Is this practical?

[dirtywhitellama]

I looked for ages of where I might want to post these questions and instead just got distracted horribly reading a zillion posts irrelevant to my questions

So if this is in the wrong spot feel free to move it. I couldn't figure where it should go.
Anyway, I am ruminating on building a campaign (have some story ideas blocked out) in which the premise is, the main character is an animal tamer of some kind, and he/she has to take a certain animal to a particular place (I have ideas for half a dozen+ scenarios to get there.)

My questions are:
Is it practical at all to have very limited recruiting? It doesn't make any sense to me for an animal tamer to be able to just randomly recruit big piles of units. I expect at different times in the campaign I would want to add particular units as "friends" for my main character (especially an archer of some kind to start with). I'm sort of thinking mostly you would recall the animals you have "tamed" that are your loyal companions with some sort of provision for getting more if some of your animals die but I don't know how to handle this so it would still produce both a realistic feel and an enjoyable experience for the player. I don't think having 5 animals where you're screwed if one dies and thats it is going to be a fun campaign

Is it possible to give a character a chance to tame or convert an opponent on hit? Sort of like in swamplings where you tame the bats - but I wouldn't want to have EVERY hit by my main character tame an animal (also would need to restrict this to units that make sense to be tamed). I'm not a coder but I'm more than willing to learn if this is something that seems possible.

Would it make sense for my main character to have both leadership and healing to animal/tamed units only?

Also, I'm curious about the particular animal that the goal is to escort (I don't want to give anything away in case I actually make this campaign ) - Is it possible to give the user an option to name it, or are we stuck with my preselected name only?

Thanks for any suggestions. I'm just trying to get an idea if this will be workable before I start, you know, doing the work!

[averyimaginativename]

Is it practical at all to have very limited recruiting?

Possible, yes. Practical...depends. It can be done, but I'm doing this, and finding it very time consuming to balance as you can't easily change the difficulty by simply altering starting gold like you can in most campaigns.

Is it possible to give a character a chance to tame or convert an opponent on hit?

Yes, though again, it's very difficult to balance and probably impossible to balance for multiplayer. For example code, the Khthon in Archaic Era do this (or at least used to - he's changing/changed the way they work).

[Ceres]

Is it practical at all to have very limited recruiting?

Well, it's a possibility. Depends on whether you're going for a huge battle campaign or a RPGish one (which seems to be the case here).
Also, what averyimaginativename said.

Would it make sense for my main character to have both leadership and healing to animal/tamed units only?

It wouls sure make sense. If you'll only have animals and no other humans/elves/something on your side, just giving your leader leadership is enough. If not - I'm not sure about how to make abilities filter other than making a hacky workaround by directly modifying the attack strengthes of single units.

Is it possible to give a character a chance to tame or convert an opponent on hit?

Yes, it is. It's not even hard once you've understood the basics of WML syntax [1][2][3]- choose the correct event and filter, make a variable have a random value and modify a unit depending on the variable's value.

Is it possible to give the user an option to name it, or are we stuck with my preselected name only?

Sure. There's a tag for showing a message, also having a possibility to cantain a text input field.


Ninja'd, but still.

[Neuromancer]

Your concept is quite sympathetic Here are my comments and opinions:

the main character is an animal tamer of some kind, and he/she has to take a certain animal to a particular place (I have ideas for half a dozen+ scenarios to get there.)

Would you mind uncovering something more from the story? Or the desired player experience you want to achieve.

Is it practical at all to have very limited recruiting?

I think it is practical as long as the units have various attacks and abilities each.

Is it possible to give a character a chance to tame or convert an opponent on hit? Sort of like in swamplings where you tame the bats - but I wouldn't want to have EVERY hit by my main character tame an animal (also would need to restrict this to units that make sense to be tamed).

Converting based on a chance is possible in WML via random number generator. However, I suggest to make this taming process something more than mere attack. For instance, you can have the player collect some things/complete a few miniquests and then reward him with the animal.

Would it make sense for my main character to have both leadership and healing to animal/tamed units only?

Id suggest giving leadership to some friend.

Also, I'm curious about the particular animal that the goal is to escort (I don't want to give anything away in case I actually make this campaign ) - Is it possible to give the user an option to name it, or are we stuck with my preselected name only?

Yes, it is possible. You can do it via WML input text box, alternatively player can rename any unit you let him at any time.

[dirtywhitellama]

If it's not really practical to have my leader recruit only animal units and in a limited number, well... are there other units it would make sense to recruit? I mean I know that depends on my story of course! My original idea was to have the main character, his animals, and maybe a friend or two embarking on this mission in sort of an RPG-ish style (as Ceres surmised). The premise being at the beginning of the campaign, the main character is doing something (I'm thinking hunting with a pet wolf) and comes across this potentially powerful animal that needs help...so then he has to figure out how to help it..etc... and encounters resistance from people thinking he's using it for his own shady purposes. the eventual end of the story is it's release into the wild.

As far as the units for sure I know I want to have at this point, it would be the tamer him/herself (probably an elf, it just makes sense!), an archer friend who starts with him, his wolf, and the creature they find in the first scenario, plus several scenarios in a character who would have a greater than average understanding and skill with this creature. Possibly this later character will be a proper healer and my original main will have only limited healing abilities? (better than nothing but..) That might be easier to just allow "first aid" without having to figure out how to make him magically fully heal only animals.

I started working on my first map. Hmm, throwing terrain together in a pretty pattern is probably going to be about the easiest part of this...

I was wondering, I'm thinking for my first map now of having them hunt a stag (or maybe something else if I can't scramble up any decent sprite for it) and wondering is it possible to program it on a certain route moving (out of sight again) every time the player spots it?


Recruiting I may just have to start out with what I am thinking and see if anyone finds it fun to play or if is just annoying. Maybe let him recruit a certain number of weak animals (like rats...very exciting! hehe) and then recall certain more powerful animals trained up over time (or acquired through the quest as suggested) with a couple friends along to fill more specialized roles. Makes sense to me to start there, anyway. Then again I can give him some basic units too if I make it a "hunting party" that's loyal* to him, rather than just the character himself..hmm. that could make sense too.

*not necessarily "loyal"


Ok well, back to trying to figure out how to make anything do anything! I've never programmed anything more complicated than html/css and a handful of javascript... then again looking through a few campaign files for fun, it doesn't seem too bad

[pyrophorus]

You could take a look into my campaign. There's some taming and herding animals there and code you could adapt to your needs.
Feel free to PM me for details.

HTH

[averyimaginativename]

If it's not really practical to have my leader recruit only animal units and in a limited number, well... are there other units it would make sense to recruit?

I've taken the easy way out with a few scenarios - single scenario recruiting. You're in, say, a loyalist city. For that one scenario, you get a bit of gold to recruit a few loyalists, and the recall list is wiped at the end of the scenario. This trick is pretty story dependent though. It might work for a few scenarios, but doesn't work for an entire campaign.

I was wondering, I'm thinking for my first map now of having them hunt a stag (or maybe something else if I can't scramble up any decent sprite for it) and wondering is it possible to program it on a certain route moving (out of sight again) every time the player spots it?

Ish. There is a sighted event, but it's buggy. You're better off using a moveto with ranged values.

See http://wiki.wesnoth.org/EventWML for the possible events, and http://wiki.wesnoth.org/DirectActionsWM ... ve_unit.5D for moving a unit.