The Desert Elves - Making them Playable

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Jaieet
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The Desert Elves - Making them Playable

Post by Jaieet »

Hi everyone! I'm not sure if this is the right section, but I've recently downloaded Wesnoth for the first time in a few years, and am looking to enable the Desert Elves from the "Under the Burning Suns" scenario to be playable in local multiplayer games.

I managed, the last time I owned the game, to somehow plop the Elves into the default era as a faction, but this was done through trial and error - and I have no idea how I did it before. :P

This is entirely for my own amusement. I *love* the Desert Elves as a faction, and I adored the campaign. I might be in a minority though, cause I can't, at a glance, find any Eras available for download that include them.

I'm prodding at the lines of code, and copy+pasting keywords in an excruciatingly slow attempt to use the Desert Elves on custom maps, but you guys would no doubt be more knowledgeable than I on the subject, so if someone could please give me a push in the right direction, I would be *eternally* grateful.

I was a fan of Kaleh's stylish sprite, and his unique form of levelling up. So if there is also a way to set him as the faction's default leader, that would be *perfect!* And again, as I said, I'm playing this locally - so I have no issue with making the game incompatible with online multiplayer. But I do not want to delete or overwrite any existing factions to sneak them in.

I'll get back to trying to solve this on my own, but I would appreciate any help *very* much. Thanks guys. ^_^
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Astoria
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Re: The Desert Elves - Making them Playable

Post by Astoria »

There's a playable version of the new Desert Elves (not in mainline yet) in Era of Chaos. If you want the mainline version, though, you'll need to make a faction file. See also: EraWML

Additionally, you'll have to load UtBS in multiplayer, or copy all the units to your own add-on.
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Jaieet
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Re: The Desert Elves - Making them Playable

Post by Jaieet »

I actually downloaded that era, but the new units made me assume it was just another 'normal' elf variant. I took another look, and it's *precisely* what I was looking for.

Minus the Kaleh leader unit, of course, but I'm willing to make the sacrifice. :P

I *believe* I've also managed to figure out how to get the old desert elves into the default era, and make Kaleh their leader. So consider all my problems solved. Thanks so much, bumba. Would've ignored the era of chaos, had you not said something.
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Re: The Desert Elves - Making them Playable

Post by Dugi »

There is era named Ageless Era that contains them as one of their factions. If you want to make your own era only with one extra faction, just copy that faction's code into a copy of the default faction and rename it.

To make Kaleh the must-be leader, just assign him as the only possible leader unit of that faction.

But I believe that desert elves are weaker than default era factions, for example a skeleton spam might crush them, their only effective attacks against them are shamans and hunters with bolas, but both of them have little damage and are mostly oriented to slow.
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Astoria
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Re: The Desert Elves - Making them Playable

Post by Astoria »

Dugi wrote:There is era named Ageless Era that contains them as one of their factions. If you want to make your own era only with one extra faction, just copy that faction's code into a copy of the default faction and rename it.
Ah, I forgot about Ageless. Yeah, I think that has a version more like the mainline one.
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Jaieet
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Re: The Desert Elves - Making them Playable

Post by Jaieet »

Dugi wrote:There is era named Ageless Era that contains them as one of their factions. If you want to make your own era only with one extra faction, just copy that faction's code into a copy of the default faction and rename it.

To make Kaleh the must-be leader, just assign him as the only possible leader unit of that faction.

But I believe that desert elves are weaker than default era factions, for example a skeleton spam might crush them, their only effective attacks against them are shamans and hunters with bolas, but both of them have little damage and are mostly oriented to slow.
Yeah, I copied Kaleh's images and code into the Age of Chaos leader selections, and he's now a part of the action. No clue if this'll include his unique level up options, but I'll soon be finding out. They also stand up fairly well against the default armies vanilla. Bolas + heals, y'know. :P The need to work in small teams is part of my draw to them.

I'll also take a look at that ageless era.

Thanks again guys, so much. I wasn't expecting such quick answers. Really helped.
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Re: The Desert Elves - Making them Playable

Post by Dugi »

No clue if this'll include his unique level up options, but I'll soon be finding out.
It will include them. But I think that you might need to include there some of the UtBS utils files, because they may contain the definition of the sustenance ability he can get (if you need it, it'll crash on loading, so it will be easy to find).
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Re: The Desert Elves - Making them Playable

Post by Astoria »

Dugi wrote:
No clue if this'll include his unique level up options, but I'll soon be finding out.
It will include them. But I think that you might need to include there some of the UtBS utils files, because they may contain the definition of the sustenance ability he can get (if you need it, it'll crash on loading, so it will be easy to find).
I think I only recently moved Kaleh's abilities to a separate file. The stun event needs to be included, though, else it won't work.
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Re: The Desert Elves - Making them Playable

Post by Dugi »

I seriously don't think he's using 1.11.6+ trunk, compiled by himself.

Good that you remembered the stun event, I would have never thought of that.
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Re: The Desert Elves - Making them Playable

Post by Jaieet »

Okay, so I tried out a game, and made a point of earning a couple hundred EXP on Kaleh. Problem is, he isn't levelling up *at all.*

He has no EXP bar (just the health one), but *does* have an EXP tally when I click on him (ala, 106/44 EXP)

I've fiddled around with the files in the campaign to see what's missing, but I haven't the slightest clue. I've also thought to check the names of the folders and files that he references to, but, as far as I can tell while sifting through that wall of text+code that is Kaleh, I'm not missing anything.

I've got Kaleh-abilities in the Era of chaos util folder, since it was in the burning sun's util folder. I've also tried just copy+pasting everything in the util folder into the Era of Chaos one for good measure (not deleting any of the EoC files to do it). I'm not sure if code works this way, but I even tried copy+pasting lines of code from the 'abilities' file onto the end of the EoC file of the same name.

Yes, I know, I've clearly got no idea what I'm doing. But I would *really* like to get Kaleh levelling up, if anyone might have an idea of what I'm missing. :P
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Re: The Desert Elves - Making them Playable

Post by Dugi »

If a unit's exp bar is invisible, it means that it advances to nothing (this isn't a problem in this case) and has no AMLA options. It appears that you forgot to place his AMLA macro invocations into his unit_type. I believe that we might help you more if you posted the related stuff you've made in this topic, in a zip archive.
Jaieet
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Re: The Desert Elves - Making them Playable

Post by Jaieet »

The files relevant are units>Kaleh and utils>Kaleh_abilities in the burning suns core campaign. Nothing has been changed; they were just copied into Era of Chaos, and enabled. Obviously with the sprite images and stuff (which work flawlessly).

I *think* I found the problem; through painstaking search and process of elimination:

# Kaleh abilities - special custom AMLAS for Kaleh {UTBS_INCLUDE utils/kaleh-abilities.cfg}

The enabler for his levelling up seems to be *in* the burning suns scenario code. I could be wrong; as I'm in way over my head, and had to actively look up what "AMLA" stood for; but this is an eye-catching piece of command, nonetheless. I did some reading, and I came across a few discussions claiming that Kaleh's code is, in fact, tied to the scenarios for some so far unknown reason. Likely compatibility issues.

So my question - hopefully my final question: Where, within the Era of Chaos, would such a line hold relevance? I assume I'll have to change 'utbs' to Era_of_chaos: But where would I put the line of code?

Sorry for being completely clueless. But persistence is a virtue, right? :P
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Re: The Desert Elves - Making them Playable

Post by Astoria »

Put {campaigns/Under_the_Burning_Suns/utils/kaleh-abilities.cfg} in the [era] tags in eras.cfg. Also, that file has nothing to do with amlas, really (it's just an event used for a weapon special). The reason why it's not working is because you don't hae the variation set. The basic Kaleh unit has no advancements, but its [variation]s do.

Code: Select all

[event]
    name=prestart
    [modify_unit]
        [filter]
            type=Kaleh
        [/filter]
        variation=Youth
    [/modify_unit]
[/event]
Add this to kaleh-abilities.cfg and it should work.
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Re: The Desert Elves - Making them Playable

Post by IPS »

Would been really fun if on a desert elves faction there was some kind of aquatic or flying unit in their faction in order to make them playable on almost any map and if there were a unit with "decent" impact of fire damage in order to make them useful againist undeads aswell.

I do not know Chaos's Desert elves, but I know that the ones on ageless are not yet a complete faction, they gained the falcons from Khalifa faction but that's not enough to make them ballanced againist any faction. Maybe a Bolas Thrower 5-3 (slow) and crappy mele and accesible price could help at fighting undeads or maybe a kind of Desert Sprite (likely to Sprite at Sylvan elves from ageless era) or whatever.


A secondary option you can do Jaieet is creating your own desert elves faction, with some aditional units and maybe some reballance like at these 17g Desert archers because they can't cost the same as rebel elvish archer because of that trade of 5-2 mele to 6-2 mele and 5-4 ranged to only 4-4 (even lower damage than loyalist archer) but still these 6 movement (cause of trade, these archers have poor ranged but strong mele in comparation to normal archers)

edit: I checked these desert elves on ageless era and their stats are easly editable, they don't get linked from core desert elves so it's possible to edit these ageless desert elves by not alterating the others. I will try to send an improved desert elves faction for ageless era soon.
Last edited by IPS on December 28th, 2013, 6:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Desert Elves - Making them Playable

Post by Lord-Knightmare »

The Southerners faction of War of Legends is based on the desert elves of UtBS. It was originally the UtBS Desert Elves faction, but I made significant changes to it, including adding both a flying and a swimming unit.
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