1.16 Campaign: A Rough Life - version 1.2.9

[Jacques_Fol]

Point well taken, sir! I'm a little rusty as to where in the story this phrase appears, but I'll be on the lookout for it once I comb through all the text, and I'll appropriately de-scientise it when spotted.

[Max]

can somebody post a replay for scenario 1? i can stay alive up to turn 10 by killing the purple leader so i get two villages for healing - but it doesn't take long for the remaining three sides to come after me.

tried hiding in various places using my men as shields - didn't work out either...

[Huston]

did somebody order a replay?

[Max]

thanks! looks much better than my approach... but still doesn't look like something that's reproducible without luck on your side.

[Ruksa]

Just a couple of comments and a curiousity-
First - I like the campaign (thus far[haven't finished it yet]). I think the dialogue is well written, and Jacques non-linear advancement is really good. Even though the goal is somewhat 'slay bad guy, save maiden and village' the plot is ... mysterious? enough to want to know why

Spoiler:

Ruphulus is fixated on Kyoko and how the cave-dwellers came to suffer their plight

I'm curious and i like it.
On gameplay - minor but... I'm in "Day of Reckoning right now". The AI is really good here. The enemy waits for me to overextend my lines, advances without attacking, and uses their units appropriately(The chocobones won't charge my pikeman )
back in "More Hard Labour" (I had to restart a few times for reasons already discussed, but that's ok) I found the enemy leaders to be rather... passive. Sorry, that's an understatement. They were more like punching bags than ferocious beasts. The Scorpion Queen never retaliated and Hatrox did one attack (when he was almost guaranteed a kill). What's the point of all that life if you're not going to use it?
I found the adjective in front of Jacques name to be rather amusing. like it's part of his given name. Imagine Kyoko- "But Fierce Jacques, what about my father?" I usually change it to something silly like "Cowardly Jacques". But if it's part of the game could a relevant trait be added to reflect his state of being? Like Fearless for Fierce or Quick for whatever he is in the first Scenario. It might imbalance gameplay but it's just an idea...
Finally, an idle question - can I save the explorer in "Day of Reckoning before he's a pile of bones?

[Jacques_Fol]

thanks! looks much better than my approach... but still doesn't look like something that's reproducible without luck on your side.

Hi, Max2008! I think some scenarios, especially the shorter/simpler ones, may sometimes be impossible to plan in such a way that there is no chance whatsoever of getting defeated. Still, that said, in the times I've played scenario 1 I would nearly always be able to "survive" and then the goal merely became trying to do it in different ways, and finally also trying to meet the bonus challenge.

Glad you're interested, though, thanks!

I'm curious and i like it.

Thank you, Ruksa, for all the comments. You are right about the bosses in scenario 5, I will make them fight or run for it, even if it means that they might die sooner (but perhaps take someone with them). I also quite like the idea of giving Jacques traits that match his mood - I think I'll have to look into doing that! Finally, as for this:

an idle question - can I save the explorer in "Day of Reckoning before he's a pile of bones?

Alas, no. The explorer has been dead for a long while (hence the bones). He just did so much exploring that he just got caught up in it too much, so to say. It might be interesting to contemplate doing something with him, but given that there is another source of help to be found in the neighbourhood, I think it's also fine the way it is.

[Ruksa]

Alas, no. The explorer has been dead for a long while (hence the bones).

Ha, the way I played this scenario the explorer could have settled down and raised a family by the time I got to him. Suppose the shortage of eligible women would prove difficult but...
Definitely enough help in the scene though. Only asked to save myself replaying and blitzing through only to find ....... a pile of bones, again.
Same issue w/ Ruphulus as in Sc. 5.

Spoiler:

And he's IMMORTAL! I'd be pretty aggressive in war if I knew that death was meaningless.

I know that kamikaze Ruph would decimate your forces but maybe he should? I can see a lot of frustrated reloads though. "He just slew Carl! nooooooo..." (Little too attached to my loyal units) Enjoyment would decrease. hmmmm.... not good either.
Anyway, finished one branch of the game. Multiple endings. Awesome. Plausible sequel. Excellent. Spin-off starring Krug/Kurg(can't remember) Bonus. Great job.

[Jacques_Fol]

Much obliged, Ruksa, both for the wit and the kind words.

Also, you should know that you took the "right" fork of destiny - as you will soon find out if you decide to explore the other one...

[Sapient]

thanks! looks much better than my approach... but still doesn't look like something that's reproducible without luck on your side.

My approach was similar, but if you look closely at my opening you'll see that I was attacking only two peasants on turn 2 and focusing the attacks of three units on each peasant. This unified attack gives better odds of killing the peasants quickly, which thereby enables you to secure the castle and mount a better defense against the goblins.

Later on I did a reload on turn 5 because I was greedy and wanted to feed the XP to Jacques; still the approach in the beginning was the key. If you have bad luck on the opening turns then at least you can try it over without having wasted much time.

[lostnumber]

Are you still working on this Jacques? Have you done any read-throughs of the dialogue on the later scenarios?

My computer broke and I know I kind of dropped off the face of the earth for a while, but I'm thinking about getting back into Wesnoth.

[Jacques_Fol]

Thanks for dropping by, lostnumber!

I am not currently working on ARL (or anything Wesnoth-like), but I am planning to do at least one more revision to port it to 1.8, fix the dialogue and include all the remaining art. The last part, in particular, is what I've been waiting for, hoping to get a set of portraits for Jacques (two of his three iterations seen here) and Kyoko (a start seen here) before I get to it.

Seeing as the two artists have been inactive, perhaps real life has taken them over. I won't wait forever, but in any event expect it will be a few more weeks before I find a free weekend to get it up to speed. If you carry on with the campaign "as is" and let me know of anything else you'd suggest to fix, I'll definitely both appreciate it and make use of it.

[StandYourGround]

"fix the dialogue," you say?

If I ever get around to finishing my writing projects for "Dwarven Kingdom", I'd be glad to give your campaign dialogue and storylines a polishing. Let me know.

[Elvish_Hunter]

I'm glad to announce that this campaign is alive again. Six months after Jacques_Fol's latest message, after posting in the abandoned campaigns thread, and after having zookeeper's confirmation that it's fine for me to do this, I uploaded A Rough Life for Wesnoth 1.8.
This is what I did:

Spoiler:

* Ran wmllint and wmlscope
* Fixed binary_path in main.cfg
* Commented out these lines in _main.cfg, because these .cfg don't exist:
#{~add-ons/A_Rough_Life/utils/abilities.cfg}
#{~add-ons/A_Rough_Life/utils/movetypes.cfg}
#{~add-ons/A_Rough_Life/credits.cfg}
* Fixed abbrev and added ID in _main.cfg
* Removed lines recruit=0 from Tears in Hell, The Day of Reckoning, Flip of Destiny, Following Destiny, Changing Destiny, Quenching_the_Thirst, 15a_Vengeance_in_the_Making, 15b_Vengeance_in_the_Making, Fertile Valley, Captivity, Hard Labour, Unrest in the Ranks, More Hard Labour, Seeing the Light, Confronting the Traitor, The Long Night of Shadows
* Fixed Death Blade unit in The Day of Reckoning (it is now Deathblade)
* Added {SPECIAL_NOTES_BACKSTAB} to Battle_Commander.cfg
* Converted some die events to last breath in Led Astray, Captivity, Hard Labour, Unrest in the Ranks, More Hard Labour, Confronting the Traitor, The Shadowlands, The Day of Reckoning, Following Destiny, Quenching the Thirst.
* Renamed Pollox.PNG to Pollox.png
* Fixed items being placed over units and not under units in The Shadowlands, The Long Night of Shadows, Tears in Hell, The Day of Reckoning, Flip of Destiny, Following Destiny, Changing Destiny and Fertile Valley. Bug due to use of halo= instead of image= in [item] tags
* Gived bronze ring to loyal units in Captivity and Unrest in the Ranks
* Ported macro NO_SCROLL_TO_AI_LEADER from Wesnoth 1.4.7
* Added a translations directory.
* Fixed missing landscape.png in story screens of The Shadowlands: using landscape-plain.jpg.
* Removed unusefully duplicated side 2 in The Day of Reckoning
* Removed non-existent image path function ~LEFT() from Skeleton_Guardian_left.cfg. Still kept function ~RIGHT() in Skeleton_Guardian_right.cfg, because it makes the portrait appear on right side of screen in messages, instead of left side (not yet documented on the Wiki, I had to test by myself).
* added [if] [have_unit] id=Kyoko in ON_SIDETURN macro in More Hard Labour to avoid an "error engine: could not de-serialize unit: 'game_error: creating unit with an empty type field'"
* Fixed deprecated WML (continue and continue_no_save) in Led Astray, Captivity, Seeing the Light, Tears in Hell, Flip of Destiny, Following Destiny, Changing Destiny, Quenching the Thirst, Cold Vengeance in the Making, Hot Vengeance in the Making, Fertile Valley.
* Added 3 gohere.png in Quenching the Thirst to make more clear where the player should go to win the scenario on one of the two ways.
* Added a gohere.png in The Shadowlands to make more clear where the player should go to remove the magical barriers. Added also a [removeitem] tag.
* Fixed two Dwarvish Stalwarts that were recalled in lava in The Day of Reckoning.
* Added a {FLASH_WHITE ()} after every lightning.ogg in Led Astray, Captivity, Confronting the Traitor, The Long Night of Shadows and The Day of Reckoning.
* RIPLIB: Gived to the Elven Queen the same pierce attack of the Elven Princess.
* RIPLIB: Gived to the Elven Queen ABILITY_CURES.
* Removed unuseful {ABILITY_HEALS} from Elven Princess.
* Added healing and thorns attack animations for Elven Queen, by WML-frankensteining of the Elvish Shyde, Druid and Enchantress... Unfortunately, using [base_unit], the thorns attack animation wasn't showed correctly, this forced me to copy the whole content of the Enchantress cfg and to add the needed bits of code.
* Made it so there is an hint that suggest the player to move on the oasi in More Hard Labour, and now the Woses show by moving on every hex of the oasi in both events.
* Commented out passive _leader from both leaders in More Hard Labour, to make these leaders move and attack. Also added leader_aggression=1 to both sides.
* Added new Bombasan and Jacques portraits made by bera, a thing that Jacques_Fol planned to do. Wired Jacques' portraits using MODIFY_UNIT in More Hard Labour and The Shadowlands.
* Made it so Jacques in More Hard Labour doesn't lose the experience gained until that scenario.
* Added lostnumbers' dialogue corrections in Captivity, Hard Labour, Unrest in the Ranks, More Hard Labour, Seeing the Light, Confronting the Traitor, The Shadowlands (at least, only those small changes that didn't altered the meaning of Jacques_Fol's writing, but instead helped the sentences flow better).
* Removed now unused temporary Jacques portraits and now mainlined Arbor portrait.
* Backported new mainline Giant Mudcrawler portrait for use in scenario 1.
* Added a [redraw] in Confronting the Traitor to have King Bombasan speak after that Ruphulus changes the terrains.
* Fixed Kyoko's portrait being showed on right side (instead of left) at Level 1.
* Converted the campaign to the new gold carryover system in Hard Labour, Unrest in the Ranks, More Hard Labour, Confronting the Traitor, The Shadowlands, The Long Night of Shadows and The Day of Reckoning.
* Added a [print] tag to see how many beasts the player defeated in Hard Labour.
* Added a [redraw] when Arbor changes terrains in More Hard labour.
* Made it so, if Jacques is an Assassin, he becomes directly a Sand Ranger in More Hard Labour.
* Removed an unusefully duplicated [binary_path] in _main.cfg.
* Version bumped to 1.1.

I hope that you'll like it. The campaign is complete, it needs only updating the music playlist.
One last thing: should Jacques_Fol reappear, I'm ready to send him my PBL.

EDIT: uploaded version 1.1.1, that corrects a spelling mistake in The Day of Reckoning. No other changes.

[Gwynnedrion]

@Elvish: first of all, thanks for putting it up. Second:

Spoiler:

How do you beat the final scenario? I can't find the thing kyoto needs to learn on how to defeat Rulf...

[Feufochmar]

@Gwynnedrion : For the solution :

Spoiler:

The battle agianst the dragon is not the final scenario. Hint : Send Kyoko to the south-west of the cave, where there's a wooded area.