1.16 Campaign: A Rough Life - version 1.2.9

[Elvish_Hunter]

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

Thanks Gwynnedrion for playing!

@Gwynnedrion : For the solution :

And thanks Feufochmar for answering so quickly! To be more precise:

Spoiler:

you need to move Kyoko at 7,37 and then move her in Ruphulus' chamber.

[Elvish_Hunter]

Version 1.1.2 of ARL is on the 1.8 server. This time the main change is the updated music playlist. Also, some wmllint fixes (modified {SPECIAL_NOTES_HEALS} to {SPECIAL_NOTES_CURES} for Elven Queen unit, added teleporter movetype for Invisible Leader unit, copied [movement_anim] from TSoG for Dragon Lord unit).

[Elvish_Hunter]

Version 1.1.3 is on the 1.8 server. This release features the Italian translation, courtesy by mich. I think that this will be the final release for 1.8, because soon I'll move to the 1.9 series.

[Pranav]

Hi!
I'm having problems in completing the Shadowlands scenario in this campaign. Once I defeat both enemy leaders the dwarf does not appear again to help me get in the temple (I'm assuming that he helps us get past the wall surrounding it.), thus I am stuck at his point.
Do you have a solution to this problem??

Thanks!
PS : Sorry if I posted this in the wrong thread!

[Elvish_Hunter]

Once I defeat both enemy leaders the dwarf does not appear again

Hint: it is not the Dwarf that will help you.

Another hint:

There is a Mage hidden in a village...

Solution, if you're still stuck:

Move a unit, maybe a Saurian because it will be faster, in the village at 20,20. The Mage Luxor will then appear and help you.

[Elvish_Hunter]

Version 1.1.3 of A Rough Life is on the 1.9 server. This means that the version for Wesnoth 1.8 is now unsupported.
The campaign is meant to work on 1.9.10 and above. These are all the things that I did to update it:

Spoiler:

* Ran wmllint, wmlscope and wmlindent.
* Fixed reference to no longer existent ON_SIDETURN macro.
* Made campaign compatible with wmllint's spellchecker.
* Removed Skeleton's temporary portraits, and used image path functions instead.
* Replaced FormulaAI with Lua AI in scenario 1.
* Converted two story screens from png to jpg to save space.
* Removed unuseful NO_SCROLL_TO_AI_LEADER macro.
* Scenario 1: removed two unuseful CLEAR_VARIABLE in start event.
* Scenario 1: Removed a nested turn and moveto event, replaced with just moveto. Converted one event to [filter_condition].
* Scenario 1: Removed a [message] from an [object] tag. Converted one [unstore_unit] to [floating_text].
* Scenario 1: Converted a FULL_HEAL to [heal_unit]. Used Lua AI for Jabb.
* Scenario 1: Fixed use of flower overlay.
* Scenario 2: fixed warning unit: Unknown attribute 'team_name' discarded.
* Scenario 3: removed two unuseful CLEAR_VARIABLE.
* Scenario 4: used animate=yes in Gronar's [kill]. Fixed warning unit: Unknown attribute 'team_name' discarded.
* Scenario 4: Removed Gronar's side, Gronar is on side 1. Now there are only two sides.
* Scenario 5: removed three CLEAR_VARIABLE. Completely reworked Jacques' transformation. Reworked Kyoko's illness. Reworked control variables. Added Wolves to units recruitable by Hatrox.
* Scenario 5: used RECALL_LOYALS.
* Scenario 6: turns reduced to 1, used victory_when_enemies_defeated and removed side 2.
* Scenario 7: removed three unuseful CLEAR_VARIABLE
* Scenario 7: Ruphulus has canrecruit=yes, added victory_when_enemies_defeated=no
* Scenario 7: now Lt. Popper is hitten by a real lightning.
* Scenario 8: removed four CLEAR_VARIABLE
* Scenario 9: removed Invisible Leader, used no_leader=yes
* Modified experience required by Dragon Lord and Skeleton Guardian to reflect the latest mainline updates.
* Scenario 8: variable check -> [have_unit], and removed two now unuseful variables.
* Scenario 8: made Luxor loyal.
* Scenario 9: made Choki loyal. Allowed recruitment of Dwarvish Scouts.
* Scenario 11: allowed recruitment of Dwarvish Scouts.
* Scenario 11: modified some words in Krug event. Also replaced [kill] and [unit] with [modify_unit].
* Scenario 9: now the Shadowhounds are killed on victory.
* Scenario 9: replaced some high level Ghosts with Ghasts.
* _main.cfg: King Bombasan can advance as Dwarvish Arcanister.
* Created a macros.cfg file that contains some new macros: RECALL_LOYALS and RECALL_LOYALS_AND_KYOKO, and used them in some scenarios.
* Scenario 11: Removed some CLEAR_VARIABLE.
* Due to the huge dimension of the map and the amount of turns required to win, only 10% of gold is carried to scenario 12.
* Scenario 11: modified the message about King Bombasan's death.
* Scenario 12: removed unuseful side 2.
* Scenario 14: made side 2 a no leader side. Added Dwarvish Guardsmen and Scouts to Jacques' recruit list.
* Scenario 13: added Signalmen on Hard, sprites by Elvish_Hunter. Removed a variable and used [filter_condition] [have_unit].
* Scenario 13: Jacques has gone berseker!
* Removed unuseful Invisible Leader unit, and all its occurrences.
* Scenario 11: used flower overlay. Removed a # sign that fooled wmlindent.
* Scenario 15: [kill] and [unit] -> [modify_unit]
* Scenario 15: reworked the dam event. Raised by 100 the Trolls' gold.
* Used GENERIC_UNIT in several scenarios to improve code readability.
* Converted AI to 1.8 syntax.
* Added user_team_name to all scenarios.
* Changed several unit IDs to not have the underscore. Added a compatibility.cfg file.
* Add [gold_carryover] in [objectives] in every scenario.
* Kyoko is now a L2 unit with several AMLAs. May need balancing. Sprite supplied by Dibs from the Wesnoth Italian Forum.
* Added {IS_LAST_SCENARIO} to scenarios 13 and 15 objectives.
* Removed Mudcrawler portrait, as it is in core.

If you find any bug, please report it, as usual.

[Evander]

Downloaded it today for BfW 1.9.9

it shows the following error when I am trying to start this campaign:

[Elvish_Hunter]

Downloaded it today for BfW 1.9.9

The campaign is meant to work on 1.9.10 and above.

[Evander]

mkay

[Elvish_Hunter]

Version 1.1.5 is on the 1.9/1.10 server. This fixes a bug in the Shadowlands scenario, as reported by Rowanthepreacher in the feedback thread. Version 1.1.4 does not exist, because I accidentally used 1.1.3 twice in past.

[mattsc]

I just finished playing through this campaign and I like it. It has a very interesting story that twist all over the place and I particularly like that there are different endings that are not just minor variations of the same theme. My main "complaint" (not really a complaint) is that, for the most part, it was very easy. The first scenario is a bit tricky, as are a couple other ones (not the big ones), but I could just walk through the rest without having to think much and often without losing a single unit. But then, I played on Medium, not Hard, so it's my own fault. I played version 1.1.5 on BfW 1.10.0

I have no major comments, so here's just a bunch of little nitpicky stuff. Feel free to ignore it all. As there are spoilers sprinkled throughout, I put the whole thing in spoiler tags

Spoiler:

General:
- As I said, I like the story. It's not only interesting, it also "makes sense". Several times I found myself wondering about something (e.g. why is there a day-night cycle underground) and then it was explained sometime later. I also specifically like how Jacques' name changes throughout the campaign.
- The Dragon Lord appears twice in the help menu
- For my taste Kyoko has too many AMLA upgrades and becomes way too strong. At the end, I put her on the front line against troll heroes and hardly even had to rotate her to the back
- Why is there any gold income for Jacques in the first few scenarios while he's a prisoner?

Captivity:
- I think this would be more interesting if you couldn't just hide behind the guards of the AI. Why not make the AI side be passive? It would make sense from a story point also, if this is supposed to be a test for Jacques et al.

Unrest in the Ranks:
- I had fun trying to figure out how to do this without losing any of my units.

More Hard Labour:
- Again, I did not think it was necessary to get additional help here. With the addition of the woses (very effective in stomping on trolls!) and Kyoko, you can just march up the valley of the gryphon with part of the army, while the other part takes out the scorpions
- I don't really see the point of having the two enemy leaders have 150 hitpoints. They don't fight back and they don't have a ranged attack, so you just put a bunch of units around them and slowly kill them off with ranged weapons. However, if you keep it that way, I'd like to see max_hitpoints set to 150 also.
- In general, I felt that this scenario is just a big slaughterfest, in which you can level up (too) many units (too) quickly - but maybe that's the intention.

Confronting the Traitor:
- In the 'Current Status' window, there are 2 sides for Ruphulus, and one for Popper (after he is killed). If you need them for coding reasons, could they be hidden in the menu?

Shadowlands
- Are you supposed to be able to recall the woses here?
- The Night Guardian leader essentially suicides on the first move, at least the way I played it.

Long Night:
- I believe that this is supposed to be one of those mid-campaign scenarios where you lose a lot of your troops for balancing reasons? If so, there's a way to play this that probably wasn't intended. I only hired a couple more units, and then retreated to the center of the map inside the impassable mountains. Holding the bottlenecks with strong units backed up by a couple healers was no problem at all, without losing a single unit.

Tears in Hell
- The dwarf king says "we thought we heard a human voice." Technically, that's correct because Jacques is human, but why would a dwarf say that? How about simply "we thought we heard voices"?

Day of Reckoning:
- I'm not a fan at all of long labyrinthish cave scenarios, so I am biased here, but I didn't like this scenario very much (although the map was nice). In a scenario like this, with plenty of bottlenecks and no turn limit, and (by now) a large number of very strong units including some healers at your disposal, all you need to do is hole up somewhere and let the enemies attack until they are all killed. I find that very boring. As I said, it's a general prejudice of mine against scenarios like this. I know other people like them.
- At the signpost in the south-west, I had one of the skeletons appear inside the cave wall. (The same happened previously with a couple units in Long Night.)
- I do like the idea of the riddles at the beginning, however, compared to the rest of the campaign, this scenario is much harder to figure out. I understood that some sort of goal was off to the side, but I interpreted this as Ruphulus being not straight ahead, but through the long tunnel to the west. I had also explored the island (it just looked like there was something special about it!), but with one of the faster unit, not Kyoko. So now I am done, all enemies killed, up in the NW corner of the map, and I have to sit around waiting for a unit that can do 3 moves per turn walk all over the map to figure out what's going on... Again, it's boring (and I cheated, because I didn't see the point of it)
- And just to say it one more time, I am biased against scenarios like this. I'd completely redo this scenario, but it would change it's character entirely. No need to justify why you want it this way, just telling you my impression.

Following Destiny:
- This is interesting. It seems pointless at first from a playing perspective, but it turns out to be fun trying to figure out how to win this without simply restarting it over and over and relying on luck.

Quenching the Thirst:
- I like that there are different options to play this. It's kind of fun to figure out the non-battle solution, but since the trolls stay away until you get really close, it's really just running all over the map without pressure at all. You could change that by making the trolls appear either when you approach them, or after a certain number of turns
- As for fighting the trolls, you can simply block off the entrance to their lair with a few strong dwarves backed up by healers and let them run themselves to death. An even less interesting way to win is by staying at the ogre keep and kill them off one by one as they come across the bridges. The layout of the map has very much a cave-like feel to me (see my comments about my feeling on those above ) and makes for not very interesting play (IMO). I think this could be changed by opening the map up somewhat and/or making the trolls come out earlier than when you're right at their lair.
- If you play it the non-battle way, the story doesn't work out if you have Jacques and Kyoko on low terrain and getting killed. It still says "Jacques, Kyoko and the others watching ..." after they died -- and then you are defeated. (Yes, I know, there's ample warning that you shouldn't do that, I just tried it to see what would happen.)

There's an obvious setup for a follow-up campaign at the end, so is there going to be one???

I apologize if this sounds negative, it's not meant that way. As I said, I quite like it overall, so I tought I should point out the bits that I didn't like so much. Obviously, all of this is very subjective, so just ignore it all.

[Elvish_Hunter]

For my taste Kyoko has too many AMLA upgrades and becomes way too strong. At the end, I put her on the front line against troll heroes and hardly even had to rotate her to the back

OK, I'll weaken her.

Why is there any gold income for Jacques in the first few scenarios while he's a prisoner?

This is the first of several question that I had; but being unable to contact Jacques_Fol, I remained with the same question mark, that is "Was it a deliberated choice, or he just wasn't too good with WML?" Anyway, that can be easily fixed, and in the next scenario the gold can be raised.

I think this would be more interesting if you couldn't just hide behind the guards of the AI. Why not make the AI side be passive? It would make sense from a story point also, if this is supposed to be a test for Jacques et al.

In that case, I think that it was deliberate; King Bombasan did not expected at all Ruphulus summoning monsters, so his guards fight to keep him safe.

Again, I did not think it was necessary to get additional help here. With the addition of the woses (very effective in stomping on trolls!)

Heh... on Hard, you get only one Wose!

I don't really see the point of having the two enemy leaders have 150 hitpoints. They don't fight back and they don't have a ranged attack, so you just put a bunch of units around them and slowly kill them off with ranged weapons. However, if you keep it that way, I'd like to see max_hitpoints set to 150 also.

Again, deliberated choice or what else? I will fix both issues, especially the HP one that can be fixed also with two new unit lines.

In the 'Current Status' window, there are 2 sides for Ruphulus, and one for Popper (after he is killed). If you need them for coding reasons, could they be hidden in the menu?

I don't think that two sides are really necessary. I suppose that I can safely remove one.

Are you supposed to be able to recall the woses here?

Once that you got them, they're your units.

I believe that this is supposed to be one of those mid-campaign scenarios where you lose a lot of your troops for balancing reasons? If so, there's a way to play this that probably wasn't intended. I only hired a couple more units, and then retreated to the center of the map inside the impassable mountains. Holding the bottlenecks with strong units backed up by a couple healers was no problem at all, without losing a single unit.

I think that the way you played it was exactly the original idea.

The dwarf king says "we thought we heard a human voice." Technically, that's correct because Jacques is human, but why would a dwarf say that? How about simply "we thought we heard voices"?

Good point, I'll fix it.

At the signpost in the south-west, I had one of the skeletons appear inside the cave wall. (The same happened previously with a couple units in Long Night.)

That's not really necessary, but can you send me the savegames, so I can repair it quicker?

No need to justify why you want it this way, just telling you my impression.

Again, I think that Jacques_Fol's intention was this one; I can try making the map smaller, or adding more cave path.

If you play it the non-battle way, the story doesn't work out if you have Jacques and Kyoko on low terrain and getting killed. It still says "Jacques, Kyoko and the others watching ..." after they died -- and then you are defeated. (Yes, I know, there's ample warning that you shouldn't do that, I just tried it to see what would happen.)

That's not supposed to happen. Thank you for the report. By the way, I tried to pickpocket a Swamp Lurker in Grnk just for the sake of it...

There's an obvious setup for a follow-up campaign at the end, so is there going to be one???

Not by me, sorry. But if everyone else wants to try making one, he/she'll be my guest.

[mattsc]

At the signpost in the south-west, I had one of the skeletons appear inside the cave wall. (The same happened previously with a couple units in Long Night.)

That's not really necessary, but can you send me the savegames, so I can repair it quicker?

It happens when you have a unit (or units) on the locations where you try to spawn the new enemy. If the closest available hex is impassable, the unit will still be put there. I don't have the savegames any more, so I created an artificial situation (attached). Move the goblin to the signpost. With the wolves where they are, all the skeletons appear in the cave walls.
In "Long Night", it's the Soulless you spawn at 11,9. I had units on that hex on each turn a new wave of enemies came in.

By the way, I tried to pickpocket a Swamp Lurker in Grnk just for the sake of it...

I'm glad I told you off for that then. Actually, I didn't think so much about the Lurkers, but I was sure somebody would try to steal money from the rats in town.

Btw, I found another little issue with the Jabb AI code (besides him not moving at all when an enemy is on his next waypoint). If he cannot make it to his next waypoint on a move, because he needs to move around an enemy along the way, and you then save/reload the game, he will go back to the first (well, second, really) waypoint no matter where he is in on his patrol route because the content of the variable 'next_step' gets lost. Neither of this is very likely to happen in ARL, so maybe it's not worth the effort to fix it. (Actually, I am going to fix it in my Patrols scenario, because one meticulous tester found it right away(!), so you can copy it back when I am done.)

[Elvish_Hunter]

Version 1.1.6 of A Rough Life is on the 1.10 add-ons server. This release fixes almost all of the things reported by mattsc - thank you again .
This is what I changed:

• Led Astray: fixed waypoints being resetted upon saveload
• Captivity: removed one unuseful side
• More Hard Labour: enemy leaders have max_hp to 150
• More Hard Labour: enemy leaders no longer have passive_leader
• More Hard Labour: Hatrox can recruit Young Gryphons
• Confronting the Traitor: remove two unuseful sides
• The Long Night of Shadows: added placement=map_passable by using a macro to all spawned units
• Tears in Hell: removed "human voice" and replaced with "voices"
• The Day of Reckoning: added placement=map_passable to four units
• The Day of Reckoning: added cave path
• Quenching the Thirst: fixed message about Kyoko or Jacques seeing the dam when they're drowning!
• Changed Jacques' movetype to smallfoot and Kyoko's movetype to woodland - both with modifications.

[Jamie]

Hi. I like this campaign.

< #textdomain=A_Rough_Life > is missing from the first scenario file and prevents the text from displaying in BfW version 1.10.x. I don’t know what else has to be done to bring the campaign up to porting standards, but I am able to play through without encountering other serious bugs. Are there plans to port? Is anyone working on this?

I like the mix of units and the story gives sufficient rationale for it. It is a real strength of the campaign. Sticking with a single faction would make the campaign more like all others. It needs this distinction to stand out as something a little different, in my opinion. Maybe not everyone’s cuppa.

I like the odd leveling path Jacques takes, and again I think the story gives adequate rationale for it.

Spoiler:

It is clear that Jacques is growing away from his youth and escaping a probable fate as a petty thief of no account who never traveled more than five miles from home. Events change him, and reflecting that by changing his unit type, not simply advancing him, is brilliant. I understand players who particularly like the thief line might be disappointed, but I hope there is no plan to change this.

The campaign is OK with regard to art but it could be great with more custom art. I’m no artist, so I can’t offer anything there except the observation that previous discussion of art has focused on sprites and portraits. Jacques_Fol did an excellent job of picking portraits and getting the latest art into this campaign, but that was awhile ago. So, yeah, it could use more of that, but I think it would really benefit from custom backgrounds. The introductory sequence in particular.

Spoiler:

It’s unclear whether Jacques’ “dreams” are supposed to be prophetic dreams or ordinary dreams that simply pre-figure the action.

I enjoyed the maps, but I’m not a good map designer. Maybe they could be improved, but they worked for me. I found them interesting and appropriately challenging, i.e., on easy level they are easy.

I think the plot is great and I have no trouble with: the elvish daughter of a dwarven king, Gronar saving Jacques (an important motivator of Jacques' transformation I think) or augers for recruitment... a few things that have received some crits. But the language and text does not read very well in english, in my opinion. Some of the dialog a very cheesy… in some cases I think the cheesiness adds to the fun, but in others I think it could be toned down. I also found Kyoko's character disappointing and overly stereotyped. The relationship between J & K is pretty thin and cliched, and Kyoko says very little. I would be very happy to work up some rewrites if you are interested.