Re: Swamplings - v1.1.7 - for 1.8 and 1.9

[boru]

If you can tell me when you first started noticing problems, that would help me fix them.

Defineteley in "Mr.Blydd". 2 Kennisons. I recalled both. I lost one without noticing. I lost Misri (on wolve) without noticing, not even noticing a dialog. After that it was more crazy. units did not change to my side. Units I have seen at the end got lost. It might have todo with dialogs poping up after recalling and/or after smacking end boss.

Misris is not a unit you must keep alive. I felt that requiring the player to keep five units alive in that scenario was too much, and she was the least critical to the later plotline. There should be a death event that triggers, but dialog in this game is often clicked past by accident.
The recall list is a serious problem which I will address immediately. It doesn't have to do with dialogs, it has to do with my changing the leader's unit type several times in earlier scenarios. Something back there is screwed up, I'll fix it as soon as I figure out what.

I would allow this spear for Eep, Misri and what was the boss again?. Even on wolve. Can you take the spear and change to wolve rider afterwards?

I customized my goblins (only in 1.6) long ago and gave every single one a spear with an attack less strong than the regular one additionally. On wolves the fighting values are resembling the animal. The rider is only the "bus driver". I did not like that. So a lvl 1 rider got a lvl0 spear attack and so on. I would consider to make wolf rider race goblins instead of wolves. Maybe a doublicate of wolves called goblin_rider or so.

Wolf riders are already rather powerful for a level one unit. I think they are one of the more powerful scouts in the game. If I gave them spears you'd have another unit that does pierce damage, and many of the units in my campaign already do pierce.
The purpose of the multi spear is make one of your foot soldiers more powerful and useful. If Clammie picks up the spear before the climax of the scenario, he will put it down and you will be able to let another spear unit get it. So: Goblin Spearman, Impaler, Rouser, Thundergobo, any of the many, many units that use spears.
Once the recall list is working properly, and you have a few good level 2s & 3s, this will make a lot more sense.

Do you have a excel sheet with the main stats of all your goblins? If so please post it. That makes sugguestions much easier.

I have a spreadsheet but it's formatted in a way that makes sense to me, and probably looks like a mess to the rest of humanity. Also, xls documents are not permitted on the forum. Here is a pdf though:

[boru]

i recently downloaded and played on 1.8 a week ago. after the direwolf cave i noticed a missing unit file.

Which means that you used the same version of Swamplings all along, correct?

(i ask because switching versions along the way can lead to that sort of troubles wrt recalling units).

In this case, there really was a missing unit file in the 1.1 release for Wesnoth 1.8.x. It will be included in the next update.

I can't find anything wrong with the bosavi AMLAs, though.

EDIT:

Okay, I spent a few hours today carefully going through each scenario in the campaign and checking the number of units in the recall list. I added some units with the debugger that are impossible to actually recruit in the game. I've done this sort of playtesting before, of course, but not since some major changes to the code, and not with such a close eye on the recall list. I counted the number of units for each scenario, and aside from one bug in Meet Mister Blydd, where Greta appears on the map and on the recall list at the same time, the whole process was error-free. (The Greta bug is fixed in version 1.1.2.)

I don't doubt that recall list bugs happened to other users, especially if they updated their copy of the campaign while in the middle of playing it. I'm glad to squash out any bug I can find, but if I can't find it, then there's no way I can fix it. I'm sorry about past bugs and I think that going forward, there will be less problems simply because I'm not updating the game as often, so most people will be playing the same version from start to finish.

[Mountain_King]

I finally found the time to play through your whole campaign yesterday/today on 1.9, and I figured I should give some feedback.
Overall, the storyline is superb, though the whole prophecy/sacrifice/direwolf thing kinda weirded me out.

A couple "bugs" or things that confused me while playing:

boulderlobber has no images. As it turns out, this is because the images aren't in a "trolls" folder. Either remove "trolls" from the data path or create a "trolls" folder to put the images in.

In "Meet Mister Blydd", you get your entire recall list back. This confused me, as I thought the others were only searching for Clammie, they hadn't found him yet. If there was some way to clarify that they reunited (unless it was clarified and I missed it), that would be nice too.

Nit-picking on specific scenarios:

Spoiler:

The cave scenario gets boring quickly once you defeat the Ghast. Especially all the moving around. It takes Clammie about fifteen turns to go visit the mermaid, at which point my Pillager spam was making mincemeat of that failed lich. After Clammie became a direwolf rider, I sent him to get the spear. *GASP* Clammie is no longer a spear user, and cannot take up the spear! Having -500 gold at this point and -40 income, I finally used debug mode to give me gold and recall "Burk" the Impaler/Burk the Daring. (I was still all out of gold by the time I left the cave so it didn't do much good other than that) After getting Burk to the Spear, I find out it's guarded by an infinitely powerful (to a goblin) fire-master (Question: Why is his race, "Elf" and does he have 20% resistance to arcane?). Using debug mode one last time for health points, Burk defeated the fire-master and went on his merry little way. Also, while the seven deadly bones was rather nice and helped to round out the scenario, being petrified without warning was a bit of a shock to my "best and brightest". A warning would have been nice. As it turns out, the only unit that was having a fine time was my holy-water Dread Bat that I decided to name Familiar.

The fourth scenario, when you escape with Kennison, had slightly unclear objectives. As I saw the objectives were to RUN that is what I did, not having to trouble myself with killing a single spearman or bowman. When I found out I had to re-traverse all that distance to get the trapdoor, I used some creative save-loading to perfectly time the torch passage closing, after which it was a simple and easy matter of using ALL movement points on both units, and eventually the rat too.

Another little complaint is that the slowness of the dwarves compared to other units made it very difficult to level them up (they would barely be showing up at the front lines by the time the battle was almost over); as a result I couldn't level either of them beyond what they started out as. Also, considering that you were planning on moving the location of you campaign to the Old continent, wouldn't it be better to change that one line that one of the enemies says in the final scenario?

They almost have all of Wesnoth against us.

It was something like that.

So yeah, other than that, pretty well done. I can't think of any other complaints, but one good compliment.

Spoiler:

I really like how you made it so goblins and orcs are two distinct races. It meshes with my campaign rather nicely.

[boru]

I finally found the time to play through your whole campaign yesterday/today on 1.9, and I figured I should give some feedback.
Overall, the storyline is superb, though the whole prophecy/sacrifice/direwolf thing kinda weirded me out.

Yeah, there's some pretty weird stuff going on. Glad you enjoyed the storyline.

boulderlobber has no images. As it turns out, this is because the images aren't in a "trolls" folder. Either remove "trolls" from the data path or create a "trolls" folder to put the images in.

Will fix in the next update.

In "Meet Mister Blydd", you get your entire recall list back. This confused me, as I thought the others were only searching for Clammie, they hadn't found him yet. If there was some way to clarify that they reunited (unless it was clarified and I missed it), that would be nice too.

Once I have a map finished, this won't seem so tremendously strange. The other goblins aren't exactly "searching" for Clammie, they know he went back to the Archduke to bring Knight Shining to justice and clear Kennison's name. Maybe if Clammie and Skandix bump into Eeep before he starts recruiting, it will not seem confusing.

Spoiler:

The cave scenario gets boring quickly once you defeat the Ghast. Especially all the moving around. It takes Clammie about fifteen turns to go visit the mermaid, at which point my Pillager spam was making mincemeat of that failed lich. After Clammie became a direwolf rider, I sent him to get the spear. *GASP* Clammie is no longer a spear user, and cannot take up the spear! Having -500 gold at this point and -40 income, I finally used debug mode to give me gold and recall "Burk" the Impaler/Burk the Daring. (I was still all out of gold by the time I left the cave so it didn't do much good other than that) After getting Burk to the Spear, I find out it's guarded by an infinitely powerful (to a goblin) fire-master (Question: Why is his race, "Elf" and does he have 20% resistance to arcane?). Using debug mode one last time for health points, Burk defeated the fire-master and went on his merry little way. Also, while the seven deadly bones was rather nice and helped to round out the scenario, being petrified without warning was a bit of a shock to my "best and brightest". A warning would have been nice. As it turns out, the only unit that was having a fine time was my holy-water Dread Bat that I decided to name Familiar.

Spoiler:

So you sent Clammie off to the mermaid before he was a DWR. Okay, I didn't consider that, maybe I can work out a shortcut to her lake.
After all the gold that's thrown at you in earlier scenarios, you were in the hole for 500? You must have had quite a few Pillagers. I sort of felt a direwolf rider with four biting attacks, poison claws and a magical spear that inflicts serious amounts of hot, cold, or arcane damage might be a tad over-powered.

The spear guardian is an Enlightened Master of Fire from Era of Magic. He's 20% resistant to arcane because Inferno8 says he is. I'm just glad he let me use the guy, 'cause the sprite is awesome. It's supposed to be difficult to get the spear. Your gobo will need backup. A few bats can be great, or your gobo can duck behind a few expendable units and let them duke it out while he makes off with his prize. Or ... maybe you wind up not getting the spear, it's just one of those things I threw into the game.

A warning about getting petrified? Now you're taking away all my fun. Okay, maybe I'll put something in the script.

Spoiler:

The fourth scenario, when you escape with Kennison, had slightly unclear objectives. As I saw the objectives were to RUN that is what I did, not having to trouble myself with killing a single spearman or bowman. When I found out I had to re-traverse all that distance to get the trapdoor, I used some creative save-loading to perfectly time the torch passage closing, after which it was a simple and easy matter of using ALL movement points on both units, and eventually the rat too.

Spoiler:

There are three secret passages in there, just look for torches. If you open one and don't like the result, you can close it again by walking out of that hex and then back into it. So there are several ways to get back to the trapdoor, and combat is probably the last resort.

Spoiler:

Another little complaint is that the slowness of the dwarves compared to other units made it very difficult to level them up (they would barely be showing up at the front lines by the time the battle was almost over); as a result I couldn't level either of them beyond what they started out as. Also, considering that you were planning on moving the location of you campaign to the Old continent, wouldn't it be better to change that one line that one of the enemies says in the final scenario?

They almost have all of Wesnoth against us.

It was something like that.

Spoiler:

I don't think the dwarves are all that much slower than the goblins. They're not as fast as wolf riders and bats, of course. If you recall them in the swamp scenario where you're fighting nagas, the dwarves are really useless, but they should be able to keep up with the gobos in the cave and on the mountains and at least somewhat in the final scenario, if you don't push your troops off the hill and into the swamp.

I'll fix that line about all of Wesnoth. Thanks for pointing it out.

So yeah, other than that, pretty well done. I can't think of any other complaints, but one good compliment.

Spoiler:

I really like how you made it so goblins and orcs are two distinct races. It meshes with my campaign rather nicely.

I'm glad to hear that. I started playing Ice Age but haven't had a chance to finish it. I enjoyed what I played so far though. Thanks for all your comments, they help a lot.

[Mountain_King]

Speaking in spoilers...

Spoiler:

I didn't mean a warning against the petrification, but more like something so it is brought to your attention right away (Like, "What enchantment is this? Our own troops are turned to stone in their presence." ). After getting my second pillager petrified I decided just to back up and let them come to me.
More units to attack the fire master? I didn't think of that. But yeah, Pillager spam was the order of the day. With 800+ gold IIRC, I had a lot of spam to send out. What with the ghast having seemingly unlimited gold, the best way to defeat him was to sit on his castle tiles and slow him to death. The reason I ended up going to the mermaid first because that was the first thing my scouts (paired pillagers) reported other than Ryzzylx's forces.
I'm not sure if this is a game bug or not, but Skandix can rest heal back to full health, even though he's poisoned.

EDIT: Glad you liked my campaign so far too. I only have three more scenarios to write and it will be done. Once I reach 1.0 status I'll be redoing some of the dialogue to better fit the flow of the story and emphasize certain plot points, like the big differences I placed between goblins and orcs.

[Tet]

yep, same version all along

[boru]

Tet, any chance you may have some saved game files you could post? It may help if you still have a save of Clammie The Healer or Thunderstruck, since the problems started happening at the beginning of Meet Mister Blydd.

[hagabaka]

In "Thunderstruck", both Eeep and Misris can recruit, but only Eeep can recall, and his camp is much farther from the caravan needed to turn goblins into thundergobos. It mostly makes sense as Misris is scouting, but if she can recruit goblins from that area, I think it would make sense for she to be able to recall too. My reason for wanting to do this is that I have several level 0 goblin spearmen in my recall list who probably have "no future" as enemies get harder, and really want to just turn them into thundergobos instead of recruiting even more. Maybe it would make the scenario too easy if the player recalls high level goblins and use them at the caravan, but in my experience goblins are pretty hard to level, so at this point any level 1 or higher goblins would be more valuable than thundergobos. If it's impossible for two leaders to use the same recall list, is it possible to make the caravan slightly easier to access from Eeep's camp? I tried to use blood bats to escort the goblin spearmen to the caravan, but saurians would get too close when they are about 2 turns away, and it's hard for even the blood bats to survive, or block the skirmishing saurians.

By the way I'm loving the campaign. Really interesting story, entertaining dialog, and fun battles.

[boru]

In "Thunderstruck", both Eeep and Misris can recruit, but only Eeep can recall, and his camp is much farther from the caravan needed to turn goblins into thundergobos. It mostly makes sense as Misris is scouting, but if she can recruit goblins from that area, I think it would make sense for she to be able to recall too. My reason for wanting to do this is that I have several level 0 goblin spearmen in my recall list who probably have "no future" as enemies get harder, and really want to just turn them into thundergobos instead of recruiting even more. Maybe it would make the scenario too easy if the player recalls high level goblins and use them at the caravan, but in my experience goblins are pretty hard to level, so at this point any level 1 or higher goblins would be more valuable than thundergobos. If it's impossible for two leaders to use the same recall list, is it possible to make the caravan slightly easier to access from Eeep's camp? I tried to use blood bats to escort the goblin spearmen to the caravan, but saurians would get too close when they are about 2 turns away, and it's hard for even the blood bats to survive, or block the skirmishing saurians.

By the way I'm loving the campaign. Really interesting story, entertaining dialog, and fun battles.

Hagabaka, I'm glad to hear you're loving the campaign. Thanks.

I'm not sure if it's possible to have a shared recall list like you suggest, but even if it's possible, I think it would lead to confusion and since it costs more to recall a gobo than to recruit one, most players would not bother with it. I agree that turning a rouser or impaler into a thundergobo would be a poor choice. As things are set up now, you can do it, but you get a prompt asking if you are sure.

By the way, a good strategy here would be to recruit (or recall) gobos near Eeep's castle and position them around the shoreline, to force the saurians to attack you from water. Works better with the skirmishers than the augurs, of course, but you could get the chance to level a gobo or two that way.

[Devas]

The goblin cutthroat has got an "extra ranged attack" AMLA which is useless since you have removed it's ranged attack.

[tr0ll]

secret passages? seven deadly bones?
now i will have to replay the whole campaign on the next release and look for those things
i never did level a thundergobo either...

[boru]

Devas: Thanks, I'll fix that in the next update.

tr0ll: It's kind of fun to get Thundergobos but also a bit difficult in the Thunderstruck scenario. You can recruit them directly in Full Circle, the last battle of the campaign.

[tr0ll]

well i did manage to get at least 3 thundergobos in the first scenario it was possible to do so. come to think of it i may have leveled one but i dont remember it actually going to L2, just a full heal and the xp numbers turned purple. i would have to replay to be sure, sorry about that.

[boru]

If you got a full heal and purple bar, then you leveled him. The higher level unit (Vundergobo) is a level one, as opposed to the level zero Thundergobo. He's got more hitpoints and misfires less frequently, but he's not exactly what you'd call a game-changer.

================
EDIT:
11/24 - Version 1.1.3 has been posted on the 1.8 & 1.9 servers. The new version includes the Misris portrait by GangrN, saurian child sprite by artisticdude and Goblin Prime sprite by Stern. Also some minor bugfixes and stuff - details in the changelog.

[chrbun]

Hi,

I play the campaign with the 1.9.2 version and swamplings version 1.1.3n. I can not bet the "healer and slayer" szenario because my bats do not seem to be counted correctly. With the help of the wand of wonderment I got more than eight bats at round 33 . But then I loose the szenario, because the time is up.

The campaign idea and the first szenario are great though.

Greetings

Chris