The South Guard

[zookeeper]

IMHO, some unit re-balancing should definately take place (in general, not just for South Guard)

Do not sidetrack the South Guard thread with comments like this, but feel free to start a new topic.

No, please do not start a new topic suggesting balance changes.

[Unlucky Wizard]

Hi, I'm playing through through this campaign and really enjoying it. However, on the fourth scenario "Vale of Tears", I'm perplexed by the word "cleanse", and I can't seem to find any direct mention on the forums of what exactly is meant by it. What exactly does "cleanse" mean in this context (I know the dictionary definition, just don't know the figurative one used in here), and what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to kill the 2 leaders?

[Turuk]

Unlucky Wizard, it does indeed mean to kill the two leaders. The enemy are undead, and so the meaning of the word is "to purge or clean." The player is purging the land of the undead abominations.

[Unlucky Wizard]

Unlucky Wizard, it does indeed mean to kill the two leaders. The enemy are undead, and so the meaning of the word is "to purge or clean." The player is purging the land of the undead abominations.

Ahh, I see. That makes sense, thanks! I guess outlaws are purgeable too, then.

[beetlenaut]

Ah! I've always thought that TSG used some very unclear language--especially for a beginner campaign. And here's a beginner being confused by it. It should probably be tweaked so the objectives are crystal clear in all cases.

[Turuk]

Ah! I've always thought that TSG used some very unclear language--especially for a beginner campaign. And here's a beginner being confused by it. It should probably be tweaked so the objectives are crystal clear in all cases.

Eh, but is this the exception rather than the rule? I highly doubt most people think that the objective means to give the enemy leader a bath.

[AI]

An objective for a silly campaign? "Lure the enemy leader into the water"

[Soel]

Hi, I'm playing this campaign and I have a problem in scenario 7 of the bandit path. The objective of the scenario is to keep alive Sir Gerrick for as many turns as the player can, but I was able to kill both enemy leaders and the scenario didn't end. Is something supposed to happen, or the only way to end the scenario is to reload and let Sir Gerrick be killed?
Thanks for your help.

[zookeeper]

Hi, I'm playing this campaign and I have a problem in scenario 7 of the bandit path. The objective of the scenario is to keep alive Sir Gerrick for as many turns as the player can, but I was able to kill both enemy leaders and the scenario didn't end. Is something supposed to happen, or the only way to end the scenario is to reload and let Sir Gerrick be killed?

Yes. But don't worry, I doubt you'll be able to manage that feat in the next version anymore.

[nemchenk]

The South Guard is an excellent teaching campaign -- I've been playing it for the last few days, and I have to say I am very pleased and impressed. I was thinking of creating a campaign for Wesnoth, and The South Guard is very close indeed to what I was intending to do!

I completely agree with aelius' initial points about using the campaign to tell a story and present choices for the player, and also with his ideas on what makes a good teaching campaign (i.e. fiddling with gold teaches little, while simplifying the tactical problem can teach a lot.)

In all, I think TSG is a very good campaign indeed, almost perfect! I would love to help polish out the few little imperfections that are left -- are the devs looking for someone to (help?) maintain TSG? I have some experience working on Open Source projects, and games in particular, and would be very happy to help look after The South Guard.

In any case, I attach a patch for a tiny mod I made in the first scenario -- very very simple, just added a portrait for an NPC the player encounters early on. Better IMHO to have portraits for all the "speaking parts." The portrait is Syntax_Error's unfinished "Ruffian" (http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=23584), but again I think it works here very well indeed.


Yours Hopefully!

nemchenk

[zookeeper]

The South Guard is an excellent teaching campaign -- I've been playing it for the last few days, and I have to say I am very pleased and impressed. I was thinking of creating a campaign for Wesnoth, and The South Guard is very close indeed to what I was intending to do!

I completely agree with aelius' initial points about using the campaign to tell a story and present choices for the player, and also with his ideas on what makes a good teaching campaign (i.e. fiddling with gold teaches little, while simplifying the tactical problem can teach a lot.)

In all, I think TSG is a very good campaign indeed, almost perfect! I would love to help polish out the few little imperfections that are left -- are the devs looking for someone to (help?) maintain TSG? I have some experience working on Open Source projects, and games in particular, and would be very happy to help look after The South Guard.

You're welcome to help polish it up (I think balance in some scenarios is the most notable concern), but if you want to really improve the campaign, there's one bigger task that needs doing: rewriting Vengeance (the elf branch finale). If you read its thread in the campaign feedback forum, you'll see that almost everyone hates it. I'm the official maintainer and rewriting that scenario completely is on my list, but I don't know when exactly I might get around to doing it, so if anyone else is up for the job, that'd be great too.

Or if you'd prefer to do smaller stuff at least to begin with, I can give you some specific tasks that'd need doing. For example, going through the scenario feedback for 1.6/1.6.1 and tweaking the balance of any scenarios reported to be unnecessarily hard or easy.

In any case, I attach a patch for a tiny mod I made in the first scenario -- very very simple, just added a portrait for an NPC the player encounters early on. Better IMHO to have portraits for all the "speaking parts." The portrait is Syntax_Error's unfinished "Ruffian" (http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=23584), but again I think it works here very well indeed.

Yeah, it's an ok portrait to use, but I don't think it's really worth spending it on this particular chap (has one line, only on hard). If we'd introduce for example a loyal ruffian in the bandit branch or something, then this'd be perfect for him.

[nemchenk]

Hello there, zookeeper!

I did indeed read about the problems with Vengeance and Into the Deep. I'll be happy to have a go at those, but I am still playing through the campaign so it might take a little while

Part of the reason I started delving into the WML was because it kept kicking my b*tt for me on Soldier and Recruit. I've got quite a few little tweaks which make it more playable *for me*, which I'll post up for you to look over.

It mostly has to do with:

1. Making TSG look better (I'm working on new Summer/Autumn/Winter slides, and a new Spring, for example)
2. Polishing some of the text and dialogue (for example, Sir Gerrick knows the player was sent by King Haldric in their first conversation, yet at the end of the scenario asks whether Sir Loris sent him)
3. Making scenario objectives very clear for the player, to emphasise the original ideal of a teaching campaign (for example, the footpads near the player start in Proven by the Sword serve only to slow him down on the way to Westin; I would recommend changing them to weaker units which the player can brush out of the way more easily.)
4. Some minor balancing issues (I agree for example that Deoran should be a vulnerable young man and not a superhero, but in my games so far I've been *really* molly-coddling him; it would be nice if he had *some* use on the battlefield )

Anyway, I'll post up a more thought out list of suggestions as I play through the whole campaign. I'll also be glad to help with any TODOs you have on your list!

I hope this helps

[nemchenk]

Hi zookeeper,

So as not to come across as a typical new player who is full of unfounded ideas, I thought I could post some "after-action reports" of my playthroughs of TSG, perhaps highlighting why I think some things needs changing to improve the campaign Sort of like "usability testing!"

Do you think that would help? Should I post them here, in the main thread, or in the per-scenario threads?

Also, here are first drafts of the story slides I was talking about. Let me know what you think

[nemchenk]

And the last one, Autumn

[zookeeper]

Polishing some of the text and dialogue (for example, Sir Gerrick knows the player was sent by King Haldric in their first conversation, yet at the end of the scenario asks whether Sir Loris sent him)

Sure, I think there's several places where the dialogue could be made to make much more sense. You can post your suggestions either in this thread or in a new one the writer's forum.

Making scenario objectives very clear for the player, to emphasise the original ideal of a teaching campaign (for example, the footpads near the player start in Proven by the Sword serve only to slow him down on the way to Westin; I would recommend changing them to weaker units which the player can brush out of the way more easily.)

Yeah, why not. Changing some of them to ruffians depending on difficulty might be a good idea.

Some minor balancing issues (I agree for example that Deoran should be a vulnerable young man and not a superhero, but in my games so far I've been *really* molly-coddling him; it would be nice if he had *some* use on the battlefield )

Really? I've always found it very useful to level him up even though he's pretty weak at lvl1. Maybe it'd be enough to put in some dialogue suggesting the player to try to feed him XP and/or lower the lvl1 XP requirement?

So as not to come across as a typical new player who is full of unfounded ideas, I thought I could post some "after-action reports" of my playthroughs of TSG, perhaps highlighting why I think some things needs changing to improve the campaign Sort of like "usability testing!"

Do you think that would help? Should I post them here, in the main thread, or in the per-scenario threads?

Your call. If you're going to handle each scenario separately, then the per-scenario threads are probably better.

Also, here are first drafts of the story slides I was talking about. Let me know what you think

Those are actually quite similar to some stuff I did at some point, but didn't end up using. More lately, I've also started another pass at creating new ones from some public domain photos I've collected, but I haven't finished a complete set yet and was kind of hoping that some of our proper artists would tackle the job instead. I think working on more on these would yield better results than terrain/scenery generation tools. Here's a couple of examples: