The Blind Sentinel - [Feedback and development topic]

[Njord]

I enjoyed playing as far as I got but looks like I'm never getting past The Citadel. Just too many knights all over the place and I can't get through. Came fairly close one time in the north but was inevitably overwhelmed.

[WhiteWolf]

Hi,
I'll see to the balance of that map then. Until then, you may jump through that map, but under no condition us :n! You will seriously disturb the variables causing the game to crash, and making future maps impossible (if you read back a couple of posts, you can see that this has happenned before).
If you need to jump through a map, do it by f.e. giving infinite movement points to a unit, and move him to the objectives, but never use :n or :cl!

Spoiler:

Explanation: Important variables and storings are performed in the moveto event that brings victory about, and if you just simply jump through with :n, only the victory event triggers, which doesn't do anything, and variable operations fail.

Best regards,
WhiteWolf

[Krolan]

The Ultimate Bug-Report for The Blind Sentinel
by yours truly Krolan, the Twisted.

Wesnoth Version: 1.12
Operating System: Windows XP
Playthrough Difficulty: Normal (Your enemies can be stopped)
Bug-Search-Approach: Genuine Playing Experience (GPE)

See Spoilers for Screen-Shots related to the points discussed.

Mission 1: Defending the Covoy

No Bugs were found or present.

Mission 2: The Truth is more horrible than it seems

1. Error message which I guess is related to the True Battle-Ship Battles mechanic not being implemented yet.

Spoiler:

2. The Enemy leader appears to be invisible (see above Spoiler). Sprite in description as well as Status table is present though. He also becomes visible when reloading a Turn (like with "Back to Turn 2"), reloading from Start doesn't work though.

Spoiler:

2.1 Skeletons, too, appear to have Probems showing themselves. Maybe they're shy. In their case there's no Sprite in Description. Reloading doesn't help with making them appear. Same Bug appears in The Desolation of Karlag.

Spoiler:

3. All Mages have broken Legs, they can be issued a command to move, they'll twitch for a moment, face the direction they'd be going and remain where they are. Their names also all start with "Foot Soldier" for some reason (Mission 3 explains the Name, not the broken Legs though). I also concluded that I wasn't supposed to be able to recruit them at all, seeing how I can't recruit them in Mission 3 and after.

Spoiler:

Mission 3: Allies and Foes

1. The following might be a (strange) design-decision, otherwise it is a Bug. Loyal Units seem unable to be promoted. - After playing Mission 4 I concluded that this is only the case with Loyalists from Mission 1, which is a shame since I wanted my Monk to also have Leadership, however, other Loyalists have no issues with that. Loyalists from Mission 15 also are unpromotable.

Spoiler:

Extra Mention:
When I first played around with the Promotion Mechanic I promoted Wargen to Banner Carrier and got the WML-Failure message, and how this format will be ditched in 1.12. I'm playing on 1.12 and the Error was not reproducable after reloading Turn 1 or through restarting (So the Leadership works fine, even if (Level 4) on Level-2-Units and such). Here Probably the Developement Group of Wesnoth itself failed and it has no lasting effect, that''s why this is just an Extra Mention.

Spoiler:

Mission 4: To the End of the known World

No bugs were found or present.

Mission 5: Amid the Ruins

1. Very Minor Bug, the allies Leader "Banner Carrier" Sandor is supposed to have leadership (lvl2), but he doesn't seem to have it.

Spoiler:

Mission 6: The Mountain Pass

1. Lady Lovissa has broken legs resembling the mages from Mission 2. I can select her, issue her a command, she will twitch for a moment, face the direction she'd be goin' and remain where she is.

Spoiler:

1.1 It shall be noted that I can issue an attack command to Lovissa when an enemy is beside her, she ranged-attacks without animation or sound, but does do damage and earn Experience. Her Melee-Attack is animated.

Spoiler:

1.2 On Turn 4 Lovissa suddenly grows legs again, moves a way issued a turn before, and breaks her legs again. I come to the realization that she does follow walk commands always a turn later, BUT ONLY if the issued walk command would not take an adittional turn when it is to be executed, otherwise she remains, again, where she is, unmovable. She basically walks exclusively "bright spaces", and those a turn later. The same can probably be assumed about the mages from Mission 2.

Spoiler:

1.3 Just found out, that if I issue her a bright-space walk command, then save and reload, that she then moves to the issued location. This kinda allows her to be used like any other unit, move-to-enemy-save/load-attack-enemy. Klunkily so.

1.4 As to not Mention it in the next missions, the Issue with Lovissa sticks throughout her appearance, leading to me sending her to a corner as to not having to put up with the save/load crap.

2. Am I supposed to be notified of any unit that drowns under thin ice, regardless of me not knowing where they were or not even seeing them?

Spoiler:

Mission 7: Welcome to the North

No bugs were found or present.

Wondering: Is this Level supposed to be insultingly easy? I killed about 6 units, 2 of which were Northeners, and the keep was effectively empty, the Leader then came from the northern city with half hitpoints, probably beat up by the Nature faction.

Spoiler:

Mission 8: The Dessert of Death

No bugs were found or present.

Suggestion: Notify the player that he might wanna end this scenario with some carry over Gold. Mission 9 is playable with 0 Starting Gold, but it still should be a decision the player makes. Otherwise he might spend all Gold on promoting Units.

Mission 9: The Sack of Prostum

No bugs were found or present.

Note: Very exploitable if the player makes the effort of capturing alot of cities and kill the leader only on the last turn.

Mission 10: On Northern Roads

No bugs were found or present.

Wondering: The leader starts with only 10 gold, doesn't make an effort of capturing cities, by turn 7 he manages to recruit only 1 unit.

Spoiler:

Suggestion: Increase the turn limit to 20 (bad-luck-tolerance) and give the Enemy Leader enough gold for one full keep of lvl2-units (lvl3 on harder difficulties) Otherwise this scenario seems completely pointless.

Mission 11: The Old Wall

No bugs were found or present.

Mission 12: Forest of Thelien

No bugs were found or present.

Mission 13: At the Gates of Barag Gor

No bugs were found or present.

Mission 14: The Citadel

Bug search was cancelled due to two reasons:

1. No matter what one did, even if standing perfectly still, one was attacked by Townfolk. Also, all Patrols, except the ones on the outer wall immediatly moved in direction of my two units. I had no patience to try and find out if I'm doing something wrong or if this is a bug due to...

2. As I feared, Loivissa now has a major movement role, and I don't want to put up with save/loading through the whole scenario while trying to figure out how to manuver the city, aside from my suspision of the Guards already targeting me from the start, due to her "Broken Legs". Sorry, mate, I pass on this one.

I debugged a Unit right next to the citadel, moved it there and continued.

Mission 15: The Blind Sentinel

1. Even as a prisoner Loivissa has Broken Legs.

Spoiler:

2. An imprisoned Northerner Women has Broken Legs too. Maybe you can draw some connection between this unit and Loivissa.

Spoiler:

3. I got another WML-Failure message when taking the antidote. It cured him, so I don't know if this is even bad or anything.

Spoiler:

Mission 16: The Nightbretheren

1. This might be an entirely different Bug alltogether, or maybe it is related to the omnipresent "Broken Legs"-issue. Loivissa remains a Prisoner after "The Blind Sentinel". I note that because of her broken legs, I gave both, the bow and sword, in the beginning of "The Blind Sentinel" to Vormund.

Spoiler:

2. I am now certain that the BrokenLegs-Bug originates from the base unit "Northern Women". All of them have Broken Legs, be it recruited or recalled. Not sure about the Mages of Mission 2, but I remember that they both were Women also.

Spoiler:

Mission 17: Detour

No Bugs were found or present.

Note: Damn, 4 enemies at once and only 20 turns. Well, that means the warning from "The Blind Sentinel" is validated. Good

Mission 18: The Bloody Brotherhood

No Bugs were found or present.

Wondering: NOW you give me early finish bonus? Willful exception, mistake or were the other scenarios with no EFB mistaken?

Spoiler:

Mission 19: The Point of the North

No Bugs were found or present.

Mission 20: The Northern Sea

No Bugs were found or present.

Wondering: How would this look like with the true ship-battle mechanic?

Spoiler:

Mission 21: Fleet at Prestog

1. WML Failure. I guess the Northerner Enemy Leader tried to summon a unit which isn't in his list? I get this same message each and every round of the Northerner Leader.

Spoiler:

Mission 22: The Fleet ot Tirigatz

1. Is Dawn on turn 6 supposed to heal all my units to full hit-points? Very useful, since my Flagshit and Battleships were pretty beat up (Red HitPoints) from the previous scenarios, I wonder though if this is intentional.

Spoiler:

Mission 23: Return to Wesnoth

1. While it is reassuring for me to know that I counted right, I think you didn't mean to include the Number of the Scenario into it's title ^^

Spoiler:

2. The Mission Objective expects from me to Kill Seargent Tyrin, in reality it expects both leaders to die.

Spoiler:

Mission 24: The Face of the Evil

No Bugs were found or present.

Mission 25: The Ford of Elensefar

1. Princesses are women. As such Lady Alyra has Broken Legs, too. It seems that all units under the control of the player that are female have problems following orders. I'm certain now that all female characters have broken legs. Not once was this present with a dude and not a single gal can move.

Spoiler:

2. The Objective states "Reach Banner Carrier Sandor". Raching him with Lord Draghornos has no effect. The Objective is either "Kill both enemy leaders" or "Reach Sandor with Unit X" (Probably Vormund). Please be more specific about this.

Spoiler:

Mission 26: Enemy at the Gate

No Bugs were found or present.

Mission 27: Brotherly Love

No Bugs were found or present.

Mission 28:

Other than that this map is awesome, no Bugs were present or found.



This concludes my Bug Report on the Blind Sentinel. I hope you find something useful in it.

Final Notes, Suggestions and Thoughts:

Suggestion: Rename the difficulty to "easy"
Note: The Custom Music is awesome
Thought: Everything before Scenario 15 is waay too easy for "normal" difficulty, hence the suggestion. Everything after that is pretty enjoyably designed (Of course an experienced player will steamroll it anyway.)

I plan to revisit this campaign on harder difficulties, once those issues mentioned are cleared out.

Thank you for making this game!

Greetings,

Krolan, the Twisted

P.s.: This Bug-Report was also posted as PM to WhiteWolf

Edit: Btw... wasn't I supposed to get a score at the end? :/

[WhiteWolf]

Hi,
Thank you very much for this detailed report, I'll see to it immediately
As far as I got scanning through it; the "broken legs" a cause of the 'voices effect' definitely, the allow_undo tag is probably missing from a few exit hex event range, that is what interrupts the movement.
You are actually not supposed to get a rating. You see, the series weren't written in chronologycal order, and rating is a feature introduced only later, was not put in here yet.

Thanks again, glad you liked it though, repairs should come quickly.
WhiteWolf

[WhiteWolf]

Allrighty,
Uploaded 1.4.1
Release notes:

Spoiler:

All broken legs fixed. Really sorry for missing this, probably ruined the game's enjoyability a lot
Fixed missing ships, it was missing due to an earlier replacement.
Fixed blank skeletons. Since 1.12, they have an idle animation, and received a sub-folder, this is what caused their duplicate to be invisible.
Unfortunately, the promotion tree is still out of human logics. It was simply planned without enough consideration, if you read back a couple of posts, you'll understand it. And I haven't had the time yet to redesign the whole stuff.
Sandor received the leadership.
Thin ice is only notified now when your units drowns, otherwise it keeps silent. You also receive a warning now.
Gave more gold to enemies on map7.
A typo caused the enemy to have 10 gold on normal on map10. (I mean, lol).Fixed.
Your WML warning is just a warning, not an actual error on map15, the duration=level key is getting depricated, had to be rewritten to duration=scenario. Don't bother with it, you won't see it anymore now
Loivissa no longer remains 'prisoner'. I don't know why, but instead of returning the original unit, it was just deleted, and thus the prisoner remained. I don't know why, now it is fixed and tested.
Early finish bonus remains for a while, it's not that disturbing I think Long to explain why it is present only there, and not on any other maps.
That full heal bug remains a mistery, I found no such event that would cause a full heal at turn 6. But if it's useful, then it can stay I guess Will be investigated of course.
Fixed the confusing victory conditions on map 23 and 25
Other suggestions are under consideration.

I recommend an immediate upgrade, because of the broken legs syndrome...ugly one, really sorry for that. I knew what I was doing, but somehow skipped the female event while testing it.

Regards,
WhiteWolf

[Krolan]

Spoiler:

You definitely need to look at it from a different angle: Your Campaign is so good/interesting that those Bugs (especially the "Broken Legs") failed to steal the enjoyability. After all, I played it through, and 28 Scenarios is alot. Now though It is reasonable for me to try a harder difficulty

It's definetly good to see those Skeletons again. I have to admit though that they had a little charm. There generally should be some invisible enemies in Wesnoth called ??? (all variations/diffferent units) would also be called that, with ???-Hitpoints and ???-Attacks (No information about ranged or melee) with a damage of ??-?? at ??% probability (of course, in code, this all would be defined), for a special case. But that's me just dreaming ^^

Don't worry too much about it, a considerate player will concentrate on promoting some core-units (I had 2 Level-3 Tier-10 Ghosts and one Level-3 Tier-10 Elvish Lord. because they're easy to use for in-enemy-keep-recruiting and lvl-5 Leadership and also because they become Loyal at Tier-10. Best Combination Last scenario: My 2 Tier-10 Ghosts + Shadow Spirits (10 Gold)) It also would be a waste not to "loyalize" unloyal units and instead promoting loyal ones.

Idea: Maybe the "Full Heal" was supposed to happen on turn one? Meaning I'd start with all surviving units at full hit-points as it is usual? (Because that was not the case, my ships where beat up beyond compare from the start before the Blessing on Turn 6. Though since this is a stealthy scenario It would probably be ok (and challanging))

At some point I'd really like to know why you hate EFB so much (I don't object though)

I'm happy that I can play on harder difficulty now ^.^

[WhiteWolf]

EFB got out earlier because you always ended up with millions of gold for the next map because of the inconsiderate amount of turns. But it's gonna be back

Full Heal is not once typed in the .cfg. This is the interesting part

Good luck for Hard
WhiteWolf

[Krolan]

Full Heal is not once typed in the .cfg. This is the interesting part

Mh. maybe I'm mistaken. How much does a ship heal for just-not-moving or being-in-village?

Edit:

Mh... Fun facts:

1. Flagship started the scenario with 38 Hitpoints. After assuring myself, that a ship heals exactly as fast as a humanoid unit, there is no way that by turn 6 it could have been at full health.

2. Regardless, on Turn 6 it was at full hitpoints (other red-lifepoints-ship or really any ship damaged in the slightest also was at full HP)

3. For some reason (and of course, considering my luck) all personal saves for that scenario are wiped (I tend to save when I start making screen-shots). All that remains is the Starting-point save and the replay.

4. the replay is telling me right from the first turn, that "the scenario is out-of-sync" and that what happens will probably make no sense (which is true, considering there is no way my flagship survived the attacks I issued it, even at "best-case" that it healed 10hp per turn for 6 turns, leaving it with 98 lifepoints) I'll see the replay through and see what happens. I suspect that I will lose the scenario, regardless of existing proof (and non-wiped-saves) of later scenarios.


So yeah. Probably again a bug, like the "drop-stone-bug" from "Stone of the North", which could happen only to me.

So far I allowed the Replay to reach turn 6 and present you now the same screenshot I took while playing.

Spoiler:

I assure you that I did not modify the scenario in any way, did not debug units to full health (I don't even know of a debug that heals a unit) or used any other way of cheating.

Maybe even a Wesnoth-Bug, but one I cannot really proof. I hate those.

Edit2: And here we got it. Apperantly the replay is dependant on units surviving that survived, regardless of negative hitpoints. In this case -84/250.

Spoiler:

[WhiteWolf]

OK, I'll try to reproduce it and see what's going on. Healing can be excused, but getting it down to -84 cannot
WhiteWolf

[Konrad2]

nominating/demoting system doesnt work for Vormund, Gildred and the loyal soldiers from the very first scenario (they cant be be nominated/demoted, and in Vormund/Gildreds cases they dont have any benefits from their ranks)

is it intended that there is never an early finish bonus?

[WhiteWolf]

Hello,
If you read back a couple of posts, you can see that this has been debated before
The nomination system is a complete logical failure, and repairing it would take of lots of unneccessary time, since these are only logical bugs. My point stands still, that you are not supposed to be able to promote yourself (Vormund), and the guy who nominated you (Gildred). Even though, you can promote the lower soldiers to a higher rank than you...yes, I know it's illogical Something will be done for sure, but not for now, sorry.

Finish bonus was also debated before. It had been cast away, because it caused an "infinite gold" bug, meaning that your gold carryover bonus on some maps was huge by the thousands, sometimes tens of thousands (typcal: The Siege of Prestum, because of lots of villages, as lots of turns, if you finished early, the bonus was huge). This is being fixed, with the next version bonus is supposed to be reintroduced. The date of the upload is unclear yet however. Definitely not until March. I was supposed to have finished the Desolation of Karlag by January, and it's mid-February already...

Hope this could be of some help, best regards,
WhiteWolf

[WhiteWolf]

Hi all,
It has been spotted, that 1.12 caused a few guards on map 14 to be buggy. Their working-theory had be changed, so the whole map got a bit rebalanced. Taking the opportunity, also made map 15 a bit easier, and also more logical.
1.4.2 is fresh meat to download!

Outlook on the Desolation of Karlag: it's almost finished, the stronghold map needs balancing and testing, and the sidequesets and the rating needs be implemented yet. It should enter beta version soon.


Regards,
WhiteWolf

[Krolan]

Letting you know that I still follow

Really glad you're still working on this.

Awaiting finalization of Desolation.

Best of success.

Krolan, The Twisted

[saxo]

Hi,

How can I win the "Fleet at Prestog" scenario ?
I try many things. All bastions destroyed, but in all cases when my leader ship get the southern side
of the map nothing happen.

Can I have some hints ?

Thanks,
Serge

[WhiteWolf]

Hi,

This seems to be a bug, as I used an embedded event to trigger the victory when you reach the southern border of the map, but that event never gets active as I made a mistake at one of the conditions.
I'll fix it then test it quickly, then upload a patch. I'll edit the post to let you know when it is ready for download. When you update the campaign, you can start from the beginning save of the map. It should be called: ThBlSe-Fleet at Prestog.gz (Autosaves and turn-saves do not refresh).

Spoiler:

If you do not wish to replay the map, in this case, you may use the :n command in debug mode to finish the map. There are no variable calculations at the end of this map, so you wouldn't cause harm with it in this case. - killing the Bastillons with the debug-included "kill unit" command will not work however! A real unit has to kill them, well at least, the LAST of them to trigger the event. This is crucial.

This bug may have slipped in, because at the time I was working on my idea, the realistic ship warfare, but I could never finish it due to limitations of Wesnoth 1.10, now 1.12 would do, but I started other works since, so I quickly made these three ship maps, and they were rushed, I know they are unbalanced, and have not been corrected ever since.
Well, the last part of the series, Fingerbone of Destiny is almost finished, I'm making the last tests on the last maps (gameplay, balance, on hardest difficulty). Then I still have some translation work I promised someone, but when that's finished, if I find the time, I wish to rebalance the Desolation of Karlag on hardest difficulty, and then The Blind Sentinel should get a little cleanup too. It needs it desperately. (So does the Invasion of the Western Cavarly. But that'll have to wait.)

EDIT:
Update - 1.4.5 Release notes:
- heavily nerfed norther Bastillons on ship maps
- deleted the old, distorted ship sounds
- fixed a fatal bug on the Fleet of Prestog map
- new and fixed animations for the Man at Arms branch (except bloodsword, his attack and defend animations are still being made)
- additional turns on map17
- graphical fixes for undead riders
- deleted introductory warning of rse. It's not likely to be finished ever, no need to keep that text.


Sorry for the bug, should the repair patch not work, please contact me again via pm.
Best regards,
WhiteWolf