The Sojournings of Grog (3.6.1 is out)

[Elvish_Hunter]

That works, but don't necesarily fix the issue of it being a very simple scenario. What do you think of the idea of having to complete a task for one of them first?

I think, at first, to raise the gold for all Saurians, to make them harder to escape. With my proposed dialogue, allying with one of them won't work. Unless we make some dialogue like this:

Code: Select all

- Eastern Saurian: All hail Akhenku (the Dragon)! Who you are, friend or foe (sssaurian sssspeaking issss a mussst).
- Grog: Trolls are...
- Elyssa: (interrupting Grog) All hail Akhenku! We are his ally!
- Eastern Saurian: You may pass, but first help us destroy these heatens allied with the Orcs (or something like that)
(and now, the comical part)
- Elyssa: Agreed! (now with our usual italic small) I never imagined to say such a thing! Grog, please don't smash lizards too hard: I want to make a bag and a pair of shoes with their leather!
- Zurg: ...

The only thing is if you can change the red marking on the floor in the blue and green version - it looks a little odd to me?

That ellipse (that is the mainline hero ellipse) should be team-colured, and I placed the Orbs on Lich's side, that isn't red. I don't know why the colour hasn't changed. Maybe I'll post in the WML Workshop, to check if it's a bug.

As you have seen, I've taken on a massive project as well. I only have a few more scenario's to play and then you will have a full revision of all the existing dialogue - In case I disapear for some time, or even for good.

Yes, I noticed. But please don't disappear!

[Tet]

I want to address the great ogre again.

I found some alternative art with a belt somewhere. It was designed as replacement of the muscular ogre. (Beeing called ogre on steroids by the artists)

The issue is balancing. The lvl3 ogre has an attack of 16x3. I believe it should be less compared to the troll. I recommend 15x3. However the ogre is not regenerating. He could have additional benefits.

Having 2 new great ogre sprites I was thinking of an ogre lvl4 with 20x3. The sprite is certainly fitting.

Alternativly ther could be a version lvl3b with an attack of 23x2. So at level 2 you can decide steroid ogre or great ogre.

However still not much improvement compared to the troll.

I "developed" an oriental ogre line with better movements and defences in swamp, due to substential ricefield practice in asia. It gives an explaination for the huge lvl4. Rice must be nutritious!

I made cool looking yellow skin ogres. Oh yes I team colored the Muscle-Ogre. Maybe I should share here as it is probably not enough for a seperate thread.

I made the young ogre 3 pixel taller. Now he has ogre size but is less muscular. I still recommend using all the old animation sprites for lvl1 and lvl2. I am not posting them as they are in the core.

Did I mention the cool looking portrait? It is huge. I recommand using it like this. Ogres are huge too.

[monochromatic]

I don't know about your situation right now or how the artwork was progressing, but Monroid made a sprite (not finished yet, but soon) for the Great Ogre because I shamelessly borrowed it from here I don't know what you guys will do, I though I'd just post it here just in case. (Continue to scroll down, there's more).

[Tet]

That is probably the one I utilised in my RAR file. Thanks for sharing the story and bringing the link. There is one without belt now. I actually even tried chinese hats. But they looked to plastiki (means recycled?) to me.

[Elvish_Hunter]

The issue is balancing. The lvl3 ogre has an attack of 16x3. I believe it should be less compared to the troll. I recommend 15x3. However the ogre is not regenerating. He could have additional benefits.

I think that this isn't needed. Explanation: the Troll Warrior has a 25x2=50 damage. The L3 Great Ogre has a 16x3=48. Checking also with other L3 units, in most units the total damage is around 45-50, but Ogres have worse defense on plain, only 40% on villages and, unlike Trolls, don't regenerate. So, I'll keep this little bonus for them.

I "developed" an oriental ogre line with better movements and defences in swamp, due to substential ricefield practice in asia. It gives an explaination for the huge lvl4. Rice must be nutritious!

The only problem is that the two Suns dryed amost all swamps: in TSoG we don't have it. Sorry. Thanks for attaching the file anyway. Maybe it will be useful for an Ogre campaign, who knows?

I made cool looking yellow skin ogres. I made the young ogre 3 pixel taller.

Now I know how to recolour and frankenstein sprites. Can you kindly tell me how can I make sprites bigger - or smaller? I need to make the Young Gryphon a bit smaller, and I read, in the Lvl 3 Chocobone thread, that you suggested "when scaling up units, set interpolation to no". There is anything that you can suggest me to make my (sort-of) spriting better?

I don't know about your situation right now or how the artwork was progressing, but Monroid made a sprite (not finished yet, but soon) for the Great Ogre because I shamelessly borrowed it from here

Thanks e_s for pointing me to this! But the Great Ogre wasn't my artwork (at the time, I didn't yet knew even how to frankenstein...). I shamelessly borrowed it from Into the Underworld, and modified the CFG a bit to avoid RIPLIB. I originally introduced it because Ogres, being capped at L2 and don't regenerating, were almost unuseful compared to Trolls. I'm glad that someone else liked this concept. Obviously, I'll add this even if the animation isn't yet ready, and add Monroid to the credits.
One question: for the Power Orb unit, I need a death sound. I found this one in Worldforge: being released under GPL version 2, can I add it to the campaign without any problem, right?

[Daravel]

I'll try not to disapear completely; I'm just finishing the campaign now. Jaash is almost at the Mermans keep

I should have the campaign and dialogue finished in the next day or so, then as I said already, I'm going to play utbs before revisiting the whole lot; I'm also on holiday in 1 1/2 weeks time. So, if I haven't gotten back to you in say, 1 month, give me an e-mail via my profile. Although I should still be around with the other project, even if I'm not working on utbs/tsog.

Plus it'll give you a chance to add everything in for when I play it again.

[Tet]

Hi fellows, I am not at my pc right now.

I address the read issues. The level3 troll has an attack of 20x2 I believe. 3x15 would be ok for the ogre I believe. But maybe I confused with mainline.

There was the ogre with belt ad the one without belt. I decided to make them both lvl3 The belt fellow called smart ogre and the fat belly called strong ogre. The Steroid ogre is lvl4 coming after strong ogre and is called great ogre again. Western ogre only become smart ogre. oriental ogre get the choice smart or strong.

About scalling units up. In Gimp you have to choose interpolation type. In pixel art you want NO Interpolation. You have to edit the lines which get doubled to make them more smooth. I usually keep feets and heads out for making units taller. So cut of head and feet in separate layer and scale up the rest of the body. Place everything nicely. I do recommend to place the lowest line of the lowest foot on line 63. If you need more space expand the file 2 times the pixel youneed and click center, when reframing. The fellow will stand nicely on what would be 63 in 72x72.

You can use that for scaling down too. You will loose complete lines. So to be in control you can delete lines by hand and merge the rest as you like.

Hope that helps.

[Elvish_Hunter]

I address the read issues. The level3 troll has an attack of 20x2 I believe. 3x15 would be ok for the ogre I believe. But maybe I confused with mainline.

Yes, that's true. I just did a mistake in my former post, maybe I remembered the value with the chaotic bonus. Then it will be 15x3.

About scalling units up... You can use that for scaling down too... Hope that helps.

Yes, it helps! Thanks Tet, it was the kind of explanation that I needed! I'll try to scale down the Young Gryphon (not sure how much time will require), and, of course, I'll add you to the credits.

[Eros]

Hi guys I am back on the forums but i am still extremely busy with University starting.

[Elvish_Hunter]

Another release of TSoG is here. Version 2.9.0 is on the server.
Main changes, this time, are a new C2 scenario featuring a multihex attack courtesy of SkyOne and mich, a new sprite for the Great Ogre (by Monroid), new Young Gryphon (my recolouring!), Elder Cactose (by Phyreprooph) and White Troll units (this one courtesy of the Wesnoth Italian Forum), as well as adding more Daravel's dialogues. There are also two impressive scenes (or, at least, I tried to make them so), when the Lich's Power Orbs are destroyed and when the Runemaster decides to get rid of some Dwarves. Complete changelog is included in the campaign folder. As always, please report any bug that you find.
@Eros: welcome back!

[Eros]

Hi I am back (temporarily) with 1.9 on line this might help

There is a new advanced preferences option, "local time of day light" to activate this area-specific color shift. This will (for instance) only apply the Time of Day color shifting to the non-cave part of properly constructed maps that mix cave and outdoors. (note that it may use more memory in heavier cases like big caves.)

When we wrote the runes we wanted a light shift just like this round them rather than halos. Maybe we can do it again.
A ominous blue glow round a rune would be rather cool

[Elvish_Hunter]

When we wrote the runes we wanted a light shift just like this round them rather than halos. Maybe we can do it again.
A ominous blue glow round a rune would be rather cool

Thanks Eros. I'm not yet using 1.9, but apparently this is an advanced preference, not a WML function. So, the best solution for this will be replacing the rune terrains (I still haven't understood much about terrain WML and don't yet know Lua ) with normal terrains, placing the runes with [item] and the blue glow with halo=. I already made a blue glow for the Power Orbs that Daravel suggested, so this will be a quick way to do this.
I have a question for you: in this thread there is a Golden Mage unit, that is supposed to be a Level 4 Silver Mage (yes, there are also the female sprites, and I remember that you originally planned to have Elyssa being able to level this way). Should I commit it? If yes, what where the stats that you planned for her?

[Eros]

Could do Eros. We did think of having a level 4 golden mage. But because that branch stops at level 3 (while an arch mage continues to a great mage) the silver is slightly overpowered. This would make it hard just to tag another unit on the unit tree. The graphics look ok though. I would have thought that it is more of a creative challenge not having it. After all a level 4 silver mage would be only slightly amazing!
NB: if you did make it inovative. Rather than just make it more powerful give it quircky abilities. (eg a better melee attack or a 8-5 rather than a 10-4 attack.) The silver has improved resistances so it could be that the golden mage only gets a fraction more power but it can use its teleport ability to evade weapons and improve its resistances.
NB2:Maybe it could move through enemy units?

I have taken the latest version of TSoG so I will play it and give a long feedback sometime soon.

[Eros]

@Elvish/Daravel I think you are doing an excellent job. Here are a few tips to make it even better.

S1

1) I like having removed the surplus elves. I like haveing the interlocutors together as well. (Telepathy is not a skill I associate with Grog!)

2) The popup after you accept the holy water needs to give a short description of its properties rather than remaining blank.

3) Esanoo could have more input into the dialog?

VERDICT: Much better.

A1

1) I am not very good at grammer but in the story pages "it was uneventful hard-going" should be "it was uneventful though hard-going" or "it was uneventful, hard-going".

2) The story doesnt fit the map. You have them travelling over "scorching deserts" ant then we start with palm trees and the sea. I would leave the sea out as it doesnt really contribute to the scenario. (The nagas are just an annoyance)

3) "They are Cactus Wose; more commonly known as Cactose." should be "That is a Cactus Wose; more commonly known as a Cactose."

4) The cactoses need to be on their own team because the dialog is confused else.

5) maybe the cactose could be more powerful with fewer of them?

6) The new dialog is good - certainly better than mine - but needs polishing. Each individual bit is good but as a whole it doesn't quite hang. If I get time I shall do a seperate critique of the dialog. (NB: Daravel keep up the good work)

VERDICT: I MUCH prefered the old version. It wasn't perfect but it was short, sweet and had plenty of spam to kill for advancement purposes. If you want this version to work it will need many hours of work. The map is also way WAY to long. UtBS would have 5-10 times as much action in that space.

A2

1) Having the dwarves guarding the runes makes it well hard!

2) Druid ought to be healthy otherwise it makes healing her very hard.

3) I like the use of italics in dialog.

4) The death knight is a servant of the lich. This is not "his" domain.

5) when krunk stays behind he is worried about the undead not the dwarves

A3

1) could we give rescued units 50% health?

2) We need to stop having death events for captured units and have them say something else instead.

4) The dialog doesnt make sense at the end.

A4

- doesn't appear to have changed -

A5

1) I like the rats. A bit weak perhaps? the blind tunnels are also good.

A6

1) I like the intro dialog.

A7

1) As you know I dont like the great ogre but if you are going to have it 16-3 is about right

2) Why havent we got gryphon riders. If dwarves can ride gryphons why cant trolls?

3) I dont like the power orbs. They are out of keeping with the rest of the campaign. But if you are going to have them they need to be scattered around the edge of his keep not en-route. The biggest problem is that they somewhat steal the thunder from runes. We could have powerful runes instead. There could be a set of runes that unlocks the path onto the castle, lowers the draw bridge, opens a gate etc. If you are going to have them dont make them essential just make them greatly weaken him. (They dont fit anyway because E managed to wound him in A3)

4) When elyssa got the potion her talons! got the poison ability.

5) the death event for mal-apothis assumes he was killed by a troll.

S2

1) Im glad that it no longer exists

Thats as far as I've got for now.

NB: Due to the way the campaign server interface in BfW lists by age rather than say popularity as default having your campaign in the top ten is very, very, VERY important. You want to be using 1.9 so that you can place TSoG on the server within hours of it going on line. It doesnt necessarily have to work when it goes up there it just has to be there.

NB2: Decided to play with silver mage to see how different it is. Quite a bit harder. Maybe golden mage not a bad idea.

NB3: AMLAs will rule the world!

[Elvish_Hunter]

Some quick answers:

1) I like having removed the surplus elves. I like haveing the interlocutors together as well. (Telepathy is not a skill I associate with Grog!)

Another reason why I reworked it this way was because it is much faster to load.

2) The popup after you accept the holy water needs to give a short description of its properties rather than remaining blank.

Fixed in the next release, copying the message from UtBS (that, I noticed, doesn't give Holy Water on Hard).

3) Esanoo could have more input into the dialog?

This applies also to all other dialogue issues: when Daravel will play UtBS and check again the dialogues, it will be fixed. Any suggestion?

4) The cactoses need to be on their own team because the dialog is confused else.

I tried this way: it ended with the Cactoses wiping out the Bandits So I had to make them silently "allied" with the Bandits.

I MUCH prefered the old version. It wasn't perfect but it was short, sweet and had plenty of spam to kill for advancement purposes. If you want this version to work it will need many hours of work. The map is also way WAY to long. UtBS would have 5-10 times as much action in that space.

You know, I followed your initial suggestions to redraw the maps, adding Nagas near the shore, etc. If you think that this doesn't work, I can always revert to the old version (I kept a backup). Or, if someone has any suggestion, I can always try to improve it.

2) Druid ought to be healthy otherwise it makes healing her very hard.

Fixed, thanks.

3) I like the use of italics in dialog.

This was my idea after experimenting a lot with Pango markup.

1) could we give rescued units 50% health?

Maybe not immediatly, because I'll have also to partially rework and test the code (use [switch] [case] and see if and how can I store a unit inside another unit).

2) We need to stop having death events for captured units and have them say something else instead.

Inserting a [kill] animate=no in the last breath event should work. Any suggestion about what they will say?

- doesn't appear to have changed -

There wasn't much to change here, apart adding the recruit capability to both Grog and Zurg

1) I like the rats. A bit weak perhaps? the blind tunnels are also good.

And you're not alone, at the point that now the rats are in core. I also made a recolour for their level-up called Bosavi, and it's used in Swamplings (in its thread there are the sprites; it's a brown rat with yelllow eyes, in fact).

1) As you know I dont like the great ogre but if you are going to have it 16-3 is about right

I'll keep it becuase there are several players that like it, like Tet, elvish_sovereign (that used it in Promised Land), Monroid (that is reworking the graphincs), and someone else that I don't remember.

2) Why havent we got gryphon riders. If dwarves can ride gryphons why cant trolls?

Because Trolls are MUCH heavier than Dwarves, and no Gryphons with a working brain will ever want to be roden by an adult Troll. Also, Gryphons are intelligent enough to fight on their own will, and also Dwarves will appreciate this, because not needing Riders will allow them to spare soldiers for the battles. And, in this case, not being a real artist, for me the recolour was easier than the frankensteining.

3) I dont like the power orbs.

Well, I can always recycle the halos for the runes. I added them upon Daravel's request, because we needen an explanation why in A3 we cannot kill the Lich and in A7 we can without any apparent reason. But this campaign is still a work in progress, so any idea is taken into consideration.

4) When elyssa got the potion her talons! got the poison ability.

Ok, a filter is needed. So, Gryphons can take it, Humans can't, but Trolls, Ogres and Dwarves (a detail useful in future)?

You want to be using 1.9 so that you can place TSoG on the server within hours of it going on line. It doesnt necessarily have to work when it goes up there it just has to be there.

Ah, OK. But, as I already said before, the 1.9 server will switched off when the first 1.10 beta will be released, so this will be VERY important for 1.10. Anyway, I already started updating CoD and ARL - but I can't upload anything until 1.9.1 because of a bug in 1.9.0.

Maybe golden mage not a bad idea.

SomeOneNamedMe just allowed me to use it, so I've added it and will be in the next release - and yes, I made the sword attack sprites. By the way, how did you added the sparkle on the blade?

NB3: AMLAs will rule the world!

Spoiler:

Somewhere in Homecoming, there is a White Troll that uses AMLA instead of normal leveling.

If you want, I can add AMLA also to Gryphons. I'm not planning to add AMLAs to Grog, Zurg and Elyssa, to avoid transformating them in sort-of tanks.