Dead Water (add-on for 1.8)

Review and rate user-made single and multiplayer campaigns and scenarios.

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beetlenaut
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Dead Water (add-on for 1.8)

Post by beetlenaut »

(1) What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the campaign on?

(2) How difficult did you find the campaign? (1-10)

(3) How clear did you find the campaign objectives?

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline?

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the campaign?

(6) How fun do you think the campaign is? (1-10)

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the campaign to make it more fun?

(8) Any grammatical mistakes in dialog/story text?

Dead Water is included with the game in the development version 1.9, and will be in the stable 1.10 when it comes out.
Last edited by beetlenaut on September 14th, 2010, 6:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
Campaigns: Dead Water,
The Founding of Borstep,
Secrets of the Ancients,
and WML Guide
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Rakarei55555
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Re: Dead Water

Post by Rakarei55555 »

beetlenaut wrote:(1) What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the campaign on?

(2) How difficult did you find the campaign? (1-10)

(3) How clear did you find the campaign objectives?

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline?

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the campaign?

(6) How fun do you think the campaign is? (1-10)

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the campaign to make it more fun?

(8) Any grammatical mistakes in dialog/story text?
1)medium, in 1.6.2

2)4 for most of it, except the last scenario when they start pumping out lvl 2's and you've got like no gold :augh:

3)very clear

4)pretty interesting, nice idea, not much focus on mermen in the rest of wesnoth

5)the last scenario

6)7

7)make the last scenario easier :augh:

8)not that i noticed
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beetlenaut
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Re: Dead Water

Post by beetlenaut »

Rakarei55555 wrote:4 for most of it, except the last scenario when they start pumping out lvl 2's and you've got like no gold
You should have plenty of money. I expected you to finish the previous scenario ahead of time, and there is a huge (for this campaign) amount of gold there. I started the last scenario with around 450 on medium. That was enough to recall everybody I had.
Campaigns: Dead Water,
The Founding of Borstep,
Secrets of the Ancients,
and WML Guide
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Rakarei55555
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Re: Dead Water

Post by Rakarei55555 »

maybe i didn't do it right then...

i've gotten a lot better since i last played it, maybe i'll try it again this weekend
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Thrawn
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Re: Dead Water

Post by Thrawn »

When I tried downloading it for 1.6 branch add ons, it never showed up in the campaign list. However, it behaves properly when I downloaded it from the 1.7 add ons menu
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beetlenaut
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Re: Dead Water

Post by beetlenaut »

Thrawn wrote:When I tried downloading it for 1.6 branch add ons, it never showed up in the campaign list.
That doesn't make any sense. I haven't changed anything in eight months. I had all the 1.6 releases and never had that problem, and no one else has reported it either. The only thing I can think of is that something has gone wrong with the download. The Dead_Water folder uses 1,083,762 bytes. That may vary a little on different file systems, but you should have about that. You could also check _main.cfg and see if anything is obviously wrong there. Post it if you want, and I'll look at it.
Campaigns: Dead Water,
The Founding of Borstep,
Secrets of the Ancients,
and WML Guide
jpaulson
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Re: Dead Water

Post by jpaulson »

Just finished on normal (Wesnoth 1.6.5). Great campaign!

I found "Slavers" to be by far the hardest mission. It ended my attempt to beat the campaign on hard soundly. Way too many Saurians on favorable terrain for them. On normal, the walkthrough strategy worked. Nothing else was super challenging; I replayed some missions to save valuable units.

Objectives were very clear. "Flight" was odd; it almost forced you to go back and replay the first scenario (it is nearly impossible, IMO, to bring Kellis from lvl 0 to 1 on white's units before Orange's bats cut off any hope of escape). IMO, it would be better to place some level 2 undead guards near the exit and drop the level requirement; it would make the scenario more self-contained. I was very amused to find my objectives hadn't changed in flaming sword after killing the lich :)

Dialog was of unusually high quality. Story was maybe too simple (many of the battles were completely tangential to the storyline), and the quest to get the flaming is...random (why does she care?).

Question #5 doesn't adapt so well to campaigns...I've already said I thought "Slavers" was very hard.

Campaign is very fun. It's nice to get to use an underused race. Inky was enjoyable for the same reason. And the last mission is a nice epic fun battle (recruiting priestesses is cool; reminded me of the last mission in HttH where you get knights).

Suggested changes: I've already mentioned the strange objectives on "Flight". The mage in "The Flaming Sword" is not a credible threat; it's very easy to one-turn-kill him. Maybe make him harder? (perhaps he recruits immediately, for instance)

Grammar was fine, afaik.
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beetlenaut
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Re: Dead Water

Post by beetlenaut »

jpaulson wrote:Just finished on normal (Wesnoth 1.6.5). Great campaign!
Thanks! It's going mainline soon, and has actually been improved in the 1.7 version, though not in any ways you suggested.
jpaulson wrote:I found "Slavers" to be by far the hardest mission. It ended my attempt to beat the campaign on hard soundly. Way too many Saurians on favorable terrain for them.
I balanced the hardest difficulty level by making it too hard for me, because the really good players are better. It probably could use some tweaking. I think I'll add a little more "flat" terrain and water (where they get 40%) around the south saurian castle, and maybe take a couple units worth of gold from the south guy as well. I think the level gets easy enough when you defeat him.
jpaulson wrote:it would be better to place some level 2 undead guards near the exit and drop the level requirement
I like the level requirement, and you get told in the first scenario to start leveling Krellis. The bats can choke the exit though. I was already thinking about limiting how many orange can recruit.
jpaulson wrote:I was very amused to find my objectives hadn't changed in flaming sword after killing the lich
I was proud of that little touch myself. I'm glad you noticed.
jpaulson wrote:the quest to get the flaming is...random (why does she care?)
It's a non-specific "test of worthiness", but maybe I can flesh out that part of the story.
jpaulson wrote:The mage in "The Flaming Sword" is not a credible threat; it's very easy to one-turn-kill him.
True. I had him take the sword mainly for story consistency, and I didn't want him to be a surprise that kills some weakened high-level units. Maybe if he recruited immediately, but teleported away a bit first. I'll try that.
Thanks for your insightful comments!
Campaigns: Dead Water,
The Founding of Borstep,
Secrets of the Ancients,
and WML Guide
ragesoss
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Re: Dead Water

Post by ragesoss »

1. 1.7.12, on medium

2. Difficulty: ~4

3. Very clear

4. Interesting and well-plotted, if relatively straightforward story. The dialog is uneven, and sometimes slips into a colloquial 21st century styles. Mostly it's little things like word choice and phrasing. Also, I didn't find much emotional connection with the grandmother reveal; it's kind of a weird plot twist that didn't tie in enough to the rest of the story.

5. None, really, once I learned that the strategy for basically every level is to lure the enemies into the water.

6. ~8 or 9

7. The purpose of the great journey should be reiterated more frequently; I lost track of why I was going where I was going, and even then it didn't seem specific enough. The last scenario could be better balanced; there should be a reason for the player to assault the fortifications at the top left (I just ignored it, but if there was something interesting like a prisoner or artifact, I might have gone for it), and the wave of necromancers is too isolated to do the bad guys much good if the player is aggressive and has already taken over the central keep by the time they spawn. Maybe spawning them earlier would be good, or bring them in when the player first attacks the central keep (and maybe have the number of them spawned depend on how long it takes the player to attack that keep, since the longer it takes the more allies from up the coast the necromancers could recruit).

8. No grammatical errors, but it could use a going over for more consistent style. It's also a bit longwinded at the very beginning; too much text dump, which could be better conveyed as part of the action. For example, Kai Krellis could begin the game in a state of confusion and ignorance, not knowing what happened to his father. He knows his father is gone but isn't totally clear about why he had left, and then he started to piece things together when undead start attacking and he meets survivors from his father's army over the course of the first few maps.
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Zerovirus
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Re: Dead Water

Post by Zerovirus »

:augh: Got owned on Slavers. And I was on Easy too. I had, as veteran units, 4 Priestesses including the hero unit, two netcasters, and a brawler. Kai was at lv1 but by the end I got him to lv2... Not that it helped me, I still lost epicly. Just didn't have the money to fight off the overwhelming waves of units. Bad playing in the previous two missions resulted in my ending up with only 120 or so gold this mission. Going to try again later, hopefully with better skill.
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Re: Dead Water

Post by beetlenaut »

ragesoss wrote:The dialog is uneven, and sometimes slips into a colloquial 21st century styles.
Hmm. It recently got rewritten in an attempt to take care of that. Do you remember specific instances that stuck out for you? We'd like to fix them. Also, there is some more work I plan to do on the text.
ragesoss wrote:there should be a reason for the player to assault the fortifications at the top left
The fortification in the top corner is just to explain why the mermen have to come in at the bottom of the map.
ragesoss wrote:the wave of necromancers is too isolated to do the bad guys much good if the player is aggressive and has already taken over the central keep by the time they spawn.
I'm kind of surprised you were able to get there that fast. There's a lot of traffic to go through. I'll think about changing the timing at least.
ragesoss wrote:It's also a bit longwinded at the very beginning; too much text dump
It's on par with other campaigns, and I'm not going to make that many changes just to remove a page or two of story text.
Zerovirus wrote:Got owned on Slavers....Bad playing in the previous two missions resulted in my ending up with only 120 or so gold this mission.
It sounds like you haven't played this before now. I'm surprised. 180 is the minimum gold on Slavers, so you should have more than that. Also, there is some easy-to-find extra gold on the map! If you do go back, get one or two enchantresses rather than priestesses. Saurians are weak to impact, but not arcane.
Campaigns: Dead Water,
The Founding of Borstep,
Secrets of the Ancients,
and WML Guide
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Zerovirus
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Re: Dead Water

Post by Zerovirus »

Ugh yeah. I upgraded my initiate spam into pure priestesses because I was expecting lots of undead. Obviously not the case, by the time the second scenario ended my priestesses were useless to me. >.< Going for some enchantresses on second run of campaign.

I'm also having an unfortunate case of roleplaying. I debugged up a brawler and named him "Alerus the Heroic" and decided that all the citizens would follow him in combat but if he died I would have all the citizens flee. Same thing with the initiates; a certain "Nari the Beautiful" Enchantress was debugged up as the mascot-leader of the initiates. It's kinda cheating, but I also handicap myself with these roleplaying limitations. One of my citizens leveled up so I kinda decided I was going to roleplay this unit as Alerus's battle-brother, and that if either fell, I would play the survivor so that he is always trying for vengeance. And other such pointless stuff :P I always recruit all my roleplaying characters when I first recall from my keep.

EDIT: Yeah I know about the treasure chest. I kinda underrecruited at the beginning because I didn't take Saurians seriously. Then the Augur spam proved me wrong, and I had to go negative gold to just hold back the wave. Finally in a desperate suicide move I summoned the slaves and went for the northernmost leader. Almost got through to him before Kai died. It was just him and a Lv2 Merman Warrior in the end :P Last stand roleplaying abounded.
ragesoss
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Re: Dead Water

Post by ragesoss »

beetlenaut wrote:
ragesoss wrote:The dialog is uneven, and sometimes slips into a colloquial 21st century styles.
Hmm. It recently got rewritten in an attempt to take care of that. Do you remember specific instances that stuck out for you? We'd like to fix them. Also, there is some more work I plan to do on the text.
I'm going to go through again to try to find the places that stuck out. Here are my thoughts on the intro and first scenario.

1. Introduction: "In the calm waters of this bay lay the merfolk city of Jotha." This is technically correct, but it's confusing because there is a tense change from the previous sentence in which a bay "lies". So if readers are still thinking in present tense, "lay" will read as a grammatical error since the present tense would again be lies. On the next screen "the largest raiding party yet" strikes me a just a bit off; maybe "a larger raiding party than ever before"? 'largest yet' feels more like it's relative to the present (rather than the past when the story is set), as if a larger one is expected in the future. On a later screen: "...the mermen slid into the bay intending to launch a surprise attack at dawn", maybe add a comma between bay and intending. On the next screen, the repetition of "himself"--"the kai himself", "Kai Laudiss himself"--is a little awkward. Perhaps a bit of detail about his death would be in order...did he die in combat with the orc champion, or by the poisoned blade of an assassin, etc.? On the next screen, "She had been a friend of his father, and he had known her as long as he could remember"... that strikes me as a bit mundane and doesn't give a strong sense of placement in the Wesnoth world.

Scenario I: Gwabbo says: "Kai, please lead us against them yourself, it will hearten the folk. And - if you will permit - you reach the age now where must learn battle skills." I think it's more of an imposition to ask him to lead the battle than to suggest it's time to learn to fight. Maybe instead, the line could be: "Krellis, you reach the age now where a kai must learn to wield his mace. And - if you will permit, kai - you should lead us against them yourself. It will hearten the folk." That way, Gwabbo phrases it as a suggestion - 'you should' - and then Cylanno reinforces it - 'you must'.
ragesoss
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Re: Dead Water

Post by ragesoss »

Thoughts on dialog from scenario II:

Gwabbo: "We are not all soldiers used to obeying orders. I'm not sure everyone will follow you on so perilous an adventure. First you have to prove you aren't afraid of danger. If you leave now, a lot of people will think you are just making an excuse to run away." This one doesn't seem consistent style-wise, nor quite consistent character-wise. In the previous scenario Gwabbo is encouraging the kai to be brave and lead his people; now he's basically calling him an unproven coward. And Gwabbo *is* a soldier used to obeying orders (although he's obviously somewhat cheeky with Krellis). Maybe instead of Gwabbo saying all this, a leader among the citizens could actually directly voice his/her concerns, something along the lines of 'it maybe be dangerous here, but it would be foolish to follow so young and untested a kai into the open waters.
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Re: Dead Water

Post by beetlenaut »

Thanks for doing this, rageoss. Your suggestions sound good so far. I'm not at home, so I cant' work on this for a week or so, but I will take a closer look at it then.
Campaigns: Dead Water,
The Founding of Borstep,
Secrets of the Ancients,
and WML Guide
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