Rise of the Elementalist campaign

[Elvish_Hunter]

I notice that there's no music playing during the scenarios. Is there another add-on I need?

Nope, I didn't add any music. Actually I almost always play with the sounds muted, so my attention to sounds is lacking, I am sure, sorry. Once again, I would welcome patches to be contributed.

It's a pity, because in mainline we have some really great tracks. Anyway, a quick fix can be done by adding {DEFAULT_MUSIC_PLAYLIST} in every scenario.

[arobinson]

Well if it is that simple I'll release 2.0.2 with some music shortly. Should story scenarios have it or only playable ones?

[Elvish_Hunter]

Both playable and story-only scenarios.

[arobinson]

3.0.0 uploaded containing "Source of the Elementals" campaign which is part 2 of the series. See the change log in the first post for more information.

Constructive feedback appreciated, as always! Thanks for playing.

[Feufochmar]

I'm playing the second part (I'm in the Orc Enlistment scenario), and I find it more challenging than the first part (mainly the first scenarios), but also a little boring : all the scenario have the same objective : kill all ennemy leaders (Maybe we can't expect anything else from a bloodthirsty demon, but for the three first scenarios, it could be different). I haven't noted bugs until now.

And for the third part...:

I guess that we will play on the water elemental side, with the objective to kick the demon's ass and save the world...

[arobinson]

I'm playing the second part (I'm in the Orc Enlistment scenario), and I find it more challenging than the first part (mainly the first scenarios), but also a little boring : all the scenario have the same objective : kill all ennemy leaders (Maybe we can't wait anything else from a bloodthirsty demon, but for the three first scenarios, it could be different). I haven't noted bugs until now.

And for the third part...:

I guess that we will play on the water elemental side, with the objective to kick the demon's ass and save the world...

Sorry for the boring part. I think I actually spent more time on the unit graphics and profile pics than I did with the scenario WML (animating the demon took me quite a bit of time actually, but my Gimp skills are improving). It was challenging to try to make it creative since an all powerful demon should not have to "survive to the end of turns" or flee the map, or those types of scenarios that mix the plot up better. One thought is to throw out some of the scenarios and just have a shorter campaign, but is that better or not?

I'm open to suggestions, as you can probably tell from my part I re-write of the end of the campaign, I am not opposed to fixes and non-major plot changes.

Spoiler:

Perhaps I could not make the dais a story only thing, but an interactive thing. Like a search & find mission and need "parts" for it to work only to find out it is broken still. Or something of that sort, instead of having it as kill the leaders and then see the story.

Let me know any ideas on improvements but also what you do like, so I don't remove it and also knowing what is good helps me with the fixes to know what is working vs. just what is not.

Hope you are enjoying it.

[Feufochmar]

I've finished the second part.
I've noted this :
- at least in the 3 last scenarios, all leaders (ally or ennemy) have a silver crown. The silver crown is usually used to indicate the non-leader units that must survive in a scenario, not the leaders.
- in the last scenario, normally, the player side can't have any village, as they are burnt. But you burn the villages where at the beggining the turn, not when they are captured. This way, the player side can have villages if the unit who capture the village is killed before burning it.

It was challenging to try to make it creative since an all powerful demon should not have to "survive to the end of turns" or flee the map, or those types of scenarios that mix the plot up better.

I only see three scenarios that have to be of the type "kill all the ennemy leaders" : the Reawakening, Orc Enlistment and Burning the Forests.
The scenario Fusion can be of the type "Go to the signpost" : for the story, the 3 entities of the demon just have to go to the ritual circle to try to fusion. Killing the dwarves is secondary.
The scenario Rebirth can be of the type "Search and go to the signpost" : you have to locate the ritual circle and move the two demon entities to it.
The scenarios Troll Submission and Under the Volcano can be of the type "Kill one specific leader" : the dragon for Under the Volcano, the troll shaman and then the troll hero in Troll Submission.
The scenario Eruption could be story telling only. Appart from the way the demon go to the surface, I don't see any interesting purpose.
For the scenario Elvish Perimeter, it can be a pursuit scenario where you have to follow and kill messengers that go to say want appends at the bordure.

[arobinson]

Wrapping my response in a spoiler tag as this content shows scenario details:

Spoiler:

I've finished the second part.
I've noted this :
- at least in the 3 last scenarios, all leaders (ally or ennemy) have a silver crown. The silver crown is usually used to indicate the non-leader units that must survive in a scenario, not the leaders.

I marked the leaders with {IS_HERO} to indicate they must survive, are you saying that I should not have for those that canrecruit (is that a gold vs silver crown?). If so I'll fix that.

- in the last scenario, normally, the player side can't have any village, as they are burnt. But you burn the villages where at the beggining the turn, not when they are captured. This way, the player side can have villages if the unit who capture the village is killed before burning it.

Yes, that was intentional, without that feature, healing an air elemental would be reserved for 2 HP per turn, very frustrating.

For the scenario Elvish Perimeter, it can be a pursuit scenario where you have to follow and kill messengers that go to say want appends at the bordure.

The trick here is that for story purposes, normally the elves would probably use a scout to report the news. Not event an air elemental would be able to catch an elf scout (9 MP, 10 MP for levels 2 and 3). So the question would be how to do this without making the elves look to dumb. Also it would be hard as the area of Wesnoth that I choose for the setting is all forest, and elves obviously move fast in the forests.

As for your other ideas, thank you I will take them into account. Right now I am doing the new units for part III (WML and sprite graphics), but once that is done I may want a break from part III for a bit and do some more work on part II.

FYI, the elementals are going to get weaker soon. I am going to lower almost all of their physical damage resistance. Basically I want them to be better balanced with the rest of Wesnoth units and right now their HP+defense+resistance gives them quite an unfair advantage. The downside to doing this is that I will have to re-balance the scenarios which is very tedious. Trying to balance enemy levels, gold, income, map size, castle size is quite an art to make a hard but not too hard scenario (I played that last scenario of part 2 probably ~ 30-50 times, although not always all the way through).

Thank you for the feedback, it was helpful.

[Bjartmarr]

I'm enjoying this campaign, and am looking forward to part 3!

Thank you!

[Arc]

I just played through "Rise of the Elementalist" - absolutely great story. I especially enjoyed the dynamic the elements vs land tiles added to the game, much more interesting than "you're playing elves, so stick to the forests". There's a few angles you could have gone further with it, such as a battle against Wose angry that the fire elementals are burning down forests to heal (would make more sense than vs elves or vs humans).

I disagree with the postings here that the mud units are worthless - I found them very handy for throwing a wave of weaker, less expensive units in a few of the multi-sided scenarios. A few of the maps could certainly be modified to give them more healing terrain (wider roads, more grassland) or add swamp to heal them (mud, after all).

I haven't played "Source of the Elementals" yet, but I look forward to the additional unit levels. While it may be a chore to rebalance (level 3 units costs an extra gold each to maintain, where you've already given the ability for level 2 units to add abilities/etc while remaining at 2 gold/turn), it may be worth it for the visuals. As the elementals appear to have faces and mouths, giving dialog to veteran units (perhaps to help new players with unit selection, such as rock elementals commenting how many hills and mountains there are to hide in) would add a small touch to the story as well.

A few bugs I noticed as I played:

Spoiler:

In the level that you need to reach the center of the mage tower, I had absolutely nothing to fight or do. The mages were fighting the undead, i had a bunch of wind and fire elementals to escort me, my mages arrived, but in the end I just ran into the tower on turn 8 untouched. Since the early finish bonus gold does no good at that point in the story, it was extremely confusing. It would be more interesting if the undead to the north were weaker, but as the dialog suggests, an undead army are right behind you - so by the time the tower mages beat back the undead to the north the undead army to the south (or west, etc) arrive and start burning their way through the southern villiages on prehaps turn 2 so you have to fight through them to reach the tower.

When you switch sides on the next to last scenario, the tower mages could use a boost of gold to help defend against the wisps while you hunt for the cave entrance. Mountains are slow terrain, I had to restart the level a few times to reach the entrance (whereas I knew exactly where to go) before the wisps killed all the tower mages and surrounded my units 2-3 layers deep with a new wave arriving every turn making it impossible to reach the door. Perhaps a new enemy arrives (elves?) to help with the undead only to find something worse.

On the final level the dwarf allies were absolutely obnoxious - twice they prevented me from proceeding forward by jamming up the path (in the water and as you enter the lava room), elementals were coming at just the right pace to keep the dwarves fighting in place rather than choosing to proceed even one tile per turn. In my first attempt the dwarves had me stuck on the lava bridge for more than 30 turns - until they finally were killed and my own units had a massive army of elementals to fight through alone. I restarted the level and forced the dwarves to follow by leaving them to deal with the wisps as my own units charged ahead, which was much easier. I'd tune the AI or the scenario to keep the majority of the allied dwarves in the first chamber to fight wisps and add dialog of the dwarves ordering you ahead while they cover your rear. I would also reduce the initial gold of each of the elemental leaders, since you're essentially fighting all four while navigating through slow terrain its a bit tough.

Overall its a great campaign that, with a bit of work, may be a good candidate to include with future game releases.

[Reepurr]

Your first post was thread necromancy; this is frowned upon by the Wesnoth community and, of course, a month and nine days later than the last post means that the creator might not still be listening.

[Arc]

So would you suggest starting a new thread on the same subject, or not giving feedback at all?

[arobinson]

Your first post was thread necromancy; this is frowned upon by the Wesnoth community and, of course, a month and nine days later than the last post means that the creator might not still be listening.

Not sure what you are talking about in this post (thread necromancy?). Did you get the correct post?

I have posted often to this forum and have updated the change log in the first post recently, after the last minor release:

Last edited by arobinson on September 10th, 2010, 2:21 pm, edited 9 times in total.

Version 4 is being worked on, but very slowly as my 2nd daughter was born, leaving me very little time to mess around with game development.

[tr0ll]

congrats!
btw it looks like an awesome campaign, though i only finished 2 scenarios so far.
[[edit]] ok i finished the campaign parts 1 and 2 and they were indeed really fun and challenging to play.

regarding the final level of RotE

Spoiler:

the wisps were not a problem after the initial 3 or 4 were destroyed: a single level 3 dwarven sentinel at the entrance to the cavern can bottle up the new wisps long enough for the rest of the battle to finish. make sure to give space for new wisps to appear in the entrance tunnel otherwise they appear behind you in the cavern.

i found it toughest to get past the water section with more than 3 units left alive. regarding Arc's problem with dwarves clogging up the lava bridge area, it is possible to predict fairly well where the dwarves will go (they follow the same attack pattern as the enemy AI) and thus manage it by placing your own units in strategic places. it helps to have a fast moving scout. hmm... replay attached.

i noticed the same problem Arc saw regarding when you go to save the Guild in the second last scenario: there is nothing for you to do except race to the guild because no one attacks you and the initial recruiting and movement of units is a waste of time and gold. maybe that is the Wesnoth AI's fault for not attacking Vallin's reinforcements, but the undead and elves seem to be stuck in the northern corners anyway.

also in the second last level multipart scenario i forgot to keep track of which turn the scene changed and my savegame limit was too low so i had to restart from the beginning. im curious why not break it into multiple scenarios?

the same problem appeared in the first scenario of SotE - it takes so many turns (189) my disk fills up with autosavegames. perhaps each sub-scenario it could be made with fewer enemies.

Spoiler:

the regaining of power follows an exponential curve: very slow at first and then accelerating. this is realistic and a really cool way to learn the strengths and weaknesses of each elemental unit type, and a great story too. however i think once you have generated your 3rd unit your power is normal and the rest is standard gameplay so the major fighting part could be deferred to later levels.

for the last level of SotE may i suggest you can add to the nastiness

Spoiler:

by having random panic stricken or angry elves come out of each village that is destroyed, or have them appear toward the end when the elves are down to 1 leader. can you copy the level 0 elflings from the Fate of a Princess add-on?

there are a lot of simple spelling errors and some grammar but i hesitate to take time to report them if you are still reworking the story.

i look forward to campaign part 3 to explain the story behind the different units you get to work with.

Spoiler:

ie why does Vallin get to use 4 elements but the demon only 3 and why are the water elementals so tough on water and on land. the wisps are an awesome concept and *should* be more powerful than any one element individually, though perhaps harder to advance. also, why arent there other demons that combine two or more of the elements?

[arobinson]

Just wanted to give everyone a heads up that I have yet to give credit for the artwork from other campaigns that I have leveraged. I have taken unit images and potentially some other graphics from other user campaigns and used them in this campaign. I will try to make sure I add credits to my campaign to mention each campaign and give thanks, but I wanted to make sure, at least for the short term, that I did not make all of the new unit graphics and some have been borrowed from other user campaigns.

For those that have enjoyed this set of campaigns, the work is still, slowly, underway for the last of the trilogy, but it is going to be quite some time to develop. The 3rd installment will be the longest, with 3 sub-stories. It will summarize the history of the elementals and bring in more story (I hope). I have no idea at this point on the number of scenarios, but it could be in the upper-teens or even over 20 if I have the energy and depending on how well I feel the story is progressing. Don't stop posting ideas or bugs here even if you don't see a release for months as I will try to get around to them at some point. Once the 3rd installment is done I will plan to go back and polish the full trilogy before finally retiring it into maintenance mode only.