Affably Evil

Discussion and development of scenarios and campaigns for the game.

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pyndragon
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Re: Affably Evil (new campaign)

Post by pyndragon »

A 300% XP rate really really stinks in the first scenario. Also it was quite ironic after the PCs insisted upon having nothing to do with the dark arts for a necromantic poison staff to be one of the random items. Some of the portraits could be made livable but the angles are all different and all wrong. Higher poly would help a lot, but if you're going this clashing non-standard 3D route it's just awkward for Judas to use a mainline portrait. The story backgrounds work. 300% XP still is super problematic.
Dugi wrote:it also increases the importance of items.
But my 126xp-required Spearman can't use items! Like Xara said, the XP multiplier is unnerving. But more importantly, it ruins the dynamic of the game. Acanthamoeba (I hope that's a working name and not the final choice), who can use items and supposedly is going to end up being OP, only needs 48xp to level. How is that balanced? I'm getting the idea that I'm expected to spam level 1 units to their deaths until the heroes get to a high enough level to keep themselves and their minions alive. If you're worried about OP heroes, just increase the amount of XP they need and leave the rest of the poor units at a lower (100% please? At least consider making it different across the different difficulties — 100%, 200%, 300%) multiplier.
What's a long campaign? Mainline and most UMC campaigns combine to tell me that a long campaign is 20+ scenarios. Legend of the Invincibles tells me that a short campaign is 90 scenarios.

Speaking of LotI, as the campaign author, you probably have no clue what it's like to have to download a 30MB campaign every time the author fixes a typo in a macro. Hint: it's not fun. Especially when over a tenth of that is scenario files. Do the right thing and split out the files that all three of your campaigns need from LotI into a resource pack.
Wussel wrote:Did not work in 12.2 please fix it.
Regardless of any other issues you have, you really need to upgrade to 1.12.4.
Last edited by Ravana on July 10th, 2015, 11:12 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Merged double post
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Wussel
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Re: Affably Evil (new campaign)

Post by Wussel »

@dugi: Maybe lazy, but you got it to the point. My Legend of invincible was at 3.1.13 which is one less than current. Why does Wesnoth not catch this? It is not so hard to say: Upgrade dependables! Actually if you have the dependables already, it does not even tell you that they are in fact dependables. Does anybody get why this is exotic?
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Re: Affably Evil (new campaign)

Post by Dugi »

@Xara
Then it's quite disappointing to be tantalize with so many maces and axes scattering on the ground.
That was an oversight. Fixing it.
Better to make bad hand-drawn portraits than bad 3D-model ones. And the white leotard guy looks like a psycho (no offence, I just don't know how to articulate it).
That white stuff was supposed to be a white mage's clothes, I found robes to look quite silly but it seems that I did not make normal pants and cloak look correctly. In his dialogue lines, he shows to be an evil man whose evil ideas have to be filtered by the protagonist.

@Ravana
In Strych, when moving to signpost then it ends scenario, and creates new one that was just like last one ended, only gold has been refilled.
I can't quite find the cause, can you please send me a save file or watch what happens to the cash variable (it should be set to the current gold at the end of every scenario)?
The undead of menancing hills after the message telling me to retreat do not attack me, leaving me free to whirlwind them.
It is a part of the plot that the undead left you alone and helped you defeat the enemies, but it wasn't intentional that you might exploit them and farm experience for free. I will have to do something with it.
Is it intentional that backstab whirlwind does double to all targets.
I never thought of this possibility, I will fix it.

@pyndragon
Also it was quite ironic after the PCs insisted upon having nothing to do with the dark arts for a necromantic poison staff to be one of the random items.
Although this was just by chance, it actually contributes to the plot.
But my 126xp-required Spearman can't use items!
The recruits are not kept. I have done it intentionally to resolve the problem of wesnoth's campaigns that if the campaign is not very short, the player will assemble a huge army of recalls that needs very strong enemies and the typical solution is to cull them (for example in a scenario where your army is massacred) and players hate it.
Acanthamoeba (I hope that's a working name and not the final choice), who can use items and supposedly is going to end up being OP, only needs 48xp to level.
Acanthamoeba (in dialogues, everyone calls her Acantha, just like in UtBS Kalehissar is called Kaleh and Nymphatessa is called Nym) gets only AMLA that does not give large bonuses at once. The strongest unit in my testing was Judas.
I'm getting the idea that I'm expected to spam level 1 units to their deaths until the heroes get to a high enough level to keep themselves and their minions alive.
No, that's actually so that you would recruit them instead of just recalling old units. I found the game much more interesting then. Although it frequently resulted in many units dying.
If you're worried about OP heroes, just increase the amount of XP they need and leave the rest of the poor units at a lower (100% please? At least consider making it different across the different difficulties — 100%, 200%, 300%) multiplier.
The experience multiplier a scenario setting, it's not possible to be separated between sides or unit properties. I might reduce the modifier on easier difficulties, though I am somewhat afraid that it would make it too easy.
What's a long campaign? Mainline and most UMC campaigns combine to tell me that a long campaign is 20+ scenarios. Legend of the Invincibles tells me that a short campaign is 90 scenarios.
This one has 21 scenarios in total including one that is story only and a few that are just about passing through an area and meeting ten bandits. I have written the whole campaign without even turning off my computer, I wrote it as a rest from harder stuff.
Speaking of LotI, as the campaign author, you probably have no clue what it's like to have to download a 30MB campaign every time the author fixes a typo in a macro.
LotI is a 15 megabytes download, it just takes 30 megabytes on disk (the scenarios compress pretty well). I don't upload a new version to fix a typo, I make updates quite rarely because I am aware of its size. The typo bug was fixed by updating Affably Evil instead.
Some of the portraits could be made livable but the angles are all different and all wrong. Higher poly would help a lot, but if you're going this clashing non-standard 3D route it's just awkward for Judas to use a mainline portrait.
You mean that it's too visible that they are low-poly? Guess that could be done.
I used some mainline portraits because I did not want to remake all secondary characters.

@Wussel
Guess I could write a feature request, I didn't know that outdated dependencies cause such a mess.
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Re: Affably Evil (new campaign)

Post by Wussel »

A feature request;) sounds great!

I do have a question. I never found the wml code which takes all the left overs into the storage at the end of the scenarios. Since the minions cannot collect it would be nice to have that in fact functional.

Could you point me to how you clean up the map items into the storage??

Are you aware of all the custom white mages and heavy knights drawn for wesnoth campaigns? Anyway it would be better to get your own art. And a placeholder makes it clear that some custom art would be awesome.
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Re: Affably Evil (new campaign)

Post by Dugi »

I do have a question. I never found the wml code which takes all the left overs into the storage at the end of the scenarios. Since the minions cannot collect it would be nice to have that in fact functional.
Look at Legend_of_the_Invincibles/utils/global_events.cfg lines 523-567. There is just one [if] check that you have to remove to have all the items picked up.
Are you aware of all the custom white mages and heavy knights drawn for wesnoth campaigns? Anyway it would be better to get your own art. And a placeholder makes it clear that some custom art would be awesome.
Some of the portraits in mainline campaigns are similar in style to those of core units, many others are very different in style, just as different as my portraits. And none of them has been described to look like a psycho - and he is an evil White Mage.
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pyndragon
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Re: Affably Evil (new campaign)

Post by pyndragon »

Dugi wrote: The recruits are not kept. I have done it intentionally to resolve the problem of wesnoth's campaigns that if the campaign is not very short, the player will assemble a huge army of recalls that needs very strong enemies and the typical solution is to cull them (for example in a scenario where your army is massacred) and players hate it.
The player needs to be informed of this in any relevant location, either through dialog ("We'll have to leave our troops behind after this battle") or an opening notice.
Dugi wrote:No, that's actually so that you would recruit them instead of just recalling old units. I found the game much more interesting then. Although it frequently resulted in many units dying.
So I'm supposed to spam level 1 units forever. So much better. There's RPG gameplay and there's military tactics gameplay, and I enjoy both, but both in the same game at the same time for the same player is overwhelming. Imagine playing NR [in the traditional style where you end up with 4-5 sides with scores of units each] if you had manage stances for each unit. It is very hard to do without confusing and overwhelming the player. Knowing that my recruits are meaningless makes it easier to focus on the Important People, but the heroes can be incredibly weak at the beginning depending on what items are spawned.
Dugi wrote:The experience multiplier a scenario setting, it's not possible to be separated between sides or unit properties.

Code: Select all

# Pulled directly from TRAIT_DIM
[effect]
    apply_to=max_experience
    increase=20%
[/effect]
Dugi wrote:Acanthamoeba (in dialogues, everyone calls her Acantha, just like in UtBS Kalehissar is called Kaleh and Nymphatessa is called Nym)
Then she should be name="Acantha", not having the unused full name always appearing in dialog.
Dugi wrote:LotI is a 15 megabytes download, it just takes 30 megabytes on disk (the scenarios compress pretty well). I don't upload a new version to fix a typo, I make updates quite rarely because I am aware of its size. The typo bug was fixed by updating Affably Evil instead.
Point make. However, splitting your off common assets remains a Good Thing.
storyline 0.o wut!?:
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Re: Affably Evil (new campaign)

Post by Dugi »

The player needs to be informed of this in any relevant location, either through dialog ("We'll have to leave our troops behind after this battle") or an opening notice.
Yes, I'll add it.
There's RPG gameplay and there's military tactics gameplay, and I enjoy both, but both in the same game at the same time for the same player is overwhelming.
What exactly do you mean with 'overwhelming'? 'Confusing'?
Knowing that my recruits are meaningless makes it easier to focus on the Important People, but the heroes can be incredibly weak at the beginning depending on what items are spawned.
I am changing the odds to get useless items, so the provisions at the start should be more useful. Also, the enemies you have to face with the heroes are relatively easy until your reach the town where you can buy items to complete their gear. And in the first scenario, it's good to use units to defeat the enemy and the heroes only to grab some experience.
Pulled directly from TRAIT_DIM
Haven't thought of this.
Then she should be name="Acantha", not having the unused full name always appearing in dialog.
Okay.
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Re: Affably Evil (new campaign)

Post by Spirit_of_Currents »

Dugi wrote:if the campaign is not very short, the player will assemble a huge army of recalls that needs very strong enemies
You already know how to easily make stats for very strong enemies: just pick some existing units and add damage & HP. And I tell now how to easily make graphics for them: just pick images of their lower level counterparts and add a number that shows the units' level. If you want to make completely new units, you can more easily make those new images if that number is the only area with team colour.
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Re: Affably Evil (new campaign)

Post by Dugi »

That doesn't work like that. If you see a Fencer, you expect him to do 4-4 damage or 5-4 damage if he has the trait. If his damage is suddenly 9-7, people are going to complain about enemies having unexpected unit properties. It happened in LotI and I had to fix it with those with tentacles, gusts of flare, sparks and other visual effects.

In this case it would be even more awkward because when encountering them, you'd have to recruit high level units so that they would stand a chance against the enemies balanced to face your heroes.

A solution that would fix it would be to approximately compute the amount of exp a unit has obtained over its lifetime (for example some function of level and number of AMLAs) and adjust the properties of any unit it fights accordingly, to make the heroes' power rise only a bit, but that cannot be implemented in a Wesnoth add-on.
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Re: Affably Evil (new campaign)

Post by Wussel »

I found some issues so far:

Merylin tries to run of the map to a field not part of the map. Result: The remaining dialog is not displayed.

Next mini szenario: The Bowman (Xuxi or so) is not recruited. He is on the recall list. Therefore the dialog "keep or kick" is not triggered. You have to recall him every time later. Might not be the desireed result of the code.

The next talks had some typos. There was a kikdom and the orcs are stark.

When you go north all the gold is gone. If that is intentional it would be good to know so that players waste it on the store options. It would be nice if the store gets some new items every visit.

About portraits: Would be hilarious to frankenstein a rogue or such head on a white mage body. Might cause trouble with the art fellows.

I would suggest more item pictures in particular armor. I find it disturbing that the iron and mitril armor is golden. Could you point me to the math about the protective quality of armor?

There was a fellow who came up with a solution for items beeing displayed as pictos on a body outline. Might be nice code for your stuff too. Are you aware of that?

There was a book for the help function or as diary made with lua code. It is in "scenario with robots". Since I like to have bigger letters and it looked awesome, I would suggest you look at that too. Would be such a great utility.

For the records: I like the bombastic names!
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Re: Affably Evil (new campaign)

Post by Delicius169 »

I just finished this campain.
Story is really great, I wont say that I enjoyed it, cause I didnt like playing for such a character as Krux was. Also I am a bit concerned about (story spoiler)
Spoiler:
I dont see problem in too much high xp modificator. There are a lots of places where you can farm XP and items... but still I would prefere if there were no places for free XP, in contrast with lesser XP modificator?
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Re: Affably Evil (new campaign)

Post by Spirit_of_Currents »

Dugi wrote:That doesn't work like that. If you see a Fencer, you expect him to do 4-4 damage or 5-4 damage if he has the trait. If his damage is suddenly 9-7, people are going to complain about enemies having unexpected unit properties. It happened in LotI and I had to fix it with those with tentacles, gusts of flare, sparks and other visual effects.
I suggested to make them visually different by adding a level number to their images. It is in my previous post.
Dugi wrote:In this case it would be even more awkward because when encountering them, you'd have to recruit high level units so that they would stand a chance against the enemies balanced to face your heroes.
If you make enemies have not too much gold, the player's recalls will be enough.

I forgot cost. It should be higher too.

Please don't make the xp multiplier depend on difficulty. Things would get strange if the player changed difficulty in the middle of the campaign: similar units would require different amount of xp.
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Re: Affably Evil (new campaign)

Post by Paulomat4 »

hey, currently playing the first scenario.

I've got a pretty good first impression and only wanted to say that I really like the portraits and the names.
Keep it up!
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Dugi
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Re: Affably Evil

Post by Dugi »

@Wussel
Merylin tries to run of the map to a field not part of the map. Result: The remaining dialog is not displayed.
I encountered this issue too, but I thought I had fixed it. I was wrong.
Next mini szenario: The Bowman (Xuxi or so) is not recruited. He is on the recall list. Therefore the dialog "keep or kick" is not triggered. You have to recall him every time later. Might not be the desireed result of the code.
Found the cause. I had this problem before, so I added him to the list of heroes starting every scenario, but I wrote that line in his unit definition instead of writing it behind it, so it had no effect.
The next talks had some typos. There was a kikdom and the orcs are stark.
It was a kigdom, not kikdom. Please be careful when reporting it, using search to find a typo if I don't know the exact letters written can be impossible.
The orcs were not supposed to be stark, it was the Thule family. I have reworded it to correct the spelling mistake.
When you go north all the gold is gone. If that is intentional it would be good to know so that players waste it on the store options. It would be nice if the store gets some new items every visit.
The gold is supposed to disappear if you enter a scenario with recruitment, but it will return to you afterwards, the bonus gold from the scenario will be added to it. I think that I should write a note about it somewhere.
About portraits: Would be hilarious to frankenstein a rogue or such head on a white mage body. Might cause trouble with the art fellows.
Spoiler:
I would suggest more item pictures in particular armor. I find it disturbing that the iron and mitril armor is golden. Could you point me to the math about the protective quality of armor?
Only iron armour is golden.
Here is the math about the protective quality of armour. The armour has a defence percentage, it affects the resistances this way: modified_resistance = original_resistance * (100% - protective_value_of_armour) -> so that 15% better resistances mean that a Fencer would get 15% less damage from blade and also a Heavy Infantryman would get 15% less damage from blade. The effect on impact resistance is halved because maces were always good at penetrating armour.
There was a fellow who came up with a solution for items beeing displayed as pictos on a body outline. Might be nice code for your stuff too. Are you aware of that?
I know he did it, I know who did it, I know how he did it. However, you can't see anything except its image on it, because there is no way to show something when you hover your mouse over it. There is no efficient way to write its properties nearby either. It looks good, but I think that it's not very useful if you don't have unique images of every single item that are also sufficiently descriptive.
There was a book for the help function or as diary made with lua code. It is in "scenario with robots". Since I like to have bigger letters and it looked awesome, I would suggest you look at that too. Would be such a great utility.
Can you please describe this more in depth? I haven't played Scenario with Robots, all I know is that there is an interesting mechanic allowing upgrading and fusing robots with various components.
For the records: I like the bombastic names!
Googled them?

@Delicius169
Story is really great, I wont say that I enjoyed it, cause I didnt like playing for such a character as Krux was.
Not liking playing for the bad guys? But you should know people like that, they are very real.
Also I am a bit concerned about (story spoiler)
Spoiler:
@Spirit_of_Currents
I suggested to make them visually different by adding a level number to their images. It is in my previous post.
It would have to be quite annoyingly large to be readable enough and doesn't quite fit. I don't like that idea.
If you make enemies have not too much gold, the player's recalls will be enough.
The point is that I want the players to recruit something instead of just recalling as in most later scenarios in campaigns where the recalls aren't massacred somehow.
Please don't make the xp multiplier depend on difficulty. Things would get strange if the player changed difficulty in the middle of the campaign: similar units would require different amount of xp.
Okay.

@Paulomat4
I really like the portraits
Finally somebody likes my portraits ^_^
Last edited by Dugi on July 15th, 2015, 7:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Affably Evil (new campaign)

Post by pyndragon »

Re: story spoiler explanation: I have nothing left to say, except that I'm unconvinced and you're making your case worse. :shock: :o :( :? :augh:
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