Betrayal of Thaeylan: 2p campaign

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H-Hour
Posts: 222
Joined: April 14th, 2010, 12:27 pm

Re: Betrayal of Thaeylan: 2p campaign for 1.11.12

Post by H-Hour »

The beta version is now on the 1.11.12 addons server!

After a three-year journey full of starts and (mostly) stops, Betrayal of Thaeylan is now in beta. What's that mean? This is now a complete campaign from start to finish with 12 full scenarios, custom units and a complete storyline.

The last time it underwent vigorous testing was early in the 1.11 development cycle, so please report any deprecated WML notices or other things you come across.

Some animations are missing, more portraits or better artwork is needed in lots of places, and I've got a long list of tiny little enhancements to polish it off. But the campaign is now ready for wider play.

v1.0b
Released on 20 April 2014
- Added finale scenario (12)
- Replaced scenario 08b to reduce story complexity
- A boatload of minor balancing changes, tweaks and enhancements
- Lots of unit portraits and scenario art added
Plentyn
Posts: 7
Joined: June 1st, 2014, 2:55 pm

Re: Betrayal of Thaeylan: 2p campaign for 1.11.12

Post by Plentyn »

Hi - thanks for the nice camaing which we played some versions before. While replaying using 1.11.13 I found some problems:
- On the first scenario seemingly after the objective changes, the first player inherits all enemy sides.
- At the beginning of the game I get to pick a faction. In the second scenario I can recruid units belonging to the fation. I believe this is not the desired effect.
H-Hour
Posts: 222
Joined: April 14th, 2010, 12:27 pm

Re: Betrayal of Thaeylan: 2p campaign for 1.11.12

Post by H-Hour »

Oh no! That's no good. That first problem sounds strange. Not sure what would cause that. To be honest, the second problem sounds like an issue that comes from not following the save-load rules for MP campaigns. Are you following these tips?

I'll test it out to see if I can replicate the problems as soon as I get the opportunity. Thanks for playing!
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Bob_The_Mighty
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Joined: July 13th, 2006, 1:15 pm

Re: Betrayal of Thaeylan: 2p campaign for 1.11.12

Post by Bob_The_Mighty »

Hi H-Hour. Played this campaign and really enjoyed it up until the end when it became intensely difficult. Admittedly we did it on the hardest setting, so maybe it is sour grapes. We lost quite a few of our loyal recalls, including Nivyan (we didn't know he had to survive), which may have made the last two scenarios extra hard and they seem to rely on the bonus units. In general the later scenarios felt like they hadn't been playtested that much. It didn't help that we ran into several 1.11 bugs, but that's not your fault. Overall the gameplay was fun with a few special objective scenarios to mix it up, and well written dialogue.


Here's some feedback...

General stuff
leaders don't need to be loyal, they already have zero upkeep
there's no map description in the set-up screen
synn has no ranged animation
no sound for muhim's attack, no sound for blue mage freezing wind attack
typo in lieutenant general description: "on the rare occassion"
there's no music on any of the maps

Scenario 1: Betrayal
took us two tries
typo in intro: "fueding cousins"
Muhym gets no reinforcements in the village at 21,13

Scenario 2: Sea of Sorrows
this took us three tries
The free poacher you get stays red, no matter what option you select
sneak and flappers have no attack sounds
sneak should have lvl0 ellipse

Scenario 3: River Waine
we did this in one go
one of the signposts is on a bridge which looks a bit weird
no dialogue when you kill the purple orc boss in north east?

Scenario 4: Brigand's Mire
typo in intro: "reknowned for being home to..."
typo: "was no gentlemen for waging it"
no fog of war on Brigand's Mire?
the intro to brigand's mire says herald is in the south, the intro says he is in the west
there was a purple non-leader naga called 'computer player 4'
dirkmun dialogue with green leader did not show for player one (red) - moveto event was undoable, thus event didn't transfer?
green is still an enemy, when dirkmun goes off to chat with green leader
when dirkmun reappears after his chat, red gets scouts - shouldn't it be blue?
we did brigand's mire scenario first time through (i remember this one being much harder when i tried the campaign before, in fact I never got beyond it).

Scenario 5: The Forest's Edge
we did this with ease, killing the drake leader before turn 12 without losing a single unit. then again we had loads of gold and probably overspent, getting into neg income
typo in opening dialogue: "they breath fire"
player 1 didn't see the dialogue about the tunnel entrance when player 2 triggered it
Georn the dwarf scout doesn't have the loyal overlay
no attack sound for runic hammer

Scenario 6: Elvish Home
typo: "Our friends fought valiently"
It's a bit disconcerting when your leaders step on the boat and simply disappear (and we lose all the villages we had!)
maybe explain the sailing thing a bit, took us by surprise that it took three turns
player one gets the choice of whether to sail, even when i have no troops onboard (only blue has)
player 2 was given choice of path - at the end - invalid WML found [message] side_for= cannot query any user input out of turn
helping elves to fight drakes - should be a message for the other player so they know what's going on

Scenario 7a: The Scorched Path
Mirandel does not have a loyal overlay
a good meaty battle, with lots of scope for fielding recalls
nice surprise ending

Scenario 8a: Burning Mountain
this was fine, nothing to report

Scenario 9: Second Kingdom
We lost when Mirandel died, even though that was not mentioned in the victory conditions
blue always get their loyal units automatically recalled at the start of scenarios, but red doesn't - why?

Scenario 10: River Uran
typo in story intro: "an ..."
nivyan dialogue is missing (cos he is dead!)
lua - station_guardian is missing
MICRO_GUARDIAN ai isn't needed in side tag anymore
herald's moveto event triggers everytime he moves which means he has to click to attack twice and cannot undo moves

Scenario 11: Southern Pass
typo: "whole in the dam"
victory objectives say we lose if turns run out, but survive the flood implies we need to last the turns
killing leaders early means you have to survive flood for longer?
fire ghosts are killed by the flood (the blurb says non-flying units)
flooding was very easy to survive

Scenario 12: Seat of Theayrdn
same error messages about zone guardian ai
undoing a torch bearer move, seems to leave an ally with fire arrows (even if they don't see it yet)
moving a torchbearer away from a unit, it still has fire bow - until it moves itself?
no death message for dirkmun
several multiple times, there is no way we can win!
My current projects:
MP pirate campaign: The Altaz Mariners
RPG sequel: Return to Trent
MP stealth campaign: Den of Thieves
H-Hour
Posts: 222
Joined: April 14th, 2010, 12:27 pm

Re: Betrayal of Thaeylan: 2p campaign for 1.11.12

Post by H-Hour »

Wow, thanks for this amazing feedback Bob_The_Mighty. I'm sorry it was such a rocky ride for you. It looks like a whole bunch of stuff that was pretty well tested in 1.10.x seems to be turning up errors now -- players not receiving messages, units not getting assigned to the right player, etc. I just haven't been able to keep up with WML's forward movement, unfortunately.

Plenty of other stuff is definitely my fault. I'll just address the main points here, but be sure that all of it's getting chucked on the TODO list for the future.
  • It doesn't surprise me that the last scenarios were wildly unbalanced. They've had very little play testing. On top of that, I can't really judge the hard difficulty as I am more of a "normal" difficulty player. I added the hard mode after JB and Wintermute complained the campaign was too easy. If you have any further details about where the biggest hurdles were in the last scenarios, that will help me iron them out a bit. The last scenario is kind of ridiculous. How far have you gotten in it?
  • Do you remember which scenario Nivyan died in? He should never be able to die (without you losing the scenario), so I obviously forgot the death event in one of the scenarios. He's kind of vital in the end.
  • Once the flooding begins in the Southern Pass, you just need to wait for it to fill the valley. I obviously need to update objectives and explain things a bit more clearly. But killing the enemy leader early shouldn't require you to sit around longer -- it will just end the scenario early.
  • Yeah, Brigand's Mire was made much easier after complaints that it was too difficult. Although now it sounds like it's basically broken.
  • The boat confusion has been brought up before and the mechanic definitely needs to be smoothed out.
  • I'm super depressed about the bugs with the torchbearer unit. I spent forever getting that to work right -- and it's pretty important for making all your pierce units valuable in the last scenario. I guess I'll have to take another look at them.
If you happen to still have your replays I'd love to see them. If they're on the server, do you remember the dates you were playing?
MRC_Tideggur
Posts: 12
Joined: August 30th, 2014, 12:28 am

Re: Betrayal of Thaeylan: 2p campaign for 1.11.12

Post by MRC_Tideggur »

Sounds like a fun and good campaign, can't wait to give this a try with one of my friends!

-MRC_Tideggur
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Coin-coin_le_Canapin
Posts: 9
Joined: May 22nd, 2009, 3:06 pm

Re: Betrayal of Thaeylan: 2p campaign for 1.11.12

Post by Coin-coin_le_Canapin »

Hi !

I'm playing this campaign with a friend.
We are in normal difficulty and we can't beat the 2nd scenario. Are we missing something ? We tried about three times with different strategies.
We can't reach the ogre faster than the little devils and they are too numerous so we can't move toward the ogre anymore.
We did one game where we beat the devil king, but there were too much units alive and we were too short on turns to win.

What is(are) the best strategie(s) ?
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Coin-coin_le_Canapin
Posts: 9
Joined: May 22nd, 2009, 3:06 pm

Re: Betrayal of Thaeylan: 2p campaign for 1.11.12

Post by Coin-coin_le_Canapin »

Nobody can give me an advice? :/
H-Hour
Posts: 222
Joined: April 14th, 2010, 12:27 pm

Re: Betrayal of Thaeylan: 2p campaign for 1.11.12

Post by H-Hour »

Hi Coin-coin_le_Canapin,

Thanks for playing. Some tips in the spoilers.
Spoiler:
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Coin-coin_le_Canapin
Posts: 9
Joined: May 22nd, 2009, 3:06 pm

Re: Betrayal of Thaeylan: 2p campaign for 1.11.12

Post by Coin-coin_le_Canapin »

It's worth a try. We made such a strategy but we were attacking with loyalists during the night instead of going full defense and I didn't us thieves at all since I find the backstab hard to use.

Edit : everything went better than expected. Thank you for the precious advices !
MRC_Tideggur
Posts: 12
Joined: August 30th, 2014, 12:28 am

Re: Betrayal of Thaeylan: 2p campaign for 1.11.12

Post by MRC_Tideggur »

This campaign is beyond stupid. You give us the jankiest guys to play as in the 2nd mission. My buddy and I have wasted 6hrs playing, and we can't make it after turn 10 without either being overrun or our leaders killed.

Going to find another campaign to play.
H-Hour
Posts: 222
Joined: April 14th, 2010, 12:27 pm

Re: Betrayal of Thaeylan: 2p campaign for 1.14

Post by H-Hour »

Betrayal of Thaeylan 2.0 is now available on the 1.14 addons server. It has been rewritten from the ground up to be a shorter, punchier campaign suitable for casual coop play.

It has been stripped back to two short chapters of five scenarios each. Most scenarios can be completed in an hour or less. And scenarios have been designed to keep turns short by making use of smaller armies and limiting the use of loyals.

I did a fair amount of work refactoring the players' units. You will play with a mix of new units and familiar ones with a twist here and there. Side plots and characters have been removed in an effort to keep the storyline straightforward.

It was fun to revisit this and to see how much Wesnoth has improved over the last few years - especially for mp campaigns. The built-in support for chapters and difficulty levels is terrific. Thanks to everyone for keeping it going!
H-Hour
Posts: 222
Joined: April 14th, 2010, 12:27 pm

Re: Betrayal of Thaeylan: 2p campaign

Post by H-Hour »

Betrayal of Thaeylan 2.0.1 is now available on the 1.16 addons server.
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GrandMarshalEmil
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Joined: March 15th, 2020, 10:23 am

Re: Betrayal of Thaeylan: 2p campaign

Post by GrandMarshalEmil »

I liked the look of the campaign, so my friend and I decided to try it.
.
One question though. Does the AI side have an UNLIMITED number of gold? Because the sheer amount of recruit spamming it did made us think twice whether the campaign was actually doable or not...
.
We tried it on hardest difficulty(didn't get past that one) so we tried it on the normal difficulty. Refer to the picture herein. Jeez.

EDIT: The first comment was done out of sheer frustration. I was supposed to use this campaign as a sort of introduction to Wesnoth but it ended up being a real frustrating experience because of the aforementioned AI spams. The dialogue is VERY well-written, and the cutscenes were nice. It was just the meatwall that we ran into that made it such a frustrating playthrough.
Attachments
What.png
H-Hour
Posts: 222
Joined: April 14th, 2010, 12:27 pm

Re: Betrayal of Thaeylan: 2p campaign

Post by H-Hour »

Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback. That is an insane meat wall and no you're not meant to battle through that! The challenge of this scenario is to get Herald away to the south. To accomplish that, you will need to go very quickly before the orcs have accumulated units. I appreciate the temptation to mine XP, but the orcs will not permit this. The way I win is...
Spoiler:
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