The Altaz Mariners (2p pirate RPG) now with French translation!

[Boldek]

oh right, I was treating it like a campaign, I guess mp's are a lot more sensitive to me abusing save and reload

[csarmi]

i couldn't recruit at all at Morteau. I received no units to either side and there was no keep to recruit from. Looks extremely hard, if not undoable likie that.

[jb]

i couldn't recruit at all at Morteau. I received no units to either side and there was no keep to recruit from. Looks extremely hard, if not undoable likie that.

It's intentional. Though maybe it is still a bit hard. Obviously, level-up your leaders and give them some upgrades will help.

Spoiler:

If you hire the orc Big Horn, he will be auto-recalled for most battles.

[csarmi]

Never met that guy. I won that scenario wiuth the Necro side (it seems to be impossible to win it with the zombie side). I had a lot of luck however + AI bugged behaviour helped. I kept my thug next to the zombie keep, in a village and my poacher declared war. For some reason the zombie captain recruited only one unit per turn for a while.

[csarmi]

A small bug: if you finish your move with your vessel in deep water, you need to press end turn. It's alright if there is shallow water around you too, but if only deep water? (the vessel has 2mp cost on deep water)

Everytime I do a scenario, the whole map disappears in shroud. Now I would understand fog, but why shroud?

[Bob_The_Mighty]

Never met that guy.

Did you discover the island of Slavenia? Failing that, did you encounter any orcish ships?

I won that scenario wiuth the Necro side (it seems to be impossible to win it with the zombie side). I had a lot of luck however + AI bugged behaviour helped. I kept my thug next to the zombie keep, in a village and my poacher declared war. For some reason the zombie captain recruited only one unit per turn for a while.

Thanks for flagging this up. I will look into it.

A small bug: if you finish your move with your vessel in deep water, you need to press end turn. It's alright if there is shallow water around you too, but if only deep water? (the vessel has 2mp cost on deep water)

Likewise, but it's not a big problem since player 2 gains control of the ship when you hit the end turn button. The turn limit won't increase unless player 2 also ends in the same deep water situation.

Everytime I do a scenario, the whole map disappears in shroud. Now I would understand fog, but why shroud?

We use shroud because there are lots of places on the world map that shouldn't be seen through the fog. I hoped it would add to the sense of exploration as it forces players to navigate with only the help of rough landmarks to go by.

[Jacos]

My brother and I have been playing this campaign and have encountered a problem. Once our pieces are reaching level 3, their movement is totally screwed up. This does not apply to our leaders - more so to the pieces we've gotten off of the slave ships. For example - we have a master-at-arms that can only move 3 spaces - despite saying 7/7 in his stats. Also an elf hero (level 3 as well) that can only move 1 space - says 5/5. Also, oddly, once he is off our boat (in a pirate or royals attack) he cannot get back on, even to move the 1 space. Any suggestions? With all the xp required to level these guys - it is really throwing the game off to not be able to use them once leveled up. Is this normal??? Thanks!

[Bob_The_Mighty]

Hi Jacos, thanks for reporting this bug. I've looked into it and it seems that when a slave levels its movement costs revert to when it was trapped in the cage, i.e. it cannot move on flat or castle terrain. This will be fixed in the new release, but short of hacking your save there's nothing you can do about it in your current game. Sorry about that.

[Bob_The_Mighty]

jb and I have done a ton of work on The Altaz Mariners since the last release. We've got more to do but I wanted to make it known that the campaign was still alive.

I thought it might be useful for us and interesting for those played it to outline what direction it is taking. Here's several of the main chunks:

1. Inventory System
The inventory will be less a menu of super weapons, more a list of items that can be used to solve puzzles and complete quests. This gives some scenarios the feel of a 'point & click' adventure game.
Status: fully working, but more puzzles needed

2. Attack Upgrade System
We've gone for a 'learning' system that allows a leaders' attacks to improve the more they are used in combat. Upon advance, the leaders gain a special attack - but the damage of the attacks do not improve unless they are used offensively. This system is clutter-free and lets players develop their character over time in a novel way.
Status: implemented

4. Finish Act 3
In terms of story, the next release will take the player up to the end of the third act. This will comprise 3/4 of the finished story.
Status: halfway there

5. Translations
Status: looking into it

6. Convert to 1.9
Status: the conversion is done, still ironing bugs

7. Single player mode
Eventually The Altaz Mariners will be playable as both a multiplayer and single player campaign
Status: looking into it

7. Add randomised islands and more random encounters
Status: there's around a dozen unreleases scenarios, but more are always being added

[artisticdude]

Awesome, looking forward to it! The 'point & click' style inventory system in particular sounds really interesting.

If/when you do a single-player mode, would there be any visible differences between the systems used in multiplayer mode and single-player? Or have you not gotten far enough in the single-player mode planning to be able to say? I know that some WML is not MP-safe and will cause OOS error (the 'select' event, for example), so I'm wondering if the removal of the MP-safe WML restrictions would change the way any of the features are implemented. Specifically, I can think of storing/restoring shroud data and using the [select] event to trigger NPC dialogues rather than using the right-click menu.

[Bob_The_Mighty]

The puzzles and adventure game elements are tricky to insert in wesnoth, but I think they vary the gameplay in a nice way. I'm always open to suggestions.

As for single player mode, I've already done it - but it is a pretty much a duplicate of the mp campaign. The player simply controls two sides. Making a fork which merged the sides or changed the way the dialogue works would involve too much extra work at this stage (it's a mammoth project as it is). Dialogue options are triggered by moving next to an NPC, which is fine I reckon.

The main benefit of playing The Altaz Mariners as a single player campaign is avoiding the horrible local player save bug which lots of people have fallen foul of.

[Araja]

Incredible adventure, my friend and I had a lot of fun with this. World maps are such a fun way of running a campaign, and I liked the gameplay variety in the scenarios. It did feel as if every scenario played differently, with the obvious exception of the ports. Praise has to go to the royal palace because stealth is so unusual in Wesnoth. Finally, I'll have to remark on the unusually good dialogue, which added alot of personality to the characters. I remember being particularly impressed by the two brothers, as well as Sayer and Steven. Largo was a bit overdramatic in places, but it always seemed in-character and never enough to be off-putting.

The only negative thing I could say was that the statues seemed slightly biased in favour of Largo. Two of the three statues we found offered one melee upgrade, and something remarkably unhelpful. Assuming the melee upgrades are given to the dedicated melee fighter, Largo had an 11-5 drain attack, while Hugo was left with slightly better sand movement and +30% resistance to cold, a damage type encountered once in the whole campaign, and optionally at that. (3-3 attacks from random ghosts excluded)

Minor gripes aside, I am once again in awe of your talent.

[Bob_The_Mighty]

Thanks for the kind words, Araja. I assume you played version 1.0 on Wesnoth 1.8? We've been working hard on a big update for 1.10 which adds a bunch of islands and a whole extra chapter of the story.

I'm glad you appreciated the gameplay and the dialogue. Variety of tactics and depth of story were two of the main things we were aiming for. In the next release we are hoping to give the campaign more replayability with extra random encounters, story forks and other randomised bits.

As for the statues, we have decided to remove them - your remarks were valid, we could never quite make our minds up how to balance them. In any case, they have been replaced by a dynamic 'evolution' sort of upgrade system whereby players' stats improve directly as a result of how they use their leader. They'll both have a different assortment of attacks which increase in damage the more they are used. It's possible, for instance, for Hugo the poacher to become a skilled melee fighter if the player puts in enough attacks with the blade.

By the way, did you encounter any bugs? Were any features or dialogue confusing? How difficult did you find the battles?

[BLAST]

In the Temple of Helena (or what ever that place where the philosophers hang out is) I have experienced the game crashing when I talk to certain people as the first character. If I remember it right, it is the second and third guys on the bottom and the first guy on the top. If the second guy talks to them, the game does not crash.

[Bob_The_Mighty]

Hi blast. I'll look into that. Were you playing the 1.0 version of the campaign on Wesnoth 1.8? Also, were you playing both sides in local player mode, or was it a multiplayer game? Did the crash occur when a dialogue option was selected? Thanks for any help you can give to track down the bug.