My first campaign - An Undead Incursion

[gloccusv]

I have just uploaded version 3.0.2 of An Undead Incursion to the 1.14 add on server. Earlier versions can still be found on both the 1.10 and 1.11RC/1.12 add on servers, although they will no longer be updated due to the security announcement from the BfW development team regarding versions prior to 1.14.4. Any comments or advice are welcome in this topic.

AUI is a three scenario long novice level campaign featuring elvish shamans and woses against skeletal undead (level 1s in the first scenario, level 2s in the second and level 3s in the third). It is set shortly after the events of the mainline campaign An Orcish Incursion and includes cameo appearances by some of the characters.

Now with Italian translation by Klemvor and Russian translation by Marat!

The campaign is complete and ready to play. Thank you to the more than 1,300 1,900 2,700 people who have downloaded it from the 1.10 add on server and 3,300 9,700 from the 1.12 add on server so far!

Changelog:

Spoiler:

3.0.2
Instituted a better work around for a bug caused by changes to the way sides are carried over between scenarios.

3.0.1
Instituted a work around for a bug caused by changes to the way sides are carried over between scenarios.

3.0
Updated to 1.14.

2.0:
Added Italian translation by Klemvor.
Removed rough terrain from scenario 3 to allow easier movement as requested by madformadrigals.
Added a few trees and embellishments to the maps in scenario 3 for variety.
Increased enemy gold in scenario 3 to compensate.
Prevented enemy leader in scenario 3 emerging from the relative safety of the cave.
Altered Erlornas' behaviour in scenario 2 to prevent him being surrounded outside the castle and killed.

1.3:
Corrected typo that prevented Kathrin Polikeit's portraits from appearing in game.
Properly listed everyone in the credits.
Marked as translatable in the pbl file and corrected the wmllint magic comments throughout.
Added feedback tags to the 1.11RC version and changed some binary paths to match those in the latest version.
Corrected an errant hex on the hard map for scenario 1.
Streamlined the wml for reinforcements in scenario 2.
Slightly increased the income for the enemy in scenario 3 to make sure that it can continue to recruit.

1.2: No change to gameplay, but includes Kathrin Polikeit's portraits for the characters I have taken from An Orcish Incursion and some changes to the wml. I believe that it should be compatible with wescamp.

My original first post is below along with an earlier version of the campaign files for comparison purposes.

Spoiler:

I recently discovered Battle for Wesnoth and having having played several mainline campaigns and "multiplayer" battles (vs the ai) I decided to try writing a campaign of my own. My first attempt is a loose sequel to An Orcish Incursion and was only really intended to let me learn a bit about wml rather than be an interesting or original piece of work.

Written with Battle for Wesnoth version 1.10.6

I am uploading it here in the hope that others might be prepared to take a look at it and give me some advice.

Since this is primarily a learning exercise, I would particularly value advice about how to improve my wml. For example, am I laying out the scenario files correctly; should I include more notes on what everything does, etc.?

There are only three (fairly short) scenarios, all of which are playable, but I am somewhat hampered in balancing them by the fact that I am not a very good player yet, so I don't know whether these are hard or not. I am fairly sure the first two at least are not very difficult, even on the hardest setting.

I have experimented with different ways to vary the difficulty without giving the enemy ai more money or income, and one of the ways I did this was to have the story take place in different seasons. I am aware that the developers have stated that they do not want seasons in Wesnoth, but this is just an experiment.

There is one thing which is not working and any insight would be much appreciated. Fixed thanks to Adamant14

Thank you for reading this and thank you even more to anyone who replies.

[Adamant14]

Use 'type' instead of 'race'.
Use a coma separated list of all possible types, then it will work.

[gloccusv]

Thanks. That is how I did it for the woses, but in An Orcish Incursion, race=elf is used so I copied that instead. However, it turns out that there was another problem as well, namely that the id=Githlania and canrecruit=yes conditions should have been in different [not] tags. Making both changes seems to have fixed the problem. I will upload a new version to my first post.

Thanks again.

[gloccusv]

Sorry for the double post but it has been a year or so since the last one, so I didn't think it made much sense to edit it.

I am trying to update this campaign to be compatible with 1.12 and it seems to be working fine except that the portraits I took from the mainline An Orcish Incursion for Lomarfel and Erlornas are not being displayed when those characters speak. To be clear, no image is being displayed at all.

It worked in 1.10.6 and I have downloaded an add on in which portraits work correctly and I can't see any difference in the code, so I am at a loss.

I am testing with 1.11.19 and any assistance would be much appreciated.

After proofreading my code more times than I can count, I finally spotted the typo. Problem solved, updated versions will be uploaded to the add-on servers shortly.

[madformadrigals]

Hello! Just finished this campaign and really enjoyed it! I love using shamans, and the woses counterbalance them well.
(I played on "Normal", the hardest setting)
EDIT: Replays attached.

Scenario 1
Very well balanced with just the right number of enemies arriving at the right times.
My only suggestion would be that because our movement in woods is far superior than the enemy's, there's no need to ever kill any skeletons! How about a gold reward per skeleton vanquished, or else perhaps a minimum number that must be felled in order to complete the level?
I finished with two druids, two enchantresses and an elder wose.

Scenario 2
Again, well-balanced, particularly with the ample forest to hide in if necessary. The enemy troops are strong, but they are no match to enchantresses, and the woses do some good damage after the enemy is slowed. Clear objectives, and easily attainable, since most of the enemy head straight north to fight the elves. I like that when you get too close, the leader re-recruits. Both times, however, the leader suicidally ran out to attack and I was able to surround him.

Scenario 3
A bit of an anti-climax really. Very few enemy troops, who are no match for my well-levelled army. Lich ran out on a limb and I was able to seriously wound him. Lost a few troops, but only as I was deliberately reckless, since it was the last scenario. I would have liked a more open level for the final one, as not many of my troops were able to get involved, which I thought was a shame.

Thanks for creating!

P.S. My friend Baryon and I have been developing a campaign as well - when it's done, would you mind play-testing for us? It's quite similar to yours in some ways - three scenarios with a druid as the leader!

[Baryon]

The link to ours is here:
http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=41448

[gloccusv]

I am sorry it has taken me so long to reply. I have been caught up with Christmas. Thank you so much for testing my campaigns and I would be honoured to do the same for yours.

It was a deliberate design decision to allow the player in the first scenario to run away. In fact, on Beginner difficulty, there is even a narrator message pointing this out. Perhaps I could give the skeletons the goal of reaching the northern end of the path through the woods and give the liches in the next scenario bonus gold for each one that makes it. That would give the elves a definite goal but still allow players to retreat if they wish. Of course, the real reason to get stuck in is all that easy experience.

The simplest way to stop leader suicide is to set passive_leader=yes, but that might make the scenario easier rather than harder. I'll have to do some testing and see.

In the light of your comments, I think I need to make changes to the third scenario. I realize now that the main difficulty comes from the terrain and not the enemies, which is never much fun, so I will expand the map slightly, make a flat valley leading to the cave entrance and give the enemy enough money to recruit every turn instead of roughly every other turn. I really don't want the leader running out of his cave into the sun in this scenario, so I'll change his movement costs to prevent it.

It may take me a few days to try everything but when it's finished the changes may be enough to call it version 2.0

Thanks again for all your help. Now I'm off to play A Walk in the Woods.

[Elvish_Hunter]

Over at the Wesnoth Italian Forum, Klemvor translated this campaign in Italian. Since WesCamp is abandoned, I'm attaching it here, with the .po file that I generated.

AUI_it.zip

Italian translation

(17.99 KiB) Downloaded 381 times

By the way, while running wmlxgettext I got these errors:

Code: Select all

expected closed node 'part' got 'story' at scenarios/03_AUI_Showdown.cfg:56 at /home/linux/Downloads/wesnoth-1.12.4/utils/wmlxgettext line 179, <FILE> line 56.
non-empty node stack at end of scenarios/03_AUI_Showdown.cfg at /home/linux/Downloads/wesnoth-1.12.4/utils/wmlxgettext line 203, <FILE> line 228.
WML seems invalid for scenarios/03_AUI_Showdown.cfg, node info extraction forfeited past the error point at /home/linux/Downloads/wesnoth-1.12.4/utils/wmlxgettext line 210.

[gloccusv]

Thank you so much for this (and sorry that it has taken me so long to reply—I have just returned from visiting my grandmother, who has no internet access).

I would never have known about the translation if you hadn't posted it here. It has helped me to make a decision regarding the first scenario. I have been trying different options to make it more involving due to madformadrigals' comments above, but none of them really satisfied me and all would have involved adding extra translatable strings, so I have decided to keep the first scenario as is and just make some tweaks to the others. Of course, there is still one more untranslated string in the new version: _"Italian translation"

I'm afraid that I don't understand enough about how wmlxgettext works to know why you get those errors. The scenarios all run in both 1.10 and 1.12 and all the tags are closed in the correct order. The only thing I can think of is that putting #comments on the same lines as [tags] might be causing problems. However, it is beyond my competence to test.

I have just uploaded version 2.0 including the Italian translation to both 1.10 and 1.12 add on servers.

[marat]

Russian translation

[gloccusv]

Thank you, Marat. The Russian translation is now available on both 1.10 and 1.12 add-on servers.

[taptap]

Easy, straightforward campaign. (Played on shyde difficulty.) Second scenario map is a bit boring. (It is a pain to watch your ally suiciding units - undead levelled a banebow - and the map is symmetrical.) I like first and last scenario maps. Killing the ancient lich inside was not easy (damaged him while I was outside he inside, but then he moved back). Finished with a loyal enchantress and plenty of L2. Since the whole campaign is in a non-standard day-cycle a short notice at start would be useful (this is a novice campaign after all). Glad to see, that you have since written more campaigns.

[gloccusv]

An Undead Incursion has now been updated to 1.14 and uploaded to the 1.14 add-on server. There are no gameplay changes, so please let me know if anything doesn't seem right.