The Dark Hordes [Wesnoth 1.18.0+]

[KameRamen]

Version 0.12.0 -Greatest Update- is now available!

Codename Rebirth RC 4. All existing scenarios were rewritten and the prose greatly enhanced. In addition, two new scenarios are now playable and the gameplay of several scenarios has been refined.

A necromancer cold as lead,
The battle fought by Erzen's Stone;
He raised the corpses of the dead
And made his eldritch power known.

He through the darkness called to those,
The shades who heard from nether shore
Who came to him, who dead arose;
They took his life and left no more.

Changelog here:

Code: Select all

Version 0.12.0
- General
    * Codename Rebirth RC 4 (greatest!)
    * Discontinue the base-utils directory
    * Clean up unnecessary files, code, and images
- Graphics & Artwork
    * Some file/dir renaming
    * Use core image instead of dark-aura.png
- Scenarios
    * Merge my local working
    * Re-rewrite all existing scenarios (WIP included)
    * 13 - Landfall (NEW)
    * 14 - Ambush (NEW)
- Units
    * Additional custom units for Elynia
        + Sylvan Warden
        + Lady of Light

More details are available on GitHub.

[KameRamen]

Announcement for The Dark Hordes 1.0.0

After giving it some thought, I decided to commit all of my local data to Git. This makes all scenarios playable and allows you to reach an epilogue. There are almost no bugs.

It will be released on the add-on server around tomorrow, but you can download it from here for now:
https://github.com/wesnoth-legacy-proje ... /tag/1.0.0

Key Points

• A new heroine, Susanne, appears. She is the result of expanding on some ideas that I had previously discussed. Important elements from The Shadow Returns are also inherited.

• A lot of music and images have been added as additional resources.

• Almost all of the prose has been enhanced. The focus is primarily on character dialogue, while narration has been reduced. The intention is to achieve at least mainline quality.

• All maps have been reworked, and gameplay has been greatly enhanced through rebalancing. Work on the new scenario is almost done.

• The connection with the older canon has been severed, and the lore has been realigned with the latest timeline.

... Basically, this is the result of a year of trial and error, and it is a kind of culmination of my previous work.

Some of the plot and character personalities have been (slightly) changed. The rewriting of the prose has been reasonably successful, and the foreshadowing has been recovered, but the final editing is not yet finished.

[KameRamen]

Quoted from Discord

========================================
The Dark Hordes ― Completion Release
v1.0.0
========================================

A necromancer cold as lead, the battle fought by Erzen’s Stone; he raised the corpses of the dead and made his eldritch power known. He through the darkness called to those, the shades who heard from nether shore who came to him, who dead arose; they took his life and left no more...

Intermediate Level, 17 Scenarios and Epilogue, for Wesnoth 1.18

Key Points

• Totally New Experience with Prose and Gameplay

• Indirect Prequel to Invasion from the Unknown

• Refreshed All Gameplay Maps and Unit Graphics

• 3 Achievements in Part 1

Great Thanks

• AI0867 and Iris for their previous development and maintenance support and advices.

• RKT for the map redesign work.

• Tsunami for drawing new portraits.

• Roge Tebnelok for the discussions and ideas so far.

• Refumee for early constructive feedback.

• Lord-Knightmare for the invitation to WMG server and for the love for TDH

All scenarios of the campaign, which was first written 22 years ago and faced a series of difficulties, are now ready to play. But the journey into darkness is not over yet and the prose in particular will continue to be updated.

========================================

Screenshots

S15 - The Crown Prince

S11 - An Orcish Coup

S6 - Crelanu’s Book

S1 - A New Chance

GitHub: <https://github.com/wesnoth-legacy-proje ... ark_Hordes>
Official Thread: <https://r.wesnoth.org/t59240>

[KameRamen]

Several patches (1.0.1 and 1.0.2) have been released. There will be no further updates for the time being. Chengelog here:

Code: Select all

Version 1.0.2:
--------------
* Scenarios:
  * S9x - Death and Rebirth:
    * Renamed from the same title as the campaign.
    * Some prose editing.
  * S17x - Epilogue:
    * Added "The End of Dreams" as the subtitle.


Version 1.0.1:
--------------
* Scenarios:
  * S14 - Ambush:
    * Balancing to make it a little easier.

* Music:
  * Added Pachelbel's Canon for Epilogue.

As an announcement, I would like to start actively seeking your feedback. The work is almost done for now!

[ZIM]

Hello, I would like to report a bug
I encountered this error when trying to start the campaign for the first time

Additional information :
I'm using Wesnoth 1.18.5 in Linux Mint 22.1 on an Asus Vivobook laptop, my laptop's screen resolution is 1280x720

[KameRamen]

Hello, I would like to report a bug
I encountered this error when trying to start the campaign for the first time

Additional information :
I'm using Wesnoth 1.18.5 in Linux Mint 22.1 on an Asus Vivobook laptop, my laptop's screen resolution is 1280x720

Hello, thank you for your bug report. I could not reproduce this in my environment (Windows and 1.18.2), so I think this might be a core bug and not a problem with the campaign itself.

I will look into it a little more and then let you know again.

[Straff]

Fatal Error while playing scenario: 04_Mages_And_Elves
The game quits to the desktop (without any log entry).
It happens on turn 2, when [random_placement] snow should happen. Something must be wrong with the code. Maybe the formula does not work (maybe).


Another minor issue (has nothing to do with the issue above).
When you have Gwiti Ha'atel in scenario 04 on level 3 (Grimreaper), then nothing bad happens ingame, but there is a log entry:

20250726 16:13:08 warning unit: unknown variation 'halfskull' (name=) in [effect]apply_to=variation, ignoring

Only Deathmaster has variations, not Initiate, and not Grimreaper. Is this intented?


I play
BfW 1.18.4
Linux

TDH 1.0.2

[tsunami_]

Only Deathmaster has variations, not Initiate, and not Grimreaper.

Hmm, useful observation. I will make staff variations for the higher levels eventually, but it's true that the Initiate should also have variations (no visual difference, but so that he levels up correctly). I had not considered that.

---

I finished playing the campaign. Having details about what Gwiti does between scenarios makes the story much better I will say. And the new rain and snow effects are very nice.

A few bugs and notes:

S1 (A New Chance)
The bat event is buggy: It triggers when a bat is revealed to you, but if the bats spawn already in your vision (if you went to fight the ogres with ghosts for example) then it will not trigger: the bats will fly to Gwiti and bully him. If you move the bats to the east end of the map, and appear on turn 1, that should fix it.

S3 (Skull of Morgorath)
In this scenario, you can find a loyal death squire, who will become a loyal death knight. However, 2 scenarios later, you can get several more loyal death knights, and they will be stronger thanks to the potions. Maybe you could recall the death squire in the Mage tower so he can get a potion?

S9x (Interim)
Four years passed? When did it happen? I remember there was snow in one scenario but then it was always spring/summer. Did I miss a time-skip dialogue?
By the way I like the bloody half-dead-land. It has lots of atmosphere.

S10 (Return to the Northlands)
Will you combine the two parts eventually? I cannot see how you could balance both ways, with recall list and without recall list.

S12 (Assault on Alduin)
The time of day cycle goes: first watch, second watch, then first watch again. It should rather be a 1/1 night cycle, no?

S13 (Landfall)
The power of the skull has stopped working.

---
S14
Here I stopped playing legitimately. I get tired of playing long campaigns (usually I avoid them) and the plot now has many references to other add-ons I have not played (so it is incomprehensible to me).

Epilogue
The credits say "The Dark Hordes part 1, to be continued".


---

[KameRamen]

@ZIM

Hello, I would like to report a bug
I encountered this error when trying to start the campaign for the first time

Additional information :
I'm using Wesnoth 1.18.5 in Linux Mint 22.1 on an Asus Vivobook laptop, my laptop's screen resolution is 1280x720

I looked into it for a while, but it seems that this is a problem caused by the user's setup. Would you mind trying a clean installation of Wesnoth with no other add-ons? Since this is not a bug in the campaign itself, there is nothing I can do to fix it... Sorry about that.

@Straff

Fatal Error while playing scenario: 04_Mages_And_Elves
The game quits to the desktop (without any log entry).
It happens on turn 2, when [random_placement] snow should happen. Something must be wrong with the code. Maybe the formula does not work (maybe).


Another minor issue (has nothing to do with the issue above).
When you have Gwiti Ha'atel in scenario 04 on level 3 (Grimreaper), then nothing bad happens ingame, but there is a log entry:

20250726 16:13:08 warning unit: unknown variation 'halfskull' (name=) in [effect]apply_to=variation, ignoring

Only Deathmaster has variations, not Initiate, and not Grimreaper. Is this intented?


I play
BfW 1.18.4
Linux

TDH 1.0.2

Thank you for the bug report. However, this is entirely a core or setup issue. I have uploaded a new version, 1.1.0, so please try it just in case. If the problem persists, please try a clean installation of the game itself - if you don't mind.

If the problem continues, I will consider changing the code to a different implementation or removing the snow.

As for variations, it's simply that the artwork is not yet all ready.

[KameRamen]

Only Deathmaster has variations, not Initiate, and not Grimreaper.

Hmm, useful observation. I will make staff variations for the higher levels eventually, but it's true that the Initiate should also have variations (no visual difference, but so that he levels up correctly). I had not considered that.

Hmm, I see. But I don't think additional graphics are necessary. The variation code alone is sufficient.

I finished playing the campaign. Having details about what Gwiti does between scenarios makes the story much better I will say. And the new rain and snow effects are very nice.

Sure, I'll add it to my TODO list.

S1 (A New Chance)
The bat event is buggy: It triggers when a bat is revealed to you, but if the bats spawn already in your vision (if you went to fight the ogres with ghosts for example) then it will not trigger: the bats will fly to Gwiti and bully him. If you move the bats to the east end of the map, and appear on turn 1, that should fix it.

I have already corrected it using a different method. Thank you for reporting it.

S3 (Skull of Morgorath)
In this scenario, you can find a loyal death squire, who will become a loyal death knight. However, 2 scenarios later, you can get several more loyal death knights, and they will be stronger thanks to the potions. Maybe you could recall the death squire in the Mage tower so he can get a potion?

He became an original unit that can advance to level 4.

S9x (Interim)
Four years passed? When did it happen? I remember there was snow in one scenario but then it was always spring/summer. Did I miss a time-skip dialogue?
By the way I like the bloody half-dead-land. It has lots of atmosphere.

Hmm, indeed, the flow of the seasons is unclear at the moment, and it's almost like a patchwork. I will think of some additional dialogues. The four years was a miscalculation on my part; it was actually three years.

S10 (Return to the Northlands)
Will you combine the two parts eventually? I cannot see how you could balance both ways, with recall list and without recall list.

When starting from part 2, I have made corrections so that veterans are added to the recall list. Balancing is probably not so difficult.

S12 (Assault on Alduin)
The time of day cycle goes: first watch, second watch, then first watch again. It should rather be a 1/1 night cycle, no?

I agree, fixed it.

S13 (Landfall)
The power of the skull has stopped working.

It was a simple mistake... and I have fixed it. Thank you for pointing it out.

S14
Here I stopped playing legitimately. I get tired of playing long campaigns (usually I avoid them) and the plot now has many references to other add-ons I have not played (so it is incomprehensible to me).

I know the campaign is too long, but when I started working on it, there were already 12 scenarios, so I had no choice but to make it the way it is now in order to wrap up the story.

Were there that many references to other campaigns? I tried to keep it to the bare minimum...

Epilogue
The credits say "The Dark Hordes part 1, to be continued".

This is a known issue. For some reason, it is displayed that way. I will try to update it.

Thank you for your detailed feedback. I will do my best to further improve the campaign.

[KameRamen]

-- The Dark Hordes 1.1.0 --

Simple changelog:

• Dark Adept recruitment has been replaced with Rogue Mage. They can even advance to Dark Sorcerer; Necromancer can now become Lich in Episode II.

• A complete Japanese translation is now included.

• All scenarios have been rebalanced after being played through. Gameplay has been enhanced.

• Several additional custom units, visual reworks, bug fixes, and other improvements!

Full changelog:

Code: Select all

Version 1.1.0:
--------------
* General:
  * Changed from "Part" to "Episode".
  * Replaced Dark Adept recruitment with Rogue Mage.
  * Copied code from SotA so that Necromancer can become Lich in Episode II.
  * Other bug fixes that were overlooked.
  * Changed required Wesnoth versions to 1.18.0 and later.

* Language and i18n:
  * Updated translations: Japanese.
    * 100% done.

* Graphics:
  * New unit graphics: Rogue Mage, Shadow Mage, Shadow Lord
    * Added from TDG campaign.
  * Included halo graphics showing the power of Morgorath.
  * Several other additional graphics.

* Scenarios:
  * S1 - A New Chance:
    * Fixed a minor bug related to the arrival of bats.
    * Minor rebalancing.
  * S2 - Brother Against Brother:
    * Refined conversation, several additional effects, other rebalancing.
  * S3 - The Skull of Morgorath:
    * Replaced Gigor with a custom unit.
    * Minor rebalancing.
  * S4 - Mages and Elves:
    * Removed horses in front to avoid sudden death.
    * Rebalancing.
    * Updated the map a little.
  * S5 - Inside the Tower:
    * Several additional tunnels and other gimmicks.
  * S7 - Confrontation:
    * Added elven reinforcements on a trial basis.
    * Balancing the Leonard recruit list.
  * S8 - Underground Pool:
    * Added several Fire Guardians and other deep creatures.
  * S9 - Underground River:
    * Make some bats appear as guardians.
    * Minor rebalancing on side 2.
  * S10 - Return to the Northlands:
    * Added several veterans who join if you start from Episode II.
  * S12 - Assault on Alduin:
    * Updated schedule based on feedback.
    * Added a hidden achievement.
      * Achieve this to make Chocobones recruitable.
    * Rebalancing.
  * S15 - The Crown Prince:
    * Updated the map a little.
      * Increased the number of fords in the river.
      * Added a few more villages.
    * Rebalancing.
  * S16 - Glyn's Forest:
    * Minor rebalancing.
  * S17- Revelations:
    * Added defeat condition as destruction of Gwiti.
    * Updated victory condition.
    * Balancing to make it harder.

* Units:
  * New advancement unit (line) for Gigor:
    * Death Marshal
  * Rogue Mage line units included in the campaign itself:
    * Rogue Mage, Shadow Mage, Shadow Lord
      * Removed binary dependency on EI.
      * Shadow Mages can now advance to Dark Sorcerers.
  * Implemented "faerie fire" attack for Elynia.
  * Some minor fixes related to sound.

Playable on Wesnoth 1.18.0 and later.

[KameRamen]

I found some bugs, so I uploaded patch 1.1.1 to fix them.

Changelog:

Code: Select all

Version 1.1.1:
--------------
* General:
  * Added traits to all enemy leaders in Episode II.

* Scenarios:
  * S7 - Confrontation:
    * Fixed an important bug caused by defeat.
  * S13 - Landfall:
    * Updated the code for the storm trident more appropriately.
    * Minor rebalancing.
  * S14 - Ambush:
    * Bug fixes and some balancing.
  * S15 - The Crown Prince:
    * Balancing to make it a little harder.
  * S17 - Revelations:
    * Balancing to make it a little harder.

[Straff]

@Straff

Fatal Error while playing scenario: 04_Mages_And_Elves
The game quits to the desktop (without any log entry).
It happens on turn 2, when [random_placement] snow should happen. Something must be wrong with the code. Maybe the formula does not work (maybe).

Thank you for the bug report. However, this is entirely a core or setup issue. I have uploaded a new version, 1.1.0, so please try it just in case. If the problem persists, please try a clean installation of the game itself - if you don't mind.

After updating your campaign I started a new try. I started from the beginning, with no modifications activated. Sadly the issue is still there. But if it is the case that I am the only one who has this problem then don't mind. If it works on all other engines, than it is okay for me. I just reported that here becaus I thought it would happen to all users. So again, please don't mind.

[KameRamen]

After updating your campaign I started a new try. I started from the beginning, with no modifications activated. Sadly the issue is still there. But if it is the case that I am the only one who has this problem then don't mind. If it works on all other engines, than it is okay for me. I just reported that here becaus I thought it would happen to all users. So again, please don't mind.

I was hoping to resolve this issue, so that is unfortunate. I may look into it a little more. In any case, thank you for your report. It was helpful.

[ZIM]

I looked into it for a while, but it seems that this is a problem caused by the user's setup. Would you mind trying a clean installation of Wesnoth with no other add-ons? Since this is not a bug in the campaign itself, there is nothing I can do to fix it... Sorry about that.

I managed to fix it myself, I disabled this line in the storytxt.cfg and the campaign runs fine


[part]
music="revelation.ogg"
#po: newlines at the beginning help to (depending on the screne size) center this vertically. The space at the end stops the last letter from getting cut off
title=_"<span font_family='Oldania ADF Std' size='90000'>


<i>The Dark Hordes </i>
<i>Episode I </i></span>"
title_alignment=center
background="story/trow_intro_05.webp"
[/part]


Edit : I managed to play until "Mage and Elves", here my game crashes everytime after the event with horses breaking out