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

[boru]

(bump)
I've just finished the final scenario and decided to give you a rather detailed feedback, since it was a great campaign and it deserves every minute of my time to be reviewed. I'll start with worse stuff, so I don't live a bitter aftertaste

I appreciate your time very much. It is not easy to get detailed comments and they really are crucial to future development.

Suicidal AI
This was mentioned before, but this really is an issue you should work on. It just makes it too easy...

Generally I don't attempt to change the default ai in the game, my experience has been that it often brings about unexpected results. Having said that, there are many ways to adjust things so the ai will appear to be much more clever and capable. Can you tell me exactly which scenarios you found the ai to be very suicidal?

Gold
You really have to do something with gold. Especially after that scenario where you get rewards for assassination. After that scenario you have ridiculous amount of gold to spend on very cheap units. I thought that soon there will be some great battle, but it never came. So I ended up with enormous amount of gold wasted because of carry over percentage. I was playing on medium but it felt like sandbox because I finished every scenario with hundreds of spare gold (that means dozens of units I could have recruited).

Balancing the campaign on 3 difficulty levels over the course of 14 battle scenarios has been rather difficult, especially since I don't want the campaign to be one of those where you are forced to cope with meager resources. My vision is, the player should be able to recruit a vast army and the challenge would come from how he uses that army. So there are points in the game that are anti-gold-killer scenarios, where you are showered with gold. I'm thinking the best way to balance this is to make the enemies stronger rather than take away your gold. Yeah, you're rich gobos, that's why you can wander into a cave full of WCs and then attack an orc clan and then repel a human army.
After reading your comments I will be giving the enemies in the last three scenarios additional gold. Also I found a few cutscenes that awarded gold ... okay, that's going too far!

Wild animals
At first they were pretty fun, because they were free xp for my goblins but further in campaign they were simply annoying, because they only blocked my units posing no threat whatsoever to my army.

Really? There is no wildlife in the game once you get to Dire Cave. At what point did they become annoying? The wolves in Thunderstruck seem rather challenging to me.

Merman ghost
That was one of those things that annoy player and don't add any real difficulty to the scenario. I discovered that merman with pillager and when she asked me for my leader I've made Clannie leave the battlefield and go back to that stupid merman only to find out it was a ghost who wanted to kill me. I had to load game from 8 turns before

In the next version of the game there is a system that will help you navigate more quickly through the cave. The statues teleport so you can move your army from the keep to other spots in the cave much more quickly.

Loot ability (bug?)
I've noticed that after you kill someone using loot attack you get an extra turn for your victorious unit. I'm not sure if it's planned or if it's simply a bug.

Not a bug. The level three Cutthroat gets extra attacks, but only if it kills a unit. Loot is just a little cherry on top. So you can get a lot of kills with a Cutthroat but you may not want to give away all that XP to a level three unit.

Dire wolf attacks
I have a silly question. Why does dire wolf unit have two blade attacks, one with lower damage (claws)? It seems like you didn't finish something- perhaps claws should have poison or impact?

That's a very good question, in fact. I thought poison wouldn't work because direwolves aren't poisonous by nature Although these are trained wolves and perhaps the gobos brush poison on their claws as they do with the direwolves they ride. You're definitely right that two blade attacks make no sense.

That's about it. Overall, it was a great campaign, very enjoyable. Good plot, well made scenarios. It just had this something that makes a campaign special. Very, very, VERY good job!

Thanks, I put a lot into it and I'm happy to see that people are getting enjoyment from it.

One more thing: I've noticed that you lack sprites. Would it be possible to let me try and make some? I've never done it before and because of summer break I have lots of time. Cheers!

Do you have an art thread here or elsewhere? I'd like to see your work.

[Dunno]

Generally I don't attempt to change the default ai in the game, my experience has been that it often brings about unexpected results. Having said that, there are many ways to adjust things so the ai will appear to be much more clever and capable. Can you tell me exactly which scenarios you found the ai to be very suicidal?

Shining, Thunderstruck and Final Circle. First and last because AI very often attacked my spearmen with horsemen standing in swamp or water at night which was a complete suicide. And in Thunderstruck, for some reason, the AI leader rushed out of his keep at 7th turn and I quickly surrounded him with bats and wolves.
In addition, in Final Circle, I had to reload game because my ally left his keep and charged horsemen and died due to their counter attack... 2 hits and he's dead. Bad luck, yes, but he shouldn't have risked. It's extra annoying because it's the player who loses and who can do literally nothing about it except for loading and praying for luck.

Balancing the campaign on 3 difficulty levels over the course of 14 battle scenarios has been rather difficult, especially since I don't want the campaign to be one of those where you are forced to cope with meager resources. My vision is, the player should be able to recruit a vast army and the challenge would come from how he uses that army. So there are points in the game that are anti-gold-killer scenarios, where you are showered with gold. I'm thinking the best way to balance this is to make the enemies stronger rather than take away your gold. Yeah, you're rich gobos, that's why you can wander into a cave full of WCs and then attack an orc clan and then repel a human army.
After reading your comments I will be giving the enemies in the last three scenarios additional gold. Also I found a few cutscenes that awarded gold ... okay, that's going too far!

Yeah, after those cutscenes I had over 1000 gold...

Really? There is no wildlife in the game once you get to Dire Cave. At what point did they become annoying? The wolves in Thunderstruck seem rather challenging to me.

Yeah, but mosquitos and rats in Xaffaras (I don't remember how it's spelled, lol) are completely harmless

In the next version of the game there is a system that will help you navigate more quickly through the cave. The statues teleport so you can move your army from the keep to other spots in the cave much more quickly.

That's cool!

Not a bug. The level three Cutthroat gets extra attacks, but only if it kills a unit. Loot is just a little cherry on top. So you can get a lot of kills with a Cutthroat but you may not want to give away all that XP to a level three unit.

Oh. Maybe it should be put in description more clearly, then.

Do you have an art thread here or elsewhere? I'd like to see your work.

Like I said, I haven't done any spriting yet. I just thought I could make some simple frankensteins to make cutthroats and fireflies differ from pillagers and lvl 2 goblins from the rest. I just wanted to ask first so I don't waste my time on making something someone else is making. So if no one is currently working on sprites, I'd gladly give it a try!

I've just remembered something: timing of 2 events. The Deep One and the return of orcs in Final Circle. They both were too late. I'm not sure how it looks in WML, but I'd spawn Deep One, say, 2 turns earlier and orcs around 10 turns earlier. I've even made a screenshot on how things looked when Girk showed up:
As you can see, they're pretty much late for the show. And here shows up the gold issue again, I had a full map of my army and then I was able to recruit additional three castles of orcs...

Thanks!

[boru]

Shining, Thunderstruck and Final Circle. First and last because AI very often attacked my spearmen with horsemen standing in swamp or water at night which was a complete suicide. And in Thunderstruck, for some reason, the AI leader rushed out of his keep at 7th turn and I quickly surrounded him with bats and wolves.

I'll give more gold to the enemy in Shining & Thunderstruck. The saurian leader has the same 60% defense on the keep as in the swamp or nearby rocks, so changing ai to make him remain in the keep would only forestall his demise by a turn or two. The solution may lie in subtle changes to the map or other factors. Thanks for pointing out the problems.

In addition, in Final Circle, I had to reload game because my ally left his keep and charged horsemen and died due to their counter attack... 2 hits and he's dead. Bad luck, yes, but he shouldn't have risked. It's extra annoying because it's the player who loses and who can do literally nothing about it except for loading and praying for luck.

This is an easy fix. I assume you mean the merfolk ally, not the allies that come later. He'll stay in the keep, and since there's dialog about defending the merfolk, it should be enough.

Yeah, but mosquitos and rats in Xaffaras (I don't remember how it's spelled, lol) are completely harmless

Maybe I'll add more animals to that one. They're in there because Stern drew those really nice mosquitoes and I wanted to put them to use. Also, the beserker mosquito amused me. Hmm, maybe I'll throw in a poison undead sea serpent. Riding a gryphon.

Not a bug. The level three Cutthroat gets extra attacks, but only if it kills a unit. Loot is just a little cherry on top. So you can get a lot of kills with a Cutthroat but you may not want to give away all that XP to a level three unit.

Oh. Maybe it should be put in description more clearly, then.

It does say, "In the time it takes to kill one enemy, the Cutthroat kills many." That seems clear.

Like I said, I haven't done any spriting yet. I just thought I could make some simple frankensteins to make cutthroats and fireflies differ from pillagers and lvl 2 goblins from the rest. I just wanted to ask first so I don't waste my time on making something someone else is making. So if no one is currently working on sprites, I'd gladly give it a try!

I've been very lucky to get some custom sprites for the Trumpeter and Goblin Prime from Stern, and artisticdude reminded me of a sprite of his that I'll be using for the Jinx. I've tried my hand at a few frankensteins this week and there will be one for the Goblin Slave in the next update, based on Ken_Oh's frankenstein in Wesband. I'm not sure what Stern plans to do in the future but if you want to try a Firefly frankenstein, give it a shot and post it in the art thread.

I've just remembered something: timing of 2 events. The Deep One and the return of orcs in Final Circle. They both were too late. I'm not sure how it looks in WML, but I'd spawn Deep One, say, 2 turns earlier and orcs around 10 turns earlier. I've even made a screenshot on how things looked when Girk showed up:

I'll take a look at the deep ones, they're currently scripted to start appearing in turn 10, and reappear every time you kill one. Orcs appear in turn 10. Since there will be less gold and more enemies, the final scenario may play out very differently now, so it will take a bit of testing to know the best time for the orcs to now appear.
Thanks again for all your ideas.

EDIT:
Just wanted to add, the Direwolf will in future have no claw attack. Instead he will have level 3 leadership that applies to wolves and of course wolf riders.

[Dunno]

It does say, "In the time it takes to kill one enemy, the Cutthroat kills many." That seems clear.

Now that you mention it, it does. But you see, most of description have a note in the bottom. Like "note: this unit's magical attack always has a high chance of hitting" etc. It would be very helpful if a similar note was written in Cutthroat's. Like "note: this unit gets an extra move after successfully killing an enemy".

I've been very lucky to get some custom sprites for the Trumpeter and Goblin Prime from Stern, and artisticdude reminded me of a sprite of his that I'll be using for the Jinx. I've tried my hand at a few frankensteins this week and there will be one for the Goblin Slave in the next update, based on Ken_Oh's frankenstein in Wesband. I'm not sure what Stern plans to do in the future but if you want to try a Firefly frankenstein, give it a shot and post it in the art thread.

Well then, see you in the art thread!

Thanks again for all your ideas.

You're very welcome! I'm glad I could help.

[alterego]

Thanks for this great campain.

* I played it at default level (medium) and found it well balanced (i am a rather experienced player).
* I love the goblin 's sense of humor and spirit

Spoiler:

[*] Maybe i am wrong, but it seems that when wolf riders are "transformed" they become weaker (do less damage : a new level 3 is equal to an old level 2)
[*] It is quite hard to get the leader to level 4 before the end, because this become possible in the penultimate scenario, so i was a bit frustrated

[*] I had a tiny bug when wolf-riders gain a new level : the window to select the new kind of character appeared twice, maybe it is a bug of 1.9.6 and not the scenario, i'll do a bug report

[boru]

Thanks for your comments. Balancing this thing is a tricky business, I'm happy to see you had a positive experience with balance.

I'm still tweaking the level 3 wolf riders, Cutthroat and Firefly. Many people have told me Cutthroat is overpowered. The jury's still out on Firefly, the unit has been totally revised in version 1.1.7. I'll take another look at his stats, maybe it needs something more.

The level 4 Direwolf Master is not a terribly impressive levelup. Unless I get some brilliant idea of rearranging stuff to help Clammie get more XP in the final two scenarios, I may not keep the unit. Both those scenarios are set up a far distance from the enemy and several rounds of recruiting is necessary, so by the time the leader gets to the front there's not always a lot of XP to be had. Even if you do level him in the final battle, it's sort of a letdown. Well, this is why we're still "in development."

It's not good to file a bug report on Gna based on what happened in an add-on. I've mucked around a lot with the normal way that wolf riders level up, so the bug is almost definitely from that. If you still have a saved game file from before the bug occurred, please post it here. Otherwise, let me know if this happened before or after the Dire Cave scenario, and which kind of wolf rider unit was leveling up.

Thanks again for your comments.

[aaack0]

wesnoth 1.8.5 on linux
current swamplings

20110718 12:22:18 error general: Error while playing the game: game_error: unknown unit type: Giant Rat Sw

otherwise no problems & love the game

if i can't fix that, can i jump past the scenario using debug mode somehow?

apologies for my newness to wesnoth/forums

thanks for any advice

[lipk]

1. Find the Wesnoth user data directory
(~/Library/Preferences/Wesnoth/Data/Add-Ons/ on Mac
~/.wesnoth/data/add-ons on Linux
C:/Program Files/Wesnoth/userdata/data/add-ons on Windows)
2. Enter the Swamplings/scenarios directory
3. Open 13_The_Ruins_of_Xaffrasz.cfg (with a simple text editor, such as NotePad)
4. Find the line

Code: Select all

{SCATTER_UNITS 8 "Buzzblood,Giant Rat Sw" 3 ( 

(roughly at the 1/4 of the file)
5. replace "Giant Rat Sw" with simply "Giant Rat"

Now it should work.

[boru]

Wow, lipk ... you solved that 16 minutes after the post! Not bad at all. I'm still working on alterego's wolf rider bug, but I can't find a trace of it.

[edit]
There is now a new version on the 1.8 server that fixes the Giant Rat bug discovered by aaack0

[aaack0]

Thank you, and yes that fixed it perfectly. Great add-on... who doesn't love the under-dog?

1. Find the Wesnoth user data directory
(~/Library/Preferences/Wesnoth/Data/Add-Ons/ on Mac
~/.wesnoth/data/add-ons on Linux
C:/Program Files/Wesnoth/userdata/data/add-ons on Windows)
2. Enter the Swamplings/scenarios directory
3. Open 13_The_Ruins_of_Xaffrasz.cfg (with a simple text editor, such as NotePad)
4. Find the line

Code: Select all

{SCATTER_UNITS 8 "Buzzblood,Giant Rat Sw" 3 ( 

(roughly at the 1/4 of the file)
5. replace "Giant Rat Sw" with simply "Giant Rat"

Now it should work.

[dirtywhitellama]

having trouble on "it takes a swampling"...got to the south end of the hall of unstable columns, and my goblin (whos name I just drew a blank on) says to kennison, what's this torch for? and then kennison opens the door to the great hall, closing the door to the hall of columns...but most of the enemy's forces are in the great hall (because I took the advice to flee and didn't waste any time anywhere if possible) and fall on me immediately and there is no way I can get to the trap door at all. whats up with this??

otherwise enjoying the campaign so far, if necessary I will just skip the rest of this scenario, but would rather play through if I can make it work out.

edit: attached my replay if it is useful to anyone, also if relevant, I am using bfw 1.8

[Dunno]

answer:

It's quite simple actually. You just keep on going down that hallway, and through another secret door. I'm attaching a replay.

[dirtywhitellama]

Doh, thanks, I don't know why I didn't even try that.

[boru]

You can close the door at 7,17 by walking out of that hex and re-entering it.

Glad you're enjoying the campaign.

having trouble on "it takes a swampling"...got to the south end of the hall of unstable columns, and my goblin (whos name I just drew a blank on) says to kennison, what's this torch for? and then kennison opens the door to the great hall, closing the door to the hall of columns...but most of the enemy's forces are in the great hall (because I took the advice to flee and didn't waste any time anywhere if possible) and fall on me immediately and there is no way I can get to the trap door at all. whats up with this??

otherwise enjoying the campaign so far, if necessary I will just skip the rest of this scenario, but would rather play through if I can make it work out.

edit: attached my replay if it is useful to anyone, also if relevant, I am using bfw 1.8

[mattsc]

Hi boru. Earlier this year, when I was in the middle of writing my own campaign (also a goblin campaign), I cheated my way through about half of Swamplings in debug mode, making sure that I wasn't writing something that had been done already. I was happy to see that we had a few common elements, but that overall the campaigns were very different. I also liked Swamplings a lot and decided to come back to it later - which I have now finally done. It's a great campaign, very well done. I like how the story line switches back and forth and how there's something new that you didn't expect happening all the time. I do have a bunch of comments below, if you don't mind. I found that I really appreciate when people send me this kind of feedback. These are my personal opinions and preferences and I am not suggesting that you change anything, they are just meant as FYIs. I played version 1.1.7n on BfW 1.9.9. Also, I didn't read many of the previous comments, so I apologize if some of these have been made already.

Before getting into specifics, a general comment: I found it very hard in my own campaign to set up "running scenarios" (as in, running away from something) that only have one or few units and are not either trivial or unstable. I actually have come to believe that that is essentially impossible, because either the units can outrun the pursuers (=boring), or if not, the battle has to be very easy (or it becomes unstable). I was happy to see "It takes a Swampling", which is very entertaining and even requires a bit of thought down in the sewers (although even that I wouldn't exactly call hard).

On to more specific stuff, in no particular order:

Whenever the goblin spearmen advance, I needed to click on the advancement window twice (as in, the window popped up a second time after making the choice).

It Takes a Swampling:
- The dialog at certain key points is set up for Clammie and Kennison to do things in a certain order. For example, when you get to the trap door the first time, I moved Clammie next to the torch first, opening the passage, then moved Kennison onto the trap door. The dialog was set up for things to happen in the opposite order and didn't make 100% sense that way. Similar things happen when you get to the other torches and (I think, don't quite remember), when you get down into the sewers

- In the swamp village down in the sewers, Clammie only has 20% defense. Is that intentional?

Clammie the Healer: I didn't find this very interesting. You walk around for a while looking for Shining in the cave, and then he just sits there and lets you kill him off. To me it feels like this was added as an afterthought to an otherwise interesting story-only scenario.

Thunderstruck: the units turning into thundergobos heal fully when they get the sticks. That's very convenient once you figure it out, but I wouldn't have expected it to happen that way.

Meet Mister Blydd:
- I think I know what you are trying to do here, but this is probably the scenario that I liked least - which is unfortunate since I think it has a lot of potential. For me, sitting around waiting for 2 AIs to fight it out until I can sneak past the enemy just isn't very interesting. Of course, if you let the player fight one side first, then switch him over to the other, you will get complaints about tomato surprises and that one would play the first side differently if one knew this in advance...

- Also having that much gold to start with seems ... unnecessary. It's tedious to recruit units for that much gold when you don't need them. When I played it, I stopped recruiting when I still had more than 800 gold left. I read your comments on gold a few post up there and I have no issues with that, just telling you how it felt to me. I can't even imagine recruiting 1000 gold worth of swamp goblins.

- I was then surprised by the new enemy units showing up a few turns later, but that actually made the fight a bit more interesting than I had expected because otherwise I'd recruited another round or two of units. (I guess this constitutes a classical tomato surprise, but I am not as opposed to those as some people). I considered reloading from a few turns before, retreating to recruit more units, or waiting for my allied AI (which also got some more units) to catch up - and rejected all those options, regrouped my units, and beat down the enemy. In the end, that surprise (tomato or whatever), was actually the most fun in the scenario, as it forced me to put effort into a scenario that I thought I could just breeze through. Just as in real life, something things turn out differently ...

- In the objectives, it says "Defeat: Kennison (if recruited)", even though you have him from the beginning. Or maybe that was Eeep; my savefiles have been overwritten by now. It says it for both of them, but one you get from the beginning.

Dire Wolf Cave: I don't usually like big battle scenarios or underground scenarios all that much (I don't really know why, I just don't), but this one is great.

Last 2 scenarios: when the player plays the orcs, the dialog shows "It's now 's turn" - probably because the side doesn't have a leader.

Full Circle: Shining's team name shows up as "1" in the status window.

How does a Peltast manage to throw the same spear 4 times in one ranged attack? Or does he carry 4? Or maybe he has a rope attached with which he pulls it back really quickly? Ok, that was supposed to be a smart-ass comment. (I actually have something along those lines planned for the second part of my campaign, which is why I noticed it.)

As for difficulty, I played on medium and thought it was not particularly hard, especially after the first few scenarios, once you have a lot of gold. You can throw your forces at the enemy and don't need to worry about playing defensively with limited resources. As I said, I read your comments on gold, so I know that is intentional (and I agree very much that balancing is always a challenge) -- and I have to admit that this kind of offensive play is a lot of fun, so I don't mean this in a negative way (even though I take the oppsoite approach to most of my scenarios). And there certainly are parts where you have to be pretty careful, especially early on. So, no need to change anything (especially since there is a hard level that I have not tried). I am just telling you this because I personally have no idea how hard people think my campaigns are until somebody tells me (and it's been clear that I have misjudged it at times!), so hopefully it's a useful comment.

I hope it's ok that I wrote all this. As I said, take it as my personal thoughts while playing the campaign. One of the things I like most about Wesnoth is that there are so many different ways to set up scenarios. This really is a great campaign and it's obvious that you have put a huge amount of effort into it. Thanks for creating this, I enjoyed playing it very much.