Inky's Quest - The Cuttlefish Campaign

[Wesbane]

No. I've check it. None of them.
In your _main.cfg change this:

Code: Select all

[binary_path] 
    path=userdata/data/add-ons/Inky_Quest 
[/binary_path]

Into this:

Code: Select all

[binary_path] 
    path=data/add-ons/Inky_Quest 
[/binary_path]

[Telchin]

Version 0.1.4 on the server. Only change from the previous version is that the bug mentioned by Wesbane should be fixed. (Unles I missed something or made another mistake. Precision isn't my strength ) I'm going to make some cosmetic changes based on ideas suggested by posters in this thread, but I don't know when I'll have time. So keep commenting, just don't be surprised if I don't respond this week.

[Telchin]

Version 0.2.0 on 1.8 server with afore mentioned changes suggested in this thread:

• Enemy leaders no longer have randomly-generated names (well, the names I have given them were all created randomly).
• The 2nd scenarion has much les coastal reef.
• In the 2nd scenario, when you kill both the mermen and Magister Teonyc, you win instantly, instead of waiting one turn.

I'm looking forward to getting some feedback (as usually).

[Maiklas3000]

I'll test for 1.9.3. [and 1.9.4.] Warning to others: the campaign is made for 1.8.

Here are my scenario reviews, to which I will add more later...

Scenario Review IQ: A Water Struggle
1. Difficulty/version? hardest; 1.9.3; 0.2.0
2. How difficult? 3
3. Objectives? Clear.
4. Dialog? "control each my tentacle independantly" => "control each of my tentacles independaently"
5. Challenges? Damn Nagas stealing my XP.
6. Fun? 8
7. Changes? None necessary.
8. Restarts? None.
9. WML? Well commented.
10. Replay? Attached.

IQ-A_Water_Struggle_replay.gz

(8.49 KiB) Downloaded 541 times

Scenario Review IQ: Inky Goes Fishing
1. Difficulty/version? hardest; 1.9.3; 0.2.0
2. How difficult? 8
3. Objectives? Clear, well handled.
4. Dialog? Excellent. Mermen being treated as food is funny.
5. Challenges? Lack of sufficient healing, getting squeezed on both sides.
6. Fun? 9
7. Changes? The humans can appear on top of your forces; I had a Tentacle ZOC pinned. Maybe move them to the western end of the island?
8. Restarts? Lost once, restarting from start.
9. WML? Warning: 'format' is deprecated, use 'value'.
10. Replay? Attached. Lost two loyal Tentacles, sniffle.

IQ-Inky_Goes_Fishing_replay.gz

(32.84 KiB) Downloaded 544 times

Scenario Review IQ: A Haunted Ford
1. Difficulty/versions/gold? hardest; 1.9.4; 0.2.0; 522 starting gold
2. How difficult? 8
3. Objectives? Clear. Maybe the continent and island should be labeled.
4. Dialog? Fine.
5. Challenges? Got swarmed by Red Mages the first time. It is difficult to balance the undead against the Mermen and humans, without either side getting too strong. Taking out the human leader is difficult, since you have to wait for him to come to you in (or by) the water, and he's likely to be flanked by his units.
6. Fun? 9.5. It is insane, in a good way. The dynamic recruitment of undead makes it like an artificial life simulation (like Conway's Game of Life.) It's unpredictable.
7. Changes? None needed.
8. Restarts? Lost once, restarting from start.
9. WML? Warning: I think 1.9.3 warned about 'color' but not 1.9.4.
10. Replay? Attached. I hit the undead at first, by day, then swung around and hit the humans by night. I let the Mermen and rest of the undead fight it out, which worked out well. My losses were minimal. I kind of forgot about the healing ability of level 1 and level 2 Magical Tentacles until towards the end.

IQ-The_Haunted_Ford_replay.gz

(54.04 KiB) Downloaded 550 times

Scenario Review IQ: Old Lich and Sea
1. Difficulty/versions/gold? hardest; 1.9.4; 0.2.0; 436 starting gold
2. How difficult? 9
3. Objectives? Clear.
4. Dialog? Too cute for my taste.
5. Challenges? The main problem is holding a line against the combined Naga and undead assault. Poison and damage take their toll if you don't have many healers. A disciplined line is very necessary. At night, I wound up using lots of ineffectual ranged poison attacks versus walking corpses, to avoid taking retaliation damage.
6. Fun? 7. I'm not fond of the board edge or the Lich dialog.
7. Changes? Widen the map to the left. Reduce enemy forces to compensate.
8. Restarts? Lost three times, restarting from start each time.
9. WML? Warning: [removeunit] is deprecated; use [remove_unit] instead.
10. Replay? Attached. I sent Sea Head, a healer, and others north, while a few forces entertained the undead in the south and then withdrew to join the rest. I set up the northern line with the board edge on one flank and just wore down the enemy. When there were few enemy forces, I sent Sea Head running for the goal. He arrived with one turn to spare.

IQ-Old_Lich_and_Sea_replay.gz

(66.02 KiB) Downloaded 516 times

Scenario Review IQ: Drowned Dwarves' Day
1. Difficulty/versions/gold? hardest; 1.9.4; 0.2.0; 275 starting gold (the minimum)
2. How difficult? 3
3. Objectives? Clear.
4. Dialog? Okay.
5. Challenges? None really. Killing 0% defense dwarves is not much of a challenge. The undead and nagas can be blocked with four units. The trolls were perhaps a small challenge.
6. Fun? 8. Good for novelty, but too easy.
7. Changes? Switch trolls' and dwarves' positions. Widen cave entrance.
8. Restarts? None.
9. WML? Warning: [removeunit] is deprecated; use [remove_unit] instead.
10. Replay? Attached. I just fanned into three search parties, then sent a fourth squad back to block the entrance. No sweat. [To watch the replay, you will need to hit "ignore all", as the starting gold is messed up.]

IQ-Drowned_Dwarves'_Day_replay.gz

(57.09 KiB) Downloaded 553 times

[Maiklas3000]

(Sorry for the double post.)

This is a review of the final scenario in the campaign, so the whole campaign appears to be playable under 1.9.3/1.9.4, albeit with annoying warning messages.

Scenario Review IQ: High Risk, Low Tide
1. Difficulty/versions/gold? hardest; 1.9.4; 0.2.0; ~485 starting gold
2. How difficult? 6
3. Objectives? Almost clear. I assumed I would lose if the Dwarves killed the Lich, but this does not appear to be the case from my reading of the WML. Change objective to "death of Lich" instead of "kill Lich."
4. Dialog? Lots of spelling mistakes.
5. Challenges? It looks scarier than it is. The hardest part is getting squeezed into a single line and then healers getting killed as a result. The second hardest part is killing the Lich. Melee attacking him with grounded Cuttlefish tends to only heal him, and range-attacking him is painful. The only other challenge is killing the Sea Serpents. Sea Head can almost handle them himself, but not quite.
6. Fun? 8. Another novel scenario, with water draining out this time, but too easy for the final one.
7. Changes? Less starting gold would make it harder and hence better, so I guess give less turns for the previous scenario.
8. Restarts? None.
9. WML? Very well commented.
10. Replay? Attached. I sent Sea Head running for the exit, only to be surprised by Sea Serpents. Fortunately, I was able to rush reinforcements to him. Meanwhile, my main troops mostly fought single file, until the tough undead were killed, and then crawled onto land to kill the Lich.

IQ-High_Risk,_Low_Tide_replay.gz

(37.96 KiB) Downloaded 538 times

* * *
In summary, I love the campaign. It's funny and the novel situations demand novel strategies.

Suggestions:

• I think Double Tentacles should have double the hits, not do double damage. This makes sense and also makes them more like Cuttlefish, which seems appropriate and it would provide strategic challenges (nothing similar to Lancers or Dragonguards, for decent chance of very high damage.) Likewise for Triple Tentacles.
• To somewhat compensate, you could add Giant Clams. Huge hit points and resistances, huge crushing damage, but zero MP or 1 MP but can only move when adjacent to a friendly (for towing) or something like that. Vulnerable to blade.
• I think it would be funny for the Cuttlefish to regard humans as non-sentient, like so:
  Old Head: Bah, humans are no better than these human-shaped fish. They're just as non-sentient.
  Inky: But humans have ships, which presumably they built. Does that not make them sentient?
  Old Head: No. The definition of sentience is the ability to instantaneously change one's skin patterns to convey complex information. Their skins are nearly immutable.
  Inky: Oh.
• Some of your maps feel cramped in the sea area. I suggest extending the board, even if it's just with blank sea, no terrain. Extend it until the edges are no longer a significant factor. In general in Wesnoth, strategy is too often reduced to "form a line, with one or both flanks against a board edge." In a marine environment, board edges are especially unrealistic.
• Markscuttlefish should not be green, as they look poisoned.
• I don't get the point of Globsters. I don't think lack of "swarm" offsets the reduced attack strengths compared to Krakens. Since the description of Globsters says they are undead-like, maybe Globsters should carry plague (so they would create Walking Corpses, even though they cannot be recruited.)
• A native English speaker needs to proofread all the scenarios. There are lots of mistakes. "mollucs" is often used instead of "molluscs".

[Telchin]

@Maiklas3000 - thanks for detailed analysis. I might do some changes you have suggeted when I'll have time. I'm surprised that you found the fourth scenario the hardest as I thought that the second one is harder. (I guess it's because I playtested the campaign only on the easy difficulty.)

5. Challenges? Got swarmed by Red Mages the first time.

Do you think that I should remove Red Mages from Daedry's recruit list? It might make sense as you killed the Red Mage that was sent to help him in the previous scenario.

6. Fun? 7. I'm not fond of the board edge or the Lich dialog.

Well, Ravyan is supposed to be cartoonishly evil and utterly stupid. I understant that many people might like more serious stories and realistic villains, but I figured that there is enough pathos and angst in mainline campaigns, so I tried to make my campaign silly.

9. WML? Warning: [removeunit] is deprecated; use [remove_unit] instead.

Where does that tag appear? I don't remember using it and didn't find it in the .cfg files.

Poison and damage take their toll if you don't have many healers.

I purposedly gave the enemies poisonous units to give the player incentive to level up Magic Tentacles.

6. Fun? 8. Good for novelty, but too easy.

The idea of flooding cave is blatantly stolen from Under the Burning Suns. The only novelty is that you want the flood to spread.

I think Double Tentacles should have double the hits, not do double damage.

I have considered this, but then the Triple Tentacle would have more HP then the Kraken... If I apply this change I would also have to lower their damage. What amount do you suggest?

you could add Giant Clams.

Giant Clam was one idea I had considered for a ranged damage dealer (it would have shoot pearls ), but for lack of art (and artistic talent) I settled for a recolored tentacle.

I think it would be funny for the Cuttlefish to regard humans as non-sentient

Great idea! However, there is a problem: Master Sea Head mentions that if the humans on the continet get to know about Inky's achievements they will send more soldiers as revenge. This means that Sea Head knows that humans are sentient and without this knowledge the cuttlefish wouldn't follow the merman to the human fortress in the third scenario.

Some of your maps feel cramped in the sea area.

Well, I felt that a vast area of deep blue sea would look boring. I'm also not very good at making maps (just look at the geometrically shaped island in the first scenario ).

Markscuttlefish should not be green, as they look poisoned.

I made them green in memory of the old cuttlefish sprite that was kind of green...

I don't get the point of Globsters.

The point of them is that I felt urge to make alternative brach for sake of it I like your plague idea. I have also noticed that the Kraken in Dead Waters does 5-10 damage. What about giving Kraken 5-10 Swarm and Globster 4-10 Plague?

A native English speaker needs to proofread all the scenarios. There are lots of mistakes.

Yeah, writing in English prabaly isn't my strength

[Maiklas3000]

I'm surprised that you found the fourth scenario the hardest as I thought that the second one is harder. (I guess it's because I playtested the campaign only on the easy difficulty.)

I rated the difficulties as 8 for the second (Inky Goes Fishing) and 9 for the fourth (Old Lich and the Sea), not a big difference. The second is relatively easy to win, I think, but not easy to avoid losing units. You get the 20 kills pretty quickly, and then it's not that hard to kill the Red Mage when you don't have to worry about the enemy responding after you kill him. I found the fourth scenario harder, because the northern assault is enough to break a strong line without lots of healers. I had only one healer going into the scenario.

5. Challenges? Got swarmed by Red Mages the first time.

Do you think that I should remove Red Mages from Daedry's recruit list? It might make sense as you killed the Red Mage that was sent to help him in the previous scenario.

No. It was a random fluke that so many Red Mages got recruited one time. You could use LIMIT_RECRUITS or LIMIT_CONTEMPORANEOUS_RECRUITS to prevent it from happening again. The Red Mages (and regular Mages) are nasty versus Cuttlefish, as magical attacks have a 70% chance to hit and Cuttlefish have good resistances to most things but 0% resistance to fire.

9. WML? Warning: [removeunit] is deprecated; use [remove_unit] instead.

Where does that tag appear? I don't remember using it and didn't find it in the .cfg files.

It must have been [removeitem] instead. You can see the warnings in the replay, if you use 1.9.4.

I think Double Tentacles should have double the hits, not do double damage.

I have considered this, but then the Triple Tentacle would have more HP then the Kraken... If I apply this change I would also have to lower their damage. What amount do you suggest?

Not double the hit points, but rather double the attacks. A Trench Tentacle's attack is 5-3 and a Double Tentacle's attack is 10-3, but I think a Double Tentacle's attack should be 5-6, i.e., 6 attacks of 5 damage each. (And I think a Triple Tentacle should be 5-9.) Hit points would not need to be doubled; you could imagine a Double Tentacle as having a single tentacle at its base, bifurcated into two at top. The hit points could be left as they are now.

I don't get the point of Globsters.

The point of them is that I felt urge to make alternative brach for sake of it I like your plague idea. I have also noticed that the Kraken in Dead Waters does 5-10 damage. What about giving Kraken 5-10 Swarm and Globster 4-10 Plague?

I think making Krakens stronger and giving plague to Globsters would be good. I fear 4-10 Plague could be overly powerful, but maybe not. To compensate, you could remove the Globster's ranged attack. In the description, I would rationalize Globsters' saliva as having a powerful neurotoxin, which can cause a zombie-like animation of its nearly dead victims.

I'd also consider removing poison from the ranged attacks of Young Cuttlefish. Some cuttlefish are very poisonous if you eat them, and some have poisonous saliva around their beaks, but I'm not aware of any real cuttlefish that can attack with poison at a distance. So, I suggest delaying the unrealistic poison until level 2 Cuttlefish. Additionally, weakening Young Cuttlefish would help offset the other changes being considered: stronger Krakens and Globsters, plus level 2 and level 3 Tentacles with more attacks but less damage per attack.

[Telchin]

It must have been [removeitem] instead. You can see the warnings in the replay, if you use 1.9.4.

Well, I haven't downloaded the 1.9 branch as I download only stable branches.I'm going to keep the campaign as 1.8 and them move to the next stable version (is 1.9 followed by 1.10 or 2.0?)

Not double the hit points, but rather double the attacks.

I'm sorry for misunderstanding you. I chose double(triple) damage over double (triple) number of strikes because the attack animation shows both tentacles striking at once.

I'd also consider removing poison from the ranged attacks of Young Cuttlefish.

Maybe it's not realistic, but WINR. I'd like to keep the ranged attack on level 1 because:

• Young Cuttlefish is the only unit on your recruit list with both melee and ranged attack.
• As Magic Tentacles are enabled in the third scenario, disabling Young Cuttlefish's ranged attack would leave you with melee only units at the beginning. I'm afraid this would make Inky Goes Fishing even harder than it is.
• Later scenarios have undead that are immune to poison, so I wanted the player to enjoy poisoning enemies at least at the beginning.

[joshudson]

Globster is somewhat more useful for defending because it doesn't have swarm.

[Telchin]

Version 0.3.0 is on the 1.8 server. Changes:

• Increased attack of Globsters and Krakens. Globsters have the plague ability now. (Don't expect it to be terribly useful as your main enemies are undead.)
• Sir Deadry can't recruit Red Magi, but gains a loyal Dragoon that should move directly to the other shore (except when he doesn't. This one shall need fixing.)
• Added empty deep water in the fourth scenario.
• Swapped positions of dwarves and trolls in the last two scenarios

I haven't made any changes to the second scenario, but I'm considering changing it as I think it's too hard for being the second scenario. What about splitting it in two - a fishing scenario with some custom fish units and then the fight against mermen and humans? This changes won't happen overnight, so I want to get some opinions first.

[Telchin]

I like the idea of Giant Clams, so I made an atempt to draw a sprite myself. The horrible result is below.
From left to right: standing, attacking, defending
From top to bottom: level1, level2, level3
If I get to splitting the second scenario, one of resulting missions may introduce the Clams. You can post your ideas for the story or name of a Clam character (note that giant clams are hermaphrodites, but I would prefer female name as all main charcters in the campaign so far are refered as male).

[bigkahuna]

I don't see any change in size whatsoever. I would at least scale down the ones on the top and middle (or vice versa, scale up the middle and bottom).

[Maiklas3000]

The defensive clams look okay, but yes, lower level clams should be smaller, not different colors. You don't even need to have different level clams, which would save you some artwork. Real giant clams are long-lived (can be over 100 years old) and take forever to grow. In the space of the campaign time, they wouldn't change. I suggest making them level 2 or level 3, period.

Also, the Young Cuttlefish sprites should be smaller than the level 2 and 3 cuttlefish.

Have you thought about Cuttlefish Spawn? Level 0, no ZOC, absurdly cheap and weak, more so than other level 0's. For what it's worth, real cuttlefish lay about 200 eggs, and the hatchlings are miniature versions of the adults.

If you're going to make Giant Clams be really slow (like 1 MP), you'll want to add a scenario where they could do some good and maybe be essential to winning. A defensive struggle centered at the keep would suit them.

For a female Giant Clam's name, the most obvious choice is Pearl. It was a popular woman's name in America at one time. I would suggest more monstrous sounding names like: Gaaaaaa, Raaaaaa, Daaaaaa, Kaaaaaa. If I'm imagining a Giant Clam talking, I think that is about the best they could do. You could even have a character Gaaaaaa whose only line of dialog (repeatedly) is "Gaaaaaa!", which Seahead would interpret intelligibly, like "Yes, I agree. We can't hope to beat them on land."

I like the second scenario as is. I can't think of any other Wesnoth scenario that is similar. If you want to make it easier, just decrease the gold and/or villages of the Mermen. If you want to add another scenario, I suggest just inserting another scenario rather than splitting this one.

About the attack increases to Krakens and Globsters, I previously thought that level 2 and 3 Markscuttlefish were overpowered (slow and marksmanship and finally concealment), so I chose to advance most of my cuttlefish on that path. The only time I remember Markscuttlefish being bad was on land versus the Lich in the final scenario. Now, with the improved Krakens and Globsters, it's a much harder choice, and that's good.

For character art used in the dialogs, I suggest real photos of real cuttlefish, if you can find a copyright-free source. You'd probably need to cut around them, which could be a pain. You could even have alternate photos for "angry" and whatnot. If you could pull it off, I think the effect would be awesome.

Normal cuttlefish: http://languages.oberlin.edu/courses/20 ... efish9.jpg
Angry cuttlefish: http://thetruthbehindthescenes.files.wo ... fish-3.jpg
Sleepy cuttlefish: http://flatblack.us/Pics/cuttlefish.jpg
Young cuttlefish: http://www.westrimphotography.com/galle ... 50x582.jpg
Hatchling cuttlefish: http://www.bluereefaquarium.co.uk/uploa ... lefish.jpg
Seahead: http://blogs.crikey.com.au/firstblog/fi ... fish01.jpg
Level 3 Markscuttlefish: http://www.tonywublog.com/wp-content/up ... unting.jpg

It's your campaign and you've done a great job, so remember to do what you want.

[Reepurr]

It started out better, but here's a placeholder clam.

rubbish.png (3.72 KiB) Viewed 6955 times

[perseo]

I've done a try for this clam. It's doesn't have the correct prespective but maybe It can help you.