My Wesnoth 1.3 wish list

[Cuyo Quiz]

I would be interested in the Taming of the Wild.

It gives the chance to fight everything, for one. Which can make you root for your little band of men which have to plow through all the rubble, and get very worried when something unexpected hits your rear.

Also, if well done, the relation between the (i guess) many side involved could really put the stress on you, specially if osme scenarios end up haivng variable objectives for branching.

[unsung]

I think a no-recruit campaign would be great.

The second elf war campaign -I believe it was called revenge- Is to this day my favorite campiagn, and you never recruited.
(it doesn't work anymore. AGAIN.)
You basically started off with a few level two humans, picked up some elves, and were given several level twos per level, but also face a huge anmount of higher levell enemies- and oft had an ally with only level ones who had to survive who you had to reach from the other side of the map, or a severe time limit- or just had to march single file through a forest filled with rangers and avengers- lots of level vaierity, lots of tough terrain for you to get your humans across, and it was fun.
You also got the odd level one elf or dwarf in some levels.

[Thrawn]

I think a no-recruit campaign would be great.

I agree. Right now I'm working on a campaign that I hope will funtion like this. I'm trying to make it, I should say. I want it to be centered around a few main characters, who are a bit stronger than the norm, who have their own stories that eventually intertwine. I'm trying to make it strategy and thinking based, rather than the old recruit/kill recruit/kill method, if that makes sense.

anyways, back on topic, I think having fresher campaigns would be wonderful, or even just brush-ups of the old dusty ones using newer WML, if that could be done. (adding levels, changing other things)

[Taurus]

IMHO, the key to a good campaign is variety. What would sound good to me is a campaign where some scenarios are the traditioinal recruiting/recalling thing, but in other scenarios you are on your own. That was one of the things I like about Defadors Memors, there is variety in the recuitment pattern, sometimes you can recruit a few units, others you have a whole aray to choose from, the races change back and forth, and on one of those underground scenarios you are compleatley on your own.

Same thing with the scenario types, there should be a mix. Too many "defeat enemy leaders" gets borring, but they are fun every once in a while. The point is have some variety, shake things up!

[Taurus]

Another thing about the storyline. Remember the saying that 'Truth is often stranger then fiction'? In other words, if the storyline was based around a kernal of similar events that actually happended then it adds a certain depth to the story.

Since everyone seems to be enthusastic about the Taming of the Wild, here is an idea. Why not make this campaign based around the way the Americans wiped out the American Indians? The circumstances are similar, you have a bunch of tribes, living in the wild, fighting amoungst themselves occasioanlly, but pretty much have been there for hundreds - or even thousands of years. Then you suddenly have this mass migration of people from another continent. They establish a few cities, live there for a few generations. The locals threat them in a variety of ways - some trade with them, others fight with them, and often times they do both. Then after a few generations, someone the newcommers decide that they are going to take over the continent. So they set out on a campaign to simply exterminate all the locals.

That's the background. I find that campaigns that have a strong background tend to do well - UTBS has this background of a mass catastrophy. ROW has this background of a mass invasion of orcs and HttT has a strong background of the evil reign of the power hungry queen. My proposal has to have this background of this massive, merciless, butcher like military movement of the army of wesnoth, and the scattered locals either running for their life, or holding on to their homeland and getting slaughtered.

What I had in mind was to focus the campaign on the doings of one particualr officer. Maby he originally starts out as one of the lower ranking officers in the army, and perhaps he gets sent of on a sepperate mission or two to subdue one tribe or another. Then somewhere along the line he gets defeated or captured or otherwise turned around to see things from the eyes of the locals. Then perhaps he tries to stop the Wesnoth army somehow, and of course they won't listen, or he might try uniting the locals agaisnt them, and of course they get crushed (the MIGHTY wesnoth army!), and perhaps as a last ditch effort he tries to get as many people as he can out of Wesnoth. The campaign might end with his death, or him becomming the leader of one of the tribes that he reolcates, or maby have him simply mysteriousley vanish from the eyes of men.

[Flametrooper]

Ideas:
-A scenario in which you do not fight, or at least don't fight much. You have to solve puzzles etc. using logic and thinking. Find items and use them in combination to open stuff, etc.
-An RPG-like scenario in which you have all the campaign heroes, but can't recruit, and there are lots of items etc. you can find, that last only the level length.
-A scenario containing a gate guarded by a Gatekeeper. When you try to go through the gate, he asks you a riddle. If you answer correctly, he lets you pass; answer wrong, and either you can't pass until you do, or you have to fight him - and he's powerful.
I just keep coming up with ideas for this campaign. Hope some of them will be useful.

[Baufo]

-A scenario containing a gate guarded by a Gatekeeper. When you try to go through the gate, he asks you a riddle. If you answer correctly, he lets you pass; answer wrong, and either you can't pass until you do, or you have to fight him - and he's powerful.

Isn't that basically this password thing in Two Brothers? I like it. It's sooo wicked if you tend to click dialogs away quickly

[Flametrooper]

I think that's a password, not a riddle. Same idea, though.

[Neoriceisgood]

I'd like a true dungeon-crawler type scenario.

It'd allow for me to create awesome dungeon-based monsters and would be nice for the new dungeon-esque terrain I'm working on.

[Baufo]

I'd like roleplay elements (or a roleplay scenario like flametrooper described).

[Dave]

Hmm...I'm wondering how this thread deteriorated from some rather good, conservative, solid suggestions into ideas to make Wesnoth into a different game....

[Sapient]

well, there is a related thread in the Developer's Discussions forum if that gives you any comfort, Dave.

[viorc]

I second the motion that developers and contributors should get together to create a new grand campaign. A campaign with a strong story, but that also shows off what Wesnoth can do. To provide direction, i propose that individual who have proven themselves be given final say over various aspects of the game.

I think that more than anything, what would be needed is a strong leader to lead the overall effort. Simply putting people in charge of various areas wouldn't work, since areas overlap and clash, and people who are good at what they do always have very strong opinions about it.

The best way to select a leader is for the leader to actually start the project. What needs to happen is someone who feels they can lead a campaign effort needs to start writing a new campaign, and then when they get it to a stage where it is finished enough to give a rough idea of the finished product, they need to start recruiting people to help. This way people have a very good idea of what the final product will be like when they 'sign up' for it.

This is happening each time someone sends an idea of campaign on the dedicated forum. The most persistent keeps on working on it. After monthes of effort, with the help of the community and the developpers (mainly on WML), it turns out to become another User Made Campaign.

Still never it happens that a developper raises a hand to say: "this is a good start, let's work on that together to make it to the mainline".
Is it because the initial ideas are all bad ? Or because of the lack of leadership on the campaign writer side ?
Doesn't any of the current UMC have the potential to raise to the mainline expectations of quality with the help of an unified developper team ?

[Sapient]

Still never it happens that a developper raises a hand to say: "this is a good start, let's work on that together to make it to the mainline".
Is it because the initial ideas are all bad ? Or because of the lack of leadership on the campaign writer side ?
Doesn't any of the current UMC have the potential to raise to the mainline expectations of quality with the help of an unified developper team ?

Maybe the reason that hasn't happened is that many of the developers don't read the campaign development forum, then? Good question, though. I like the way Return of the Legions is going, but I haven't gotten very far in it yet. To be honest, I haven't finished a single campaign yet, usermade or official. Weird, huh?

[commander keen]

Yeah, some really unique campaigns would be good. I think that version 1.3 should have an improved map editor, with minor trigger abilities, like in Starcraft and that sort of thing. I'm not saying go the full hog, just some way of getting simple triggers. Campgen is good, but I find it a bit flaky and it tries to do too much. All right, triggers are the full hog really, but some way of making a simple campaign without downloading other stuff would be good.

I'd also like to see a matchmaking service of some sort, so that way people get teamed up relatively fairly.