"Aeranor: Book I": A SP RPG Campaign for Wesnoth 1.10+

[artisticdude]

Announcing the pre-alpha demo version of 'Aeranor: Book I', a single-player RPG campaign for Wesnoth 1.9.4+!

(currently with 4 scenarios and 2 quests)

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Feature list (not complete):

> A dialogue system that allows you to actually click on an adjacent NPC to speak to them (no more right-click menus or moveto events!)
> A full-featured inventory
> Complete quests and earn rewards such as gold, potions, new weapons, etc.
> Inter-level shroud and item location saves (if you can exit a level and return to it later, all previously unshrouded areas will be unshrouded on your return, and all previously dropped items will still be on the ground exactly where you dropped them earlier, waiting for you to come back and pick them up again!)
> No respawning enemies (if you kill an enemy in a certain level and then leave and return to the level later on, that enemy will stay dead)
> Use lockpicks to pick locks on doors to gain access to new items and treasures (although be warned, if your lockpick skill isn't high enough you may break your lockpick!)
> A custom AMLA system that lets you improve vital character stats each time you level up
> Three character races to choose from
> Four character classes to choose from (the shaman class is currently unplayable, but should be fully playable in the next version)
> Choose your pet (your animal companion that will help you throughout the campaign)
> Custom, never-before-heard-or-used music by Telaron
> Custom sound effects


Note that this demo is not by any means stable, so not all features are implemented yet (the shaman class isn't playable, some NPCs have no dialogue, etc.). I'll be adding more features and playable content (i.e. more quests and levels) in future updates, along with better balancing. And I'll be working on the full project behind the scenes, to be released sometime next year.

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Known Bugs:

> Your pet recovers full health upon loading a saved game. I have no idea what causes this (and the few possible solutions I have in mind don't seem very likely to fix the issue), so it's unlikely this will ever be fixed.

> The shaman class is not currently playable.

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Known Gameplay Issues:

> There is no way to heal your pet. I've got several solutions to this in mind, but I'd appreciate suggestions on this issue in particular. Should the pet have a separate inventory to store health potions and such, should the pet regain x amount of hitpoints for each turn that combat is not engaged and the pet is adjacent to the player? Should the player be able to use health potions from his/her inventory on his/her pet as well as on him/herself? Although since that inexplicable bug heals the pet completely each time you load a saved game, healing your pet may not even be necessary at all...

> Cannot buy better weapons/spells. Working on that issue as I write this.

> Cannot sell items. Also a WIP.

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Some General Statements:

1. This project is currently single-player only, and due to the high amount of non-MP-safe WML used in the project, I'm afraid a MP option is out of the question.

2. This campaign uses terrain, WML features, and WML syntax found only in the 1.9 development version of Wesnoth, so I will not be backporting this project to the 1.8 stable branch. It will, however, be available on the 1.10 stable branch when that branch debuts.

3. There is currently no in-game tutorial, so adding one in is one of my top priorities for the next release.

4. There are some gameplay elements in this project that differ a lot from vanilla Wesnoth. For instance, you cannot walk on trees in this campaign, and terrain defense values play a relatively minimal role.

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Balancing is in a semi-decent stage, right now. Since I don't yet have the shaman class up and running, class balancing is on hold for now, but you should be able to complete the demo with any of the other three classes without too much trouble.

...Oh, and by the way, for those of you who tried out my earlier "Undead in the Sewers!" (which was the testing ground for a lot of the systems used in this campaign... no, there is no sewage in this one, I promise), I've fixed the problem with the enemies not attacking you when their hitpoints got too close to 0. Enemies now attack you not matter what until either you or they are destroyed, regardless of hitpoint values.

[Crendgrim]

I hate you so much right now.
After you released Undead in the Sewers! I thought: "Well, maybe my campaign has still a place somewhere." But now you are releasing an actual RPGish campaign, which seems to be a) more fleshed out than mine, and b) the techniques (and all my great, innovative ideas! well, you're faster) seem to be nearly the same, though probably better coded. And that even before I'm done with the first chapter. Aarrgh.

So, griping done. I'm going to test it tomorrow.


Crend

[artisticdude]

Well, competition drives the market.

No seriously, if you are working on a similar project, please do keep working on it. I'd like to be able to play an RPG campaign that I haven't play-tested a billion times already. And I don't know about the 'better coded' part... I abuse WML. Badly. But it works, so it's all good.

[Crendgrim]

Okay, I somehow had to test it right today. It's ... well, let's call it "great" missing a better word.
Maybe I'm going to borrow some of the dialogue code of yours (I am still using menus as long as feature request #18556 [Gna.org] is open; and you seem to have found a nice workaround), and some of the great images.

Anyway, serious feedback:

Spoiler:

I think the goblin ran waay too much. It was always said "he won't be too far away", but you still search ages for him. After he ran away the third, fourth, whatever time (the last time), I used debug menu to locate him, because I just didn't find him. You may want to not let him run that far...
Well, and I lost my pet in the goblin hunt due to some critical hits, but he was at my side again when switching back to the fortress.
Apart from that, the great things I know from UitS! are still there, but somehow even better.

Crend

[Neuromancer]

Bug reports:
Iron throwing knife has bow image
No objectives available when entering the second level
Both character and his/her pet can be nameless
When going from castle to the Hearth. forest, game shuts down; illegal map tile. Happens in 1.9.6.

Personal feedback:
In the first room (where the game starts) hint the player how to open the door. I figured it only after ~15 seconds passed.
People/spaces ratio. Very few persons in the castle compared to the vastness of the level. I felt a little claustrophobic. Look at Fallout for example: much more NPCs per space.
Still only one playable character (ok, two, because of pet)? As I wrote in Undead in Sewers, party is much better then one person.

[artisticdude]

New version is on the 1.9 add-on server (v0.0.2). I got rid of the old levels and started over again. I also fixed some of the more annoying issues with the combat mode system. So... Yup. Enjoy.

[Heindal]

I just played it and I must say: You did a good job and I think we are all waiting for an update ^^.

If anybody out there is interested in a good coded rpg - here it is! The inventory system really makes me a little jealous. The story is well written and has good lead-in. Your writing style is good, better than mine I'd say, so keep this up!


Here several hints how to make your campaign even better:

- Reconsider if you need Shroud AND Fog! Fog AND Shroud might be ok in a dungeon, but I don't see the sense when you are in a city or on an island. Shroud is enough in that case. The fog also has a nasty side effect. This way you can not just move to annother place you already know on the other side of the map ... the normal way would be clicking on it and waiting the turns for your character to arrive. I don't know if this is even possible with this macro.

- The macro with the infinite movement has some annyoing drawbacks - you actually have to click several time and sometimes your character isn't selected any more, so you have to click on him again, which means to click 20 times, to get one character from one place to annother which is actually one click with the normal system.

- When taking up the crystal and the vicious rat tail, the images of these objects were at the very bottom - that looked strange.

- Your starting story is very long and even though you use some great artwork to picture the first part of the story, most of your screens stay dark. You should try to fill this with pictures, otherwise some people might get bored, as the start is really very long. Maybe you could split up the story and actually show what happens, instead of explaining it - that is also a drawback of my campaign Trapped .

[artisticdude]

Glad to see there's still some interest in this. I've been working on this project on and off for the past couple months, and I think I'll probably ship out another release sometime soon. Hopefully it will have a lot more playable content than the current version does, along with some improvements in the various systems and some better artwork.

- Reconsider if you need Shroud AND Fog! Fog AND Shroud might be ok in a dungeon, but I don't see the sense when you are in a city or on an island. Shroud is enough in that case. The fog also has a nasty side effect. This way you can not just move to annother place you already know on the other side of the map ... the normal way would be clicking on it and waiting the turns for your character to arrive. I don't know if this is even possible with this macro.

I've actually considering getting rid of the fog for a while now. Originally I had wanted to use fog to hide the movements of enemies located in areas that you have already uncovered (which could lead to some interesting situations like a secret door opening in the wall after you pass by and then enemies come out behind you), but that's just not feasible for a variety of reasons. So thank you for the suggestion, and I will remove the fog in the next update.

- The macro with the infinite movement has some annyoing drawbacks - you actually have to click several time and sometimes your character isn't selected any more, so you have to click on him again, which means to click 20 times, to get one character from one place to annother which is actually one click with the normal system.

As tedious as it can become having to constantly re-select your character, most people seem to favor the infinite movement system over the normal one, simply because they don't have to end their turn all the time. In the normal system you would have to:

1. Select your character
2. Select the hex you want to move the character to
3. Hit the 'end turn' button

In the infinite moves system, I eliminate step 3, which means there are now only 2 clicks necessary per move rather than 3. Also, if you click 1 hex outside your character's movement radius when you move to a new location, your character will automatically be selected at the beginning of the next move, which is especially useful if you are traveling across large distances.

- When taking up the crystal and the vicious rat tail, the images of these objects were at the very bottom - that looked strange.

Unfortunately I have no way to organize the items in the inventory by when they were picked up, so all the item locations in the inventory are pre-set. In other words, the location of each item in the inventory is defined at the beginning of the game, so health potions will always be above armor, which will always be above 'junk' items, etc. Unfortunately [message] doesn't support action WML. Ken_Oh and Exasperation managed to pull it off in Wesband somehow using [insert_tag], but so far I have been unable to replicate their success. So until I manage to figure it out, I'm afraid we're stuck with a pre-ordered inventory hierarchy.

- Your starting story is very long and even though you use some great artwork to picture the first part of the story, most of your screens stay dark. You should try to fill this with pictures, otherwise some people might get bored, as the start is really very long. Maybe you could split up the story and actually show what happens, instead of explaining it - that is also a drawback of my campaign Trapped .

That's a good suggestion. I'll probably have a dialogue-only scenario for when you are given your mission by the Nar'roth council, then finish out the rest of the dialogue after that. And maybe I'll try to do some custom story images... although large-scale brush art isn't my strong suit, I'm afraid.

Thanks for your feedback, you've given me some extra motivation to keep working on this project!

[Crendgrim]

- The macro with the infinite movement has some annyoing drawbacks - you actually have to click several time and sometimes your character isn't selected any more, so you have to click on him again, which means to click 20 times, to get one character from one place to annother which is actually one click with the normal system.

As tedious as it can become having to constantly re-select your character, most people seem to favor the infinite movement system over the normal one, simply because they don't have to end their turn all the time. In the normal system you would have to:

1. Select your character
2. Select the hex you want to move the character to
3. Hit the 'end turn' button

In the infinite moves system, I eliminate step 3, which means there are now only 2 clicks necessary per move rather than 3. Also, if you click 1 hex outside your character's movement radius when you move to a new location, your character will automatically be selected at the beginning of the next move, which is especially useful if you are traveling across large distances.

I don't think I tried that yet, but shouldn't [wiki=InterfaceActionsWML#.5Bselect_unit.5D][select_unit][/wiki] do the job?

[artisticdude]

That's new. Or else I've just missed it in the wiki up to now. But that could possibly solve everything! Thanks a ton Crend, I'm going to see what I can do with that.

[Crendgrim]

It's not that new: Its documentation was added in October 2010: http://wiki.wesnoth.org/index.php?title ... ldid=38728

[artisticdude]

Actually, upon testing the project without fog (only shroud), I've concluded that it is necessary to keep both fog and shroud. Why? Mainly because there are some instances where fog is necessary.

For instance, if there is an enemy right at the edge of your vision, you will enter combat mode. At that point you can either chose to approach the enemy and do battle with it/him/her, or you can chose to run away in the opposite direction. For the purposes of this explanation, let's assume that you decide to run away. Since you are no longer within the enemy's movement radius, the enemy won't chase you. However, since the enemy unit is still in your sight (you have uncovered the shroud around the enemy), combat mode will not end until you either kill the enemy or leave the level entirely, because that enemy's location is no longer masked by shroud, hence the enemy is still 'in your sight'. Furthermore, whenever you return to the level you will enter combat mode unless you previously killed all uncovered enemies in that level, because of the inter-level shroud data storage. So, in short, fog is necessary for principally this reason, and there are also a number of more minor reasons (such as when an NPC moves from a location near you to a location far away from you; if there is no fog or shroud to cover the movement, you will have to wait longer for the NPC to complete its movement).

I have tried implementing [select_unit] into the movement/combat code for the project (in 1.9.10), but I'm not achieving the desired result (as a matter of fact, I'm not yet sure if it actually works at all :/ ). But I've just begun playing around with it, so it might be something at my end (with the exception of syntax errors, I know I got the syntax right!).

[alluton]

I dled the campaign in 1.9.6 And just got it started. I must say intro was really long and i tried to read parts of it to get any clue what is happening. But the main reason was : In 1st scenario it says no objectives.

[artisticdude]

I'm currently in the process of remedying the too-long intro by breaking it up with a cutscene (a.k.a. a 'dialogue-only scenario'). As for the objectives... I'd prefer it if I could get rid of the objectives altogether (since this is an RPG, and objectives won't be tied to specific scenarios, which is a problem that is further compounded by the fact that you can revisit levels) and just use a quest log built into the inventory, but AFAIK there is no way to remove the objectives window at the start of a scenario.

[Ceres]

I'd prefer it if I could get rid of the objectives altogether (since this is an RPG, and objectives won't be tied to specific scenarios, which is a problem that is further compounded by the fact that you can revisit levels) and just use a quest log built into the inventory, but AFAIK there is no way to remove the objectives window at the start of a scenario.

Have you already read this thread?