Struggle For Freedom 1.5.0

[rogul]

New version is up, fixed issue with reinforcements in scenario 3 Attack from the North

[rogul]

Another new version, 0.2, is up. Have fixed the gates and all scenarios should be playable now. Have not play-tested 7b,8 or 9, so no guarantees that they will work ok.

Please post any feedback, good or bad. Hope you are enjoying this campaign.

[ForestDragon]

well, played a few scenarios, well, you could update the faeries sprites (look into IftU code these days)

[ahmannar]

First of all thank you for porting this campaign. I have played the first scenario on NORMAL(since it said it was the most balanced) and i have some comments on it:

->In the introduction maybe some sort of image would be cool to eb in there?(There´s a image of a book around the game, that is for storyboard, that is very detailed and would make sense to be in the introduction) I say this because it´s a significant amount of text in this stage and, this way, it wouldn´t be jsut a black screen with lots of text;

->There´s a need for the "green trolls"? They aren´t really more effective than the normal ones and that ancient artwork is off puting compared to the rest of the units. A troll of level 2 is more threatning than these ones;

->In this difficulty the amount of gold from the player plus the ally is almost the same compared to the enemies. Add the fact that there´s another ally side that doesn´t recruit but has untis on the field and you have a scenario in NORMAL where there´s no way to lose because of sheer amount of units(also the fact that the fight occurs in terrain almost always favourable to the player). I would say that more gold to the enemy/less gold to the ally would make sense in here(perphaps the option of less gold to the ally, seeing that the player is the guard of the garrison). This also add the negative effect of the ally stealing too much experience with his units because of this problem;

-> Since the enemy already burns the villages of the player, perphaps an alternative objective could be to prevent an X amount of villages from being burn? This, combined with the previous point, would definitively make the scenario more exciting. Currently there is probably a low number of villages near the enemy but there could be more implemented in the middle of the map(IfTU has it´s 2 scenario with this mechanic);

->Maybe put an limit to the amount of level 2 units the enemy recruits also? He recruited too much of those on my playthrough and it ended with him having a low number of units(don´t know if this is already implemented);

->Even with recruiting 2 full castles of units i had an carryover of 100 gold, which seems fine, at least now, to the next level, so there was no need to conserve gold;

-> The final dialogue from the ally leader is strange, since the introduction said that the elves and dwarves have been know to protect each other in times of need and he doesn´t even consider it in the beggining;

In conclusion i would rate this scenario 5/10 in terms of difficulty because of what i said previously. It´s a fun scenario but there´s no real danger of losing in this one in the current situation.


EDIT:Well the second level as even easier than the first one and i think the problems for the first level are mainly what did this but moving on to some points:

->The ally side completely crushes the orcs without any help from my side, effectively making this scenario against only 2 enemy sides. The ally survived with many units and, by turn 24, was moving towards the middle of the map so i would say they either have too much gold or the orcs have too little. There could be here a management of gold to equalise this or, if the orcs focused it´s units on the player instead of north of the map, this would solve the problem;

->From what i understood there was no leader for the white enemy side but, on turn 24, suddenly appeared 3 enemy units of level 2 on the map from nowhere without warning. If these units had appeared in the beggining, in addition to the level 1, they would make a decent adversary to the player. As is stands now, there´s no risk of losing units to only level 1 goblins and trolls and one level 2 naga;

->The saurian leader has an starting gold of 145, which is nothing compared to the almost 280 that i have right now. I wasted all the gold in the previous scenario basicly so, if i had been more conservative previously, the difference would be even higher. Even if you change something on the previous scenario this one will probably still be easy because of these factors, i think the saurian needs more gold;

->Just something i noticed, the dwarves don´t have their "manner of language" that is associated with them(they talk like an human unit and don´t have dwarf manneirims). This can be more difficult to achieve since it requires rewriting dialogue, but pointing it out doesn´t hurts(this probably is a common thing in the campaign).

->I only had to recruit a castle and a half of units for this level(which was enough for it, given that the enemy units come in small waves) and ended with 188 carryover gold, which seems too much at this point;

In the end this scenario comes to the same conclusion than the first one: the global gold of the player+ally side is the same or even greater than the enemy and, in the case of this one, there are units that either don´t pose any threat(goblins) or units that are never met in battle(the orcs). Fixing the AI of the orcs and changing some values of starting gold should fix this.

[rogul]

Thanks for the feedback.

I agree gold balancing is an issue. The first time I played the first two scenarios after porting it I had 700 gold at the end of scenario 2! So I reduced it and was worried I had gone too far for normal. Interesting to hear your feedback.

I have been hesitant to change too much, but WYRMY did say improve it so I will look into changing the graphics and story as well as the mechanics of getting it working. That book idea would be neat.

I think the dialogue at the end of scenario 1 is meant to set up the story for later. Although the other position probably makes more sense to the story. Will have a look.

Scenario 2:
Those extra three units appear when all enemy leaders are killed, I just took them to be a random group of trolls wandering into the area. I'm not actually sure what the intention was for them, maybe it was to capture some of the villages and reduce the gold you get? I agree it does seem a bit random.

As for the dwarves, I think I will try and keep them within an area at the top, as they are just the garrison for the entry to the caves and wouldn't normally stray too far. I just can't have the orcs kill them. I want the scenario to be the player moving through the tribes living there.

Do you think for the orcs it would be better / more interesting if there was some location based spawning of orcs? ie when the player gets near the orcs some orc guards appear around the encampment, and then the orc leader starts recruiting. So then if the dwarves are confined to the top, the player has to fight their way through, and has to make the choice to either skirt around the enemies or take them head on. Will look at that.

Thanks for the feedback. This is the first campaign I have ported and it is more involved than I expected. I come from a coding background so haven't been looking too much at the story, so your comments will really help.

[ahmannar]

Your idea regarding the orcs seems a good one to me and there´s indeed a need to rebalance the scenarios gold-wise Maybe those 3 enemy units on the 2 scenario could spawn at a time that isn´t so late(with some warning about it because tomato surprises are unwelcome most of the time).
Good luck in this task

[rogul]

A new version is up. Cleaned up some old WML, updated images, added more storyline, adjusted gold and difficulty on the first few scenarios. Made a few changes to the final scenario, trying to make it a bigger harder finish.

IMPORTANT: this version breaks the save games from previous versions, they won't work. Sorry.

I am planning more changes to the middle scenarios, to make them more interesting and story like.

[ballislife15]

just updated to the newest version 0.3 because the gates on the bane of saradoc wouldn't let me go through them after I destroyed them and now I can load any of the beginnings of any scenario.

[rogul]

Oh. I wonder if that is because of the name changes, causing old save games to not work. I didn't even consider that, sorry. I think you might have to start again.

Just had a thought, it might be enough to change the scenario name within the save game file for it to work. If you want to send me your save game I can test it for you.

[ballislife15]

my save file.

[rogul]

@ballislife15 I have fixed your save game. In testing I saw a few issues in the scenario files, so there is another new version up on the server (0.3.1)

For anyone with the same problem, to get the save game working, all that is needed is to change the scenario name within the save game file (unzip it, search for the name of the scenario, and increment the number of the scenario by 1). You don't need to zip the file again, Wesnoth will read an unzipped file.

[Paulomat4]

Hey Rogul,
Just played through struggle for freedom. It's a really, really enjoyable Campaign, great work!
Really enjoyable scenarios, the story is great as well. I just felt like the ending was a bit rushed, one or two scenarios more at the end explaining the connection between the big boss and the increasing orc attacks and everything.
also you're using older sprites for the dwarvish pathfinder line, no idea if that is intentional.
Great work!

[ForestDragon]

also you're using older sprites for the dwarvish pathfinder line, no idea if that is intentional.

this stuff also applies to UMC faeries (check modern IftU for newer sprites)

[rogul]

It's a really, really enjoyable Campaign, great work!

Thanks, although I have only ported this from 1.6, most of the storyline is from the original creator, WYRMY.
I had removed the dwarf lines that are in this campaign and am using the ones in standard wesnoth, although I haven't uploaded those changes. I am guessing there was no pathfinder in standard wesnoth when this campaign was done (around 2008). Thought I had already updated the faeries though. Will check those.

Thanks for the feedback, glad you liked it. I think when I find more time I am going to do more changes / additions to the campaign, as I have mostly just got it working on 1.12.

[rogul]

Thank you everyone for the feedback. I have decided to start a new thread so I can keep the thread title up to date with my current status. New thread is: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=44304