Dead Water 1.0 for BfW 1.8

[beetlenaut]

After beating the Bilheld scenario (07_Bilheld.cfg), pressing next scenario, and saving (or cancelling) the replay, Wesnoth always stops responding.

I've played through on easy in 1.4.5, and it worked fine for me. Did you perhaps install the new version without removing the old one? That can cause strange problems. If that's not it, I'm not sure what to do. It's probably loading the next scenario when it dies, but that scenario is just dialog, so there isn't really enough WML to have a bad error in it. You might have uncovered a bug in Wesnoth, so maybe this should be posted on the gna bugs page. If you send me the autosave from one turn before the end of the scenario, I would be happy to try it and see what happens on my machine.

[LemonTea]

After beating the Bilheld scenario (07_Bilheld.cfg), pressing next scenario, and saving (or cancelling) the replay, Wesnoth always stops responding.

I've played through on easy in 1.4.5, and it worked fine for me. Did you perhaps install the new version without removing the old one? That can cause strange problems. If that's not it, I'm not sure what to do. It's probably loading the next scenario when it dies, but that scenario is just dialog, so there isn't really enough WML to have a bad error in it. You might have uncovered a bug in Wesnoth, so maybe this should be posted on the gna bugs page. If you send me the autosave from one turn before the end of the scenario, I would be happy to try it and see what happens on my machine.

I just have 1.4.5 no other version. Scenario advancement works for every other scenario.

I have a save for the immediate turn before ending the scenario posted on filefactory:

http://www.filefactory.com/file/04fbe3/ ... _Turn_8_gz

[beetlenaut]

I have a save for the immediate turn before ending the scenario posted on filefactory:

I tried it, and it worked fine on my computer, advancing like it was supposed to. (I'm using 1.4.5 now, too.) I really can't debug something that works. My guess is that something is corrupt with your BfW installation, and you should carefully delete it all (except the save files) and reinstall. You could also try posting in the technical support forum. Other than that, I'm out of ideas. (I suppose I could send you the save file for the next scenario if you want. Maybe the rest of the campaign will work fine.)

[LemonTea]

I have a save for the immediate turn before ending the scenario posted on filefactory:

I tried it, and it worked fine on my computer, advancing like it was supposed to. (I'm using 1.4.5 now, too.) I really can't debug something that works. My guess is that something is corrupt with your BfW installation, and you should carefully delete it all (except the save files) and reinstall. You could also try posting in the technical support forum. Other than that, I'm out of ideas. (I suppose I could send you the save file for the next scenario if you want. Maybe the rest of the campaign will work fine.)

hmm :/

K thanks for your time

EDIT: I backed up userdata and re-installed Wesnoth it still didn't work. Also tried re-doing the scenario (by spawning units in debug mode on Turn 1 as to do it quick) and still has the same problem of freezing and not responding after saving or cancelling the replay.

[Divine Crusader]

I test your campaign and i think it is very interesting.

1.The merman king unit doesn't look tough.I like Longbow avatar.Look at his avatar cause his one is like a tough and strong unit which can be a leader.

2.I don't think specter is a weapon for a king,sea king should use Triton which can shoot lightning,water and ice.Up to you.

That is all.Well done.If you are making another campaign,i am forward to see it.

[beetlenaut]

I test your campaign and i think it is very interesting.

Thank you for saying so.

1.The merman king unit doesn't look tough.I like Longbow avatar.Look at his avatar cause his one is like a tough and strong unit which can be a leader.

That is true. The merman king is the next thing I will work on. Jetryl drew that avatar and also drew other new pictures of mermen. They are all powerful looking, and I will use them to help me draw the new merman king.

2.I don't think specter is a weapon for a king,sea king should use Triton which can shoot lightning,water and ice.Up to you.

That would be a very powerful artifact for Wesnoth, and I don't think it fits a king in the Northern Lands. He should be tough and strong instead of magical. He has a mace when he gets to level 2, and he crushes skeletons with ease.

That is all.Well done.If you are making another campaign,i am forward to see it.

I hope to make another sometime, but it will take me a while to finish all the graphics for this one!

[Divine Crusader]

I see.Ok.Good luck on that.

[Sneezy]

Hi Beetlenaut--
I recently finished playing this campaign using BfW ver 1.4, Dead Water ver 0.9.3, difficulty = normal, using win2k svc pack 4.

I really enjoyed the campaign. Good story, good dialogue.
Things tie together nicely, lots of races get involved, and it's nice having a mixture of units in the party. I was particularly happy to have the kraken. That's a nice touch. You deserve a giant atta-boy for that one. The animation still makes me chuckle every time I see it. Who'd want to fight that thing?

What follows are some observations & feedback on the experience.

**** SPOILERS AHEAD ****

Scenario 1, Invasion!, was quite a challenge. I had to back up and re-start a couple of times, and eventually settled on a different strategy than the one mentioned in the walkthru (or the forum or wherever). I sent the 6 pre-existing citizens out to flag a ton of villages to generate revenue, then they came back to the camp to help defend. Kai kept recruiting (mostly citizens, since their upkeep=0), and the mermen stayed away from the shore and away from the ford hexes. I.e., they stayed out of reach of the ground units. The bats and the swimmers came out and arrived before any ground units, and there was quite a melee. Mermen weren't able to prevent a couple of bats getting by, so most of the villages went over to the enemy, and a ton of enemy units popped up. Some of those units also swam out to fight. The enemy force got up to about 32 units, the mermen recruited a total of 31, and the mermen generally had about 20 units alive at any particular time. By about t13, the mermen were starting to chew down the enemy numbers, and they could start re-capturing a few villages, and taking the fight in toward shore. Citizens and especially brawlers can do pretty well against skeletons, so we ended up with about 8 brawlers at the end. We also got a couple of mer-initiates promoted to mer-priestess, and a bunch of hunters promoted to netcaster. Only used 2-3 fighters, and maybe 6-7 hunters, and a couple of initiates. Victory happened in t26 (but will be better next time!).

My initial reaction (during the first half-dozen turns) was to dislike the scenario because it felt too hard. But by about t15, it was clear that the approach was going to succeed, and by the end I felt that this was a REALLY GOOD scenario: tough, but not unfair. Maneuver was important, and slipping units back and forth from flank to flank was equally important. Reliance on lev-0 units was interesting, and they advanced to be a pretty effective unit. I like the brawlers as they are. I think I'd resist the pleas to make a lev-2 version of a brawler.

scenarios 2 thru 5 were good and interesting and weren't quite as difficult to figure out.

Scenario 6, Uncharted Islands, was tough.
Eventually, I backed up and worked harder on promoting units in Slavers and Tirigaz. Having a Diviner and a few other lev-3 units, and deploying the mermen just east of the chain of islands (to slow down the enemy's ability to gang up on units), made this scenario fairly workable.

Scenarios 7 thru 9 were interesting because the opponents were again different. They required thought, but weren't unfair. By about this time, Kreshan was lev-3 and Inky was a Kraken.

Scenario 10, Flaming Sword, initially looked kind of scary, but it turned out that we faced the ghosts, etc., first, and the skeletons arrived afterwards. You had to think carefully about unit placement, but once we got the upper hand, the win was pretty straightforward. I particularly liked the mage's change in "attitude." Allies in BfW,
in general, seem to be surprisingly reliable -- you don't often see the double-crosses or duplicity that the real world serves up. It caught me by surprise the first time through, and was incredibly painful, since a bunch of key troops were heavily injured getting the undead boss. Needless to say, that scenario got re-played, and I'll be more skepical of my allies in the future(!).

Scenario 12, at first glance, looked like a lost cause. But I approached it the same way as scenario 1: stay away from the shore, deal with the flyers and swimmers first, heal up, then move in toward shore and deal with those that will wade out to fight, and finally go ashore and get the last of the enemies. Used lots of powerful lev-3 units. A diviner paired with a priestess is a wonderful thing, and it can wreak havoc on a crowd of skeletons. The whole scenario was one giant melee, which the mermen won in t35.

**** END SPOILERS ****

This is a very, very enjoyable campaign.
The story is a nice, tight adventure, where each piece fits neatly with its neighbors, and there is a reason for each encounter with danger. Each scenario does its part to move the story along. Maps are good and the balance is just about right. Another virtue is that it gives you practice in structuring your force vs some new opponent: against this crowd I need blades or pierce, not the impact that I used on the skeletons.

Very nice work, indeed! Please be cautious about tweaking it.
--sneezy

[beetlenaut]

Thank you for the in-depth review! I'm glad you liked the campaign.

Scenario 1, Invasion!, was quite a challenge.

I also had to restart Invasion three times to win. I just had the feeling it was possible with the right strategy, so I kept trying without changing it. I finally won around turn 16 with the strategy I posted in this thread. Even though I had written the thing, I felt pretty good about winning, so I figured it was done. The strategy you used would make quite a mess! I'll have to try it that way sometime to see if I can do it. You promoted a much larger number of units than I did though, which, as you know, is useful later on. Maybe I should have some character suggest promoting a full variety of units. You really do need a couple of everything, but that might be kind of a surprise, forcing you to go back to get more.


Spoiler alert
In Flaming Sword you do get a warning about Calodon! Also, it shouldn't be that painful. He tells you he won't attack, and he doesn't (at first). You really do get a turn to rotate wounded units out of the way if you don't attack immediately. At first, I was reluctant to add the complexity of that twist. However, I felt that I had to, or else I had to change Caladon's character, and I liked his character too much. Besides, why else would he help you? It's not through the goodness of his heart! I hadn't thought about it until you mentioned it, but that's the only double cross I've ever seen in Wesnoth too. (There are a couple opportunities for you to betray allies, but that's not the same thing!)

The animation still makes me chuckle every time I see it. Who'd want to fight that thing?

You comments about the kraken made me chuckle. I sure wouldn't want to face those things. I was going to put some in Uncharted Islands, but I didn't want to retest that scenario with krakens on the enemy side!

Scenario 6, Uncharted Islands, was tough.

It was supposed to be. I felt that Tirigaz was a little easy--very easy if you leave the orcs alone. But I don't think you can make it through the islands without losing at least one level three unit. (Or else being very lucky.) It's always sad, but I don't think I would be a good designer if I let you keep everybody all the time!
End spoilers

Very nice work, indeed! Please be cautious about tweaking it.

Thank you! The only thing I plan on tweaking now is the graphics. My plan for this weekend is to work on Kai Krellis. A lot. Otherwise, he will look pretty out of place when the new mermen are finished. They look much more awesome than he does!

P.S. Other players would probably appreciate it if you edited your post to include a note about spoilers. You mention a couple of plot items that should be a surprise (pleasant or otherwise!).

[thebohemian]

I just finished this campaign and liked it .

Here are my nitpicks:
- the race is called 'merfolk'. In some texts it is called 'merman' however.
- in the last mission I killed the dark knight first, then the dark mage in the lower left corner. when he was killed he said something about the dark knight who should revenge him.
- at one time in the final scenario the enemies seem to be calling reinforcements but no one appeared

[beetlenaut]

I just finished this campaign and liked it .

That's always good to hear!

Here are my nitpicks:
- the race is called 'merfolk'. In some texts it is called 'merman' however.

Most of those texts are bad guys who you can't expect to be politically correct. However, the help file also calls the race "mermen," so I think it's OK the way it is in the other places too.

- in the last mission I killed the dark knight first, then the dark mage in the lower left corner. when he was killed he said something about the dark knight who should revenge him.

What he says is, "Save me Lord Ravanal!" That refers to Mal Ravanal who ordered the attacks in the first place, not the death knight.

- at one time in the final scenario the enemies seem to be calling reinforcements but no one appeared

Calling back the troops is the first reaction of one of the enemies, but the other one tells him just to make more instead. (Instead of calling the reinforcements.) I'll see if I can make that more clear, but I'm not convinced it needs it.
I really do appreciate your feedback, although I probably won't actually change anything. You're welcome to try to convince me more if you feel strongly about it.

[starless]

I have been playing all user created campaigns in the past month. This was possibly the most interesting and well designed one. Keep up the good work.

[beetlenaut]

I have been playing all user created campaigns in the past month. This was possibly the most interesting and well designed one. Keep up the good work.

Wow! Thanks.

[zookeeper]

Very nice campaign, lots of tactical variety and uncommon matchups makes for a much more refreshing experience than a yet another bunch of dwarf/elf/human+undead/orcs/saurians scenarios would. I played on the second easiest difficulty, but I still found it pretty tough in a couple of places.

The only actual problems I've stumbled across:

- The scepter has no attack icon (even the blank one would be better).
- Losing undo on moveto in some places, like when moving to the northwest in the second scenario. I moved there (for some reason), but found I couldn't undo it even though I was still lvl0 and thus nothing happened. You should use [allow_undo]s in those kind of conditions when there's no reason to take the ability to undo away from the player.
- I found "The Mage" to be a bit of an annoying scenario. It didn't seem clear when the bats would be spawning, and after a while they were regularly spawning in the north somewhere beyond where I could see. So I basically just tried to fend the blood bats that were constantly appearing out of nowhere off in the hopes they'd stop at some point, until I was at about turn 14/15 and realized that the turn limit is actually that low. I just used lots of brute saveloading to get through the scenario in the end, because I was rather annoyed at that point.
- Blood bats in general are really annoying units, I'd wish I'd have encountered a bit less of them.

...and now that I glanced at a few more .cfg's when writing the above, I also spotted the following:

- In the second scenario, [set_variable] is used wrong in a couple of die events.
- In the second scenario, there's an event of type "last_breath" (should be without the underscore).

I didn't actually play through the final scenario, since it frankly didn't seem very interesting, so I just read the .cfg of it and the epilogue instead. If you'd be willing to rework the ending a bit at some point, I'd suggest making the scene a bit different from the first two scenarios: have the player arrive from some other direction (a small river, or across a land ridge) for example on the pretense that the bay mouth itself is guarded or blocked, in order to make the terrain configuration and locations of the player and enemies a bit different and more interesting.

In any case, good job.

[beetlenaut]

Very nice campaign, lots of tactical variety and uncommon matchups makes for a much more refreshing experience than a yet another bunch of dwarf/elf/human+undead/orcs/saurians scenarios would. I played on the second easiest difficulty, but I still found it pretty tough in a couple of places.

One of my main goals in creating the campaign was finding uncommon matchups.

- The scepter has no attack icon (even the blank one would be better).
- Losing undo on moveto in some places, like when moving to the northwest in the second scenario.
- I found "The Mage" to be a bit of an annoying scenario.

-I put in the blank icon for the scepter. There is a thread for attack icons in Art Contributions. Would it be uncouth to ask someone to do a scepter and meman tail?
-I hate losing undo. I tried to be careful about including [allow_undo], but that one slipped by me. Fixed.
-I didn't find the bats to be that annoying, but then, I knew when and where they were going to spawn! I just removed the bats from the northern chasm that you can't see at the beginning. The scenario won't be a lot easier without them, but maybe less annoying. I also added a bit of dialog to hint at the fact that there will be more bats after the first turn.

- In the second scenario, [set_variable] is used wrong in a couple of die events.
- In the second scenario, there's an event of type "last_breath" (should be without the underscore).

- The [set_variable] was embarrassingly wrong. It was obviously a mistake from when I was just learning WML. Fixed.
- Fixed. Actually, there should have been no lastbreath events left. I replaced them with my own version to make them work when the defender or attacker dies.

I didn't actually play through the final scenario, since it frankly didn't seem very interesting.

Yikes. I guess it is the third time you've seen that map. You had some good suggestions, so I'll see what I can do about that.

Thanks for your feedback! I'm glad the campaign was mostly good. I would love to see it get into mainline.