Short Campaign: Battle Against Time (1.14)

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Wonderboy
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Short Campaign: Battle Against Time (1.14)

Post by Wonderboy »

EDIT: This campaign has now been uploaded to 1.14 server

Battle Against Time is a short, experimental orc campaign. Warchief of allied orc clan is captured by humans and you have to rescue him before he is executed.

What makes this campaign different from others is that you get all the gold and turns in the first scenario. There is no finish bonus and all the gold is carried to the next scenario. Also remaining turns are left to the next scenario.

Yes, this is quite short. Only four scenarios. Honestly, I don't think that campaign like this can be made much longer.

Well, if you liked it, please leave me some feedback here. Actually, if you did not like it, it is even more important to give me feedback.
Last edited by Wonderboy on August 30th, 2020, 7:04 pm, edited 5 times in total.
Campaigns that I have created (now updated to 1.14):
Bitter Revenge, The Dark Alliance, Battle Against Time, Talentless Mage
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docrock
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Re: Short Campaign: Battle Against Time (1.6)

Post by docrock »

very nice campaign, well doable, interesting concept. found no bugs or flaws while playing through. good job.
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Halykos
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Re: Short Campaign: Battle Against Time (1.6)

Post by Halykos »

As always a very well made campaign. No flaws, no bugs, some refreshing new ideas and also well balanced (okay it was on medium a little too easy, but it's probably better that way considering the additional turn and gold restriction). You should probably team up with some other developers to make a big mainline campaign (I am not talking about myself here because I don't really have valuable skills).
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Wonderboy
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Re: Short Campaign: Battle Against Time (1.6)

Post by Wonderboy »

docrock wrote:very nice campaign, well doable, interesting concept. found no bugs or flaws while playing through. good job.
Thanks. It's nice to get some feedback.
Halykos wrote:As always a very well made campaign. No flaws, no bugs, some refreshing new ideas

Thanks. I also think that my campaigns are really good. :wink:

Seriously, it's completely impossible to think about my campaigns objectively. That's why it's so important to get feedback from others. Unfortunately, I have only got feedback only from you and docrock. Still, I try to do my best to make my campaigns enjoyable to the player. I spend lot of time tweaking and balancing.
well balanced (okay it was on medium a little too easy, but it's probably better that way considering the additional turn and gold restriction).
Well, the fourth time I played it, the campaign felt harder than it should have been. So I made it easier. I really did not want to play it fifth time. It's possible that I made it too easy.

Also I think that the 800 gold is a bit too much but on the other hand I don't want to cut it because it is possible that the player spends too much gold early and then can't finish the campaign because he doesn't have enough gold.
You should probably team up with some other developers to make a big mainline campaign
It would be awesome to see my campaign mainline. That's what every campaign author wants. However, I have no unrealistic dreams about getting my campaigns to mainline. Creating campaign in collaboration with someone else could be interesting. Frankly I really don't know other developers.

Also I really want to make too big campaign. Playtesting one would take lots of time. I can play Bitter Revenge in five and half hours and The Dark Alliance in six and half hours. Battle Against Time takes only little over an hour.
(I am not talking about myself here because I don't really have valuable skills).
Creating a campaign is not really that hard. For years I've wanted to make one but I always thought that it was too much burden. You have to make good storyline and plan interesting scenarios. Then you actually have to do maps and code it! And even though it is 'complete' you have to remove bugs and balance it.

However, one day I invented nice storyline with some interesting twists and I knew that I had to make a campaign about it. Writing the story and dialogue was really the hardest part for me. I had the story in my head but actually writing it without making it sound awkward was quite a challenge. I did the maps mostly by placing some terrain here and there. I was surprised how well that actually turned out. I coded Bitter Revenge mostly by copy-pasting stuff from other campaigns and modifying it a bit. Sure, there was some bugs but I was able to deal with all of them. Balancing was as simple as playing the campaign many times and writing notes at the same time.

Certainly, it takes lot of time but it's worth it. It's just awesome feeling when you can click the button to submit the campaign to the server.

It would be more awesome if I actually got more feedback...
Campaigns that I have created (now updated to 1.14):
Bitter Revenge, The Dark Alliance, Battle Against Time, Talentless Mage
Jacobian
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Re: Short Campaign: Battle Against Time (1.6)

Post by Jacobian »

I finished this campaign a few days ago. I noticed the note in the campaign asking for feedback, so I came over here.

Well, it's wonderful. It's an interesting idea. The story fits the modified gameplay very well. The code seems to be designed well, too--everything worked, and it was fun to play.

Now the way I attempted it, I chose only trolls. I was racing as fast as I possibly could during the entire campaign, and I ended up finishing with only about 10 turns to spare on the Normal difficulty. It was tense. I felt like I could easily fail to finish in time.

I had plenty of gold left at the end: 399 gold. I was being as conservative as possible with gold. I was hurrying as fast as I could, and I took about every shortcut I could: I killed the Necromancer before he had a chance to use any of his minions in battle, and I eliminated the rival orcish clan before the final battle.

The trolls may or may not have been a good choice. In the end, I had eight level-three trolls, although I fought with only six lower-level trolls during most of the campaign. The trolls hit hard and would recover health during the battle, but they were slow on their feet, and many of the battles were above ground, on grassland, where trolls are very vulnerable.

I never felt comfortable until the final scenario, when I was finally sure that I would be able to finish on time.

Because of that, I was glad that the campaign was short. In the normal gameplay, you can go back and repeat one scenario at most if you have to. But under this modified gameplay, you might have to replay several scenarios, or even restart the entire campaign, in order to make up for lost time. Although this didn't happen to me, it would have been very frustrating to reach the second-to-last scenario, only to find that there isn't enough time to finish the last scenario, and there is no way to finish the scenario any faster. So I was pleased that the campaign was short. That seemed to fit the storyline too: There isn't a lot of time, which is the reason for the rush in the first place.

So I liked it. Very original!

This is now the second campaign of yours that I've played. I chose this one, because I was impressed with your other campaign. I recognized you as the developer, and gave this one a try.
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Wonderboy
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Re: Short Campaign: Battle Against Time (1.6)

Post by Wonderboy »

Thanks for the feedback. I am glad to hear that you liked the campaign.

I usually recruit only 1 or 2 trolls during the campaign. I feel that they are too slow and can't deal enough damage. Usually I've had 15-20 turns left in the final scenario.

EDIT: Battle Against Time has been uploaded to 1.7.9 add-on server.
Campaigns that I have created (now updated to 1.14):
Bitter Revenge, The Dark Alliance, Battle Against Time, Talentless Mage
shadowblack
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Re: Short Campaign: Battle Against Time (1.7/1.8)

Post by shadowblack »

Looks like I'm the first to post feedback in several months...

I consider the entire campaign a single scenario divided in 4 parts.
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Neuromancer
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Re: Short Campaign: Battle Against Time (1.7/1.8)

Post by Neuromancer »

I played three of your campaigns but finished only Battle Against Time. I played on Hard and divided my gold roughly on quarters, each for one scenario. I ended up with insufficient gold at the last one, and wasnt able to finish it without debug, mainly because I didnt have experienced warriors from the previous scenarios to recall.
Generally, concept is innovative, campaign is nicely playable, but the whole thing seems to me kinda unfinished. And that holds true for each of your projects. I think you will earn more recognition (and reading your posts I think thats what you seek the most) if you focus on making not good, but great campaigns.
krsmith28p
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Re: Short Campaign: Battle Against Time (1.7/1.8)

Post by krsmith28p »

I enjoyed the campaign. Sorry to see it's no longer in the 1.10 list (unless I missed it). The need to *guess ahead* made for a different and interesting twist. I ended up at the last scenario with 220 in Gold and 28 turns, with Kagurin (I may have re-invented his name) still alive. I had three attempts at the last scenario, eventually winning by creating an army of goblins, letting the northern humans and orcs fight it out between them while I took over the castle in the south west, and waiting for nightfall to make a assault on the prison. In previous attempts I first ran out of turns, then out of units. Not sure what previous poster meant by unfinished, but then I haven't played too many campaigns. I'll have to try your others! K
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Turuk
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Re: Short Campaign: Battle Against Time (1.10/1.11)

Post by Turuk »

I have been in touch with Wonderboy, and he has passed the torch on to me for maintenance, updates, and movement to 1.11.

It is now available on the 1.11 add-on server.
Mainline Maintainer: AOI, DM, NR, TB and THoT.
UMC Maintainer: Forward They Cried, A Few Logs, A Few More Logs, Start of the War, and Battle Against Time
mattsc
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Re: Short Campaign: Battle Against Time (1.10/1.11)

Post by mattsc »

Thanks for porting this to 1.11, Turuk, and to Wonderboy for writing the campaign. I needed a little diversion so a 4-scenario campaign seemed just right. I liked it a lot. The method how gold and turns work makes for an interesting balance between trying to rush through and playing (somewhat) carefully, especially on the first play-through when you don't know what's ahead. For reference, I played (semi-carefully) on medium and started the last scenario with 268 gold and 29 turns left, finishing on Turn 15 of those 29.

A couple comments, if I may:
  • Scenarios 3 and 4 don't load because the maps contain hexes with terrain Ggf which has been deprecated. Those need to be replaced with Gg^Efm
  • Some of the main units have portaits set, but they are set to the small, non-transparent portraits that don't look very nice (in messages, I mean). Also, they are inside the campaign's images folder, even though all of them are part of mainline, if I remember correctly.
  • If you care, I'd suggest running wmlindent. The indenting of some of the code is a mess. :P
Thanks again, this was fun!
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Turuk
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Re: Short Campaign: Battle Against Time (1.10/1.11)

Post by Turuk »

mattsc wrote: Thanks for porting this to 1.11, Turuk, and to Wonderboy for writing the campaign. I needed a little diversion so a 4-scenario campaign seemed just right. I liked it a lot. The method how gold and turns work makes for an interesting balance between trying to rush through and playing (somewhat) carefully, especially on the first play-through when you don't know what's ahead. For reference, I played (semi-carefully) on medium and started the last scenario with 268 gold and 29 turns left, finishing on Turn 15 of those 29.
Thanks for the feedback mattsc, particularly on how well on it might be balanced. It's always appreciated.
mattsc wrote:A couple comments, if I may:
Scenarios 3 and 4 don't load because the maps contain hexes with terrain Ggf which has been deprecated. Those need to be replaced with Gg^Efm
Some of the main units have portaits set, but they are set to the small, non-transparent portraits that don't look very nice (in messages, I mean). Also, they are inside the campaign's images folder, even though all of them are part of mainline, if I remember correctly.
If you care, I'd suggest running wmlindent. The indenting of some of the code is a mess.

Thanks again, this was fun!
  1. I've updated S3 and S4 to remove the Ggf and replace it with Gg for now. I was not always a big fan of flowers anyway. :P Maybe I'll throw in some of the other embellishments to break up the maps.
  2. The portraits have been fixed, I updated them to be more current and seems I pointed to the wrong ones.
  3. I ran it just so things can be all nice and pretty. :P
An update is out on the server to fix those maps.

Thanks!
Mainline Maintainer: AOI, DM, NR, TB and THoT.
UMC Maintainer: Forward They Cried, A Few Logs, A Few More Logs, Start of the War, and Battle Against Time
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Re: Short Campaign: Battle Against Time (1.12)

Post by Inky »

(Campaign version 1.0.4 / Wesnoth version 1.12.5 / Hard difficulty)

Hey, this was a fun and unique campaign, the need to hoard gold/turns made the whole thing an interesting challenge.

Summary of my playthrough:
S 1: Recruited 4 wolves for screening and ran straight to the signpost. Finished in 5 turns.

S 2 (738 starting gold): Recruited a whole bunch of troll whelps since they are pretty good in caves, and recalled the experienced wolves from the previous scenario. In retrospect some archers would have been really nice against the dwarvish fighters and corpses. I sent everybody south and killed the southern dwarf leader, and ignored the northern one. Managed to level a goblin knight and a couple trolls, finished in 16 turns.

S 3 (595 starting gold): Ran north immediately, stole the peasant's keep and started spamming grunts and assassins. Assassins poisoned everything while grunts acted as cannon fodder. Killed the orcish leader, and an enemy slayer and crossbowman were kind enough to kill the human leader for me. :) Finished in 14 turns.

S 4 (334 starting gold): (My veteran units at the start: 3 goblin pillagers including the loyal one, the loyal orcish slayer, a troll rocklobber, and a level 3 troll.) Lots of beefy high level loyalist units, but after a friendly chat with some orcish assassins, they quickly become an army of dying poisoned units. Finished turn 10, of 25 remaining.

----------
Very tense campaign - I was constantly worried that I was using too many turns but thankfully, it is pretty forgiving. The gameplay fits the story very well. Nice work!
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Wonderboy
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Re: Short Campaign: Battle Against Time (1.12)

Post by Wonderboy »

Hi, Inky. I'm glad to hear you had fun playing it.

S1: That is best strategy if you want to finish without using much gold. I usually recruit bit more and try to level as much as possible.

S2: Troll are pretty essential here because orcs don't have healers. I usually compliment them with assassins and archers. Killing both dwarf leaders takes too much time.

S3: Grunts and assasins are very good here. I also like to recruit few ogres here because they level up from two lvl2 kills. The human leader can usually defend for himself but I think that the other orcs have killed him once.

S4: The enemy has plenty of veterans that are pretty vulnerable to poison. This scenario can be really hard if you are low on gold.

I've always known what to expect from every scenario so I rely in feedback on how well it may balanced. Thanks.
Campaigns that I have created (now updated to 1.14):
Bitter Revenge, The Dark Alliance, Battle Against Time, Talentless Mage
Kente
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Re: Short Campaign: Battle Against Time (1.12)

Post by Kente »

i have just finished Battle Against time (v1.12 on Linux, difficult normal). I haven't find any bugs. I like the idea about having fix gold and turn. To be honest in normal, i didn't struggle with gold of turns (i have finished with still 12 turns to play, but maybe i was a little lucky, because many hits on assassins have missed). I will try it with challenging difficult.
While i think, having an entirely long campaign with fixed gold and turn it will be maybe too hard to play, i suppose it could be put in a part of a long campaign (what i mean, i.e. 24 scenario campaign, first 10 scenarios normal, then putting a 4 scenario with fixed turns and gold, then the last 10 scenarios normal).
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