The Sojournings of Grog (3.6.1 is out)

Discussion and development of scenarios and campaigns for the game.

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Evander
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Re: The Sojournings of Grog (3.0 on its way)

Post by Evander »

Evander wrote:- Grog appears to be thicker than he was in Under the Burning Sun
That was a deliberate design choice.
may I ask why it it so? Grog wasn't that bad back in UtBS :)
Evander wrote:- some maps, especially final scenario could use re-designing
I'm open to suggestions and contibutions on that matter. What do you think that should be changed? Or, even better, do you have an alternate map available for a certain scenario?
I haven't yet played with editor much enough.
still, final scenario is pretty uneventful - maybe one of the drake leaders should appear at some later turn behind quenoth/player keep?
Evander wrote:- placing Zhul and that elvish prowler (a heroes from UtBS) as regular units in final scenario gets them killed. it is pretty unrewarding for those who completed UtBS - they should be placed as guardians next to Quenoth elves keep
Hint: they have an extremely low chance to be hit.
ok, but still it is possible. have seen Zhul getting owned.
Evander wrote:- a Sceptre of Fire in a lair?
Well, the Dragon is keeping it. Where should it be placed, if not in his lair?
but how did it get there?
Evander wrote:- after killing the dragon in final scenario there are little dialogues or story line to somewhat reward player for completing the campaign. all those heroes should like say something after the battle ends
Yeah, I'm aware of that. Daravel had the task to rewrite the dialogues, but so far he never found the time to work on the last scenarios... Do you want to give it a try on this task?
can't promise you anything. job gets in the way of doing almost anything right now... about to change it soon tho.
Evander wrote:- difficulty pretty uneven in some battles
A common problem in long campaigns. But again, I'm open to suggestions to make them easier or harder. :)
did some balancing for commercial game development once. the only way to get it right is by trial and error, really.
here I think you should try to envision how player and player recalls will progress. by the time a player reaches finale he will have a lot of 3lvl units, and it is basically a matter of chopping through initial wave of drakes to the boss
drakes could use some "second wind" like getting some small amount of gold after some turns.
although humans on finale are getting owned easily.
Thanks for these positive comments! :D By the way, did you choose to go for the Great Mage or Gold Mage path?
golden, to see what it is. imho, picture has a slightly too bright yellow on it, but! :lol2:
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Elvish_Hunter
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Re: The Sojournings of Grog (3.0 on its way)

Post by Elvish_Hunter »

Evander wrote:may I ask why it it so? Grog wasn't that bad back in UtBS :)
Not because he was bad, but because after defeating Yechnagoth he became a sort of living legend. This is also the explanation behind his inspire ability.
Evander wrote:still, final scenario is pretty uneventful - maybe one of the drake leaders should appear at some later turn behind quenoth/player keep?
IMHO, it will be a sort of tomato surprise. Once that the player will know this, he/she will play in a different manner.
Evander wrote:ok, but still it is possible. have seen Zhul getting owned.
OK. In addition, I'll give them the ai_special=guardian, to avoid them moving, and to compensate for this I'll raise the Elves' gold a bit. Fine?
Evander wrote:but how did it get there?
Don't forget that a unanswered question may allow a user to create a new campaigns. :wink: That said, the most plausible reason to me is that he simply found it by chance. Flying around, he found that artifact, carried it in his lair, and there the Sceptre's power corrupted him.
Evander wrote:the only way to get it right is by trial and error, really.
here I think you should try to envision how player and player recalls will progress. by the time a player reaches finale he will have a lot of 3lvl units, and it is basically a matter of chopping through initial wave of drakes to the boss
drakes could use some "second wind" like getting some small amount of gold after some turns.
although humans on finale are getting owned easily.
Yes, having a second wave of Drakes may be a good idea. I'll try it. :)
Current maintainer of these add-ons, all on 1.16:
The Sojournings of Grog, Children of Dragons, A Rough Life, Wesnoth Lua Pack, The White Troll (co-author)
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Evander
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Re: The Sojournings of Grog (3.0 on its way)

Post by Evander »

Elvish_Hunter wrote:Not because he was bad, but because after defeating Yechnagoth he became a sort of living legend. This is also the explanation behind his inspire ability.
Uh. I meant that he appears to be somewhat dumber than he was in UtBS :D
IMHO, it will be a sort of tomato surprise. Once that the player will know this, he/she will play in a different manner.
so what? :) It will still be a combo breaker, besides is this possible to make it random (like either he spawns on location A or B?)
but maybe a "second wave" will be better idea anyway.
OK. In addition, I'll give them the ai_special=guardian, to avoid them moving, and to compensate for this I'll raise the Elves' gold a bit. Fine?
I think it will do :)
Don't forget that a unanswered question may allow a user to create a new campaigns. :wink: That said, the most plausible reason to me is that he simply found it by chance. Flying around, he found that artifact, carried it in his lair, and there the Sceptre's power corrupted him.
You will have to explain that to the players then. What about making some drake campaign where they find that sceptre somewhere? :mrgreen:
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Re: The Sojournings of Grog (3.0 on its way)

Post by Elvish_Hunter »

Evander wrote:Uh. I meant that he appears to be somewhat dumber than he was in UtBS :D
Because of the way he speaks? If yes, I noticed that the Trolls' speaking style is quite inconstant in mainline. At least, we tried to give him a consistens kind of dialogue.
Evander wrote:but maybe a "second wave" will be better idea anyway.
I'll do, although currently I didn't have time to test it. :(
Evander wrote:Quote:
OK. In addition, I'll give them the ai_special=guardian, to avoid them moving, and to compensate for this I'll raise the Elves' gold a bit. Fine?

I think it will do :)
Perfect.
Evander wrote:You will have to explain that to the players then. What about making some drake campaign where they find that sceptre somewhere? :mrgreen:
I'll add that explanation. If someone wants to make that campaign about the sceptre (that may be changed to the Sceptre of Life, or to some other artifact, should The Dark Hordes enter back in mainline), be my guest. 8)
Current maintainer of these add-ons, all on 1.16:
The Sojournings of Grog, Children of Dragons, A Rough Life, Wesnoth Lua Pack, The White Troll (co-author)
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Evander
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Re: The Sojournings of Grog (3.0 on its way)

Post by Evander »

Elvish_Hunter wrote:
Evander wrote:Uh. I meant that he appears to be somewhat dumber than he was in UtBS :D
Because of the way he speaks? If yes, I noticed that the Trolls' speaking style is quite inconstant in mainline. At least, we tried to give him a consistens kind of dialogue.
huh yes - but - that was during different time periods :)
mayhaps in the future, few trolls could get a little bit smarter... you know, natural selection or something like that :lol2:
Evander wrote:You will have to explain that to the players then. What about making some drake campaign where they find that sceptre somewhere? :mrgreen:
I'll add that explanation. If someone wants to make that campaign about the sceptre (that may be changed to the Sceptre of Life, or to some other artifact, should The Dark Hordes enter back in mainline), be my guest. 8)
Damn, an attempt to dare you into making another campaign failed :evil:
Well then, if it is so marginal item, perhaps you can ignore it...
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Re: The Sojournings of Grog (3.0 on its way)

Post by Elvish_Hunter »

Version 2.10.19 is on the 1.9/1.10 add-ons server.
Main changes, this time, are several suggestions that I received in the feedback thread and that I implemented. Unfortunately, I didn't implement all of them, due to lack of time.
For example, Grog cannot longer recruit ot recall in A3, the Arcanister in B1 does not longer kill the other Dwarves, the Sea Serpent in B6 has a new portrait made by Tissia, and a bug that allowed Ormron to speak from the grave (!) in End of a Chapter is fixed.
Please report everything that you find, as usual. :)
Current maintainer of these add-ons, all on 1.16:
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Daravel
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Re: The Sojournings of Grog (3.0 on its way)

Post by Daravel »

Evander wrote: mayhaps in the future, few trolls could get a little bit smarter... you know, natural selection or something like that :lol2:
If I recall, when E_H and I discussed it, it was decided that my original version of Grog was too smart (although I can't vouch for the consistency of the dialogue as I wrote it over several months).

E_H: I have finally had chance to look at the text file you sent me. It is from last July; has much changed sinced then or are there new scenarios that need to re-done?
If I remember, the last scenario is the only one I never touched (when I played through the campaign), then you updated with new scenarios/re-designs and I began playing again. Is this just those scenarios that were new + the final one?
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Re: The Sojournings of Grog (3.0 on its way)

Post by Elvish_Hunter »

Daravel wrote:E_H: I have finally had chance to look at the text file you sent me. It is from last July; has much changed sinced then or are there new scenarios that need to re-done?
Welcome back! :wink: The dialogues haven't changed much, as the campaign mainly got bugfixes and balancing (and I worked on mainline as well). You can use the file that I sent you without problems.
Daravel wrote:If I remember, the last scenario is the only one I never touched (when I played through the campaign), then you updated with new scenarios/re-designs and I began playing again. Is this just those scenarios that were new + the final one?
Not exactly: you stopped playing on B4 (Defense), so you had to finish B5, B6, the C part and B7. Everything that needs to be reviewed is in that file.
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Daravel
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Re: The Sojournings of Grog (3.0 on its way)

Post by Daravel »

I've somehow decided that the best approach is to replay the whole campaign. Picking up on a few little things as I go. I'm going to try and bulldoze through and finish it tonight then we can consider the dialogue finished (barring any mistakes).

Edit:
Managed to make it to the end of Siege Perilous (hampered because I was having a lot of fun trying to kill all the Undead). I have numerous revisions for each scenario.

Did you re-write a fair amount of the dialouge? Scenes such as when the first encounter the Un-dead and other smaller sections are different, and I am afraid to say, I have proposed revisions for those sections.

Also, I recall that a while back (probably around a year now) you and Eros were discussing new names for the campaign, should we re-visit this? I was also thinking about the scenario names as some of them are pretty uninteresting (Defence) or don't really make sense (Siege perilous - should be Perilous siege, if anything).

I'm also worried about the consistency of each of the races speech. I fear that my 'rules' for how races speak changes, especially after a long time between working on it. Is it possible to pull all of one characters dialogue out of the file (in a relatively easy manner)? Would be nice to get each of the main characters into one list so I can compare and revise that way. It would really add to the characterisation of the campaign and is probably the one major task that prevents the dialogue from being 'finished'.

It's all looking really good by the way. Is there still a plan to do a Dwarf version?
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Re: The Sojournings of Grog (3.0 on its way)

Post by Elvish_Hunter »

Daravel wrote:Did you re-write a fair amount of the dialouge? Scenes such as when the first encounter the Un-dead and other smaller sections are different, and I am afraid to say, I have proposed revisions for those sections.
No, dialogues are pretty much the same (apart for some needed adaption when I switched the Bandits with the Khalifas). You are free to revise them as you like.
Daravel wrote:Also, I recall that a while back (probably around a year now) you and Eros were discussing new names for the campaign, should we re-visit this? I was also thinking about the scenario names as some of them are pretty uninteresting (Defence) or don't really make sense (Siege perilous - should be Perilous siege, if anything).
Yes, we discussed it; but the campaign is known with this name from a lot of series (1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9 and 1.0), and I somewhat fear that changing name may be confusing. About the scenario names: if you have any interesting suggestion, by all means propose it! But this is the note that Eros left me in Siege Perilous:

Code: Select all

    #In Arthurian times the siege perilous was were knights were
    #want to sit prior to going in search of the holy grail
    #Siege in OE meant throne
    #In the golden days of Wesnoth it was where knights were want to sit prior
    #to searching for the Sceptre of Fire
Daravel wrote:Is it possible to pull all of one characters dialogue out of the file (in a relatively easy manner)? Would be nice to get each of the main characters into one list so I can compare and revise that way. It would really add to the characterisation of the campaign and is probably the one major task that prevents the dialogue from being 'finished'.
I'm not sure that it'll be so easy. I thought of making a small script to extract them, but then I'll have to worry about the bugs of that script. The most foolproof way will be extracting the strings by hand; but as you know, nothing can be foolproof... :mrgreen:
Daravel wrote:It's all looking really good by the way. Is there still a plan to do a Dwarf version?
No, Invasion from the Unknown can be considered as the Dwarf branch. You may ask, "but we have two so different futures depending on which ally Kaleh chosen?". Yes, and somewhere I read that it's known as "butterfly effect". :wink:
Current maintainer of these add-ons, all on 1.16:
The Sojournings of Grog, Children of Dragons, A Rough Life, Wesnoth Lua Pack, The White Troll (co-author)
Daravel
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Re: The Sojournings of Grog (3.0 on its way)

Post by Daravel »

Just completed Defence. Should have the campaign completed this weekend (despite this being my 3rd or 4th play through, I've never actually completed the campaign - I started the last scenario once). This is fast work for me, I'm surprised I've got so much done. Looks like a lot dialogue for the last few scenarios though, 8 word pages :(

As per the consistency of race dialogue. That will be a task for another time I think. I will also have a go at re-naming some scenarios, or at least, offering suggestions.

Edit: I reckon I may as well upload what I have. The file contains all my revisions from the prologue in part 1 until the end of Defence in part 2. I named the scenarios by number, starting from 1 again in part 2. I hope you can follow them ok. I have also used a few different styles of presenting the changes, because I got lazy. I have either:
- Written out the original sentence/section and then put "to" followed by the revised text.
- Written out the first few words or sentence of a whole section, then followed it with a revision for the entire section
- I wrote the speakers name for some dialogue and not others

Basically, You'll need to open the cfg and search for the relevent message event then copy in the new dialogue. I hope that works ok for you. Note, some revisions are simply chaning a . to a , or something similar - just be aware :)

Again I apologise for the complete lack of format, I can re-format it if it is easier for you.
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Daravel
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Re: The Sojournings of Grog (3.0 on its way)

Post by Daravel »

Double post apologies, but I want to make sure you see this:

Major bug in the Jaash scenario when he's going across the desert: There are no Mermen! Playing on easy. I get to the other side of the map pretty quickly (10-11 turns - about 2 after the first wave of Drakes appear). There are no Mermen, I waited for all of the turns and in the end I had to debug to skip the scenario.

Edit: Esanoo isn't in the boat scenario with all the Mermen. I wonder though, when I first started the campaign I wasn't really trying and loads of my Mermen got killed. I'd have to check the replay but is it possible Esanoo died then and as such isn't spawned in the subsequent scenarios? However, he is back in the final scenario!

Edit 2: In the final scenario the spawning of the units seems wrong. All of Grogs followers (Elyssa, bubble, Ormron, Krunk, Zurg/Jaash, I-gruk and Hazdrubal) all spawned on the Quenoth's castle, leaving Grog alone on his. Of course, either Zurg or Jaash should spawn with Kaleh.
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Re: The Sojournings of Grog (3.0 on its way)

Post by Elvish_Hunter »

Daravel wrote:Again I apologise for the complete lack of format, I can re-format it if it is easier for you.
That's not necessary, as long as you put a note when text needs some special formatting. :)
Daravel wrote:Major bug in the Jaash scenario when he's going across the desert: There are no Mermen! Playing on easy. I get to the other side of the map pretty quickly (10-11 turns - about 2 after the first wave of Drakes appear). There are no Mermen, I waited for all of the turns and in the end I had to debug to skip the scenario.

Edit: Esanoo isn't in the boat scenario with all the Mermen. I wonder though, when I first started the campaign I wasn't really trying and loads of my Mermen got killed. I'd have to check the replay but is it possible Esanoo died then and as such isn't spawned in the subsequent scenarios? However, he is back in the final scenario!

Edit 2: In the final scenario the spawning of the units seems wrong. All of Grogs followers (Elyssa, bubble, Ormron, Krunk, Zurg/Jaash, I-gruk and Hazdrubal) all spawned on the Quenoth's castle, leaving Grog alone on his. Of course, either Zurg or Jaash should spawn with Kaleh.
Thank you for the report, I'll have to investigate this, as when I tested everything worked fine. Do you have any useful savegame, by the way? This will really be useful.
Current maintainer of these add-ons, all on 1.16:
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Daravel
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Re: The Sojournings of Grog (3.0 on its way)

Post by Daravel »

Elvish_Hunter wrote:
Daravel wrote:Again I apologise for the complete lack of format, I can re-format it if it is easier for you.
That's not necessary, as long as you put a note when text needs some special formatting. :)
If its in the text file then I made a change - I deleted everything that I didn't change (except in the last few scenarios because I forgot). I've used italics on a few words, aside from that, there isn't really any special formatting.

I'll upload some replays/save games later.

Edit: I think I found the problem. Esanoo is in my recall list for Grog in the final scenario. Might there be a point where he is added as a recall for Grog when he isn't meant to be?

Edit2:
Whew! That's 20 pages of dialogue changes for you! :D Enjoy!
- I've made notes at various points - mainly to do with little things.
- In one of the dialogues with Ormron where he is talking about the history of his city (must be the scenario after the two fighting Saurian armies), he mentions the Dwarves. Now, talks about them (the humans) giving the Dwarves a load of resources, for which the Dwarves assist them later. But, with no discussion of their fate, he later talks about the Dwarves being no more and the dragon living there. I think we should add something to explain that the dragon wiped them out.
- In a similar vein, the sceptre of fire seems to be really randomly placed in the campaign. One of the human elders mentions a red gem, then it isn't brought up again until the epilogue. Was it meant to play a greater part in the campaign?
- I played the campaign on easy, but I found it too easy. When it got to the final scenario I had about 10 Troll Warriors and various other level 3's in Grogs recall list. I daresay I could have won that scenario with just Grog and his army (or at least, with the other allies as the AI). I'll provide detailled feedback about each scenario soon.

So, that concludes the re-write of the dialogue (except a few little things which I'll detail below). I hope you're satisfied with my work, that I have actually improved the campaign and that the players feel that it is realistic and engaging.

What's left to do:
- The death dialogues need some work. I think I changed most of them, but there are a few left to do. It's mostly the ones that are "I die." or something else that is quite wooden. Would you be able to harvest all the death dialogues?
- Racial dialogue consistency - This is a fairly big task and not one I am up for tackling yet. As I said before, I need all the dialogue in one file for each character so I can standardise their style of speech across the whole campaign (will also help to develop their character, their slang, humour and so on).
- I want to tackle the scenario names as well

Now I just have to find myself a new project. I have a well formed idea for a campaign but no time to learn WML, want to collaborate? :D

Edit 3:
I've just had a look back through the last pages of the thread and noticed that you wanted a re-written description for both the gold mage and white troll, do you still want these?
I also discovered why you thought I had only got up to Defence on my re-write when I thought I got further. Turns out I actually completed up to 'flying over the sands' but never posted it. Looking through my changes I've seen a few lines that I think are better than the ones I've put into the file above; I'll take a look tommorow and copy over a few lines. I'll also check all my old notes and see if there is anything I've missed. I just noticed that the first section of my file was written in a more note form for myself; some if it may be really unclear, sorry!
Oh and save game files for the Esanoo/Mermen bug will come tommorow.
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Re: The Sojournings of Grog (3.0 on its way)

Post by Elvish_Hunter »

Daravel wrote:Edit: I think I found the problem. Esanoo is in my recall list for Grog in the final scenario. Might there be a point where he is added as a recall for Grog when he isn't meant to be?
Daravel wrote:Oh and save game files for the Esanoo/Mermen bug will come tommorow.
I think that the savegames may not be needed anymore :) Your precise report really restricted the point where such error happened, and I suspect that it was a duplicated [endlevel] in A0. So, I uploaded the 2.10.20 version, and for good measure I added also a check in C1.
I also added a side of worms in B3, and in B7 the Dragon, after being killed, resurrects as Skeletal Dragon and must be killed again. Do you mind testing these changes and stating your opinion?
Daravel wrote:- In a similar vein, the sceptre of fire seems to be really randomly placed in the campaign. One of the human elders mentions a red gem, then it isn't brought up again until the epilogue. Was it meant to play a greater part in the campaign?
Really, the Sceptre of Fire can be replaced with the Sceptre of Life from the omonymous campaign. I planned this as a solution, in case that The Dark Hordes enters again in mainline.
Daravel wrote:- I played the campaign on easy, but I found it too easy. When it got to the final scenario I had about 10 Troll Warriors and various other level 3's in Grogs recall list. I daresay I could have won that scenario with just Grog and his army (or at least, with the other allies as the AI). I'll provide detailled feedback about each scenario soon.
Unlike some other UMC authors, I balanced it on Hard and made the other levels easier. I faced some campaigns, in past, that were tested only on Easy, and on Hard were unplayable.
Daravel wrote:- The death dialogues need some work. I think I changed most of them, but there are a few left to do. It's mostly the ones that are "I die." or something else that is quite wooden. Would you be able to harvest all the death dialogues?
The file tsog-deaths contains all of them.
Daravel wrote:Now I just have to find myself a new project. I have a well formed idea for a campaign but no time to learn WML, want to collaborate? :D
It depends. I don't know how much time I'll be able to spare (don't forget that I have four add-ons and the Developer and Translator titles!), and there are some differences between a five scenarios campaign and a 25 scenarios campaign... Please send me the details via PM, and I'll take a decision. :)
However, bear in mind that WML is not that hard to learn, and you are welcome to ask your questions in the WML Workshop.
Daravel wrote:I've just had a look back through the last pages of the thread and noticed that you wanted a re-written description for both the gold mage and white troll, do you still want these?
Yes, why not? :wink:
Current maintainer of these add-ons, all on 1.16:
The Sojournings of Grog, Children of Dragons, A Rough Life, Wesnoth Lua Pack, The White Troll (co-author)
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