Sceptre of Life, version 0.12.1

Discussion and development of scenarios and campaigns for the game.

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Ektheleon
Posts: 28
Joined: March 20th, 2009, 6:01 pm

Re: Sceptre of Life, version 0.11.3

Post by Ektheleon »

Playing the 4th scenario, "Alone Time" on easy, it's a bit too easy, and some of the dialog doesn't make sense. I started out with 690 gold,so I'd beaten the saurians and gotten most of my troops up to the river by the time the orcs got there. At this point green has been more or less marginalized. If you'd like, I could post a replay once I finish, if you'd like. Also, it seems odd that there's no excitement from the orcs when the ford is completed. Some sort of gloaty cackling is in order, in my opinion.
opensourcejunkie
Posts: 547
Joined: August 11th, 2008, 3:19 pm

Re: Sceptre of Life, version 0.11.3

Post by opensourcejunkie »

Ektheleon wrote:Playing the 4th scenario, "Alone Time" on easy, it's a bit too easy, and some of the dialog doesn't make sense. I started out with 690 gold,so I'd beaten the saurians and gotten most of my troops up to the river by the time the orcs got there. At this point green has been more or less marginalized. If you'd like, I could post a replay once I finish, if you'd like. Also, it seems odd that there's no excitement from the orcs when the ford is completed. Some sort of gloaty cackling is in order, in my opinion.
At the moment, I'm only balancing for the "normal" difficulty, until the campaign is finished. But go ahead and post the replay; it'll be good to see just how easy easy is ;-).

As for the "gloaty cackle", I think you make a valid point, but I'll have to deliberate on whether or not I'll implement it. The problem is, I designed the dialogue of scenario 4 to be completely 1-sided, coming from characters on the player's side only. I did this because I wanted to focus on developing the relationships between the heroes, as they face off against a faceless enemy.

Of course, scenario 8 was supposed to be a similar setup, but I did throw in some dialogue between the orcs and the trolls there. So, I might make an exception here too; I'll have to think about it. But thank you for the suggestion; I'll definitely consider it.
--OSJ
what if the Bible's claims about Christ depicted accurate, verifiable history? given some research, you might be surprised at the evidence...
Ektheleon
Posts: 28
Joined: March 20th, 2009, 6:01 pm

Re: Sceptre of Life, version 0.11.3

Post by Ektheleon »

Here's the replay. Ended up with 1190 gold. The next track should be a barrel of laughs.
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Ektheleon
Posts: 28
Joined: March 20th, 2009, 6:01 pm

Re: Sceptre of Life, version 0.11.3

Post by Ektheleon »

8th scenario: Maybe make the units in the river level 0 or loyal? It kinda screws with the finances to have to pay their upkeep.
opensourcejunkie
Posts: 547
Joined: August 11th, 2008, 3:19 pm

Re: Sceptre of Life, version 0.11.3

Post by opensourcejunkie »

Ektheleon wrote:8th scenario: Maybe make the units in the river level 0 or loyal? It kinda screws with the finances to have to pay their upkeep.
Yeah, that's a good idea; I'll change that now. Nice replay, btw :-)
what if the Bible's claims about Christ depicted accurate, verifiable history? given some research, you might be surprised at the evidence...
Exia
Posts: 5
Joined: March 24th, 2009, 8:41 am

Re: Sceptre of Life, version 0.11.3

Post by Exia »

opensourcejunkie wrote:Hmm, an assassin. My first thought when you wrote that was "why would 'Kelan send an assassin to take out some random mage in a backwoods town, when it's about to be overrun anyway". As I was thinking about it, though, perhaps I could create some sort of a backstory/history between Nia 'Kelan and Karah that gets revealed later on.
If you put it that way, then it could be that during the first scenario, the orcs try to take Aeryn's village then Aeryn's brother comes (forgot his name) and the orcs know that they will fail so the enemy leader sends an assassin into the village to kill Aeryn and then the orcs would take the village and could attack Aeryn's brother from a better position however the assassin fails and Aeryn's sister ends up killed and the assassin appears half dead, then at the end Aeryn finds his sis dead
opensourcejunkie
Posts: 547
Joined: August 11th, 2008, 3:19 pm

Re: Sceptre of Life, version 0.11.3

Post by opensourcejunkie »

If you put it that way, then it could be that during the first scenario, the orcs try to take Aeryn's village then Aeryn's brother comes (forgot his name) and the orcs know that they will fail so the enemy leader sends an assassin into the village to kill Aeryn and then the orcs would take the village and could attack Aeryn's brother from a better position however the assassin fails and Aeryn's sister ends up killed and the assassin appears half dead, then at the end Aeryn finds his sis dead
I really like that idea; it would require less storyline editing on my part (always a plus ;-). I'll put that in after Ektheleon is done balancing scenario 1, and after I've released scenario 12.

Speaking of Ektheleon, I have an announcement to make; Ektheleon has volunteered to balance Sceptre of Life for the new 1.6 gold carryover system, and will be balancing it for each of the three difficulties. So, he's going to need balancing tips and feedback for the scenarios he's completed (which are at this point, none :-), from anyone playing the campaign on any difficulty.

I've been graciously given a feedback thread on the new Add-On Feedback forum (even though SoL isn't scenario-complete yet), and I'd like to put it to good use. So, if any players wish to comment on balance issues, dialogue or storyline issues, or the general "fun" factor of the campaign, please post your comments there. This forum thread (from now on) will be reserved for the more technical aspects of the campaign - bug reports, feature requests, etc.

As Ektheleon progresses through the campaign, I'll upload his changes to the server. At the moment, none of the scenarios have been rebalanced yet; I'll let you know when scenario 1 is finished.

Thanks as always for playing,
--OSJ
what if the Bible's claims about Christ depicted accurate, verifiable history? given some research, you might be surprised at the evidence...
opensourcejunkie
Posts: 547
Joined: August 11th, 2008, 3:19 pm

Re: Sceptre of Life, version 0.11.3

Post by opensourcejunkie »

Well, Scenario 12 is almost complete; it's so close that I'm almost tempted to take the next few hours and finish it. However, I gotta sleep, and then I gotta go to a conference for a few days. So, I'll be away from wesnoth during that time, but when I come back, I'll finish up the scenario, and upload it then.
--OSJ
what if the Bible's claims about Christ depicted accurate, verifiable history? given some research, you might be surprised at the evidence...
opensourcejunkie
Posts: 547
Joined: August 11th, 2008, 3:19 pm

Re: Sceptre of Life, version 0.11.3

Post by opensourcejunkie »

All right, scenario 12 is out; I'm really, really proud of this one :-D. I hope ya'll enjoy playing it as much as I enjoyed writing it :-),
--OSJ

Edit: Oh, and in this release I also implemented CMaster's suggestion about the paused day/night cycle in scenario 11.

Edit: One more thing; if you play through scenario 12 using a save file from a previous version of the campaign, you'll want to go back to scenario 10, and play through from there (fortunately scenario 10 is an all-speaking scenario). There were some bugs in scenario 10 that I didn't discover until 12, and they can mess you up pretty good. Game crashed on me one time, actually.
what if the Bible's claims about Christ depicted accurate, verifiable history? given some research, you might be surprised at the evidence...
CMaster
Posts: 55
Joined: December 7th, 2008, 2:25 pm

Re: Sceptre of Life, version 0.11.3

Post by CMaster »

Now I finally got to test your new scenario: Good job!

There are however a few glitches I noticed:

In scenario 11 there is a bug with the daytime cycle. Whenever I attacked someone, the daytime display switched to first watch while the attack dialog was on the screen. Once I clicked OK, the daytime display was back to normal. This is only a display bug, the hit strengths are calculated correctly.

In scenario 12 it feels a bit tedious, to actually have to get the woses to the sign post. They are just so slow. When I was finished with the orcs, they were still about 10 turns away from the sign post. I think there should be the possibility to end the scenario with a defeat of all enemies.

Also I believe, that scenario 12 should be made a bit harder. It was very easy to just steamroller the western orc. And after that, the other one was just a piece of cake. There was absolutely no challenge involved.

As always, I really enjoyed your beatifully animated map. And it feels just great that Aeryn and Elrial are on speaking terms once again :)
I'm a reciever!
opensourcejunkie
Posts: 547
Joined: August 11th, 2008, 3:19 pm

Re: Sceptre of Life, version 0.12.0

Post by opensourcejunkie »

In scenario 11 there is a bug with the daytime cycle. Whenever I attacked someone, the daytime display switched to first watch while the attack dialog was on the screen. Once I clicked OK, the daytime display was back to normal. This is only a display bug, the hit strengths are calculated correctly.
Aah, yes. I did notice that when you moused over the right-hand bar, the same thing happened. Sadly, there isn't a whole lot that can be done about that. Basically the problem is that I'm using a [time_area] tag to project the day/night cycle over the default always-night cycle of the underlying [time] tag. I can't change the underlying [time]; I can only overlay this [time_area] cycle over top of it.

One thing I could do would be to switch the overlay from the second half of the scenario to the first. The scenario would be (by default) running a full day/night cycle, but it would be masked by a nighttime [time_area] overlay. Then, when the cycle is actually supposed to begin, the [time_area] is removed, and the underlying cycle is shown. This doesn't really fix the problem (the player will still see the day/night cycle of the scenario when mousing over the right-hand bar in the beginning of the scenario), but it relegates it to a less important part of the scenario. Any thoughts?
In scenario 12 it feels a bit tedious, to actually have to get the woses to the sign post. They are just so slow. When I was finished with the orcs, they were still about 10 turns away from the sign post. I think there should be the possibility to end the scenario with a defeat of all enemies.

Also I believe, that scenario 12 should be made a bit harder. It was very easy to just steamroller the western orc. And after that, the other one was just a piece of cake. There was absolutely no challenge involved.
Yeah, this sounds like mostly a balance issue. If the orcs're made harder, then hopefully you'll be fighting at least the eastern ones while you bring back the Wose. Good call.

Thanks,
--OSJ
what if the Bible's claims about Christ depicted accurate, verifiable history? given some research, you might be surprised at the evidence...
CMaster
Posts: 55
Joined: December 7th, 2008, 2:25 pm

Re: Sceptre of Life, version 0.12.0

Post by CMaster »

opensourcejunkie wrote:
In scenario 11 there is a bug with the daytime cycle. Whenever I attacked someone, the daytime display switched to first watch while the attack dialog was on the screen. Once I clicked OK, the daytime display was back to normal. This is only a display bug, the hit strengths are calculated correctly.
Aah, yes. I did notice that when you moused over the right-hand bar, the same thing happened. Sadly, there isn't a whole lot that can be done about that. Basically the problem is that I'm using a [time_area] tag to project the day/night cycle over the default always-night cycle of the underlying [time] tag. I can't change the underlying [time]; I can only overlay this [time_area] cycle over top of it.
I didn't even notice the thing with the sidebar, I'm just so much of a keyboard user... Looks like a bug in the game itself then.
opensourcejunkie wrote:
In scenario 12 it feels a bit tedious, to actually have to get the woses to the sign post. They are just so slow. When I was finished with the orcs, they were still about 10 turns away from the sign post. I think there should be the possibility to end the scenario with a defeat of all enemies.

Also I believe, that scenario 12 should be made a bit harder. It was very easy to just steamroller the western orc. And after that, the other one was just a piece of cake. There was absolutely no challenge involved.
Yeah, this sounds like mostly a balance issue. If the orcs're made harder, then hopefully you'll be fighting at least the eastern ones while you bring back the Wose. Good call.
That's a good idea too. Sounds like another case for unlimited gold / limited numbers for the eastern orc. Would allow the player to thoroughly educate his sorceresses :)
I'm a reciever!
Jeebus
Posts: 7
Joined: April 29th, 2009, 6:59 am

Re: Sceptre of Life, version 0.12.0

Post by Jeebus »

So I'm new to the forum and the campaign (though not to Wesnoth). I just finished playing the second scenario in the campaign, and weird things happen at the end. Maybe I finished earlier than I'm supposed to? I never got to the island in the northwest, and I never encountered either Burin or the elves. So after I kill the Orcish leader, all I see is Aeryn's part of what I can only assume is supposed to be a dialogue of some kind. What am I missing? Or at least there should be a more graceful way to deal with a victory in the way I did it.

Seems like a cool campaign so far, though (apart from the "oh yeah, your sister died" in the first scenario - agree that she should "disappear" or something instead).
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opensourcejunkie
Posts: 547
Joined: August 11th, 2008, 3:19 pm

Re: Sceptre of Life, version 0.12.0

Post by opensourcejunkie »

I'm just so much of a keyboard user...
Yeah, me too :-)
That's a good idea too. Sounds like another case for unlimited gold / limited numbers for the eastern orc. Would allow the player to thoroughly educate his sorceresses :)
Aah, good call; I'll throw that into the next bugfix.
So I'm new to the forum and the campaign (though not to Wesnoth). I just finished playing the second scenario in the campaign, and weird things happen at the end. Maybe I finished earlier than I'm supposed to? I never got to the island in the northwest, and I never encountered either Burin or the elves. So after I kill the Orcish leader, all I see is Aeryn's part of what I can only assume is supposed to be a dialogue of some kind. What am I missing? Or at least there should be a more graceful way to deal with a victory in the way I did it.
Aah, if you defeated the orcish leader before the elves arrived, then you probably would have a small dialogue problem :-/. Yeah, I do really need to find a more elegant way to end it in that case; maybe fire all the turn events that didn't get fired before. Thanks for the heads' up.
Seems like a cool campaign so far, though (apart from the "oh yeah, your sister died" in the first scenario - agree that she should "disappear" or something instead).
Yeah, I guess I gotta do something about that :-].

Thanks,
--OSJ
what if the Bible's claims about Christ depicted accurate, verifiable history? given some research, you might be surprised at the evidence...
Ektheleon
Posts: 28
Joined: March 20th, 2009, 6:01 pm

Re: Sceptre of Life, version 0.12.0

Post by Ektheleon »

IMHO, the death is an essential part of the plot, the only problem is the abrupt, almost casual way it's announced, which is especially out of keeping with Aeryn's reaction.
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