Return from the Abyss [SP campaign for 1.12/1.14]

Discussion and development of scenarios and campaigns for the game.

Moderator: Forum Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
skeptical_troll
Posts: 498
Joined: August 31st, 2015, 11:06 pm

Return from the Abyss [SP campaign for 1.12/1.14]

Post by skeptical_troll »

'Return from the Abyss' is a story of a Khalifate/Dunefolk officer who, after taking part to a disastrous military expedition, is forced to seal a pact with a powerful dwarvish king and to fight at his service, in exchange of his protection. The campaign is about his efforts to find the way back home across both the underground and the surface worlds.

The story is set later than mainline campaigns (except UtbS) but before the fall and the two suns, so the tyme cycle is standard, except obviously for the underground scenarios.

It is divided in three parts, each with 6 playable scenarios, plus several cut scenes.

There is a limit on total recruits: the division under your command has 100 infantry units (on medium), so you won't be able to recruit more than that in the whole campaign. If you have played the campaign I'd be very interested in knowing how many recruits left you have at the end, for balance purposes.

You will anyway have the opportunity to recruit units from allied sides leaders which do not enter this calculation. For example, in some scenarios of the first part the player can use, beside the Khalifate infantry, also dwarves and orcs.

Gameplay
The campaign features the standard Wesnoth gameplay, but many scenarios present additional elements which will affect the fight and hence the strategy, for example water tides, sandstorms, randomly spawned enemies (used very frequently), or map split in different sections.

There are several underground scenario, mainly in the first part. I am well aware that Khalifate units suffers in the darkness, however there are options to use (artificial) illumination as an important strategic element to make battles more interesting, very beneficial for the characteristic liminal unit of this faction.

In general, healing capability is purposely limited, so shielding wounded units and managing experience for advancements at the right time will be important elements, in my intentions.

Map are generally medium-sized, with a couple of small and few big ones. In most levels, the battle size is the typical Wesnoth skirmish style, except a couple of larger battles and two dungeon-crawling style scenarios.

Feedback
Any feedback and comment is appreciated, but input on scenarios 3 - 4,11 and the last two are particularly welcome, since they are the most tricky to balance.
Last edited by skeptical_troll on June 18th, 2018, 7:56 am, edited 5 times in total.
User avatar
ForestDragon
Posts: 1769
Joined: March 6th, 2014, 1:32 pm
Location: Ukraine

Re: Return from the Abyss [WIP campaign for 1.12]

Post by ForestDragon »

took, a quick glance, and it's amazing :D one of my favourite things was the king's ranged attack icon, and the animation looks good too. keep up the good work, glad to see you back in action
My active add-ons: The Great Steppe Era,XP Bank,Alliances Mod,Pestilence,GSE+EoMa,Ogre Crusaders,Battle Royale,EoMaifier,Steppeifier,Hardcoreifier
My inactive add-ons (1.12): Tale of Alan, The Golden Age
Co-creator of Era of Magic
User avatar
Tarcil
Posts: 97
Joined: October 31st, 2014, 11:46 am

Re: Return from the Abyss [WIP campaign for 1.12]

Post by Tarcil »

The story of this (short) campaign was the best one i´ve ever played. The feeling of playing a different faction, the Caliphates, was very good, you really get the oriental atmosphere of this faction. The dialogues are damn good only the eloquent speaking of the orcish warlords irritates me a bit, as well as the jedi-master. :mrgreen:
I´m really impressed and waiting for the next part joyfully.
Creator of "In Defense of Kharos" viewtopic.php?t=56628
User avatar
ForestDragon
Posts: 1769
Joined: March 6th, 2014, 1:32 pm
Location: Ukraine

Re: Return from the Abyss [WIP campaign for 1.12]

Post by ForestDragon »

Tarcil wrote:The story of this (short) campaign was the best one i´ve ever played. The feeling of playing a different faction, the Caliphates, was very good, you really get the oriental atmosphere of this faction. The dialogues are damn good only the eloquent speaking of the orcish warlords irritates me a bit, as well as the jedi-master. :mrgreen:
I´m really impressed and waiting for the next part joyfully.
me too, and yeah, those orcish aristocrats/yodas are just downright weird :lol:
My active add-ons: The Great Steppe Era,XP Bank,Alliances Mod,Pestilence,GSE+EoMa,Ogre Crusaders,Battle Royale,EoMaifier,Steppeifier,Hardcoreifier
My inactive add-ons (1.12): Tale of Alan, The Golden Age
Co-creator of Era of Magic
User avatar
Tarcil
Posts: 97
Joined: October 31st, 2014, 11:46 am

Re: Return from the Abyss [WIP campaign for 1.12]

Post by Tarcil »

Yeah. :lol:
I guess, skeptical troll like to make great dialogues, but in this case, I would say, to give the shaman the eloquent speaking of the warlord and made the warlord at least not speaking like a aristocrat. Just an easier grammar should do it.
Creator of "In Defense of Kharos" viewtopic.php?t=56628
User avatar
ForestDragon
Posts: 1769
Joined: March 6th, 2014, 1:32 pm
Location: Ukraine

Re: Return from the Abyss [WIP campaign for 1.12]

Post by ForestDragon »

Tarcil wrote:Yeah. :lol:
I guess, skeptical troll like to make great dialogues, but in this case, I would say, to give the shaman the eloquent speaking of the warlord and made the warlord at least not speaking like a aristocrat. Just an easier grammar should do it.
yup, i think the yoda speech should be reserved for 10,000 years old elvish sages :P
My active add-ons: The Great Steppe Era,XP Bank,Alliances Mod,Pestilence,GSE+EoMa,Ogre Crusaders,Battle Royale,EoMaifier,Steppeifier,Hardcoreifier
My inactive add-ons (1.12): Tale of Alan, The Golden Age
Co-creator of Era of Magic
User avatar
skeptical_troll
Posts: 498
Joined: August 31st, 2015, 11:06 pm

Re: Return from the Abyss [WIP campaign for 1.12]

Post by skeptical_troll »

Tarcil wrote:The story of this (short) campaign was the best one i´ve ever played. The feeling of playing a different faction, the Caliphates, was very good, you really get the oriental atmosphere of this faction. The dialogues are damn good only the eloquent speaking of the orcish warlords irritates me a bit, as well as the jedi-master.
Why do you have this prejudice on orcs? Actually in the second part you'll find out that he has a PhD in linguistic at Oxford :whistle: :whistle:
Just joking, thanks for the kind words! I am not a native speaker, so it's generally hard for me to catch the right speaking register. I wanted the warlord to sound cunning and subtle, not the typical 'me orc me kill you!', but if it sounds like an aristocrat there is definitely something wrong! I'll try to make he saying the same things in a more 'orcish' way.

As for the shaman: I wanted to characterize him as an old, weird and wise guy, so a Yoda-like speech was quite fitting (beside being a due tribute to an epic scifi character). However, if that looks too silly and spoils immersion I'm gonna switch to something else. I admit that now whenever I write/read dialogues I can't help but thinking of his words in Yoda's voice :D
User avatar
taptap
Posts: 980
Joined: October 6th, 2011, 5:42 pm

Re: Return from the Abyss [WIP campaign for 1.12]

Post by taptap »

Great start.

1st scenario is hard (on difficult). Did not manage in first attempt and then only with heavy losses (10 out of 80 recruits dead). Recruited some more once I lured out the elf blocking the path to the caves, that saved the day. Ally would be much more useful if not moving all units on ice to get 12,14 village.
Attachments
RftA-Inglorious_Campaign_replay.gz
(36.86 KiB) Downloaded 742 times
I am a Saurian Skirmisher: I'm a real pest, especially at night.
User avatar
skeptical_troll
Posts: 498
Joined: August 31st, 2015, 11:06 pm

Re: Return from the Abyss [WIP campaign for 1.12]

Post by skeptical_troll »

Thanks for the replay!
I think you are in good shape: heavy losses should be expected here, you have to open a breach in little time on poor-defense terrain against elves, which retaliate all kinds of attack. You also managed to save the loyals (the lvl 2 in particular will help at the beginning of the next scenario). It'd be good to give Arzeh a couple of kills, as you'll need his cure ability soon, but I know that could be risky.

I can tweak a bit with the allied AI, at the moment I just set the 'defensive' grouping. Main result is that now he focuses on the weakest enemy (on medium and easy sometimes he even kills the sylph!). With a better behavior he'll probably defend better on the west and give the player some more time to break the encirclement.
User avatar
taptap
Posts: 980
Joined: October 6th, 2011, 5:42 pm

Re: Return from the Abyss [WIP campaign for 1.12]

Post by taptap »

"Good shape" - added a failure - timeout, about to kill troll and goblin, spider and whelp leader already dead - in Trial at Arms. Trying to handle the mud faction first (and already moving the runemaster to next position) was probably a mistake, but how could I know. Even so I had not that many idle units most of the time. And I thought it was going good when I took out the first two spiders pretty early.

(First scenario: The one tweak I would consider is giving that one 12,14 or was it 14,12 village to the ally, so they don't beeline for it into bad territory. I moved a unit to help against green, otherwise I would have had them in my back in force. As I indeed had in earlier attempts. Similarly the one unit I placed south kept plenty of units busy.)
Attachments
RftA-Trial_of_Arms_replay.gz
Failure in 60 turns.
(73.23 KiB) Downloaded 747 times
I am a Saurian Skirmisher: I'm a real pest, especially at night.
User avatar
Inky
Forum Moderator
Posts: 527
Joined: September 22nd, 2014, 1:02 am
Location: USA

Re: Return from the Abyss [WIP campaign for 1.12]

Post by Inky »

Return from the Abyss v. 0.0.2 / Wesnoth 1.12.6 / Hard
Awesome campaign so far! I'm on the third scenario so far; I really like the dialogue and the miners setting fires is really cool!

S1 (Inglorious Campaign)
Replay summary: This was quite a challenge. I spent all my gold and sent everyone straight east, and broke through the eastern forces with the help of the Arif and Naffat's lawful attacks during the first day. With the western army catching up near the end, I used the eastern enemy leader's keep to recruit some reinforcements to help fend them off. It was a tense battle! 12 recruits, 6 losses, finished turn 18/22.

S2 (Trial of Arms)
-I think the turn limit is too short here; like taptap I wasn't even close to finishing on time on my first attempt (there's actually another scorpion leader in the northeast). My next attempt was closer, but I still needed a few extra turns (I debugged myself 3 extra turns :P)
-It would be convenient to have some kind of overlay or trait to indicate which miner(s) still can use their torch.

Replay summary: 160+35 starting gold. Split forces in half, with half dealing with goblins and half going for the mudcrawlers. Killed mudcrawler leader early on (turn 23). Then all my forces went to kill the goblin leader on turn 40; then some units split off to kill the scorpions and everyone rushed south to deal with the trolls. I had made the mistake of triggering the trolls from the south early on before I was ready, so they stole several villages and got the extra income. I ended up needing 3 extra turns to finish. 7 losses (not counting 2 dead miners)

--------
A couple bugs:
-In scenario 3 (Old Castle) none of the centipedes' images show up (the image paths are missing "units/" in front).
-No idea what the cause of this one is; sometimes my units will randomly lose a few HP (I noticed this happening in scenarios 2 and 3). E.g. in this savefile (using Show Replay), on turn 2 Arzeh and a miner lose some HP and on turn 3 Eridon lost some HP.
RftA-The_Old_Castle_Turn_3.gz
Units randomly lose some HP at beginning of turns
(72.37 KiB) Downloaded 748 times
Some typos/dialogue suggestions:
Spoiler:
Attachments
RftA-Trial_of_Arms_replay.gz
Scenario 2 (Debugged 3 extra turns)
(74.99 KiB) Downloaded 725 times
RftA-Inglorious_Campaign_replay.gz
Scenario 1
(41.25 KiB) Downloaded 719 times
User avatar
skeptical_troll
Posts: 498
Joined: August 31st, 2015, 11:06 pm

Re: Return from the Abyss [WIP campaign for 1.12]

Post by skeptical_troll »

Hi, I made these modifications after seeing Taptap's very informative replay:
slighlty increased turn limit (64 on hard now), and decreased a bit the income of enemies (probably not that significant). Since I think it relies too much on knowing the map in advance, I added a small dialogue when you kill the troll whelp leader in the central hall, where Eridon explains what enemies to expect in the various secondary mines, and how strong they are. Hope this help. I'm also wondering if the mechanism of miners tearing down walls is too confusing (i.e. hard to understand where they can do it).
taptap wrote:First scenario: The one tweak I would consider is giving that one 12,14 or was it 14,12 village to the ally, so they don't beeline for it into bad territory.
Done it as well!

EDIT:
Thanks Inky for the corrections, I implemented them in the new version!
Hopefully I also fixed centipedes' images problem. Quite weirdly, I had no problem myself in visualizing them, so I'm not 100% sure that they are correctly displayed now. I hope so, cause they are really nicely drawn and animated (I taken them from 'age of tentacles') :hmm:
I also added an overlay to miners who can still set fire (reused the one I had for campfires in HotE).
inky wrote:No idea what the cause of this one is; sometimes my units will randomly lose a few HP (I noticed this happening in scenarios 2 and 3). E.g. in this savefile (using Show Replay), on turn 2 Arzeh and a miner lose some HP and on turn 3 Eridon lost some HP.
ok, I got no clue about this one, will need to have a look :shock:
User avatar
Paulomat4
Moderator Emeritus
Posts: 730
Joined: October 16th, 2012, 3:32 pm
Location: Wesmere library, probably summoning Zhangor

Re: Return from the Abyss [WIP campaign for 1.12]

Post by Paulomat4 »

Hey man, gave it a first try and really enjoyed it so far.
I'm at scenario 24 now, and after exploring the castle the objectives tell me to resist 24 turns OR do something else. The problem is that after reaching turn 24 I just lose the scenario.
-No idea what the cause of this one is; sometimes my units will randomly lose a few HP (I noticed this happening in scenarios 2 and 3)
I can confirm this happening to me as well
Creator of Dawn of Thunder and Global Unitmarkers

"I thought Naga's used semi-automatic crossbows with incendiary thermite arrows . . . my beliefs that this race is awesome are now shattered." - Evil Earl
User avatar
taptap
Posts: 980
Joined: October 6th, 2011, 5:42 pm

Re: Return from the Abyss [WIP campaign for 1.12]

Post by taptap »

Paulomat4 wrote:I'm at scenario 24 now, and after exploring the castle the objectives tell me to resist 24 turns OR do something else.
I definitely find it amazing how far ppl manage to play in this campaign... Does it even have 24 scenarios? :hmm:
I am a Saurian Skirmisher: I'm a real pest, especially at night.
User avatar
skeptical_troll
Posts: 498
Joined: August 31st, 2015, 11:06 pm

Re: Return from the Abyss [WIP campaign for 1.12]

Post by skeptical_troll »

Paulomat4 wrote:and after exploring the castle the objectives tell me to resist 24 turns OR do something else. The problem is that after reaching turn 24 I just lose the scenario.
Mmm ok, it's probably not very clear. The 'or' is between resisting 24 turns and closing the tunnels. The third objective instead is mandatory (Find more information about Thoadarak king's power), so if turns run out without doing that, it's a loss. Any suggestion on how to make this crystal clear? adding '(mandatory)' after the third objective?

I can confirm that the 2HP random loss also in my case, but I really don't know where it comes from. It seems like a weird thing to get from WML..

@taptap: he meant scenario 3 (4 counting cutscenes), this part only has 6 playable scenarios. I wish I was that productive :)
Post Reply