Invasion from the Unknown (1.9.99) for Wesnoth 1.4

[WYRMY]

Yeah.
You get the transforming magic thing in Under the Sands, the use it to transform into something flying to go to the glyph.

[fishduff]

in a broken heart wheres the exit i cant find it

[Akkarin345]

I've always wondered what the tranformation thing does i never needed to use it.

[Espreon]

I've always wondered what the tranformation thing does i never needed to use it.

It transforms Elynia into... another creature. IMO the only "useful" transformation is the Shaxthal Assault Drone.

Anyway, you need it to access The_Backyard.

[Iris]

It's been a while with no releases, hasn't it?

I decided to declare the 1.4 branch officially dead. The add-on in the 1.4 server will remain, and the SVN directory with changes made after that release, but I'm not updating those anymore. Instead, I'll concentrate on preparing a 1.5 release as soon as possible. The basic porting was made months ago by Mist/Cycholka, and I did extra polishing and improvements afterwards, a month ago. I just have to playtest and fine-tune the remaining release-critical flaws. It is a bit sad however that the development branch of mainline has the engine in a rather unhealthy shape, but it would not be the first time that having this campaign played by casual players in a development version of Wesnoth has helped me do some serious work.

I also decided to request* for a few comments on some changes that I plan to add or I'm already working on; namely:

• Removing all 'lawful' units from the Loyalist unit set used in this campaign (in particular Cavalryman line and custom Swordsman/Deathguard lines), replacing them with new or equivalent units from the Chaos faction, that is, 'chaotic' ones. The rationale for this is that lawful enemies are not a big challenge under the two suns ToD scheme, since night is longer than day. Elves are neutral, and the undead they command are chaotic, so they are basically tanks squishing mice when night breaks and lawful enemies are in the field. However, I have noticed that things change against Chaos units - those have stats that make them remarkably good at fighting at day, and horribly dangerous at night. Getting this to completion means of course that per-scenario balancing in the beginning needs to be revised, since at that point the player only has 6 neutral and 1 lawful unit types to choose from.
• To make things worse, I have nerfed some player units a bit, but I'm personally happy with the results having played with them already applied:
  • Reduced Elvish Hunter's HP from 30 to 29.
  • Reduced Elvish Prowler's HP from 66 to 62.
  • Reduced Elvish Trapper's HP from 44 to 43.
  • Reduced Elvish Warrior Spirit's HP from 18 to 16.
  • Removed 'magical' weapon special from Elynia's staff.
• To compensate, I tweaked the following ridiculously high attack strengths:
  • Reduced Chaos Razerman's axe attack strength from 25-2 (!) to 18-2.
  • Reduced Dark Knight's axe attack strength from 17-2 to 14-2.
  • Reduced Hell Overlord's axe attack strength from 31-2 (!) to 20-2.
• To make things even worse, I have completely remade the last boss fight scenario; the scenario after it has been remade too, but I have still to put stuff in it to make it different (Out of the Frying Pan, anyone?). Now, in the lass boss fight, you have a whole battalion after you.
• To compensate there, you can recruit Soullesses and level 2 undead with a small fixed amount of gold. I know this is not standard, but the gold is an excuse for Amplified Necromantic Powers, actually. Nevertheless, it is still very difficult to survive that scenario... but it is the point of having boss scenarios after all. They should be more difficult than ordinary levels, although I have let it be too easy for a long time already...
• Starting straight from Episode II has been improved too; now the player can choose the L2 unit Galas should be at the beginning, from his normal advancements.
• I'm going to completely and permanently remove "The Backyard". This is a real failure at making a huge scenario. Failure, failure failure!! I pretended to be a Taurus in scenario design, but I'm definitively not. Huge scenarios = fail. No no. I won't ever do it again. No! Never, really, neveeer... Since the scenario is plenty of bugs and I cannot endure playing it for long enough to test it and any bugfixes that may come, it is time to ditch it. Sorry Espreon, but I don't really understand how you could ever like it the tiniest bit. (Or was that a bunch of sarcasm on your side? Um...)
• I'm also screwing the plan to have a small divergence in scenario 7 (into Errand of Hope and Secret City) for converging onto scenario 9 directly by the west side. I don't really feel like doing it in the close future, must polish and balance other things first.

You also know that I'm doing artwork updates all over the place, but comments and reports on those belong to the art thread (clickety click).

* This is my poor official excuse for thread necromancy.

[Espreon]

Well, I do agree with your decisions on nixing the lawful loyalist units. I noticed in the SVN repository that the Chaos Bowman line is pretty much equivalent to the mainline Bowman line in terms of attacks; I think you should add a little more variation. Maybe a ranged fire attack (Just maybe)?

And I was not being sarcastic about The Backyard; I actually enjoyed it...

[Iris]

Fire is precisely a thing provided by the Demon Zephyrs (L2). Perhaps it is not enough for a faction, but I don't see any need on the IftU-Chaos faction (tm) for more fire. Since the player has the power of fire too, fire-vs-fire fights could ensue, and that would be slightly boring to me. I prefer the power of cold provided by the Demon tree (except L1).

However, I'll possibly give the L2 Bowman (not crossbowman) line a poisoned ranged attack, to make them a bit more dangerous. The other units with poison attack in the faction are the Imps, but I never (and do not plan) allowed Bowmen and Imps to be together in any scenario.

[Iris]

From trunk's changelog

Code: Select all

    - Balancing:
        - Added farmland to vegetated terrains list
        - Elynia's AMLAs:
            - AMLA 0 (unbound): new attack (thorns, ranged, pierce,
              magic) -> (removed)
            - AMLA 1: melee +1D, HP +5 <FH> , XP +20% -> HP +5, XP +30%
            - AMLA 2: melee +1S, HP <FH>, XP +30% -> melee +1D, XP +45%
            - AMLA 3: melee +1D, HP <FH>, XP +40% -> melee +1S, XP +60%
            - AMLA 4: melee +1S, HP <FH>, XP +50% -> ranged +
              thorns <ranged, pierce> [magic] 7-3, XP +75%.
        - Increased Lady of Light's XP from 65 to 90.
        - Reduced Sylvan Faerie's HP from 68 to 61.
        - Increased Sylvan Faerie's melee attack strength from 8-3 to 6-5.
        - Reduced Sylvan Faerie's ensnare attack strength from 7-4 to 6-3.
        - Reduced Sylvan Faerie's thorns attack strength from 9-3 to 7-3.
        - Reduced Sylvan Faerie's mystic fire attack strength from 8-6 to 5-5.

Just in case anyone is interested, and was complaining about "ridiculously powerful" stats. Then again, it is a storyline element and I cannot get rid of it so simply.

In other news, Anlindë will have her own unit line (with stats and everything) now that she has/will have her own portrait and sprites. I plan to release 1.10.0 for 1.5.6+ as soon as the mainline 1.5.6 release is announced. Stay tuned.

[sipahi]

Great campaign! I know I am late with the kudos but IftU got me back to playing regularly after a long time absence. It's wonderful that it extends plot elements from UtBS (one of my favorites ever) and DiD-Mal Keshar, and you obviously put in a ton of careful work (much like the superb Chilean scientists in the lab where I work in NYC!) ironing out the bugs and improving balance and play against the Chaos units. Look forward to trying it on 1.5 once I finally make the switch.

[Iris]

... and once I fix the awful bugs and balancing issues introduced since the last IftU release.

Thanks, I'm glad you like it. I hope to push the 1.10.0 release (first one compatible with 1.5.x) before Christmas, but I've already set different deadlines for it that could not be fulfilled for various (mostly ridiculous) reasons, so I'm not going to make promises this time.

[Sandermatt]

I have a question about "under the sands" do I get anything special, if I kill this matrix thing leader.

[Iris]

It weakens the enemy players in the next scenario, although my original mechanism seems to be broken.

It still weakens them significantly if you kill some matrices under the sands (the leader isn't enough).

[Iris]

For future note, this is about the 1.4-compatible version. Many breaking changes have been made since IftU 1.9.4. The previous posts concerning IFtU were moved to the proper thread below.

The correct thread is http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=23379

Turuk was here.

-- Shadow Master

[Arianna]

I just downloaded this one today (looking forward toit, it looked soo good), but it seems not to work...when trying to begin, it throws error on me - invalid character found on the map, scenarion cannot be loaded.

I am computer monkey, so I am trying to re-download scenarion as well as game itself now, but almost sure that wont work...

EDIT: Seems like after reinstalling game it works. Sorry for disturbing

[Soc]

Hello.
At first I should congratulate you for this great camaping. One of the best I played.

But on other side, I have small problem. I don't know is it good place to post errors like this, but's let's try.

Code: Select all

geez ~  $  wesnoth -v
Battle for Wesnoth v1.4.7
Started on Thu Mar  5 09:57:06 2009

Battle for Wesnoth 1.4.7

And While playing your campaing, part when I must run from fortress (Broken Heart - Invasion from the Unknow I), while entering hole, after characters end their conversation my game is crashing.
When I started wesnoth from the konsole, there is output:

Code: Select all

Checking video mode: 1280x725x32...                                                                                          
setting mode to 1280x725x32                                                                                                  
set locale to ''                                                                                                             
set locale to ''                                                                                                             
loadscreen: filesystem counter = 127                                                                                         
loadscreen: binarywml counter = 32468                                                                                        
loadscreen: setconfig counter = 44                                                                                           
loadscreen: parser counter = 244
loadscreen: filesystem counter = 0
loadscreen: binarywml counter = 60049
loadscreen: setconfig counter = 0
loadscreen: parser counter = 4
scenario: '23C_Broken_Heart'
next_scenario: ''
[b]
wesnoth: menu_events.cpp:1741: void events::menu_handler::move_unit_to_loc(const unit_map::const_iterator&, const gamemap::location&, bool, unsigned int, events::mouse_handler&): Assertion `ui != units_.end()' failed.
Stopped[/b]

Is there any way to fix this? Thank you for help.