Volunteering to help with Undead Campaign

[Circon]

So far I've got one map, five new units and half a scenario coded. I've got ideas for about five scenarios. But I have to ask...
1.) Are the campaigns meant to be consecutive (ala Starcraft) or starting in the same point and each side winning (ala Warcraft)?
2.) Are there any rules I have to follow? Like, "never allow recruiting of lvl 2 or 3 units" ?
3.)Who else wants to do this? I can't do it alone.
4.)Should each campaign have a diff associated with, like in some games? Do we write diff levels for each campaign, or let the 4(?) campaigns be difficulty levels?

Here's my story developed so far:
After the Civil War of Wesnoth (re-use pic: Delfador and Erlend) and the Invasion of the Orcs (pic: some orc), the ban on necromancy grew weaker in the west. Two of those that challenged it were the brothers Gwiti and Nati Ha'atel. Both knew that only one could be strong enough to invade the Eastlands...
Scenario 1: Brother against Brother. Basic undead vs. undead map, good for seeing the strength and weakness of undead. This is a map I've written already.
Story: Having bested his brother, Gwiti Ha'atel began to plot the invasion of Wesnoth. But a Dark Spirit (Elder Wraith, Delfador-style advisor) came to him and said that first he was to march north towards the Orcs.
Scenario 2: The Skull of Agarash.
Dark Spirit: "There, Gwiti! Do you see? The orcs of this land all carry skull-topped banners. What they do not know is that one of them is the Skull of Agarash. Take it, and your power wil increase."
Set 3 orcish leaders on the map. Only one of them has to be killed to win.

[Dave]

So far I've got one map, five new units and half a scenario coded. I've got ideas for about five scenarios. But I have to ask...

Cool Another campaign would be great

1.) Are the campaigns meant to be consecutive (ala Starcraft) or starting in the same point and each side winning (ala Warcraft)?

Different campaigns should be disjoint. Each campaign tells a seperate story, and should possibly be centuries apart from one another.

2.) Are there any rules I have to follow? Like, "never allow recruiting of lvl 2 or 3 units" ?

If you're doing the campaign, you're pretty much in charge.

I wouldn't recommend allowing recruitment of level 2 or 3 units, but it's your campaign, your choice.

4.)Should each campaign have a diff associated with, like in some games? Do we write diff levels for each campaign, or let the 4(?) campaigns be difficulty levels?

You can choose if you want it to be a more difficult campaign, or an easier campaign. You can choose if you want the user to be able to select between varying difficulty levels, or if there should only be one difficulty level.

We are definitely not limiting ourselves to 4 campaigns, and certainly not tying campaigns to races -- in Konrad's campaign, he is at different times able to recruit Elves, Humans, Dwarves, and Mermen.

Here's my story developed so far:

Story sounds good

David

[Circon]

1) Different campaigns should be disjoint. Each campaign tells a seperate story, and should possibly be centuries apart from one another.

2) You can choose if you want it to be a more difficult campaign, or an easier campaign. You can choose if you want the user to be able to select between varying difficulty levels, or if there should only be one difficulty level.

3) We are definitely not limiting ourselves to 4 campaigns, and certainly not tying campaigns to races -- in Konrad's campaign, he is at different times able to recruit Elves, Humans, Dwarves, and Mermen.

David

Haven't gotten the hang of minor quote blocks yet.
1)OK, the timeline should be fairly easy to shift.
2)The usual 3 difficulty levels sounds best to me.
3) IMHO Mermen don't count as a proper "race", and the Dwarves have 2 units that I've seen. I was thinking Elves, Humans, Orcs, Undead.

[Dobob]

Could it be possible that some of the new campains interact with the main one? As long as the outcome of the common battles are the same (not different winners for different campains). It could lead to some interesting plots, like :

* An undead whose mentor was killed by Asheviere after having being hired by her. He found the scepter of fire first, but cannot use it and give it to Konrad. He's the one who kill Asheviere after she ran from Konrad.

* One elf from a sacred island, invaded by orcs. He asks help from the North Elves (the friends of Kalenz), but find them corrupted and begin to fight them. On his way to the capital, he free Konrad from the North Elves and offer his support.

* The guard captain of Asheviere. He's with her when she rises and falls. He could loose is last battle (when Asheviere is killed).

It's just some loose ideas, but if we want to have some interations between campains, we should think about it now to change the main one accordingly.

[lala]

Could it be possible that some of the new campains interact with the main one?

Sounds that you create a virtual world if you can manage to make it a online game. Sometimes you'll fight AI, sometimes you meet another campaigner. Should include a possibility of fleeing, ofcourse

[Dobob]

Could it be possible that some of the new campains interact with the main one?

Sounds that you create a virtual world if you can manage to make it a online game. Sometimes you'll fight AI, sometimes you meet another campaigner. Should include a possibility of fleeing, ofcourse

Not exactly, I just meant that many campains could coexist in the same time period and in near areas. Then sometimes you could see in a campain a NPC who is the hero of an other campain. In that case, in that other campain, you would see as a NPC the hero from the first campain.

[Circon (post from school)]

This got slightly off topic.
I plan to make the Undead Campaign happen at more or less the same time as Konrad's, but fairly far away. Maybe there can be a "Distasteful Alliance" where Konrad and Gwiti have to cooperate against an Orken menace. Put it in both campaigns, playing from a different viewpoint is cool, and saves a little coding.

[Dave]

Okay there is now support for multiple campaigns in the code, so we are ready to go

David

[Circon]

Great. I've got the scenario file running and bugtested by myself. Now for the map. Apparently someone thought it funny to crash my progs while transferring... writing map from scratch at the moment, but I should have it ready later this evening, and in time for 0.5.2.
I'm gonna zip scenario and map, who do I mail them to?

[Dave]

Mail them to me: davidnwhite@optusnet.com.au

[fmunoz]

I just re-changed your changes in the liches.
your Young Lich changes doesnt sound alright (a dead skeleton ¿young?) and breaks multiplar and necromancer advancement.

So I used
Lich for 3rd level
Ancient Lich for 4th level (I'll do the image

[Circon (post from school)]

Multiplar??? Never heard of it.
Re upgrade path: I was trying to set a whole different upgrade path, only for the leader. So Dark Adept became Dark Apprentice, etc. And to me, a lich is not a skeleton, its a dark spirit, and can very well be "young" or at least inexperienced with its powers. Oh well, you're the game designers, and I'm only a teenager who plays too many games.


Oh, and I scanned through some monster lists from other games to get undead units, since Dave mentioned needing more.

Skeletons: Skeleton, Skeleton Archer, Skeleton Captain. Upgrades:
Corpse Axe, Corpse Bow, Corpse Captain (magic resistant)
Burning Dead, Burning Dead Archer, Burning Dead Captain (all fire resistant and fire damage)
Horror, Horror archer, Horror Captain (highly resistant to lightning)
Colors: white, yellow, red, grey.

Zombies: Zombie, Ghoul, Rotting Corpse, Plague Bearer, Black Death (No, I didn't invent it!)



So the skels could have a fairly clear upgrade path: Skeleton->Corpse->BDead->Horror and just color differently, since the graphics already exist. Heck, I could probably do this at home in a few hours.

[fmunoz]

multiplar?? sorry I mean multiplayer
You should have in mind that all your changes in the creatures could have unintended results in the main campaign and multiplayer games.
Try to not change the existing creatures.

[Circon]

Oh you meant multiplayer I thought it was a unit! (tiplar=templar??)

I'll avoid changing the existing ones. But adding the Skeleton Captain is fine, no? More expensive, better fighter, command ability.
Skeleton Archer (exists) advance to Bone Shooter (better name than mine really), then I can add Burning Dead Archer and Horror Archer as pink and grey right?
And if a unit used to have, say 228/500 exp, then in a new version it was allowed to advance at 100 exp, it would advance normally as far as I can see, so adding upgrades to the /500 units shouldn't cause any problems.


Can someone move this whole thread to Scenario and Campaign forum?

[fmunoz]

There is already a Dark Knight with the leadership skill.
(3rd level, after Revenant)

I was wromg and I'm sorry, you break the necromancer advancement not by changing existing units, just you forgot to change the name of one of your new units.
Dark Adept and Necromancer was planned to be still living beings, but the implementeation somehow got mixed (I just found it now!).
Try to be a bit more imaginative in the names. Only very generic names (archer,fighter) are reused.
What about:
Ghoul (1st level poison claws)->Necrophage(2nd level heal when kill+same claws). More hp than skeletons, way less damage but with poison. I still have to think in a 3rd level name.

You can add non standard undead units as rewards. Like a level with a magic book. You win if you pick the book or you defeact all enemis (put it in a island with a few a triton and mermen) in the book there are the speel to summon the hungry and starved and transform it in Ghouls... you can also put a smal scene when your leader just summon the 1st one, you got one for free. So in the next level they are avalaible to recruit

Lightning do fire damage.

Damm I have to undo the changes in my local CVS ....