The Desert Prince

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Civhai
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The Desert Prince

Post by Civhai »

I recently uploaded my campaign "The Desert Prince" to the add-on server. I created it a long time ago, but it had some problems with newer versions, but now I think I fixed them all. It has only 7 scenarios and just played it through in 3 hours, it seemed pretty easy for me, but then, I wrote the campaign, so I know exactly what happens next and this is probably an advantage.

If someone wants to try it out, any feedback is welcome. It is really only a short campaign, 7 scenarios only and I would be glad to hear any feedback about balancing, the storyline, the dialogs or the scenarios. One thing would be of particular interest for me: In the second scenario, there is a little surprise which helps a lot in this scenario and also later in the campaign, if you find it. But I am not really sure how likely it is that people will find it in the right moment or if they will find it at all. I could give a hint somewhere, but then again I think it would be too obvious. On the other hand, it is very well possible to win the campaign without finding this surprise.

I mainly created the campaign to get a feeling for the era my brother and I created, the main thread for feedback about the era is here: http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=36653
Last edited by Civhai on May 3rd, 2012, 2:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Shakeshake
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Re: The Desert Prince

Post by Shakeshake »

I'm playing it now. I went back to look for the bonus on the second level--I don't think I would have found it without knowing to look.
Spoiler:
My other issue so far is that the dragons you meet in scenario 4 talk about how much they like to kill undead/how many undead they will kill, but are actually absolutely terrible at fighting the undead (or at least the undead encountered in that mission).
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Civhai
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Re: The Desert Prince

Post by Civhai »

Ok, thanks, I think that is a good idea, I'll also trigger it if the undead come.

Yes, the dragons are not as good at fighting undead as they promise. I did that because the dragons, especially the young ones, are big show-offs, in the next scenario, the older dragon says that the young dragons are only used to fight undead if they are highly outnumbered and are not used to real undead armies and don't know what they are talking about. Besides, I think the yellow dragon is not completely useless because he has an impact charge attack, I used him to kill several archers. He gets much better in level 3 when he gets a fire attack, though. But maybe I should exchange one of the young dragons by a pale dragon because that one is much better against undead with his arcane attack.
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Shakeshake
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Re: The Desert Prince

Post by Shakeshake »

I should have just waited until I got farther to comment, since the meeting with the dragons after that mission explains the young dragons' overconfidence/reveals the more effective pale dragons!
I did managed to make some use of the yellow dragon with his charge attack (although most of the undead, even the archers, seemed to have pretty high melee attacks which made their retaliation against charges somewhat risky) and just used the green ones to capture the villages in the cave area.
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Re: The Desert Prince

Post by Shakeshake »

On the final scenario I had Mirmane get killed (which the objectives say is a defeat condition) but I didn't lose immediately as I would usually expect to, so that might be a bug of some kind.

Also, it might be nice to make a note in the description saying that 1 of the 7 scenarios is a dialogue scenario, but that's not major problem (I just wasn't sure until finishing the campaign how that was being counted).

On the whole I enjoyed the campaign! I thought the difficulty level was good, even if it was on the easier side (even playing on the hardest difficulty), since it is supposed to be "Novice Level." There did seem to be large swings in power based on time of day--but I suppose that's to be expected in a fight of lawful units against chaotic ones. The maps were generally big enough to allow the main undead to be avoided until day time, which made it fairly easy to draw them out and then wipe them out without being exposed to too much retaliation. I didn't think it was so easy that they didn't seem threatening--I think even slight increases in their numbers could probably increase the difficulty dramatically as most of the undead units did hit pretty hard when given the chance.

The wizard lizards/their upgraded forms seemed dominant to me (at least against the undead), and unlike a lot of magic units, didn't seem much more fragile than the "fighter" lizards when it came to being attacked (I think the mostly desert maps, which gave enemies a low chance to hit almost all the time certainly helped).

I also thought the Giant Lizards/Royal Lizards' attacks seemed a bit under-powered--at least compared to the Black Headed Lizards (this may be a result of fighting undead, as the Black Claw lizards' tail attack is much more powerful than the Giant, or even Royal, Lizards,' while the Giant/Royal lizards have a better bite attack which wouldn't be very effective against the undead). I suppose this is offset by their leadership somewhat, but it made it a little difficult to upgrade Giant Lizards to Royal Lizards--which ultimately made their leadership somewhat ineffective, as other units were better at killing undead and so upgraded faster/no longer were aided by leadership.

Thanks for making the campaign! I like the era you've created and hope you continue to make improvements and campaigns for it!
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Civhai
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Re: The Desert Prince

Post by Civhai »

Shakeshake wrote:I should have just waited until I got farther to comment, since the meeting with the dragons after that mission explains the young dragons' overconfidence/reveals the more effective pale dragons!
I did managed to make some use of the yellow dragon with his charge attack (although most of the undead, even the archers, seemed to have pretty high melee attacks which made their retaliation against charges somewhat risky) and just used the green ones to capture the villages in the cave area.
Yes, I did that all the time, but I changed one of them into a pale dragon now.
Shakeshake wrote:On the final scenario I had Mirmane get killed (which the objectives say is a defeat condition) but I didn't lose immediately as I would usually expect to, so that might be a bug of some kind.
Hmm, that sucks. Did his death at least trigger the dialog? I guess I will have to look at that tomorrow.
Shakeshake wrote:Also, it might be nice to make a note in the description saying that 1 of the 7 scenarios is a dialogue scenario, but that's not major problem (I just wasn't sure until finishing the campaign how that was being counted).
You are right, I changed it into "6 battle scenarios"
Shakeshake wrote: On the whole I enjoyed the campaign! I thought the difficulty level was good, even if it was on the easier side (even playing on the hardest difficulty), since it is supposed to be "Novice Level." There did seem to be large swings in power based on time of day--but I suppose that's to be expected in a fight of lawful units against chaotic ones. The maps were generally big enough to allow the main undead to be avoided until day time, which made it fairly easy to draw them out and then wipe them out without being exposed to too much retaliation. I didn't think it was so easy that they didn't seem threatening--I think even slight increases in their numbers could probably increase the difficulty dramatically as most of the undead units did hit pretty hard when given the chance.
Thanks a lot, yes, I also thought it was easy because you can usually trick the ai pretty simply. It just divides its units and one can often easily pick single units at night and do a real offense at day and eliminate his much bigger army in one hard attack. But that is just the way one has to play lizards, they are very mobile, but they are also killed quite easily except on deserts. The funny thing is, the computer scores much much worse against itself with lizards. While developing a campaign, I just notice how very annoying it is that the ai is sooo stupid! I mean, I don't want to criticise the ai developers, I think they have done an amazing job to get the ai that far and that it can play with custom fractions.

But still, it is somehow hard to make a battle hard in a nice way if he always acts that foolish. I could just give him immense amounts of money, but I think that is just frustrating for the player at some point and not very original. I think the mainlain campaign developers have done a great job to make some of their scenarios seem hard in such a way, that I never have the feeling that they made a stupid battle and just gave the ai a very large amount of money, but such that I really think the battle is hard and it is hard to find the right plan. But I am still trying to figure out what really makes the difference. But you pointed out a very good thing: The problem is that my maps are maybe slightly too large such that one can easily run away while this is not always that easy in the mailine campaigns, at least not without having to give up important strategic positions or villages. Thanks a lot for the hint. I will try maps in which it is not as easy to run away unpunished in my future campaigns.
Shakeshake wrote: The wizard lizards/their upgraded forms seemed dominant to me (at least against the undead), and unlike a lot of magic units, didn't seem much more fragile than the "fighter" lizards when it came to being attacked (I think the mostly desert maps, which gave enemies a low chance to hit almost all the time certainly helped).
Ok, I put that onto my list of "balancing todos", but I really have the feeling that if lizards are not in the desert, they are very fragile and one has to be very careful with them. In a tournament of the ai, the lizard alliance only got 174 points, while the desert undead got more than 600 points. But you are right, in that campaign, the wizard lizards are extremely powerful because of their fire attacks and because almost the whole campaign is situated in the desert where they get very good defenses.
Shakeshake wrote: I also thought the Giant Lizards/Royal Lizards' attacks seemed a bit under-powered--at least compared to the Black Headed Lizards (this may be a result of fighting undead, as the Black Claw lizards' tail attack is much more powerful than the Giant, or even Royal, Lizards,' while the Giant/Royal lizards have a better bite attack which wouldn't be very effective against the undead). I suppose this is offset by their leadership somewhat, but it made it a little difficult to upgrade Giant Lizards to Royal Lizards--which ultimately made their leadership somewhat ineffective, as other units were better at killing undead and so upgraded faster/no longer were aided by leadership.
I also put that on my list and I will discuss it with my brother soon, maybe we should make them a little stronger.
Shakeshake wrote: Thanks for making the campaign! I like the era you've created and hope you continue to make improvements and campaigns for it!
Thanks a lot for the feedback, I am glad you liked it. We will certainly continue our era, but it is much more work than we thought in the first moment, especially drawing all those sprites. I already changed several things in this campaign, for example it got a map and journey dots like the mainline campaigns and I fixed several small things pointed out by you or my brother, for example the prince gets extra money to make the chariots less useless, the high priest gets a few guards because he dies immediately otherwise, Mirmane gets a pale dragon friend, the black head lizards also appear if the undead come, some money amounts changed etc.

Right now, I am currently working on another campaign for the Artons, who are supposed to be the main human factions, the "good" side, like the Loyalists in the mainline. I also think about extending the desert prince by about three more scenarios, just to show a few other factions as well because the main purpose of this campaign is to get to know our era. The desert prince could for example run away if you kill him as evil lichs often do in mainline campaigns and after a couple of other scenarios with other enemies, he comes back as a pharao. 10 battle scenarios is still very short, so that would probably not destroy the idea of making a campaign that can be played through in a couple of hours. So we definitely plan to add some more campaigns.^^
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tribes45
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Re: The Desert Prince

Post by tribes45 »

On scenario 2, When you find the Black-Headed lizards, if you walk on the village again, it spawns more lizards.

Besides that I'm enjoying the campaign.
"In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons." -Herodotus
"Two things are infinite, the universe and Human stupidity. Although, I'm not sure about the universe. -Albert Einstein
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Civhai
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Re: The Desert Prince

Post by Civhai »

Ok, thanks a lot. Yes, I introduced that the undead trigger that event, too, because Shakeshake warned me that many people might not find it. But I forgot to take care that it doesn't happen in both cases. But I fixed it now.
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Evander
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Re: The Desert Prince

Post by Evander »

ok, so downloading few kb campaign only to download nearly 2mb era to play that campaign put me off the first time.
I suffered that for the next time, and here is my feedback.

First, let me say this:
I don't like very much playing "animals" or beasts in that case. I don't like pixel art for both lizards and pirates (pirates looks kind of hilarious, lizards looks like plush toys - I had one such when I was a kid)
And the very name of that faction... wood pirates... sounds like Monty Python to me.
What about modelling lizard faction after some lizards shown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSEOBZo3 ... ure=relmfu
check the lizard at 28:00 and afterwards :) right now their faces look like this: http://ocobiega.org/wp-content/uploads/ ... Czyste.png

Factions - lizards and Pirates appear both to be somewhat imbalanced (lvl 1 units have quite a strong attacks compared to the other Main Line factions)

- Sometimes lizards refer to themselves as lizards. This sounds strange as they would probably refer to themselves as "villagers" or "our people".
- Wizard lizard. What about mystic lizard, shaman lizard etc. Wizard seems pretty advanced for that kind of specie.
- village lizard. what about "young lizard" instead?

Ok so more to the point. Played on easy.

Scenario 1:
Aramir dialogue lines are pretty [censored]. I kinda expected more pirate-like speech :)
Lizards are not much better.
Scenario at overall was nothing challenging (after all it was easy setting).

Scenario 2 - Last Minute:
- intro text could use some improvements.
- scenario speech could use some improvements as well - lizards sounds pretty childish :)
- the amount of "Oh no!" is amazing.... are these a whiny lizards? :annoyed:
Black Head lizards. Once the skeleton stepped into the village I got four. I lost one, killed the skeleton and claimed the village with Black head Lizards. And I was given 4 more lizards! Nice! :)

Enemy Leader Death Blow ability was somewhat of a surprise.

Scenario 3 - Greedy Mages:
- Intro text again - needs rewriting. :augh:
- Garador reasons, lol. Why is he even talking to the animals? :)
- recall list - I had all protected village lizards from previous scenario. Why? Aren't they non-combatants and actually belonging to another village? :shock:
- unit descriptions. I assume you plan to work on them, but for the mages it was sometimes incredible. "The mages are the common people of the mountain mages". :mrgreen:

Scenario 4 - To The Dragons:
- Khenti dialogue. Undead says he was trained to kill lizards in his lifetime? :lol2: :hmm:
- "Oh no" again.
- Mirmane band pixel art. I somewhat expected drakes? Pale dragon looks like a rabbit! :augh:
Scenario is a bit more challenging, due to the presence of desert guards. I managed to kill last leader at turn 21 (mind you, it's easy difficulty)

Scenario 5 - At the dragon's home:
- Dragon council dialogues needs rewriting. I had problems with actually understanding their intentions.

Scenario 6 - A high priests grave:

- I am not sure why the chariots are pink :D
- "Oh no!" again? :annoyed:
- Apothecary Lizard - got one on this map - they have 2x heal+8 ability (doubled)
- Moving a unit on the temple after High Priest has been raised triggers the dialogue "Don't let them get the grave back". Not sure if this is a bug.
- Triggering 3 guards can be a nasty surprise, but eventually one can solve this. That's good, requires a bit of tactical thinking.

Scenario 7 - The Prince:
- Uro - dialogues needs rewriting.
- reinforcements were a bit of a surprise :)

Ok, let's sum this all up.
I am not quite sure why you decided to develop entirely new factions rather then to expand on existing ones. I must say, I somewhat expected saurians.
But that's ok, it is your design choice, so I won't argue. I would like to suggest, however, some changes in lizards names (like Young Lizard -> Lizard -> Ember Lizard -> Flame Lizard).
Also, Death Blow seems to be pretty overpowered. In my opinion it could be just 50% damage bonus when attacking, and it would be just fine.
Dragon faction seems to be pretty useless for now. Also, there are many campaigns with great dragon sprites, like the new one from doofus - perhaps you could ask all those people and collect all those sprites into one sexy dragon pack?

I am pretty sure, that you will continue to work on your Era, so that eventually all those annoying minutia will be eliminated :)

As for the campaign, dialogues and texts are in dire need of rewriting. That is one of most pressing issue here.
Maps are somewhat ok - nothing super-special, but they don't cause any problems and that is really good.

Story line is nothing special really. Somewhat lacks in merit, as it is difficult to understand why all this is happening.
But I assume that you will continue to improve that campaign and that one day it will be great :eng:
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Civhai
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Re: The Desert Prince

Post by Civhai »

First of all, thanks a lot for your detailed feedback
Evander wrote:ok, so downloading few kb campaign only to download nearly 2mb era to play that campaign put me off the first time.
I suffered that for the next time, and here is my feedback.
Well, the era was 600kB until I drew the map of the island. So 1.4MB are really ONLY the map you see in the background of the intros and that map is of course needed for the campaign. I put it into the era because it somehow belongs to the era and should be reused by several campaigns, as soon as we created some of them.
Evander wrote: First, let me say this:
I don't like very much playing "animals" or beasts in that case. I don't like pixel art for both lizards and pirates (pirates looks kind of hilarious, lizards looks like plush toys - I had one such when I was a kid)
You are right, the sprites of the lizards have to be redrawn and this is already on our todo list. For the pirates, it gets much harder, of course we know that they don't look as good as the mainline sprites, but that is about as good as it gets with our art skills. I still consider the pirate my best sprite so far.
Evander wrote: And the very name of that faction... wood pirates... sounds like Monty Python to me.
Well, maybe we should find something that sounds a little more dangerous, you are right. But they pirates who live in the woods, so that is why they got their name.
Evander wrote: What about modelling lizard faction after some lizards shown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSEOBZo3 ... ure=relmfu
check the lizard at 28:00 and afterwards :) right now their faces look like this: http://ocobiega.org/wp-content/uploads/ ... Czyste.png
Yes, thanks for the video, as soon as we redraw them, we will try to get something more realistic.
Evander wrote: Factions - lizards and Pirates appear both to be somewhat imbalanced (lvl 1 units have quite a strong attacks compared to the other Main Line factions)
No. Pirates have the new liminal alignment and they need to be slightly stronger to make it fair. Their strength has to be multiplied by 1.2 to make it fair,
see Drakefriends first post here for an explanation: http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?t=34952
Lizards are not overpowered because of their attacks, the lizard has 7-3, the Loyalist Spearman, too, but the loyalist spearman has more hp and is cheaper. The Wizard Lizard has 4-4, the Loyalist Mage has 7-3. It may still be true that lizards are overpowered because of their high mobility and good defenses in deserts or because of some combinations of units they have, but definitely not because of their attacks.
Evander wrote: - Sometimes lizards refer to themselves as lizards. This sounds strange as they would probably refer to themselves as "villagers" or "our people".
- Wizard lizard. What about mystic lizard, shaman lizard etc. Wizard seems pretty advanced for that kind of specie.
- village lizard. what about "young lizard" instead?
The fact that the lizards refer to themselves as lizards was intentionally, that is their identity and the name of their people.
The name wizard lizard has already been discussed a lot, we decided not to change it. Some people also proposed other names, but on the other hand, several people thought it was funny and one even mentioned it as one of the things he liked most about the era. xD
Young lizard would be an idea, I'll think about it.
Evander wrote: Scenario 1:
Aramir dialogue lines are pretty [censored]. I kinda expected more pirate-like speech :)
Lizards are not much better. Scenario at overall was nothing challenging (after all it was easy setting).
Ok, you are right, I should maybe make him a little rougher.
Our campaign is supposed to be an easy one and on the easy setting, everything should be easy. Actually, on hard, several of my friends mentioned that they thought this was actually the hardest battle. The only possibility to win is to lure the pirates into the small desert on the southern end of the map and wait and defend until the next day comes and try not to lose too many units at night. But it might be easier now because we changed the pirates from chaotic to liminal.
Evander wrote: Scenario 2 - Last Minute:
- intro text could use some improvements.
- scenario speech could use some improvements as well - lizards sounds pretty childish :)
- the amount of "Oh no!" is amazing.... are these a whiny lizards? :annoyed:
Black Head lizards. Once the skeleton stepped into the village I got four. I lost one, killed the skeleton and claimed the village with Black head Lizards. And I was given 4 more lizards! Nice! :)

Enemy Leader Death Blow ability was somewhat of a surprise.
Which part of the intro is it you do not like? We are not native english speakers and some things might be bad, that is true.
The lizards sound childish? That sucks, well, I tried to show the cultural conflict between black head lizards and normal lizards and Rol Ziton is a little pessimistic, but I definitely didn't want them to sound childish.
They are not the whiny lizards, only Rol Ziton is extremely whiny. I tried to distinguish their characters a little bit, but maybe I overdid it. On the other hand, maybe I just didn't do it right because you didn't notice that it was only Rol Ziton.
Evander wrote: Scenario 3 - Greedy Mages:
- Intro text again - needs rewriting. :augh:
- Garador reasons, lol. Why is he even talking to the animals? :)
- recall list - I had all protected village lizards from previous scenario. Why? Aren't they non-combatants and actually belonging to another village? :shock:
- unit descriptions. I assume you plan to work on them, but for the mages it was sometimes incredible. "The mages are the common people of the mountain mages". :mrgreen:
Yes, maybe I should rewrite the intro text.
Garador reasons because he is one of the mountain mages and the mountain mages are wise and have high respect for the lizards. The mountain mages are definitely not one of the evil factions and would never prefer a violent solution to a non-violent one, only if someone gets into their way and they have no other choice, they sometimes do bad things in order to achieve their goals (which is usually to improve their magic knowledge, as here) So the behaviour of Garador fits very well into the setting. The dialogs may be bad, but I think we should write the story consistent with how we imagined the factions.
Yes, most of the unit descriptions suck, our era is still a work in progress and only very few unit descriptions are good. But that doesn't have the highest priority now, I think the art is much more important. But while I agree that they are bad, I don't agree that they are incredible, remember that this is a fantasy world and we created the factions. And for the mountain mages, that is just true, most people there are mages.
Evander wrote: Scenario 4 - To The Dragons:
- Khenti dialogue. Undead says he was trained to kill lizards in his lifetime? :lol2: :hmm:
- "Oh no" again.
- Mirmane band pixel art. I somewhat expected drakes? Pale dragon looks like a rabbit! :augh:
Scenario is a bit more challenging, due to the presence of desert guards. I managed to kill last leader at turn 21 (mind you, it's easy difficulty)
Ok, the term "lifetime" is inappropriate here, true.
Well, maybe I really overdid it with the whinyness of Rol Ziton.
The pale dragon is bad, that is true, but we took him out for the era and he only exists in this campaign, so the priority for the sprite is somewhat lower.
The scenario is very easy even on hard if you manage to run away at night and kill them at day with wizard lizards, but this should be a "novice level" campaign, so it
is ok to have some easy scenarios as well.
Evander wrote: Scenario 5 - At the dragon's home:
- Dragon council dialogues needs rewriting. I had problems with actually understanding their intentions.
Ok, that sucks. Which part was it that was hard to understand? I mean they really only agree that they help them.
Evander wrote:
Scenario 6 - A high priests grave:

- I am not sure why the chariots are pink :D
- "Oh no!" again? :annoyed:
- Apothecary Lizard - got one on this map - they have 2x heal+8 ability (doubled)
- Moving a unit on the temple after High Priest has been raised triggers the dialogue "Don't let them get the grave back". Not sure if this is a bug.
- Triggering 3 guards can be a nasty surprise, but eventually one can solve this. That's good, requires a bit of tactical thinking.
The chariots are pink because somehow after some version changes, the team color didn't work any more for them, we have to fix that.
Ok, we will fix the apothecary lizard. But that the dialogue "Don't let them get the grave back" still appears is definitely a bug, I will fix that immediately.
Ok, I hoped the player was warned enough, maybe the enemy should say something additional one turn before the priest is resurrected.
Evander wrote: Scenario 7 - The Prince:
- Uro - dialogues needs rewriting.
- reinforcements were a bit of a surprise :)
You are right, the reinforcements are maybe a surprise, but still, at that point of the campaign, the player is expected to have enough veteran units to handle them. Since it is the last scenario, it doesn't matter if some of his units die. Maybe I could somehow give the player a hint such that he is not too surprised.
Evander wrote: Ok, let's sum this all up.
I am not quite sure why you decided to develop entirely new factions rather then to expand on existing ones. I must say, I somewhat expected saurians.
Well, I mainly created the campaign in order to get a feeling for the era, both myself and the people who play it.
Evander wrote: But that's ok, it is your design choice, so I won't argue. I would like to suggest, however, some changes in lizards names (like Young Lizard -> Lizard -> Ember Lizard -> Flame Lizard).
Ember lizard is a very good idea, thanks for that.
Evander wrote: Also, Death Blow seems to be pretty overpowered. In my opinion it could be just 50% damage bonus when attacking, and it would be just fine.
But remember that it only triggers if this blow would kill the unit. So if you attack them with fully healed units, you rarely run into problems. But since it is relatively new, we didn't really test it a lot yet, so you may be right that it is indeed overpowered, but since only level 2 units get it, it should rarely happen anyway. Additionally, the halbardiers have low hp and are hence easy to kill.
Evander wrote: Dragon faction seems to be pretty useless for now. Also, there are many campaigns with great dragon sprites, like the new one from doofus - perhaps you could ask all those people and collect all those sprites into one sexy dragon pack?
Well, the young dragons are scouts. Of course scouts are not always useful in combat. Additionally they get pretty strong in higher levels, it is very cool to level Mirmane, for example. The pale dragons are definitely not useless if used properly because they have arcane ranged attacks and are pretty mobile.
Evander wrote: I am pretty sure, that you will continue to work on your Era, so that eventually all those annoying minutia will be eliminated :)
We definitely will.^^
Evander wrote: As for the campaign, dialogues and texts are in dire need of rewriting. That is one of most pressing issue here.
Maps are somewhat ok - nothing super-special, but they don't cause any problems and that is really good.

Story line is nothing special really. Somewhat lacks in merit, as it is difficult to understand why all this is happening.
But I assume that you will continue to improve that campaign and that one day it will be great :eng:
Yes, the dialogs are sometimes bad, if you have any concrete proposals for improvements, I would be glad to hear them. Well, the lizards have to defend themselves against the undead, that is why all this is happening, there is not much more to it than that.
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Evander
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Re: The Desert Prince

Post by Evander »

Civhai wrote:First of all, thanks a lot for your detailed feedback
no problem!
Well, the era was 600kB until I drew the map of the island. So 1.4MB are really ONLY the map you see in the background of the intros and that map is of course needed for the campaign. I put it into the era because it somehow belongs to the era and should be reused by several campaigns, as soon as we created some of them.
is there any way to cut down it's size?
You are right, the sprites of the lizards have to be redrawn and this is already on our todo list. For the pirates, it gets much harder, of course we know that they don't look as good as the mainline sprites, but that is about as good as it gets with our art skills. I still consider the pirate my best sprite so far.
I share the pain, brother. The best things I ever managed to draw were some clan crests back in Lineage 2.
Evander wrote: And the very name of that faction... wood pirates... sounds like Monty Python to me.
Well, maybe we should find something that sounds a little more dangerous, you are right. But they pirates who live in the woods, so that is why they got their name.
Mhm, I think that "pirates" part is the problem then. Most of people hearing 'pirates!' imagines some sort of sea people, not necessarily forest poachers :)
Evander wrote: Factions - lizards and Pirates appear both to be somewhat imbalanced (lvl 1 units have quite a strong attacks compared to the other Main Line factions)
No. Pirates have the new liminal alignment and they need to be slightly stronger to make it fair. Their strength has to be multiplied by 1.2 to make it fair,
see Drakefriends first post here for an explanation: http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?t=34952
Lizards are not overpowered because of their attacks, the lizard has 7-3, the Loyalist Spearman, too, but the loyalist spearman has more hp and is cheaper. The Wizard Lizard has 4-4, the Loyalist Mage has 7-3. It may still be true that lizards are overpowered because of their high mobility and good defenses in deserts or because of some combinations of units they have, but definitely not because of their attacks.
maybe you are right. Maybe that's the high mobility.
The fact that the lizards refer to themselves as lizards was intentionally, that is their identity and the name of their people.
but why would they call themselves a lizards anyway?
Which part of the intro is it you do not like? We are not native english speakers and some things might be bad, that is true.
I actually think it would be best to get some native speaker with enough brain to take a look at whole text and just correct that.
The lizards sound childish? That sucks, well, I tried to show the cultural conflict between black head lizards and normal lizards and Rol Ziton is a little pessimistic, but I definitely didn't want them to sound childish.
They somewhat sound like they were afraid of fight and conflict and scared - like a children. This contradicts the lore of the era that lizards were fighting undead for a long time.
One might think that natural selection would lower the number of wimps in their population :mrgreen:
They are not the whiny lizards, only Rol Ziton is extremely whiny. I tried to distinguish their characters a little bit, but maybe I overdid it. On the other hand, maybe I just didn't do it right because you didn't notice that it was only Rol Ziton.
:lol2: can't one of them smack him in the face from time to time? :) But I am somewhat certain that village lizards were also crying me a river.
Garador reasons because he is one of the mountain mages and the mountain mages are wise and have high respect for the lizards. The mountain mages are definitely not one of the evil factions and would never prefer a violent solution to a non-violent one, only if someone gets into their way and they have no other choice, they sometimes do bad things in order to achieve their goals (which is usually to improve their magic knowledge, as here) So the behaviour of Garador fits very well into the setting. The dialogs may be bad, but I think we should write the story consistent with how we imagined the factions.
He loses all his credibility when he goes "hehehehe" on me. Mayhaps he should be someone more like Defaldor, just a little bit more harsh.
Yes, most of the unit descriptions suck, our era is still a work in progress and only very few unit descriptions are good. But that doesn't have the highest priority now, I think the art is much more important.
But while I agree that they are bad, I don't agree that they are incredible, remember that this is a fantasy world and we created the factions. And for the mountain mages, that is just true, most people there are mages.
Sure, descriptions can always be added later. As for the sentence mentioned, it's just as if you said that "the butter is a common milk product of the sweet butter". :whistle:
Ok, that sucks. Which part was it that was hard to understand? I mean they really only agree that they help them.
Most of what they said made me wonder if they like smoked weed or something :mrgreen: I totally skipped the longest dialogue because I just couldn't read it
To put it short & sweet as I saw it:
Mirmane(dragon): - Dear fellas, we met here cause there is something my holmes told me of :eng:
Turok(dragon): - Sure dude, we dragons gonna help ya! :annoyed:
Mirmane(dragon): - Whoah dude, do not want! so much fun, let's help ourselves :twisted:
Arangor(dragon): - Yeah that's fun but if it was so much fun the lizards wouldn't bother to come here (yada yada, too long). No fun and many dragons died. :eng:
Turok(dragon): - Our young like fun but they know sh*t really :? What of you lizards?
Albakar(lizard): - We were zerged by some prince-guy who wants to zerg you too. let's gang up together and pwn him :geek:
Turok(dragon): - Sure dude. we gonna send some moar unexperienced guys with you :wink:
Arangor(dragon): - You can't pwn them without rabbits so we send some rabbits with you :whistle:
Albakar(lizard): - I am so cool, that I will actually let you help me. Let's go pwn that prince noob! :twisted:
Rol Ziton(lizard): - Oh No! We are doomed! :augh:
Turok(dragon): - Go pwn them dude! :eng:
Arangor(dragon): - Our young suck at fighting the undead, so they are going to die anyway. :lol2:
Mirmane(dragon): - I am with you dude! ^_^
Rol Ziton(lizard): - Thank you and god bless you. :eng:
Turok(dragon): - Hey dawg, I heard you need some dragons to fight the undead, so I put some dragons in your group to fight the undead :D
Albakar(lizard): - stfu, we are leaving :annoyed:
Arangor(dragon): - yeah, why not. :geek:

I think you get my point now? :)
Ok, I hoped the player was warned enough, maybe the enemy should say something additional one turn before the priest is resurrected.
Yea, player could hear some dark ritual going on inside of the crypt :)
You are right, the reinforcements are maybe a surprise, but still, at that point of the campaign, the player is expected to have enough veteran units to handle them. Since it is the last scenario, it doesn't matter if some of his units die. Maybe I could somehow give the player a hint such that he is not too surprised.
No, why?
It was actually a positive surprise :)
I am not quite sure why you decided to develop entirely new factions rather then to expand on existing ones. I must say, I somewhat expected saurians.
Well, I mainly created the campaign in order to get a feeling for the era, both myself and the people who play it.
Yeah, but what was the original idea? I seem to be missing this one :)
Evander wrote: Also, Death Blow seems to be pretty overpowered. In my opinion it could be just 50% damage bonus when attacking, and it would be just fine.
But remember that it only triggers if this blow would kill the unit. So if you attack them with fully healed units, you rarely run into problems. But since it is relatively new, we didn't really test it a lot yet, so you may be right that it is indeed overpowered, but since only level 2 units get it, it should rarely happen anyway. Additionally, the halbardiers have low hp and are hence easy to kill.
but the enemy does recruit lvl 2 units? :)
Evander wrote: Dragon faction seems to be pretty useless for now. Also, there are many campaigns with great dragon sprites, like the new one from doofus - perhaps you could ask all those people and collect all those sprites into one sexy dragon pack?
Well, the young dragons are scouts. Of course scouts are not always useful in combat. Additionally they get pretty strong in higher levels, it is very cool to level Mirmane, for example. The pale dragons are definitely not useless if used properly because they have arcane ranged attacks and are pretty mobile.
...If they live long enough :wink: Come to think of it, zerging an enemy with rabbits sure is to be spectacular :)
Yes, the dialogs are sometimes bad, if you have any concrete proposals for improvements, I would be glad to hear them. Well, the lizards have to defend themselves against the undead, that is why all this is happening, there is not much more to it than that.
Perhaps once they will get clarified the issue will disappear by itself :)
Woodruff
Posts: 57
Joined: May 24th, 2012, 12:01 am

Re: The Desert Prince

Post by Woodruff »

Civhai wrote: Ok, we will fix the apothecary lizard. But that the dialogue "Don't let them get the grave back" still appears is definitely a bug, I will fix that immediately.
Ok, I hoped the player was warned enough, maybe the enemy should say something additional one turn before the priest is resurrected.
I'm confused by this. I took the grave, and the enemy NEVER took it back. However, the priest and his minions were still resurrected (I think it was keyed by killing the last original guard, so that only the enemy commander was left). As I understand things, the priest and his minions should not have been resurrected unless they took back the grave...right?
Woodruff
Posts: 57
Joined: May 24th, 2012, 12:01 am

Re: The Desert Prince

Post by Woodruff »

Woodruff wrote:
Civhai wrote: Ok, we will fix the apothecary lizard. But that the dialogue "Don't let them get the grave back" still appears is definitely a bug, I will fix that immediately.
Ok, I hoped the player was warned enough, maybe the enemy should say something additional one turn before the priest is resurrected.
I'm confused by this. I took the grave, and the enemy NEVER took it back. However, the priest and his minions were still resurrected (I think it was keyed by killing the last original guard, so that only the enemy commander was left). As I understand things, the priest and his minions should not have been resurrected unless they took back the grave...right?
Anyone?
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