The Hidden Kingdom

[aaron_grahn]

In the last couple of days or so, I uploaded a work in progress campaign called The Hidden Kingdom to the add-on server, and today I uploaded the latest revision 0.4.1. I'm posting here for feedback from anyone who's looked at it, especially on playability, story (such of it as has been revealed), dialogue, plausibility, and generally how do you like it so far? I'm sure that the inspiration of Gondolin will be noticed, but this story is set in the Wesnothian history some time after the Eastern Invasion. It's a tragic story, so it's not intended that the campaign be winnable in any "and they all lived happily ever after to the end of their days" sense, though the scenarios so far definitely can be won.

I've done a little custom Lua AI scripting (that was fun, programming in a language I'd never used before and for which I had essentially no documentation--but now I've downloaded the Lua reference manual so hopefully all will be well) (why Lua, by the way? I'd never heard of it before Wesnoth), developed some units, and a rather cool WML macro for prison doors that hasn't yet figured in the campaign -- and may never figure, though I have ideas.

I can't do artwork, so I'm reusing unit art from mainline and official campaigns, but there are at least a couple of generic units that really want their own art, plus units for specific characters, such as the King of Elves and the various great lords for which it could be called mandatory. Contributions would be welcome, or maybe suitable art already exists somewhere?

[aaron_grahn]

Apologies to everyone whose wesnoth coughed on my AI code! That'll teach me a lesson!

0.4.2 on the add-on server shouldn't have that problem.

[WanderingHero]

Its an interesting idea, but the huggeee empty map and the long periods of nothing (even if they make sense) don't really work well from a gameplay standpoint. Also clearing the cellar of rats was rather tedious.

[Kanzil]

Binak isn't following Cand, which is very frustrating, and makes the level impossible, also, the objectives are very vague-what does "defend the high pass" mean?

[WanderingHero]

Once you move The elf lord to the to castle you should see the wolf rider. Unless something has gone wrong....

And yeah. that objective is basically meaingless...

[aaron_grahn]

Thanks for the feedback! I think that when the wolf rider is injured, he'll sometimes stop in a village to heal, but he should keep following when he's better, and he's faster than an elf lord, so he should catch up before you reach the Citadel. But maybe I should stop him wanting to heal all the same? I've thought of splitting up the map so each scenario only has a reasonable subset of it (but if I do that it will be a last step when the campaign is finished--and what I think is a reasonable subset may not actually be reasonable. I don't want map boundaries ever to be a tactical fact). I'm working on another scenario, and when that posts, I'll have it so you can actually lose scenarios 1 and 2 by moving your units away from the opening to the pass: That involved some Lua coding, because [filter_vision] doesn't yet seem to work for unoccupied hexes in Wesnoth 1.10. In fact, I'm doing a lot of Lua now that I've sort of gotten the hang of it (I still wish that it were Scheme or possibly ML or Haskell...).

Objectives are indeed somewhat vague. You're sitting there, looking at a bunch of rock and ice, and if anything bad comes over, you want to stop it and not get killed in the process. I'm going to keep objectives vague, and sometimes perhaps borderline misleading, just like they are in real life .

You don't have to kill all the rats if you don't want to. You just have to make sure the caravan gets safely to the storeroom, and that you've moved a unit to each hex in the storeroom before that happens. But maybe I should put fewer rats anyway? Just one or two? Scenario 1 is indeed pretty boring, as garrison duty on the High Pass would be in real life. I have something of a weakness for realism over gameplay. Which is odd, considering it's a fantasy game.

What do y'all think about putting various units along the route from the High Pass to the Citadel, units that are doing peaceful things? Wagons moving from one village to another, boats travelling on rivers, things like that, all AI controlled, to give the impression of travelling through a prosperous and peaceful kingdom? One problem I can think of with that idea is, they would eat up processor cycles while not having much to do with the game.

Thanks again for playing my very incomplete campaign!

// Aaron Grahn
Deutsch macht Spaß!

[WanderingHero]

Well for the first its a particlar issue as "clean out the storeroom" would seem to imply your supposed to kill all the rats in the cellar.

I guess I get the realism over gameplay thing, but I've never been a fan of it, especially in something like Wesnoth. The closest I like is the Alfred Hitchcook esque Life Without The Boring Bits

[aaron_grahn]

The rats aren't in fact all that probable, so I may scrap them. Cleaning out a storeroom shouldn't be dangerous. Maybe I'll come up with a way that the unit can sprain his ankle while cleaning, to make things a bit more exciting, and in that case you need send someone with an ice pack to treat him. Scenario 1 is going to be pretty boring no matter what I do with it. From the point of view of the story, I want to make it clear that the Hidden Kingdom is a safe and peaceful place. For now.

I do agree with the criticism in scenario 2 that you spend a lot of time walking across empty land. The wolves should relieve the boredom a tad (in fact if you're not careful they can kill someone), but there just isn't anything dangerous to an Elf Lord on that journey: It's implied in scenario 1 that there is some lawlessness in the Hidden Kingdom, but none so severe that an Elf Lord might be set upon and robbed. Perhaps I should just fast-forward through the journey to the Citadel after the wolves are taken care of.

// Aaron Grahn
Deutsch macht Spaß!

[jdmp]

I'm really enjoying the campaign so far, but I'm stuck on 'The Scouts". I defeated the scouts, but nothing happens after that. I've clicked forward to move 40, but still nothing happens.

[moony]

i've got the same problem. two orcs were killed, after the second a text appeared. the same text by killing two wild wolves. but i've an error signal, in the left corner says a text " <Invalid WML found> [store_variable] not supported ". Has this sth to do with it?

[stillcen]

i found the same issue as moony and jdmp


stillcen

[Turuk]

i found the same issue as moony and jdmp


stillcen

There's currently no scenario after that one, and the author had not set up for the scenario to end based on the scenario file. It looks as if he made comments for what he wanted it to do... but that's about it.