Wesband, MP dungeon-crawler (now for Wesnoth 1.9.14+ !)

[Xudo]

I find in Wesband this icon:

aura-blast.png (6.42 KiB) Viewed 3873 times

It looks exactly as icon of Lesser Mystic Essence.
Does this image can be used in projects under GPL?

[em3]

I wouldn't say "exactly"... actually the difference is quite visible and sufficient, I think.

[Ken_Oh]

Yeah, it's not exactly the same. I stole the image from Quietus's Minotaur faction, so, if you really want to know, you should ask him about it.

[Maramros]

I have a question regarding ghosts: What, exactly, is the point of trying to get nightstalk? There is no ToD in the dungeons, which also means that alignments are useless, something else that has been puzzling me.

[Ken_Oh]

Yeah, that's something I should disable until there is ToD in the dungeon (we're planning to have light sources at some point) or until there is combat in the overworld. It's always been my priority to mirror the mainline units as much as possible, but sometimes I don't think that Wesband isn't ready for it yet. I'll comment it out next release.

[Brian_A]

Love this game, and especially the White Mage character type.

It seems that as the WM increases in power, they get less efficient at turning mana to healed HP. Am I doing my math wrong?

It would seem that a more powerful healer would be able to choose how much energy to put into healing - that'd be nice to be able to do.

[Ken_Oh]

Yes, they do get less efficient to a degree. I'm actually working on the magic system right now, so that's on my mind at the moment. What I've got going for now is a system where mana is only expended to the extent that you're actually using the magic. For example, the way it currently is, if you cure someone who is poisoned, it costs whatever your max cost is for healing (which would be larger for a more advanced White Mage than for one that just learned to cure). The same applies for if you're healing someone with less hitpoints missing than what your max healing capacity is. In the current system, the value that needs to be healed or cured gets sniffed out first, and then the mana is calculated afterwords.

Btw, glad you're having fun with the add-on! Things have gotten crazy with my life recently (nothing real bad, just busy), so I have been AFK a lot. But, this game is still on my mind, and I still plan to do it justice when I can.

One of the items that I've always wondered about is how to draw the line between White Mage and Paladin. I would think a Paladin would be a White Mage who wears armor, and thus doesn't have the benefit of a strong ranged arcane attack. I wondering if there should be other differences too. I do plan to have more protection and combat "buffing" spells for the White Order, but I wonder if armor should dampen the protection ones some, so it doesn't become mostly useless to wear robes when you could just wear heavy plate mail. Or, maybe lack of that ranged arcane magic is itself already a big enough difference. Then you have to consider if a Paladin simply takes off his armor if he meets up with a need to use the ranged attack. We probably wouldn't want to see that happen all of the time.

[bigkahuna]

Will Wesband ever be ported over to 1.9? On 1.8 my version was buggy, and I've been looking forward to play it after all the reviews on it

[Ken_Oh]

Ehhh, it's hard enough to get the essentials done (notice how I'm failing now), so it's hard to promise anything for dev versions. I plan to stick with the stable Wesnoth releases, but I might be able to find the time to see what's up with Wesband on 1.8.

[Brian_A]

Btw, glad you're having fun with the add-on! Things have gotten crazy with my life recently (nothing real bad, just busy), so I have been AFK a lot. But, this game is still on my mind, and I still plan to do it justice when I can.

One of the items that I've always wondered about is how to draw the line between White Mage and Paladin. I would think a Paladin would be a White Mage who wears armor, and thus doesn't have the benefit of a strong ranged arcane attack. I wondering if there should be other differences too. I do plan to have more protection and combat "buffing" spells for the White Order, but I wonder if armor should dampen the protection ones some, so it doesn't become mostly useless to wear robes when you could just wear heavy plate mail. Or, maybe lack of that ranged arcane magic is itself already a big enough difference. Then you have to consider if a Paladin simply takes off his armor if he meets up with a need to use the ranged attack. We probably wouldn't want to see that happen all of the time.

Balancing the mechanics of a point-bases system (which is what we have) with a class-based system is non-trivial. I'd just let the balance reside in the amount of available points as well as the magic-nullifying effects of armor.

So in addition to nullifying ranged attacks, how about if wearing armor were to sap N mana each time a non-healing spell were cast, where N can depend on the total amount of metal armor being worn? I wonder if there is a way to let that effect linger for a whole turn, like with slowing? A new skill could be created to reduce that effect, and the new skill could be difficult to obtain - requiring a high Mind/Body/Deft as well as having a high upgrade cost.

Again, healing could be exempt from the effect.

My level 4 quartet thanks you.

[wesfreak]

The mainline wesnoth paladin has no ranged arcane attack, just healing and an arcane melee. You could do something similar by giving the paladin some weaker healing spells, no ranged attack and a spell to change the damage type of a melee weapon to arcane and back (that could be cast on allies and require low mp). This would effectively distinguish it from both warriors and white mages. What do you think?

[Brian_A]

The mainline wesnoth paladin has no ranged arcane attack, just healing and an arcane melee. You could do something similar by giving the paladin some weaker healing spells, no ranged attack and a spell to change the damage type of a melee weapon to arcane and back (that could be cast on allies and require low mp). This would effectively distinguish it from both warriors and white mages. What do you think?

The advancement system seems to be point-based, so even a 5th level "fighter" can (with sufficient Mind score) acquire magical abilities.

Hm... but what if
* each "school" of magical theory (healing, necromancy, attack, defense ... ?) were made a separate skill
* a person could have more than 1 school of magic at a time, except that Healing/Necromancy/Attack would disallow each other
* the Magical Initiate were given all but Necro - at character creation for free
* the Dark Initiate were given all but Healing - at character creation for free
* the buy-in cost for each school were set high (25 points each?)

Then a "fighter" could become a paladin with sufficient difficulty, but it would be harder to have an omnipotent character with both battle and magical skills.

Just a first-approximation regurgitation of thought - obviously the set of "schools", the spells that go with each, the prerequisites/disallows, and costs would have to be thought out for balance.

[Brian_A]

Ehhh, it's hard enough to get the essentials done (notice how I'm failing now), so it's hard to promise anything for dev versions. I plan to stick with the stable Wesnoth releases, but I might be able to find the time to see what's up with Wesband on 1.8.

I understand completely - I'm in the same boat with playing.


Down to level 10 now. Main characters are all level 5 (2 White Mages, one Duelist type and one Fighter type). Also have 4 level 4 white mages as rent-a-healers, and somehow have a second minion for my Fighter type, a level 4 Shyde that's also good for healing.

I love mining the monsters for XP - that fine line of "weak enough to kill if I need to, but not so weak that they commit suicide on their turn".

[Brian_A]

It seems that the AI refuses to attack a player that's only 1 point from the next level.

I'm using the characters that are at that point to funnel the NPCs toward the "character currently mining XP". That PC has 3 healers surrounding him (+14, +14, +17 healers), and is disarmed. One of the "unattackable" PCs is a White Mage, who heals the NPCs when they get too low on HP.

I find that level 4 or 5 is a good time to kill off the NPC, and the PC levels quite quickly that way.

I'm hoping the enemy healer (+5) will take some of the mana burden off of my WM soon. Of course, when I get both WMs to be unattackable, then it'll be even easier to mine the NPCs, as they'll form the mouth of a tunnel.

The only trick will be to get my WM henchmen to that sweet spot, then I can safely say that I'll have won the game, by keepign only one character "attackable at a time, and surrounding him with 5 unattackable healers.... XP here we come!

[Golbeeze]

It has been about 5 months since you posted, Ken_Oh. Are you still working on Wesband? I've been looking forward to progress on this project and I hope it hasn't disintegrated.