tien scenario.

[lostnumber]

haven't forgotten about this just need to find the time

[doofus-01]

0.9.6 just went to the server. Some changes to Archaic Era had broken the last scenario of part 3, but now it should work again.

[lostnumber]

Finished up dialogue fixes for the introduction and also fixed/improved some of the fixes I had previously posted. Obviously since the introduction is significantly longer then most of the dialogue in the Campaign, it needed significantly more editing.

Before I really dive into this project more fully, I would like to note a couple of things:

-I'm not perfect so there will undoubtedly be things I suggest that are simply wrong, or are not functional improvements, whether its because I overlooked something in the dialogue, or simply because I didn't have enough coffee and wasn't thinking straight. In re-reading my suggestions I already noted one or two of these cases and fixed them.
-There are obviously going to be stylistic differences between us, and so it is understandable that not all of my stylistic suggestions will be appealing to you.

This story is ultimately your product, and you have full creative control. For this reason, and those mentioned above, I dont expect you to make every change I ask for. However I WOULD ask that if you disagree with me on a particular change (especially if its something I wrote a detailed explanation for), that you give me some feedback as to why. If I take the time to do all of this work and then you go fix some of the minor grammar problems I point out, while ignoring the more extensive suggestions I made without giving a rationale, I'll feel a bit miffed and I probably wont feel as inclined to provide a detailed critique.

Hope this helps, I enjoy your campaigns.

[lostnumber]

Also note that ironically, I do not spell-check or otherwise edit my corrections of your stuff. So its very possible I have misspelled words and errors. For the first several paragraphs I re-typed them by hand because I was looking at the dialogue in game instead of from the CFG files. So its possible there are errors in my paragraphs that aren't in your version. Ignore these. If there was a problem in your version I noted it

[doofus-01]

However I WOULD ask that if you disagree with me on a particular change (especially if its something I wrote a detailed explanation for), that you give me some feedback as to why. If I take the time to do all of this work and then you go fix some of the minor grammar problems I point out, while ignoring the more extensive suggestions I made without giving a rationale, I'll feel a bit miffed and I probably wont feel as inclined to provide a detailed critique.

Certainly understandable. Along similar lines, I should say that the release schedule, if one can call it that, is governed by bug-fixes and to a lesser extent gross balancing issues. Art gets included or revised if I've had a chance to test it and there happens to be a release. Text re-writes haven't been so much of an issue yet, but I'd want to test (or "see the actors do a rehearsal") before including. So, there will be a lag and if you see a couple of releases come out and still the text is the same as ever, it doesn't mean I've silently brushed you off. I'll let you know.

-I'm not perfect so there will undoubtedly be things I suggest that are simply wrong, or are not functional improvements, whether its because I overlooked something in the dialogue, or simply because I didn't have enough coffee and wasn't thinking straight. In re-reading my suggestions I already noted one or two of these cases and fixed them.

I wonder if this text-revision project might be better moved to its own thread because it may very well get buried here (especially if something in the campaign gets broken). If you started a new topic in Writer's Forum, maybe some other people could have useful suggestions. If you think that would only lead to pot-shots and noise, send me the text in a PM.

Thanks.