Invasion from the Unknown (1.14.4) for Wesnoth 1.6 ONLY

[Iris]

Um, would have to test. I didn't give Elynia the glyph for that ability in my saved games.

Version 1.11.0 is out and is available at the usual locations.

This release introduces probably the last change in the plot for this campaign (hence the jump from 1.10 to 1.11). It is not mentioned in the changelog (at least not directly), and only a few of us know that I even made it. The package has been uploaded to the Official Add-ons server for 1.5.x, and to the SourceForge.net hosting service. Although it is labeled as "requires Wesnoth 1.5.8 or later", it actually requires "1.5.10 or later". I cannot guarantee that it will work properly, or not be plain-broken for Wesnoth 1.5.9 and earlier versions. At least Wesnoth 1.5.6 will not work at all with IftU, and 1.5.7 is a mess.

Another important change introduced with this release is the removal of the Elvish Horseman, primarily to reduce the art requirements pressure on this campaign, and secondarily to solve some balancing issues. It is worth mentioning that Wesnoth will automatically reject saved games in which you had Elvish Horsemen in the recall list, or on the real map. I can fix your saved game if you PM it to me in its compressed (.gz) form from your saved games directory (usually ~/.wesnoth/saves on Unix-like platforms - I have no idea about Windows or MacOS X). I will reject requests for multiple saved games.

Some important art upgrades went in this release as well. You know what I mean.

Similarly to how I forgot to fix the "requires Wesnoth 1.5.8" note, I forgot to apply solsword's text patch. Sorry about that.

[Theron]

IftU 1.11.0, part 1, medium difficulty / Wesnoth 1.5.10 / Mac OS X 10.5.6

No major problems found.

There are still problems with defense animations (at least with):
Elvish Trapper
Skeleton Rider

Item comments:
- Bats are allowed to pick up the berserk potion. This may be an unwanted drain+berserk combination. But this is a minor issue as the duration of berserk is limited.
- Any unit who picks up the draining potion won't do major fighting in this scenario as they will be (too) late in the southern half of the map. So I gave the potion to Igor. This works well.
- While Faerie Spirits aren't allowed to pick up the 'ring of swiftness' and the 'ring of regeneration' a Sprite or a Fire Faerie are able (filter rule is not_living=yes) who may be advanced to a Faerie Spirit. The 'draining potion' is only protected by type=Faerie Spirit and not by race=fairy like the berserk potion.

I developed a Necrophage as a shielding unit. This works well: At the end of part 1 he had 84 HP.
If I continue to use him in part 2 this may lead to an overpowered unit.

Scenario 11 (Strike on New Knalga):
I started with 504 gold. This time I didn't use any low level units (as suggested by Mal Keshar). I killed all leaders but still needed all 19 turns (= no bonus): E and SW leader killed on turn 12, SE on turn 13, NW on turn 18 and W on turn 19. I lost a few high level units but this was expected (I developed more units than usual just for this scenario.)
Maybe next time I will only need 18 turns...

[solsword]

Alright... I just got to the Epilogue, but I'm getting an error: it says that the map is too wide ("error general: Map size exceeds limit (x > 200)"). Using the editor, I've confirmed that the map in question is "24_Epilogue.map" (the editor fails to load it with the same error). I'm running bleeding-edge svn (r33039), which may be part of the problem, but I'm wondering whether this needs to get fixed...
A look at the map file reveals that it's 202 hexes wide, and that the last two hexes are Qxu for all but the first 5 rows, with at least one additional Qxu hex in the 200th column, which means that map truncation is probably an option.

...a quick trim in vim leaves the map working fine. If you want to replicate this, I used:

:%s/,[^,]\+,[^,]\+$//

I have more changes to the story text, but they're not quite complete yet. I also got caught up in the story near the end, and stopped taking the time to make revisions... hopefully I'll get around to that at some point.

After seeing the epilogue, I've noticed a couple of issues with that as well, so I'll try to include fixes in my next svn diff.

[Iris]

I have applied some parts of your text patch. I appreciate your help, and it seems to be a well done revision AFAICT; however, I'm delaying patching the scenarios that were edited by ESR half a year ago (scenarios 1 - 7 and their storytxt.cfg entries) until he reviews the relevant parts of your patch. Similarly, I'm delaying scenario 10 because minor wording changes there can change too many things...

And talking about changing too many things, there's a problem with the patch for the scenario 8x cutscene:

Line 45 of your patch:

Code: Select all

-{MSG_UNIT (Anlindë) ( _ "We actually come from a valley, far from here, surrounded by the vast lands that we call the 'unknown'. Our ancestors departed ways shortly after putting an end to a... certain war, due to political disputes. Two different groups separated; one group found the valley whence we came. Those are our direct ancestors, but I suspect the other group, whom you probably met, managed to eke out their lives in the desert.")}
+{MSG_UNIT (Anlindë) ( _ "We actually come from a valley, far from here, surrounded by the vast lands that we call the 'unknown'. In an elven war after the Fall, the survivors parted ways. One group, our ancestors, found the Valley of Elynia, where we come from. The other group must be these desert elves you spoke of.")}

You resurrected a pre-revision-3529 fragment with the "in an elven war..." part. Not good. I deliberately decided to hide the fact that it was a civil war amongst elves by hiding any references to the elvish kind in the sentence after revision 3529. The dwarves should not know that the elves were at war before the Fall. Galas must not know that either, until Elynia gets to tell that story in scenario 10.

Differences between revision 3528 and 3529 with svn through git:

Code: Select all

diff --git a/scenarios/cutscenes/08x.cfg b/scenarios/cutscenes/08x.cfg
index 701e67b..53fb024 100644
--- a/scenarios/cutscenes/08x.cfg
+++ b/scenarios/cutscenes/08x.cfg
...
-        {MSG_UNIT (Anlindë) ( _ "We come from a valley located east from here, surrounded by the far, unknown lands that we call the 'outsides'. Your people must know them as the 'unknown east'. In an elven war after the Fall, the survivors departed ways. One group found the Valley of Elynia, where we come from, our ancestors. The other group must be these desert elves you spoke us of.")}
...
+        {MSG_UNIT (Anlindë) ( _ "We actually come from a valley, far from here, surrounded by the vast lands that we call the 'unknown'. Our ancestors departed ways shortly after putting an end to a... certain war, due to political disputes. Two different groups separated; one group found the valley whence we came. Those are our direct ancestors, but I suspect the other group, whom you probably met, managed to eke out their lives in the desert.")}

Back to your patch - same scenario, line 69:

Code: Select all

-{MSG_UNIT (Anlindë) ( _ "That name... I had not heard that name in too many years already.")}
+{MSG_UNIT (Anlindë) ( _ "That name... It's been years since I heard it, but not long enough for comfort.")}

I cannot understand the idea behind the second part of the sentence.

Code: Select all

+description= _ "Knights of the legions of Chaos seem to take a demon-like delight delight [...]

You typed 'delight' twice here.

[solsword]

Line 45: yeah, I guess I hadn't picked up on that at the time. I did these corrections as I played through and corrected initially against the text that was in whatever version of the campaign I was running, so there may be more errors of that sort. Since you asked for an svn diff I've been working relative to an svn checkout from around that time, which should reduce such regression mistakes.

Line 69: The original almost makes sense in English, but not quite. My revision isn't really any better, however ... it's a bit more grammatical, but just as confusing. How about "That name... I had hoped never to hear it again." or "That name... I had almost forgotten it." ? Both options focus on just one of the meanings that you're trying to convey, but I'm not sure there's a good way to say both at once. You could always expand it into two clauses: "That name... It's been years since I last heard it, and I had hoped not to hear it again."

Last one: wow... my bad. it's never good when the *corrections* contain errors .

Some time soon I should have the rest of the patch for you (It'll be an svn diff, so it will have the old patch contents as well, but you shouldn't have to re-patch any files.

[Theron]

IftU 1.11.0, part 2 (continued), medium difficulty / Wesnoth 1.5.10 / Mac OS X 10.5.6
I switched to Wesnoth 1.5.11 during scenario 20.

Currently I'm at the start of The Dark Hive. I will be on vacation the next two weeks. So here are my comments so far:
- My Necrophage has 128 HP now.
- Scenario 22b: The troll and the drake prisoner weren't recalled. But they talked about joining my cause, so this is probably a bug?
- My only recruits in part 2 have been some Aragwaithi just to learn about their advancement paths.
- The AI didn't use the poisonous bow (11-3 pierce) but the Death Knights crossbow (6-2 pierce) for defense (against a Steppe Hunter's ranged attack).
- The portrait of the Aragwaith Sorceress (Illana) has a black background.
- Matrix units are drainable and feed my Necrophage if he kills them (indicating they live) but aren't affected by plague (which normally affects living units). But this is probably a good thing as otherwise they may block a path as they are immobile.

Typos:
Scenario 14 (Bye and Behold):
Erathan: "(whispering) Just for safety, I want the scourt [...]" (escort?)
Cutscene 14 B:
De'Arthian: "Welcome, elves, to the Grand Council. It has been really a long time since the last your kind [...]" (should be "last of your kind")
Torancyn: "The loyalists." (should be a capital "L" in Loyalists(?))
Illana: "That is an interesting theory, [...] We, aragwaithi, [...]" (should be a capital "A" in Aragwaithi(?))
Galas: "The continent was once free of any evil such as this, [...] We, elves, [...] (should be a capital "E" in Elves(?))
Illana: "The orcs' savage instinct is impossible to calm down, [...] we'll quickly vanquish the remaining loyalists, [...]" (should be a capital "L" in Loyalists(?))
Scenario 16 (Arrival of the Battalion):
Galas: "If there is anything to be paid with blood, it is our debt to Anlindë. And we shall pay, with with your blood!" (double "with")
Scenario 18 (Armageddon):
Scenario notes: Victory: "Defeat all your oponents" (should be "opponents")

[Iris]

- Scenario 22b: The troll and the drake prisoner weren't recalled. But they talked about joining my cause, so this is probably a bug?

Yup.

- The portrait of the Aragwaith Sorceress (Illana) has a black background.

Impossible to fix this. Instead, the portrait will be removed.

Torancyn: "The loyalists." (should be a capital "L" in Loyalists(?))
Illana: "That is an interesting theory, [...] We, aragwaithi, [...]" (should be a capital "A" in Aragwaithi(?))
Galas: "The continent was once free of any evil such as this, [...] We, elves, [...] (should be a capital "E" in Elves(?))
Illana: "The orcs' savage instinct is impossible to calm down, [...] we'll quickly vanquish the remaining loyalists, [...]" (should be a capital "L" in Loyalists(?))

I since they aren't being used as proper names, I'd say nope. Not sure either.

Galas: "If there is anything to be paid with blood, it is our debt to Anlindë...

Your text editor doesn't support UTF-8, does it?

[Iris]

The fixed Epilogue map. Just locate your <config dir>/data/campaigns/Invasion_from_the_Unknown/maps directory and uncompress this file there. It will replace the old 24_Epilogue.map.

[Iris]

Version 1.11.1.1 is out and available at the usual locations.

If you saw a so-called "version 1.11.1" in the server last night (cf. thread in Off-Topic), I encourage you to upgrade to 1.11.1.1. Some important fixes went in this "minor-minor" upgrade release.

This release will work only with Wesnoth 1.6 RC1 (1.5.12) or later!

We now have a thread at the UMC Feedback forum. Please use it for overall campaign feedback instead of this thread.

[kele]

Hi,
I played the campaign earlier. It was very interesting, so I decided to translate it. I am struggling now. I have a little question:
The Verlissh and the Shaxthal - are these names derived from anything, or from sci-fi novel or series (seems to me strangely known, but do not remember) or just created on your own, and there is no "philosophy" behind them.
I enjoyed this sci-fi campaign, the translation is difficult work...
Thx

[Iris]

The Verlissh and the Shaxthal - are these names derived from anything, or from sci-fi novel or series (seems to me strangely known, but do not remember) or just created on your own, and there is no "philosophy" behind them.

The Verlisshi (singular: Verlissh; plural: Verlisshi) were originally named Kagthanii; however, after a small talk with ESR about style and stuff, we changed them to what they are now.

The Shaxthals (singular: Shaxthal) is a made-up name for this faction of biomechanical creatures. The only idea behind the name is that it should sound particularly unusual and rare.

If you needed this information for translating, I don't know what language you are working on, or what are its translation rules, but if I had to write the Spanish translation for this campaign, I'd assume Verlisshi and Shaxthals (and their singular forms) are proper names unless I can make up a more native (Spanish) form of the words conserving the Shaxthal- or Verlissh- roots.

Most likely I'd just assume they are proper names (which are not translated in English <-> Spanish).

[kele]

Most likely I'd just assume they are proper names (which are not translated in English <-> Spanish).

Yes, proper names. My problem is pronounciation and conjugation. In Hungarian there are no same words, so I can use it as new name of the new race. The names seemed to me known at the back of my mind, but not exactly remembered. OK, will be used.
Thank you!

kele

[SouthernOracle]

Hello Shadow_Master,

I was about to play episode 1 for the first time with 1.5.13 and thought I might help out with some sentence structure in your Warning introduction. I'm sorry I'm not skilled in how the text fits in the scenario like solsword, but I can provide an attachment so you can compare the two and perhaps cut and paste. I mainly corrected a run-on sentence in the warning and some grammatical errors. The words in parentheses are optional, however, I would remove the first "especially" since you have another occurring later in the same sentence and this one is needed.

Let me know also if I should post as I find something, or tally it up by scenario..I don't want be a naggy English teacher, I just wanna help.

Alright I'm starting the game..!

[joshudson]

I played this on normal difficulty not too long ago. My thoughts before they fade:

I tend to play elves using lots of sylphs whenever possible. This campaign is no exception. Early on, I was recruiting fire faeries, primarily to get flyers early on as I needed them in the desert scenarios. As it worked out, ghosts would have fared far better. Nevertheless, they helped a bit in scenario 2 providing extra magic attacks on the enemy leaders (yes I killed them all).

I found the ghosts and elvish spirits (L3 = Forefather) to be particularly useful throughout most of the campaign. I used skeletons for boneshields starting with the cave scenarios after Goliath (for Goliath I didn't even have enough gold for that). I ended up with a few leveled skeletons that rarely got used.

Anlindë's loss was heavily felt because of her power (dexterous sylph + shyde + some more). In fact, she is powerful enough to defeat Elyssa once (what's more, she wasn't anywhere near fully healed the time I did it). A well-timed AMLA would make it quite feasable to kill Elyssa twice. Too bad there's actually no place to run to.

The power that Elynia is declared to have in storyline (89 damage in one round) in her finding and Strike on New Knalga is hardly felt, especially since a random sylph has more power on the map (and all but one of mine were dexterous). Still, skirmisher comes in handy.

For the long descent to the Shadow Master, I recalled 4 Sylphs, one Specter, one Forefather, one Champion (quick + dexterous?), one Guard and two Shydes. I had no idea how long this was going to be, but I knew that I wouldn't get to recall anymore. The Elvish Lord was a liability, but both the glider and the troll came in handy. I managed to get the Lord levelled up by feeding him an almost dead Elyssa, and the glider was good for glitching the AI until Elyssa killed it.

The matrix cores are rather annoying. Some early game text suggests that killing them stops the Saxthal from spawning, which it does, but only after all the cores on the map have been destroyed rather than each one disabling nearby Saxthal spawn points. This led to me wasting time on the last scenario killing them when there are way too many on the map for that.

As for the shadow master himself, the absorbes damage ability heals him completely every time he is hit, not just the amount of damage dealt. This makes the last scenario at that point mostly load every turn and hope that turn he picks a skeleton as a target. Grrr.

[turin]

Torancyn: "The loyalists." (should be a capital "L" in Loyalists(?))
Illana: "That is an interesting theory, [...] We, aragwaithi, [...]" (should be a capital "A" in Aragwaithi(?))
Galas: "The continent was once free of any evil such as this, [...] We, elves, [...] (should be a capital "E" in Elves(?))
Illana: "The orcs' savage instinct is impossible to calm down, [...] we'll quickly vanquish the remaining loyalists, [...]" (should be a capital "L" in Loyalists(?))

I since they aren't being used as proper names, I'd say nope. Not sure either.

I realize this is a bit late, but since no one else has said anything:

It seems to me that "[Aa]ragwaithi" is a proper noun along the lines of "American". Since you'd write "We, Americans," not "We, americans," I'd say you should also capitalize "Aragwaithi".

The other ones you are right not to capitalize, though. Elves is the name of a race/species, and you wouldn't say "We, humans," - though you could, I suppose, or "We, Men," or something like that, and it wouldn't come across as strange-sounding. Either way works for "elves". Loyalists is just a description of what they are, not a proper noun, and IMO it would actually look really weird to capitalize it.