Ashen Hearts [SP Drake Campaign for 1.12.6]

Discussion and development of scenarios and campaigns for the game.

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Kwandulin
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Ashen Hearts [SP Drake Campaign for 1.12.6]

Post by Kwandulin »

The Ashen's Maw
The Ashen's Maw
Description
"In the ancient Heartfang mountains, a once powerful population of drakes has begun to weaken due to a mysterious force dimming their inner fire. Guide Herkarth, the heir of the Menor kings, and his companion Uluthur on a journey to delve into drakes' past and reignite the flames of their ashen hearts."
(Expert difficulty, 8 scenarios)

Intent
Ashen Hearts aims to be an expert level drake campaign that combines both classic and new gameplay-elements. As such, the player has to make use of the scenario-specific elements to be able to win a scenario. Adding a small selection of new unit types (for the enemy), the player will also have to adapt his well-tried drake-playstyle to match the new conditions.

Features
  • play as drakes
  • discover the past of the drakes and the secret of their inner fire
  • expert difficulty
  • intense battles on medium sized maps
  • small, yet fine selection of additional campaign-specific units, such as the Dwarvish Protector or Gryphon Scouts
  • find a handful of useful items and other places of interest
  • tasty unique micro AIs made by mattsc, such as a shieldwall AI and an AI that makes use of special scenario objects (and many more!)
Impressions
Spoiler:
Feedback
Feedback is much appreciated.

Walkthrough
A walkthrough for the campaign can be found here: viewtopic.php?p=615517#p615517

Download
The newest version of the campaign can be downloaded via the add-on server that is accessible from Wesnoth 1.12.6
Last edited by Kwandulin on March 28th, 2018, 5:00 am, edited 5 times in total.
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ForestDragon
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Re: Ashen Hearts [SP Drake Campaign for 1.12.6]

Post by ForestDragon »

hi, i noticed a few minor wrong things with dwarvish protector:
1.in game files, he has resistance values of '150' to impact and '120' to fire, that means he is actually vulnerable to them, which i doubt is supposed to happen, just change it to '50' impact and '80' fire, and it will work as supposed
2.he has ulfserker portrait (you can just give him the same one used in Carved in Stone)
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taptap
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Re: Ashen Hearts [SP Drake Campaign for 1.12.6]

Post by taptap »

So excited from reading the headline, so disappointed from seeing caves in the screenshot. How much of the campaign takes place in caves?
Last edited by taptap on August 10th, 2016, 9:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
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ForestDragon
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Re: Ashen Hearts [SP Drake Campaign for 1.12.6]

Post by ForestDragon »

well, it not like making a good-looking cave map is an easy thing

EDIT: btw Kwandulin, you won't mind if i use a few images from the campaign's files for my era, i know it's GPL, but i prefer being a bit poilte
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Kwandulin
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Re: Ashen Hearts [SP Drake Campaign for 1.12.6]

Post by Kwandulin »

taptap wrote:So excited from reading the headline, so disappointed from seeing caves in the screenshot. How much of the campaign takes place in caves?
The first scenario and the last three scenarios. In the last three scenarios, there isn't the {UNDERGROUND} schedule, so it doesn't feel like a cave, though.
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Sudipta
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Re: Ashen Hearts [SP Drake Campaign for 1.12.6]

Post by Sudipta »

taptap wrote:So excited from reading the headline, so disappointed from seeing caves in the screenshot. How much of the campaign takes place in caves?
Same here. Using drakes in caves is hellish. Why would flying creatures ever enter underground?

Anyway, is it completed or a WIP? I've started several drake campaigns but never got around to finishing them..
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Kwandulin
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Re: Ashen Hearts [SP Drake Campaign for 1.12.6]

Post by Kwandulin »

Sudipta wrote:Same here. Using drakes in caves is hellish. Why would flying creatures ever enter underground?

Anyway, is it completed or a WIP? I've started several drake campaigns but never got around to finishing them..
You'll have to find out why they are going underground. I know about the problem drakes have underground, so I've added many places where the drakes can easily fly through (flat+lava), so it won't end up in a "move-only-2-tiles-per-turn"-madness. It's not the typical cave terrain down there.

The campaign is finished and can be played through.
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Re: Ashen Hearts [SP Drake Campaign for 1.12.6]

Post by Paulomat4 »

Hey Kwandulin,
When I read about your new campaign I had to play it instantly! Poor me, I'm just a casual player and there's only one difficulty which is nightmare :augh: Well i did I have to Resort to debug a few times for a few minor things that could easily be avoided.
Spoiler:
Don't worry about the feedback, overall I really really enjoyed the campaign! Great Story and great Gameplay where you have to think about how to beat the enemy!

I'd love to see some Replays of scenarii/ios 6-8, maybe I'm just too dumb to beat them.

Great work!
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Re: Ashen Hearts [SP Drake Campaign for 1.12.6]

Post by Inky »

Ashen Hearts v0.1.1

Drakes are my favorite race so it's great to see them getting some love!
Overall it's a nice campaign, with well written dialogue and interesting mechanics (and a cool portrait for the main hero!) but like Paulomat4 I had some issues beating certain scenarios (so far I've played up to scenario 7 which I think is impossible without debug).
Scenario comments
S4 (The Wanderer)
The objectives and dialogue were pretty vague, and it wasn't clear to me that you had to break every single ice tile in order for the Wanderer to show up (I just assumed he was hidden somewhere in the center of the lake). I eventually figured it out because I was checking every tile, but by that time it was turn 18/20 so I ran out of time (I also underrecruited because I did not expect so many enemies to show up at the same time).

I think a stronger hint could be given, since you need to start clearing the ice from the beginning in order to make it in time. Also, maybe there could be less ice, because it's very tedious to clear the entire lake.

S5 (Runic Gate)
This scenario can be impossible to finish on time if you don't know the layout beforehand. On my first attempt I sent my leader southeast, but this caused me to run out of turns since there's a huge mass of dwarves in the center blocking the way north. Maybe those dwarves could just be removed since they never attack you anyway, they just block the path and provide free XP.

The 1-hex and 2-hex bottlenecks with the dwarvish protectors are pretty annoying; the drakes have the -25% cave penalty and the dwarves are on 60% defense so depending on the RNG it can take a very long time to break through. Widenening these bottlenecks would save a lot of frustration.

S6 (Tears of the Heartfangs)
The 32 turn limit is much too short- it takes about 20 turns for Herkarth to reach the exit by the shortest path without stopping (I didn't give him the speed ring), and he has to stop to recruit/fight/heal. Also, the objectives are unclear since they do not mention that Herkarth specifically needs to find the exit.

I think it may be better to make it so any unit reaching the exit works, that way you could use the fast hurricane drake, and you wouldn't be punished for not giving Herkarth the speed ring.

It also takes some trial and error to figure out where the exit is- I would either put a sign in the corner, or make it so that any hex on the eastern edge of the river works.

S7 (Dragonheart)
I don't think it's possible to win within the 36 turn limit (you can kill all the leaders if you hurry, but you need extra turns for the runes). Even then it's very difficult due to lack of healing since the villages are so far apart.

Personally, I would recommend removing the sacrificing part of the runes altogether (or make it so you only have to activate 3-4 of the 5 runes). Having to lose so many veterans for no reason is frustrating. Also, even if the runes accepted higher level versions of a unit, it's not realistic to expect the player to have a unit of every single type. For example the nonflying clasher types are really useless in this campaign due to poor mobility, and I wouldn't have bothered with them at all if I hadn't gotten a couple free level 2s in scenario 1.

General:
-More flat terrain in the cave scenarios would be nice- moving the 5 MP drakes through cave areas is pretty painful. I think it's especially an issue in Scenario 7, where your nonflying drakes have to slog through the eastern cave to reach the battle.

-For the items, it would be nice to have a more descriptive message for when you try to pick it up with the wrong unit, to save a lot of trial and error. For example the armor in S6 could say something like "Only a heavily armored drake can use this."
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Kwandulin
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Re: Ashen Hearts [SP Drake Campaign for 1.12.6]

Post by Kwandulin »

Thanks a lot for your feedback! I considered your points for the first update:

Full changelog for 0.1.2
Spoiler:
The update is on the servers. Thanks again!
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Re: Ashen Hearts [SP Drake Campaign for 1.12.6]

Post by Delicius169 »

I really liked this campain, it s great, just finished it. Storyline is great, I think it could be mainline campain...
Spoiler:
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Kwandulin
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Re: Ashen Hearts [SP Drake Campaign for 1.12.6]

Post by Kwandulin »

Glad you liked it! It's always good to see people appreciating the work!
Spoiler:
Btw:you managed to make really nice caves :-)
I had no other choice when daring to put drakes underground :P
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Re: Ashen Hearts [SP Drake Campaign for 1.12.6]

Post by WhereIsBaodur »

Hi! I've just played the first 4 scenarios, I'm having a blast! I only hope that your other campaign is as good as this one.
Have you thought about going mainline with it?
You managed to get a feel for the drakes as a species as I've never seen on Wesnoth. Great, really great. And I absolutely loved the nice touches, the drake that takes the dwarf in the second scenario, lava healing, ice melting, dwarf phalanx formations, bear riders etcetera. By the way, I had no idea lava counted as illuminated terrain!!
And great scenarios, very funny to play (I'm thinking of the very first in particular). They are atm just right, in lenght and dimension, with the right amount of units.

I've got a suggestion for you already. In the 3rd scenario, I goaded the enemy drakes with fast flying units, paying attention to leave the ice intact, so they would follow me without success, so that I would have less troups to fight in their base. Point is, enemy drakes don't melt ice. Do you think you can rectify that? Expecially because they were the bulky, armored ones, and so there should be no reason why that is. It's no huge deal, but the overall quality so far was so high I felt compelled to point it out.
Thanks for the great time! :)
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Re: Ashen Hearts [SP Drake Campaign for 1.12.6]

Post by Paulomat4 »

Hey Kwandulin, I just played through ashen Hearts again in The new Version. I think you might have made it a bit too easy for nightmare difficulty. I had better luck on this playthrough, especially in The early scenarios, so The last one's weren't so hard. While it is awesome how much units can improve in scenario 7 when moving on the statues, they're definitely too strong. My suggestion is to not buff them at all, or at maybe let them sacrifice half of their hp. Or maybe only buff them half of what you do right now. Scenario 8 is doable right now :)
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Kwandulin
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Re: Ashen Hearts [SP Drake Campaign for 1.12.6]

Post by Kwandulin »

Thanks for the kind words!
WhereIsBaodur wrote:I've got a suggestion for you already. In the 3rd scenario, I goaded the enemy drakes with fast flying units, paying attention to leave the ice intact, so they would follow me without success, so that I would have less troups to fight in their base. Point is, enemy drakes don't melt ice. Do you think you can rectify that? Expecially because they were the bulky, armored ones, and so there should be no reason why that is.
That indeed sounds reasonable, I'll change it accordingly, expect the behaviour in the next update.
Paulomat4 wrote:While it is awesome how much units can improve in scenario 7 when moving on the statues, they're definitely too strong. My suggestion is to not buff them at all, or at maybe let them sacrifice half of their hp. Or maybe only buff them half of what you do right now.
I wasn't too sure myself about giving the buff when activating the runes, so it's good to have additional opinions about this. I think I'll remove the buff part and just let the statues start emanating fire. Overusing the fire overlay isn't a good idea anyway.
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