Valor Campaign Development

[Freak_4_Jesus]

Hello to all! I want to say that I do not have internet at my home, so the length of time for me to respond to posts is going to be pretty far out there! Also: this is my first time posting in a forum ever, so please be understanding if I make a mistake...

This is my first campaign idea that I decided to really try to work on and stick with. I have been working off and on on this campaign since June of 2008. Now, when I say 'work on', I have been working on this campaign with not only scripting, but also with graphics, and music (seriously, I have over fifty hand drawn concept art pictures and portraits that I have been working on off and on for the past 4 1/2 years. Most of these will never make it into the campaign.). Other Wesnoth things have kept me busy and so I decided to work slowly on this campaign so that it wouldn't get buggy or just plain cheesetastic (this is my coined phrase. I get $5 every time somebody trys to use it. ).

Reasons for the long stall

This project has survived many ordeals such as my computer dying on me in 2009, not getting fixed for two months, and when it was finally fixed, all of the data had been corrupted.

Also in 2011, after long and grueling work of completing, balancing, and testing my 8 first 100% working scenerios, units, portraits, and unit graphics/cfgs, my computer hard drive got wiped (I still don't know how this happened...).

Finally in the begining of 2012, when I had tried a third time to successfully re-create my beloved campaign, my parents decided it was time for a new computer. So they got all of the family photos off of our older cluttered windows vista, cleaned it up, gave it away to a family friend, and bought a brand new windows 7 computer without a telling their offspring. This was all fine-dandy minus the fact that all of my campaign stuff was once again lost (minus the hand drawn portraits and older unit graphics, I had backups of these). So after the last event, I just took it easy from working on campaigns and I focused on my MP game pack.

Other failures

I have not always worked solely on this campaign; I have bounced around from one idea to another for the longest time. I have worked on an RPG that had almost fully usable inventories (melee weapons, ranged weapons, armor, etc.), skill sets (character style: mind and deft sort of thing), shops, and hordes of enemies that never ended. This idea kept me busy for about two months till it all of a sudden became buggy; I still have not ever been able to fix it.

I have also worked on a MP game pack, which is currently ready to be released as soon as I learn how to upload it to the Wesnoth server.

Other campaign ideas I have suddenly had the urge to work on have also kept me from working on my campaign.

Of all the ideas for campaigns and factions I have come up with, only two other ideas will probally be finished within the next year or two; both are only alive because of the amount of unit graphics that I have on them (close to 120 unit animations, most are fluid animations (meaning they flow pretty well), and have idle and standing animations; they just don't look extremely proffesional when it comes to how they look.

So now I am at the start once again, but this time I have three back-ups that I constantly update!
Once Again I have started on this campaign. In the past, I was doing this campaign alone, but my brother (the nerd) has started to help me with my unit graphics and animations. This has really set me up to start working again. The characters have stayed consistent throughout the campaign's evolution, with only a few minor tweeks to them (such as new unit graphics/animations, and new portraits), but the character's personallities have all stayed the same.

The storyline has dramatically changed since the time of its conception, and it is still not finalized, but I belive it will now be much better this time in terms of both graphics, and story now that I have had a long time since my last try, and I am ready once again to try to commit.

1) Units that are completed:

*Moreth - is his own unit, he is no longer has to be a Ranger
*Forrest - is now his own unit, he is no longer going to be a Brawler(also a custom unit, but I wanted the brawler to be a recruit, not the commander and recruit
*Wolf Elf Tribe - Completed the units' graphics on this, still have to make cfgs, they are no longer green clothed elves, they no longer ride horses, they now ride wolves, and they have awesome wolf heads on their heads!

2) Concept portraits:

*Moreth - 7 evolutions: last one is a major step up
*Forrest - 4 evolutions: still very outdated, but does give the idea of what he is supposed to look like
*T'kal (not finalized name) - 6 evolutions: last one is somewhat close to what I want
*Cymon - 2 evolutions: outdated
*Elithar - 5 evolutions: last one is close idea of what I want
*Brawler Captain - 1 picture: very close to what I want
*D'lyhnar - 3-5 evolutions: last on gives a fair idea of what I want
*Elf queen - 4-5 evolutions: none are what I really want

ART: I need a better artist to help me with my portaits for my units. I have a basis for you to use, I just want you to draw new portraits on a computer based off what my concept drawings look like. If you can help me with this, then please post here and let me know. I can get you the concept drawings if you are able to help! I would very much appreatiate it!

STORY: I need some ideas! I have a fairly good one, but I don't want to spoil it unless somebody does not give me a better idea and I decide to stick with this one. If you have any good ideas, then please help me with basic and complex story-line ideas!

Thank you all for your input and help!

[doofus-01]

Hi,

Have you uploaded this? I checked BfW 1.9/1.10 and 1.11 server and did not see it.

You will probably get more help if there is something concrete for others to work with. So even if it isn't close to finished, just go ahead and publish it. As long as it loads and the version number is low (0.0.x), folks should be understanding.

[Freak_4_Jesus]

I have not uploaded it yet, I have tried, but I dont think I know how to make a correct _server.pbl file. If you could send me a full file that gives information on a real campaign (minus the personal information), then I should be able to do it. My campaign does not hold all of my portaits because it would take up a lot of memory. I only have about five on my computer at this time, so if more are needed, then there will have to be a long wait before I will have them all.

Thanks for your comment! Hope you will help even more in the future!

[doofus-01]

I can at least help with the _server.pbl file. This is what I used for Bad_Moon_Rising (slightly edited):

_server.pbl:

Code: Select all

author="doofus-01"
description="An expedition to gather treasure from the cold north sets off compounding disaster.  SP Campaign (+20 scenarios - Requires 'Archaic Era' and 'Archaic Resources' add-ons)"
icon="scenery/icepack-1.png"
passphrase="######"
title="Bad Moon Rising"
translate="true"
type="campaign"
dependencies=Archaic_Era,Archaic_Resources
version="1.5.0"
email=####@####.###

While you are still working on it, and may be trashing significant amount of text-strings along the way, it might be best to keep "translate=false" until you are sure that many of the strings will not get tossed & rewritten.

[Freak_4_Jesus]

Hey this is great! Thank you. I hope I do this so it will work...

I also want to ask you if you could find any people to do art based off of the concept sketches I have made. If you can't, then do not worry about it.

Thanks again!

[Freak_4_Jesus]

The Campaign has been uploaded! I am happy to find out that it worked! I now ask for people who are willing to give feedback to play it. I would still like for people to tell me some story ideas similar to the one I have, and I need to know about any bugs, misspelled words, etc.

[Sneezy]

Hi-- I'm running BfW 1.10.0 on win2k with SP4. I downloaded Valor 0.0.1, and ran into trouble during the startup:

I poked around in valor_04.cfg, and found several lines that looked like this:

Code: Select all

#endif)}

Macro-based based things (like WML) can sometimes have trouble if they don't have a space or newline in exactly the right spot, so I changed those several lines to look like this:

Code: Select all

#endif
 )}

And the campaign started up okay(!). You might want to make that change in your official copy.

I'm only a couple of turns into scenario #1, but I can offer at least one comment.
Those first 6 story blocks are pretty long & complicated sentences. Some people will just skim them, or skip them outright. You might want to simplify them, or maybe even eliminate them, since they really don't seem to be tightly connected to the opening of scenario #1. You can probably work some of that information in later on via dialogue. If not, and you decide to keep that "story" opening as is, the final sentence seems to be garbled & dangling: "... I watched as the cavalryman checked to confirm his kill; after I suppose he was"

I'll post more after I've gotten further in.

(edit on 11/27): Completed down thru scenario #3, The Forest. That's where the campaign stops for now.

So far, so good. A promising start. I find that I'm interested in Foryst, and would like to see the story develop further. His little army has started to advance and grow a bit stronger. The other characters that he's encountered seem reasonable, and it appears that there may be connections between some of them, which helps add some depth to the story.

In scenario 2, The Road Block, there are two empty message blocks (for the narrator) that show up right at the start. I'd either get some text into them, or remove them.
Keep up the good work!
--sneezy

[Freak_4_Jesus]

Thanks for givig some feedback, Sneezy. I already knew about the bug, I thought that I had removed the scenerio before I had uploaded it...apparently I had not . I had already left my access to the internet when I remembered that I still had not removed that scenerio. I am going to upload the 'fixed' version within the next half hour.

About the storyline jumble, I had forgotten to complete that dialogue when I was working on it . I had already read and fixed it just 2 hours before I got to read this post. But I am very appreciative that you are willing to help. Player's imput is very important to me. Thanks 4 your help! Please keep doing that for me.

[Freak_4_Jesus]

Also, I want to keep the opening story because it has a major role later on (I have acctually determined what my storyline will be as you can see). It ties the story all together later on.

Click this to view what it will affect later on:

The story is told by a man who was a young boy (obviously) at the time of the story. The boy was living with his family as it was stated in the campaign, but then a cavalry force attacked some Weldyn forces outside of his home. One cavalry leader (the green scarfed wonder) sent a man to his death by catching him on fire. The man ran into the house, and shortly afterwards, the house was on fire. The boy watched the battle end, and he wept for his family. The green scarfed soldier is the man in the bar who asks the boy to play the music with him (scenerio 2 storyline). I have more that the man will do later on, but I plan on not showing all of my cards right now.