Flight to Freedom (drake campaign)

MadMax · Post by **MadMax** » December 21st, 2005, 2:36 pm

Do you have a beginning-of-scenario save for Landfall?

Post by **zookeeper** » January 1st, 2006, 1:54 pm

The first underground scenario is very difficult even on easy. When the one hex wide passage to green is protected by 6-10 dwarves, there's really no hope of getting through for a beginner. They can easily hold the passage for 20-30 turns. Perhaps the passage should be widened on easy or the number of those pesky dwarvish fighters reduced.

ozean · Post by **ozean** » January 9th, 2006, 12:18 pm

I also had great difficulties with the River of Skulls scenario Ã¢â‚¬â€œ three times I played until turn 15 to 20 and finally I played one game through to turn 100. I did not even make it to the lava river about which I read here until turn 100 - the drake flamethrowers (i.e. Malakar) can only move 1 tile per round in many places, there are very few villages that can be used for healing, and there are many, many bottlenecks which slow me down substantially: all of this taken together is making my progress extremely slow, even though I have a pretty strong force about eight level 3 units and quite a few level 2 units.

In addition, there are many dead ends - if you send Malakar into one of them, it is really hard to win. By turn 100 of my last game I finally found out which way to go, next retry I will just sent a very strong party down there and ignore the rest of the labyrinth, which to me is a frustrating experience since I really like to explore the levels that I play.

Perhaps a nice goodie would help to keep motivation high during this monster level - the whiskey casket might be funny under the right circumstances, but it added to my frustration in this level.

All in all I have a problem with levels that have to be played several times before one can possibly win them - if one is very lucky and chose the right path with a strong enough force in River of Skulls it might work on first try, but for me it took more than one day of playing until I knew how to proceed. The rest of the campaign was great to play, but the two underground scenarios frustrated my that much that I twice stopped playing BfW for several weeks, hoping that an update of the campaign or of the game make it fun again.

Nonetheless: MadMax, I really want to thank you for this grand campaign and I am looking forward to finishing it - I really appreciate your work and I love long campaigns that take me through different territories like it happens in your campaign. Keep up the great work!

MadMax · Post by **MadMax** » January 10th, 2006, 10:50 pm

Sorry I haven't been on in a while, but I've been busy with school.

zookeeper: Would it be easier if I were to remove green's ability to recruit thunderers? That way, they would be vulnerable to ranged attacks. I could also take that village out of the center of the passageways.

ozean: you're right about a nice goodie. I'm thinking some type of magic rune that would make it easier to move through caves, but I'm not sure about how the WML would go. I'm also thinking about placing signs in the cave which would give some help on which way to go, but these signs would obviously be well-guarded. I could also use runes which reveal a certain area of the map. What do you think?

The problem with placing more villages is that the enemy will probably have them before you do, especially since the AI can see under shroud, and knows which way to go to reach the villages. While the enemy has them, it is gaining gold which it uses to through more units at you. Adding villages would benefit the enemy as well as the player.

MadMax · Post by **MadMax** » February 15th, 2006, 9:40 pm

Just wanted to let everyone know I'm still active, although I have had much less time to work on FtF. There is a release for 1.1.1 pending, but I'm waiting for an update to the campaign server before I release. This is because I am planning to offer both the 1.0 download and the unstable version on the server, and the campaign server update will be necessary to coordinate the two version with wescamp.

Post by **zookeeper** » February 15th, 2006, 9:55 pm

MadMax wrote:Sorry I haven't been on in a while, but I've been busy with school.

zookeeper: Would it be easier if I were to remove green's ability to recruit thunderers? That way, they would be vulnerable to ranged attacks. I could also take that village out of the center of the passageways.

Sorry, I didn't notice you had replied until now. In fact, I don't remember seeing green recruit any thunderers, only fighters. I think the minimum you should add on easy and normal is making the passage leading to green wider. And/or make the dwarves more aggressive, so they actually leave the tunnel and make some openings for the player early on. Anything other than a veteran player can't be expected to be able to clear a 1-hex wide passage of 20 defensive dwarvish fighters in less than a few dozen turns.

ozean · Post by **ozean** » February 15th, 2006, 11:53 pm

MadMax wrote:ozean: you're right about a nice goodie. I'm thinking some type of magic rune that would make it easier to move through caves, but I'm not sure about how the WML would go. I'm also thinking about placing signs in the cave which would give some help on which way to go, but these signs would obviously be well-guarded. I could also use runes which reveal a certain area of the map. What do you think?

I think the signs would add a very nice touch to this level!

Mustelid · Post by **Mustelid** » February 16th, 2006, 3:52 am

I dunno if you're upgrading this for 1.1.1, but: the third level (the one with the slaves overrunning the mansion) is painfully difficult now that Ghosts have drain. With no good defensive terrain, no decent missile attacks and no healpoints, an occasional Ghost can wreak utter havoc.

[edit: okay, a cursory glance back suggests you are working on a 1.1.1 release. Excellent. Nerf those ghosts.]

luciano · Post by **luciano** » February 17th, 2006, 1:23 pm

I am very happy to announce that the Italian translation of Flight to Freedom reached the 100% complete stage yesterday.

Many thanks must go to Gwain who has found suitable translations for the last missing messages.

MadMax · Post by **MadMax** » February 17th, 2006, 10:24 pm

luciano wrote: am very happy to announce that the Italian translation of Flight to Freedom reached the 100% complete stage yesterday.

Many thanks must go to Gwain who has found suitable translations for the last missing messages.

Really? I didn't even know it was being translated into Italian. Thanks!

@Mustelid: I'll remove three Ghosts (there are 5) altogether, until I can find some graphics for a level 0 ghost somewhere (which I remember seeing once).

@ozean: I'll see what I can do with the signs. I'm thinking of placing them with the Rock Golems, which you would have to kill before you can read the sign.

@zookeeper: You're right about the thunderers. I'll make green more aggressive, and I'll give it the ability to produce thunderers (which are easier to kill). I can also make green less eager to move to better terrain, although I'm afraid that'd be too much of a handicap.

Hanno · Post by **Hanno** » February 20th, 2006, 4:41 pm

I support opening the bottleneck on the underground campaign, it's a PITA.
On similar note, this campaign crashes on 1.1.1 when entering a special hex with a No_such_unit error.

MadMax · Post by **MadMax** » February 20th, 2006, 6:14 pm

Hanno wrote:I support opening the bottleneck on the underground campaign, it's a PITA.
On similar note, this campaign crashes on 1.1.1 when entering a special hex with a No_such_unit error.

Which hex is it?

MadMax · Post by **MadMax** » March 24th, 2006, 3:15 am

UPDATE:
version 3.1

updated for 1.12+, not backward compatible (beginning-of-scenario saves will still work)
new terrain added: dark tiles, from UtBS (replaces some dirt, sand in caves)
maps updated for new terrain
image references updated to reflect 1.12 directory structure
terrain code for lava bridge changed to ` instead of ' to avoid conflict
Skeletal Dragon, Watch Tower moved into FtF from EI, SoTBE (credit Hanno for alerting me to this)
old wesnoth-8.ogg moved into FtF
soundtracks updated for music changes/removals
balancing changes to Underground, River of Skulls, Endgame
unit .cfgs updated for 1.12 compatibility
easter egg temporarily commented out, pending consideration

NOTE: due to technical differences between the old code and the 1.12+ compatible code, I was forced to split the campaign into two distributions, which are on their respective campaign servers. Because of this, however, the translations will not be current until the branch is created on wescamp (so that translators can update it).

Grey_Wolf_c · Post by **Grey_Wolf_c** » March 25th, 2006, 6:28 pm

Hi,

First time trying your campaign. So far is just down my aisle - enjoying it quite a bit.

However, playing the Mannor battle (scenario 3), there is a trapdoor that is opened by a key in the nearby room. Now, before I could open the trapdoor, a spearman came through the wall to stand upon it. Not sure if that is intentional, but was weird either way.

Worse, however, was the fact that nothing came of opening the trapdoor. The trapdoor image disapeared, I got a dialogue telling me it had been opened and then... nothing. Am I right in assuming that something obvious should've happened, like a wall dropping and giving me access to a new section? I would expect that to happen nearby, too, but did't.

Hope that helps,

Grey Wolf

MadMax · Post by **MadMax** » March 28th, 2006, 2:43 am

The disappearing trapdoor image (which should have been replaced by an image of an open trapdoor) is a bug. To move through the trapdoor, you need to move onto it, and your unit will appear on the other side. The reason that enemy units are appearing on it is because the enemy has access to the trapdoor, and has been using it to attack through.