Re: Swamplings - v1.1.7 - for 1.8 and 1.9

[boru]

Well, the good news is, if he had leveled in Exodus, it would have been lost in RR anyway

The other good news is, this will be fixed in the next update. Thanks for spotting it.

====

EDIT: Version 1.0.3 is on the server, with an abundance of Eeep bugfixes.

[vcap]

Version 1.0.3 is on the server, with an abundance of Eeep bugfixes.

From the changelog:

- S6: fixed bug where Eeep loses all XP. (You'll need to replay from the beginning of "At Death's Door" to get your Eeep XP saved properly)

Actually if you don't restart from the beginning of "At Death's Door", Eeep won't show up at all in RR.

Apart from that, it works.

[boru]

Yeah, I thought that would be better than to be playing along and suddenly realize he had no xp. But I'm having second thoughts. It made sense at 3 a.m. when I wanted to get it all fixed, but I'll probably go back and fix that. There's some stuff with Misris too .. she needs 60 xp to level up so changing her to a level one wolf rider in Thunderstruck is a bit problematic. Spent most of this evening ironing that out. She'll have a menu option so you can keep her a Moonbeam/Nocturne or switch her to wolf rider.

[norbert]

I didn't read all seven pages of this thread, but here's some feedback nonetheless.

I'm playing the campaign on Hard setting and I'm stuck at "It Takes A Swampling". I'm unable to survive for ten turns: there's nowhere to run (inside the cave = death; around the cave = death; up/left/right = death). Also, it took me quite a while to find Kennison - without walking into his 'trap', I mean. (Eventually, I cheated and checked the scenario's .cfg file.)

2. the second was a bit tedious as I tended to kill the bats with my "magic" stick.

Yes, I had the same experience, because I (too) thought it was a plague-like wand. Maybe the mage should specifically state that the bats should not be killed?

I liked the part with the bottles and the assassin.
Sad that Clammie lost his son.

[boru]

I didn't read all seven pages of this thread, but here's some feedback nonetheless.

I'm playing the campaign on Hard setting and I'm stuck at "It Takes A Swampling". I'm unable to survive for ten turns: there's nowhere to run (inside the cave = death; around the cave = death; up/left/right = death). Also, it took me quite a while to find Kennison - without walking into his 'trap', I mean. (Eventually, I cheated and checked the scenario's .cfg file.)

2. the second was a bit tedious as I tended to kill the bats with my "magic" stick.

Yes, I had the same experience, because I (too) thought it was a plague-like wand. Maybe the mage should specifically state that the bats should not be killed?

I liked the part with the bottles and the assassin.
Sad that Clammie lost his son.

Norbert, thanks for your post. In the next update, I will give the enemy less gold for hard games in that scenario. It's currently set to 50 Easy, 100 Normal, 200 Hard. I'll cut that back to 50/100/150 and hopefully that will give the edge you need. You're supposed to be able to hold out in the corridor for ten turns. I will also take out the whole "trap" event and fire the conversation with Kennison even if you attack him.

I'm not sure why you and Frigeridio (two people who's opinion I respect) found charming the bats to be tedious. The wand IS similar to plague, in that it changes the bat's side at the end of the attack. If the bat survives to the end of the attack, he is on your side and you can't attack him. If he is killed, it doesn't really matter what side he's on, so changing the mage's message would not help there. I'm wondering if it's the movetype. Do you think changing the cave terrain to cave path would help?

[norbert]

I'm not sure why you and Frigeridio found charming the bats to be tedious.

It's because I used the spear (three strikes) until the bats were so weak that they would die when I used the Wand of Wonderment (two strikes) on them. So, I'd make sure the bats would have only a few health points left before using the Wand of Wonderment. Then, I'd either miss or kill them. When I killed them - as is required with a plague-like weapon - I thought the scenario simply didn't give me feedback, but I did good. When I ran out of turns, I thought that maybe it works only for certain bats, so I started exploring the left cave section. There I didn't find the right bats either. Then Ronry said "There's one with teeth!" so I thought: 'Finally, the type of bat I need to kill.' And so on... Maybe the mage could say something like "Try not to kill the bats." when Clammie kills one?

[boru]

Ohhh now I understand. Okay, I'll have Ronry step in with some advice, but only if the player has killed three bats without charming any.

I did a small bit of work on the map for It Takes A Swampling, so it should be easier to survive the rush of guards. I'm still not happy with this one and I don't expect anyone else will be, either. It's totally different from what I originally envisioned, and eventually I will probably trash the entire map and redesign it completely. The second part in the sewer I'm pretty happy with though.

[norbert]

Okay, I'll have Ronry step in with some advice, but only if the player has killed three bats without charming any.

Sounds good.

I just finished the campaign.
You did a good job, clearly put a lot of work into it.

Minor issue: in the Dire Cave, one of purple's Ghosts didn't move away from the village where the key is. It didn't fly away when I attacked enemies either (maybe those were too far away or were killed by me too quickly), so I had to manually move that Ghost to get the key.

[boru]

I just finished the campaign.
You did a good job, clearly put a lot of work into it.

Thanks, yeah I did. When I started, I didn't have the vaguest idea of how to write WML. One campaign later, I can proudly say I now have the vaguest idea of how to write WML.

Minor issue: in the Dire Cave, one of purple's Ghosts didn't move away from the village where the key is. It didn't fly away when I attacked enemies either (maybe those were too far away or were killed by me too quickly), so I had to manually move that Ghost to get the key.

Yeah, that happened to me once during testing. It goes away if the ghosts have a target to go after, otherwise they just squat. The ai needs some tweaking. Did you get a message that said "This unit cannot pick up the key"?

[norbert]

Did you get a message that said "This unit cannot pick up the key"?

Sorry, I don't remember.

[boru]

Doesn't really matter, the main thing is getting them off the cotton-pickin key.

[vcap]

In "It takes a swampling", in the sewer part the rats are sometimes generated in pillars or deep water (and presumably in cave walls too, tough i did not see it happen there). In the case of deep water they may not be able to move if all the adjactent hexes are deep water too.

In both SCATTER_UNITS you do:

Code: Select all

{SCATTER_UNITS $ratfoes "Giant Rat" 3 (
    x=2-24
    y=23-32

    # prevents two rats in the same hex:
    [not]
        [filter]
        [/filter]
    [/not]

    # prevents two rats in adjacent hexes:
    [not]
        [filter_adjacent_location]
            [filter]
            [/filter]
        [/filter_adjacent_location]
    [/not]

    # keeps rats from appearing in cave walls or stuck in deep water (not sure if this works right):
    [not]
        [filter]
            [filter_location]
                terrain=Wo,Xu
            [/filter_location]
        [/filter]
     [/not]
) (
     side=5
     random_traits=yes
)}

The filter_location thing does not work (and you left out the pillars (Xos) from the terrain type).

Also your comments are wrong: SCATTER_UNITS never put the units it is scattering on the same hex and it won't put them in adjacents hexes unless PADDING_RADIUS (the third argument) is 0. Those filters apply to preexisting units (in our case that means Clammie, Kennison and Greta), such that no rat will be generated near them (which is a good thing anyway, methinks).

I think the two SCATTER_UNITS should be rewritten like this:

Code: Select all

{SCATTER_UNITS $ratfoes "Giant Rat" 3 (
    x=2-24
    y=23-32

    # prevents a rat in the same hex as Clamie/Kennison/Greta
    # (which would result in the engine placing it in a free adjacent hex, instead)
    [not]
        [filter]
        [/filter]
    [/not]

    # prevents a rat in a hex adjacent to Clamie/Kennison/Greta
    [not]
        [filter_adjacent_location]
            [filter]
            [/filter]
        [/filter_adjacent_location]
    [/not]

    # keeps rats from appearing in cave walls/pillars or stuck in deep water
    [not]
            terrain=Wo,Xu,Xos
     [/not]
) (
     side=5
     random_traits=yes
)}

Tested extensively in a test case of mine, and a few time in your scenario with shroud=no.

[vcap]

I'm playing the campaign on Hard setting and I'm stuck at "It Takes A Swampling". I'm unable to survive for ten turns: there's nowhere to run (inside the cave = death; around the cave = death; up/left/right = death).

Actually, there is a way. In the Normal setting at least. It's not much fun tough.

Spoiler:

If you position Clammie in 10,18 and Kennison in 11,19 the enemies won't sandwich you. This is to be combined with the fact that Clammie is invulnerable up till turn 10.

[boru]

Yeah, the "not much fun" part of it will require a redesign of the map, but not today. I rearranged a few things in there to make it more possible to get through, but there are definitely more changes ahead before this one is finished.

Thanks for your help with SCATTER_UNITS. I've been tinkering a bit more with the code for that but I didn't test yet. I almost have enough changes to warrant a new release. Almost, but not quite.

[vcap]

I discovered that you can prevent the "error display: Tile at -999,-999 isn't on the map" by providing a starting position for side 1 on the map itself, even if it's completely unnecessary (you can put it anywhere you want, it doesn't seem to affect anything besides this message).