Noob ideas

[fanatikid]

Hi there, I have been playing BfW for the past 2 months and has proven to be one of the best games i've ever played, i congratulate evrybody behind the development, such creativity and commitment, this is surely one of the greatest works in open-source projects.

anyhow....i come up with a couple of ideas, i searched for them and didn't found them nor anything similar so let's hope i don't seem idiot in posting this (cross-fingers) :

1st -> some units trade a powerfull blow for several strikes instead, like the fencer, so i thought if it was possible to create some sort of combo, if the fencer strikes the first 3 strikes, the fourth and last would have a bonus damage. it would make such units valuable because sometimes the foe's unit stands in a crappy terrain with 20% defense and makes it possible a weaker unit to deal a massive blow on a stronger unit, altough it's hard to hit 4 times in a row theres the possibility.

2nd -> i really got fascinated by the terrain defense and how it's important to properly situate your unit, so i thought if it would be possible that some units terramorf an hex, example: a undead unit gets a great advantage in the swamp, what if...a unholy cleric could make some tiles in a dense forest turn into a swamp? it would balance some fights between elfs and undead.

for last:
this idea will probably stand against the wesnoth philosophy and i'm sorry if its inconvenient, but this game is awesome! and i believe it could cause a huge impact on a mmo style, there are factions, history and a world map, 3 prime ingredients to a online strategy game, imagine the kingdom of wesnoth with some players on the darkside team (orcs and undead) and some players on the fightforyourfreedomteam (elfs and humans) continualy having skirmishes on the world map's territories, the influence of some factions would keep changing. my idea is not to have some players getting highlevels or such, but to have the factions on a constant war, something like Ogame, where the battle is a multiplayer game between two or more factions or players. perhaps i should have developed a more clearer idea, but honestly i know that such thing i very dificult to achieve, not to mention an non-profiting game has no chance in the online gaming i suppose.

i apreciate your time in reading my post, (if any part of it becomes hard to understand is because my native language is not English), bye.
fana.

[monochromatic]

Hi there, I have been playing BfW for the past 2 months and has proven to be one of the best games i've ever played, i congratulate evrybody behind the development, such creativity and commitment, this is surely one of the greatest works in open-source projects.

anyhow....i come up with a couple of ideas, i searched for them and didn't found them nor anything similar so let's hope i don't seem idiot in posting this (cross-fingers) :

That's great! I completely agree with you. Even better, you seem yo be creative enough to come up with ideas! That's great!

1st -> some units trade a powerfull blow for several strikes instead, like the fencer, so i thought if it was possible to create some sort of combo, if the fencer strikes the first 3 strikes, the fourth and last would have a bonus damage. it would make such units valuable because sometimes the foe's unit stands in a crappy terrain with 20% defense and makes it possible a weaker unit to deal a massive blow on a stronger unit, altough it's hard to hit 4 times in a row theres the possibility.

I disagree. Units like Fencers aren't meant to be heavy-hitters like Speamen or Grunts. Units like this have a high number of strikes so it's easier to finish off a unit with say 3hp but is on good terrain. Then what about Drakes? They have inherently low defense, so four-strike units wouldn't have trouble getting all their hits. Would that make those units overpowered against Drakes.

2nd -> i really got fascinated by the terrain defense and how it's important to properly situate your unit, so i thought if it would be possible that some units terramorf an hex, example: a undead unit gets a great advantage in the swamp, what if...a unholy cleric could make some tiles in a dense forest turn into a swamp? it would balance some fights between elfs and undead.

First of all, undead don't have good defense in swamp. I thinks it's 30%? Anyways, that would do something against yourself, right? Second, all the MP factions have been painstakingly balaced by the devs for years now. If undead were underpowered vs rebels, don't you think the devs would have figured out by now? If you do insist, post replays explaining your reasoning. Finally, terrain changes would disrupt gameplay. You know, you're playing normally, and then these dark wizards come forward and create a huge patch of swamp for example around your units and then the undead come and slaughter you. Does that sound fun to you? Not to me.

for last:
this idea will probably stand against the wesnoth philosophy and i'm sorry if its inconvenient, but this game is awesome! and i believe it could cause a huge impact on a mmo style, there are factions, history and a world map, 3 prime ingredients to a online strategy game, imagine the kingdom of wesnoth with some players on the darkside team (orcs and undead) and some players on the fightforyourfreedomteam (elfs and humans) continualy having skirmishes on the world map's territories, the influence of some factions would keep changing. my idea is not to have some players getting highlevels or such, but to have the factions on a constant war, something like Ogame, where the battle is a multiplayer game between two or more factions or players. perhaps i should have developed a more clearer idea, but honestly i know that such thing i very dificult to achieve, not to mention an non-profiting game has no chance in the online gaming i suppose.

I frankly like this idea. A lot of people do. The question is, who's going to make it? It's a huge task and all of the devs have their own lives to live as well.

i apreciate your time in reading my post, (if any part of it becomes hard to understand is because my native language is not English), bye.
fana.

Your English is pretty good for a non-native speaker. Don't worry, I understood everything you said.

[PeterPorty]

Well, I have by o means anything to say about if it would be a good or bad idea, as that is a devs work, but I do have opinions:

For the first one: that would make the game less simple, against the KISS principle, as it would be harder to calculate where you should place your units, as you would have to always keep in mind the chance of a 'critical' blow, I think this should be rejected for the same reason as 5% chance critical blows, as it would make the game more complicated.

For the second one: No. This is already possible in some user-made content, but I'm pretty sure this will not be implemented on mainline for the same reason as your first idea, it would make the game more complicated.

For the last one: I don't think so, but that is just my personal opinion, I just don't like that kind of things, as I think it would bring the comunitty apart, creating 2 groups and.... I don't like it.

Again, this is only my opinion, if devs like your ideas, I have nothing to say.

[Zachron]

Some of the ideas fall under the heading of CABD, and would simply be a matter of using WML to create the effect, defining a macro, and using it in some UMC. Terrain alteration for mainline is an FPI, and while it has been implemented for some mods, including a mainline mod or two, such abilities for default era matches never occur and never will. Undead will not be given better defense in swamps because it would disrupt the current balance in multiplayer. Plus there is no supernatural connection between undead and swamps in the Wesnoth setting. ("Wild" undead are simply attracted to the decay.) And when you think about it, is there anything about swampy water that makes it more defensible to undead?

As for the Persistent world/MMO idea, this has been proposed ad nauseum and I would be surprised if it were not an FPI. I'm not going to go into why it has been rejected. I'm sure it's on the FPI list.

[Hulavuta]

Hmm, ironically, I believe that the last one is the only one that would NOT violate Wesnoth's philosophy. Like was mentioned before, the Factions are balanced. Not perfectly, but close enough that the tiny unbalance one faction might have over another is almost non-existent.

To the first thing: I think that's a cool idea, even though I don't think it'd be right for the game. Attacks that get stronger the more times they hit? That would be awesome! But, for units with low hits, like Thunderers, Spearmen, etc. It could ruin the balance.

The last one, I think is a fantastic idea. And I would love to play it. It's never going to be made though...

[Zachron]

... The smallest change in a faction can have incredibly unbalancing effects. The balance of the walking corpse, for example, is that it is a very cheap unit to recruit. If we gave undead higher defense ratings in the swamp, it would make walking corpses more dangerous for sure, but it would also make Skeletons and ghouls a greater threat as well. With higher level undead units, it would be catastrophic. The only sure fire defense against higher level undead is to catch them with impact, fire, or arcane damage units in poorly defended terrain. This is more a campaign issue than a multiplayer issue, but if undead even had 40% defense in swamps, it would make units like the Boneshooter and the BaneBow go from being terrible threats to being ridiculously powerful on swamp-heavy maps(which are a staple for undead heavy campaigns). In multiplayer, it would give undead access to defensibility in a terrain where only a very few others have it. Given that, in mainline, the only non-undead level 1 or lower unit that had fair defense in swamps(40%) and uses attacks that undead tend to be vulnerable against is the Footpad, it would as good as give undead mastery over the swamps. No unit with good defense there has both attacks that can hurt undead effectively and the durability to withstand very many undead attacks, so there is no effective way to deprive them of the swamp. If undead got 40% defense in swamps, it would mean undead would not have to build their formations around it, and it would make defending against undead(which is an already tenuous process) a far more casualty heavy affair. (It would singlehandedly tip the balance of Elf versus Undead decisively in favor of Undead on any map with significant amounts of swamp, and it would tip the balance of Knalgan versus Undead in favor of Undead as well, but not quite as decisively.)

[fanatikid]

hi there.

after reading your posts i realized a couple things:
i now disagree with my first idea because it would be unfair, for creatures with constant low defense, they would be sitting ducks for units with this ability (btw i think i havent cleary explained myself, imagine a unit with a 4-5 mele attack, if that unit hits the first 4 attacks and the fifth attack lands as well, that fifth attack would deal a small bonus damage).

for the second idea i got the feeling i've also misexplained myself, the creation of a unit that would be capable to shift a hex into a hex that would benefit his faction.

i've already dropped both ideas and i appreciate your quick response.
if i ever come up with something that might be usefull i'll post it.
bye.

[Zachron]

Also, consider looking at a few of the pre-existing add-ons and mainlined content. A New Land has an awesome example of some of the abilities you've described. (Although I dislike how they integrated A New Land into the Default era, making it impossible to play the A New Land Era on regular maps.) In A New Land, worker type units can terraform the land they are on. Look at the WML for ANL and you would find a good template for terramorph abilities. For the sake of UMC, a macro that applies certain abilities to Undead units would not be too unreasonable. Say you wanted to give a supernatural effect to the swamp affinity of some units. Using "Sylvan Essence" as a template, have it filter for swamp instead of forest, and assign the contents of the "Steadfast" ability to the new macro, you would have an ability which caused undead to defend better in swamps, without having to upset the game balance for the units in mainline. Since the ability would be placed on the unit in the form of a modification, you won't have to create redundant unit files to have the unit with the ability. Plus you could have the filter put the ability on upon recruitment, or you could have the ability available as an "upgrade" that costs a bit of gold.

[fanatikid]

Wow thanks! that really helps alot. im kind of busy right now with exams and such, but this summer i'm going to self-teach C++ (only now C at the moment) and will start to contribute on project wesnoth. thank you again and see you next time.

[Dixie]

[...] i'm going to self-teach C++ [...]

Good for you if you do it, I'm sure it can be pretty handy in various places, but depending on what you want to do, be aware that most of Wesnoth's stuff is coded in WML, which is a quite easy to learn language exclusive to the game. I think you can also use LUA for some stuff, but I'm no expert with that. So huh... depending on what you want your contribution to be, I'm not sure C++ will be requiered.

[Zachron]

The Core program is written in C++, but that part more or less requires you to be pretty advanced in the language. I spent two semesters studying C++ and I just got to objects, If I were self-teaching I would not be as far along as I am. It's an easy enough language to work with, but it takes some real serious effort to do anything worthwhile with it.

Learn as much C++ as possible, it will make you a better programmer in general. For being able to contribute to Wesnoth, learn Lua, learn Python, learn WML, but C++ will not help you as much as those until you have a working knowledge with a few of them.

[fanatikid]

im aware that self-teaching a programming language is a hard task, but i just finish learning C this semester, so im hoping it will serve me good. and i also know that if i come up with something i can't seem to understand i can always rely on the student's best friend....google =D.

btw, i as trying to find out if this idea had already been posted but it might just be easier to post it already:
how about a shortcut to a generalized mini-map? sometimes it's great to have a better sense on the battlefield so i zoom out to see how's it going, and i believe there's more users in the same situation, i dont belive it would be hard to have a not-very-detailed map displayed, the current mini-map (i'm on 1. it's not very helpfull because it's just dots on a very tiny map, i'd rather have a semi-blank map telling me where is the bulk of my army situated and where is the enemy heading to, i don't need to see the trees or the grass just the planification, (not sure if that word exist in english).

[1000hp]

Hi all.

I really liked how you can now download multiple addons without it rebooting. Could you do the same with deleting addons? That way I can get rid of eras that slow down my computer without the wait.

(Although thanks to ageless era I do that a lot less now )

[Hulavuta]

You can do it manually by going into the userdata file and deleting the folders.

[Rya]

The only strange thing is that in the official undead campaign it is said that the swamps are basically the 'home' of the Ghouls, yet they don't have a really high defense on it.

The last one could be make without developing effort, simple by doing some kind of faction based ladder or tournament. Then the strength / kingdom size of that faction depends on statistical evaluation of the wins / losses.