Scenario 17: Mortality

[Content Feedback]

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
(3) What did you think about the dialog and story?
(4) What were the major challenges you faced?
(5) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
(6) What suggestions do you have to make it more fun?

[Kylix]

(1) Easy, 1.14
(2) 7
(3) Ardryn-Na shouldn't have transformed herself in a lich. Unlike Ras-Tabahn (illness) and Malin Keshar (poison), she wasn't going to die. But I've appreciated that it's the only undead campaign which doesn't end with the main character's demise. Then, many scenarios end without a final dialogue and many of them are named as "Defeat the enemy leader" instead of "Defeat Garcyn", for example.
(4) Facing the dwarves: they're deadly towards the majority of undead units.
(5) 3
(6) All loyal units should have a death dialogue, only Carcyn and Shynal have one, Garcyn (the first ghoul Ardonna creates) should be a loyal unit with his own death dialogue and Ras-Tabahn, Carcyn and Vendraxis shoud have their own avatar, while Ardryn-Na and Shynal, as necromancers, should have a modified version of the female Necromancer avatar, instead of the classical one.

[beetlenaut]

3) Ardryn-Na shouldn't have transformed herself in a lich.

In this world, people die suddenly all the time--she probably had some close calls during the campaign, and she would like to avoid that. She was already prepared to do whatever was necessary, so she didn't need to think about it long. She certainly wouldn't have gone first, before she was positive it was going to work, but after Ras-Tabahn survived and was stronger than ever, why not?

"Defeat the enemy leader" instead of "Defeat Garcyn", for example.

A lot of mainline campaigns are like that, including HttT.

Facing the dwarves: they're deadly towards the majority of undead units.

Sure. It's supposed to be hard at that point.

All loyal units should have a death dialogue

Yes, maybe so. The reason I didn't bother is because I figured the player would probably keep going if they lost Carcyn or Shynal, but would probably quit if they lost one of the others. There is no reason for Garcyn to be loyal though.

Carcyn and Vendraxis shoud have their own avatar

If you mean the portrait, then sure, that would be great! I'm not a good enough artist to do it though, and I'm not going to ask our single active artist to do it. He has a lot to work on.

[Kylix]

3) Ardryn-Na shouldn't have transformed herself in a lich.

In this world, people die suddenly all the time--she probably had some close calls during the campaign, and she would like to avoid that. She was already prepared to do whatever was necessary, so she didn't need to think about it long. She certainly wouldn't have gone first, before she was positive it was going to work, but after Ras-Tabahn survived and was stronger than ever, why not?

"Defeat the enemy leader" instead of "Defeat Garcyn", for example.

A lot of mainline campaigns are like that, including HttT.

Not at the level of DW and SotA.

Facing the dwarves: they're deadly towards the majority of undead units.

Sure. It's supposed to be hard at that point.

All loyal units should have a death dialogue

Yes, maybe so. The reason I didn't bother is because I figured the player would probably keep going if they lost Carcyn or Shynal, but would probably quit if they lost one of the others. There is no reason for Garcyn to be loyal though.

I think Garcyn should be loyal, just like Rudic, another Ardonna creation, since he was the basis for the next ghouls and also her best experiment.
Carcyn and Vendraxis shoud have their own avatar

If you mean the portrait, then sure, that would be great! I'm not a good enough artist to do it though, and I'm not going to ask our single active artist to do it. He has a lot to work on.
[/quote]You can ask to someone. I'm asking to my acquaintances too for avatars and sprites, since I'm a very bad drawer.

[Kylix]

3) Ardryn-Na shouldn't have transformed herself in a lich.

In this world, people die suddenly all the time--she probably had some close calls during the campaign, and she would like to avoid that. She was already prepared to do whatever was necessary, so she didn't need to think about it long. She certainly wouldn't have gone first, before she was positive it was going to work, but after Ras-Tabahn survived and was stronger than ever, why not?

"Defeat the enemy leader" instead of "Defeat Garcyn", for example.

A lot of mainline campaigns are like that, including HttT.

Facing the dwarves: they're deadly towards the majority of undead units.

Sure. It's supposed to be hard at that point.

All loyal units should have a death dialogue

Yes, maybe so. The reason I didn't bother is because I figured the player would probably keep going if they lost Carcyn or Shynal, but would probably quit if they lost one of the others. There is no reason for Garcyn to be loyal though.

Carcyn and Vendraxis shoud have their own avatar

If you mean the portrait, then sure, that would be great! I'm not a good enough artist to do it though, and I'm not going to ask our single active artist to do it. He has a lot to work on.

A thing I forgot to tell you is that, after the leaders' transitioning, all the other necromancers shouldn't become ancient lichs, since that unit is programmed for being a leader, not a common unit which the lich already is. I've already asked some people for the avatars, but my younger sister is focused on tattoos, since she's an aspiring tattoo artist, while my ex boyfriend has told me I should learn how to draw...

[beetlenaut]

after the leaders' transitioning, all the other necromancers shouldn't become ancient lichs, since that unit is programmed for being a leader

All the necromancers get to keep their experience when they become liches, so if they have a lot, they go straight to ancient liches. I don't see any reason why only one of them should be allowed to level up. The ancient lich unit is in the game to do whatever you want with, and I wanted to play with a couple of them. Besides, the leader does at least have a different sprite than the rest.

[Kylix]

after the leaders' transitioning, all the other necromancers shouldn't become ancient lichs, since that unit is programmed for being a leader.

All the necromancers get to keep their experience when they become liches, so if they have a lot, they go straight to ancient liches. I don't see any reason why only one of them should be allowed to level up. The ancient lich unit is in the game to do whatever you want with, and I wanted to play with a couple of them. Besides, the leader does at least have a different sprite than the rest.

in fact I was referring to both leaders, not only Ardryn-Na or Ras-Tabahn. In fact she differs from the classical ancient lich only for the sprite, while for the rest she's identical to it. I meant to say that only they two should level up to ancient lichs, while all the others, Carcyn and Shynal included, would be allowed to become only lichs. Then, I suggest to change the leaders' death dialogues when turned into lichs, since they basically have achieved their goal. Only with Shynal's demise, her death dialogue is slightly changed from her human form.

[beetlenaut]

Okay, I don't see a compelling reason why only two of them should be able to level up, and others of the same unit type shouldn't. I wouldn't be interested in changing that.

I didn't spend a lot of time on the death messages, so it's likely that they could be improved. But, if either leaders gets killed, then they definitely did not achieve their goal.

[LordWolfDan]

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?

- 1.14.5, Normal
(3) What did you think about the dialog and story?

- It's good. Ras-Tabahn dying was really sad to see, but he ended up being transformed into the lich so he's not entirely destroyed here! Now that Ardyn-Na turned herself into lich, where is this going to lead at?

[Pilauli]

(1) 1.15.4, "normal" (easiest option available)
(2) 6-ish? It's frustrating how fast my low-level recruits fall to the spiders, but the cave system's layout lets me bottleneck the spiders and chew my way through them with liches.
(3) Makes sense. The bit about the spiders moving slowly until they wake up seemed brilliant, although I don't know whether that practically affects the level's difficulty or not.

(4) On my first time through, the major challenge was figuring out how to kill the spiders without getting my units killed. When I did it a second time (I wanted to bring the Saurian along, and he'd gotten killed in a previous scenario), then I already knew about the spiders and planned the bottleneck-and-ancient-liches strategy.

The second time around, the main challenge was logistics. Get this ghost a kill, push forward with the liches so the ghost doesn't get killed again... move a skeleton backwards so the healer can stand next to the injured ghost and the lich who isn't on a village... move another ghost into the front line to protect the injured-but-high-xp ghost... oops now I have two dead ghosts, good thing I can make more. I often try to crowd all my units into a tight space, and then regret it when that makes moving units really tedious.

The other difficulty I had (the first time; I was forewarned the second time) is that I slaughtered the first batch of spiders at my leisure, then headed off to the west end of the cave... with only a few turns to spare. I ended up save-loading the last turn several times so I could finish off the last few spiders before the time ran out. I tend to dawdle and forget about the turn limits in general.

(5) 6-ish? See point 2. And 4, to some extent. Part 4 is probably my fault for crowding my units, though.

I was disappointed that Vendraxis can't turn into a lich, given that that's his whole reason for coming along. Now, a tall humanoid lich isn't consistent, and a unique saurian lich sprite is probably too much work, but do the Saurians at the top and right-hand side of this picture look sufficiently lichlike? (The other ones are Soothsayers for comparison.)

Saurian-Lich-Mockup.png (78.31 KiB) Viewed 11693 times

It just uses image path functions to change the colors, which means no new image files are necessary.

If Vendraxis turned into a lich, I'd expect him to keep his healing ability but gain lich resistances. Things like better attacks and increased movement speed (he's already as fast as a human lich, but humans do get an extra movement point when they lichify) would be nice, too.

(6) Well, it would be cool if Vendraxis could become a lich.

I didn't really enjoy the sensation of a neverending-but-not-really-threatening horde of spiders; spreading them out into 3 or 4 groups (instead of 2) might add a little bit of variety.

[beetlenaut]

Good job with the image path functions. You didn't post them though.

I don't know if Vendraxis would be excited to become a lich. He's annoyed about saurians having shorter lives than humans, but I don't think he's ready to jump off that bridge. We should have some dialog to that effect though, because it does seem like a plot hole now that you point it out. Maybe there should be a way to do it though...

If Vendraxis could turn into a lich, I think he would have to lose his healing power. An undead unit with healing seems contradictory according to Wesnoth's mythology, and I don't like the idea.

[Pilauli]

Ah, that would be disappointing, because healing is the thing he's most useful for. Maybe he could heal undead units, but not living units?

Okay, here are the image path functions I used. (I put them inside [effects] which I applied with an [object], but any other way to apply [effect]s, such as traits, would also work.)

Code: Select all

[object]
    [filter]
        id=$unit.id
    [/filter]
    silent=yes
    duration=scenario
    [effect] # Turns green skin to pale yellow-ish bone or undead skin color.
        apply_to=image_mod
        add=PAL("cff521,98d858,4d8d38,0d4218,020202">"ffffce,d6d69c,a19470,5c5239,13130f")
    [/effect]
    [effect] # Makes eyes black for consistency with normal lich.
        apply_to=image_mod
        add=PAL("ffafaf,f93c3c">"283028,101010")
    [/effect]
    [effect] # Turns white-ish robes darker, like lich robes.
        apply_to=image_mod
        add=PAL("ffffff,9b9c92,515249,18222d">"889880,506858,283028,101010")
    [/effect]
    [effect] # Gold trim made the robes look too light: change gold to robe color.
        apply_to=image_mod
        add=PAL("ffd44a,bf6d00">"506858,283028")
    [/effect]
[/object]

The mini palettes could be mashed together, but that's harder to read and modify, so I didn't do it until now. (I did test it, though, and it works.)

Code: Select all

[effect]
    apply_to=image_mod 
    add=PAL("cff521,98d858,4d8d38,0d4218,020202,ffafaf,f93c3c,ffffff,9b9c92,515249,18222d,ffd44a,bf6d00">"ffffce,d6d69c,a19470,5c5239,13130f,283028,101010,889880,506858,283028,101010,506858,283028")
[/effect]

If you used this, you would probably want to apply the image path function(s) to each relevant unit (in this case, Vendraxis) using some way of applying [effect]s and manually apply the same image path function(s) onto the [unit_type]'s base image, so that it would show up properly in the help menu. Otherwise, the help menu would show a normal green Saurian Soothsayer picture even though Vendraxis looked properly undead.

(If there's an easier way to do this, especially a way to put an [effect] directly inside a [unit_type], I'd love to hear about it for other projects I have. I've tried traits and events so far, neither of which is quite as tidy as I'd like.)

[Kylix]

Ah, that would be disappointing, because healing is the thing he's most useful for. Maybe he could heal undead units, but not living units?

Okay, here are the image path functions I used. (I put them inside [effects] which I applied with an [object], but any other way to apply [effect]s, such as traits, would also work.)

Code: Select all

[object]
    [filter]
        id=$unit.id
    [/filter]
    silent=yes
    duration=scenario
    [effect] # Turns green skin to pale yellow-ish bone or undead skin color.
        apply_to=image_mod
        add=PAL("cff521,98d858,4d8d38,0d4218,020202">"ffffce,d6d69c,a19470,5c5239,13130f")
    [/effect]
    [effect] # Makes eyes black for consistency with normal lich.
        apply_to=image_mod
        add=PAL("ffafaf,f93c3c">"283028,101010")
    [/effect]
    [effect] # Turns white-ish robes darker, like lich robes.
        apply_to=image_mod
        add=PAL("ffffff,9b9c92,515249,18222d">"889880,506858,283028,101010")
    [/effect]
    [effect] # Gold trim made the robes look too light: change gold to robe color.
        apply_to=image_mod
        add=PAL("ffd44a,bf6d00">"506858,283028")
    [/effect]
[/object]

The mini palettes could be mashed together, but that's harder to read and modify, so I didn't do it until now. (I did test it, though, and it works.)

Code: Select all

[effect]
    apply_to=image_mod 
    add=PAL("cff521,98d858,4d8d38,0d4218,020202,ffafaf,f93c3c,ffffff,9b9c92,515249,18222d,ffd44a,bf6d00">"ffffce,d6d69c,a19470,5c5239,13130f,283028,101010,889880,506858,283028,101010,506858,283028")
[/effect]

If you used this, you would probably want to apply the image path function(s) to each relevant unit (in this case, Vendraxis) using some way of applying [effect]s and manually apply the same image path function(s) onto the [unit_type]'s base image, so that it would show up properly in the help menu. Otherwise, the help menu would show a normal green Saurian Soothsayer picture even though Vendraxis looked properly undead.

(If there's an easier way to do this, especially a way to put an [effect] directly inside a [unit_type], I'd love to hear about it for other projects I have. I've tried traits and events so far, neither of which is quite as tidy as I'd like.)

Saurian lich could still heal and cure everyone, remember that after the leaders' transitioning the other necromancers can still turned into liches, but not if we don't want, so I don't understand why neither them nor bats can beneficiate of that.

[Kylix]

Okay, I don't see a compelling reason why only two of them should be able to level up, and others of the same unit type shouldn't. I wouldn't be interested in changing that.

I didn't spend a lot of time on the death messages, so it's likely that they could be improved. But, if either leaders gets killed, then they definitely did not achieve their goal.

Because it's like having several Elvish Lords, Great Marshals, Dwarvish Arcanisters, etc.

[Kylix]

3) Ardryn-Na shouldn't have transformed herself in a lich.

In this world, people die suddenly all the time--she probably had some close calls during the campaign, and she would like to avoid that. She was already prepared to do whatever was necessary, so she didn't need to think about it long. She certainly wouldn't have gone first, before she was positive it was going to work, but after Ras-Tabahn survived and was stronger than ever, why not?

Then, since Pilauli proposed the Saurian Lich, I think Ardryn-Na and possibly Vendraxis' undeath should be optional, since they weren't going to die neither of natural causes nor from mortal wounds. It could happen either in a castle or after being "killed" in battle. Let's face it, no necromancer turns into a lich unless forced to.