Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

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SigurdFireDragon
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by SigurdFireDragon »

Noted. I'll look into it.
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AlexanderRM
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by AlexanderRM »

I just finished this campaign and want to mention how much I like Ardonna as a protagonist- she's obviously evil from pretty early on, a first for Wesnoth campaign protagonists, but she has a noble goal and genuinely wants the secret of immortality to share with others and not just for herself (although not all the people she murders for little reason, but then a campaign about a pacifist transhumanist wouldn't allow for quite so many combat scenarios), which makes it very easy to root for her throughout the campaign.
I'd been thinking about how we don't have very many campaigns with "Evil" protagonists and figured part of the reason is that an Orc who just says "Hah! We kill you now!" every scenario would be less interesting, but now I'm imagining the story of an intrepid Orc explorer who sees his people struggling to feed themselves and leads them on a journey to a new land, and the various challenges he struggles with in doing so such as the people already living there...

Incidentally the final scenario was a very nice touch; I'd switched completely over to ghost units for the last few scenarios having previously raised up a ton of skeleton units as well, and it was nice to be able to bring in literally my entire recall list and fight enough units early on that I actually did need to use every single unit.
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max_torch
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by max_torch »

I made several GitHub issues containing several suggestions about the text and dialog of the campaign (and one bug). See below links to Git Issues:
Image cropping issues in North Knalga - https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/issues/6118
Suggestion for Against the World - https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/issues/6119
Suggestion for Following the Shadow - https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/issues/6120
Suggestion for Dark Business - https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/issues/6121
Suggestion for Becalmed - https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/issues/6123
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egallager
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by egallager »

I've been meaning to open a PR to modify this campaign (buglink); I haven't gotten around to it yet, though... the diffs I'd be applying in such a PR can be found here: https://github.com/cooljeanius/wesnoth_mods/commit/06a5ab60bcbe9b869140e3e12168f273af1aec6f
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Antro
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by Antro »

Hi there!

I' reviewing the Italian translation of this campaign and just noticed that all dates are reported as below

Code: Select all

#: data/campaigns/Secrets_of_the_Ancients/scenarios/01_Slipping_Away.cfg:43
msgid ""
"<i>From the Journal of Ardonna of Tarrynth</i>\n"
"\n"
"9 XII, 22 YW:\n"
"\n"
"It’s unfair that we humans must die after so few years. Elves and dwarves "
Could we use the months names introduced in Liberty campaign, and listed in wesnoth-help

Code: Select all

#. [topic]: id=..calendar
#: data/core/encyclopedia/calendar.cfg:14
msgid ""
"Each year in the Wesnoth calendar is composed of 12 months. These are, in "
"order:\n"
"\n"
"Whitefire\n"
"Bleeding Moon\n"
"Scatterseed\n"
"Deeproot\n"
"Scryer’s Bloom\n"
"Thorntress\n"
"Summit Star\n"
"Kindlefire\n"
"Stillseed\n"
"Reaper’s Moon\n"
"Verglas Bloom\n"
"Blackfire\n"
"\n"
So, the date should be something like
Blackfire 9, 22 YW
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beetlenaut
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by beetlenaut »

Antro wrote: August 12th, 2022, 2:04 pm So, the date should be something like
Blackfire 9, 22 YW
You're right of course. (They didn't exist a decade ago when I wrote the campaign or I would have used them.) I am not the maintainer anymore though. You or anyone can feel free to make a PR, but I don't see why you can't just use them in the translation now anyway: "XII" and "Blackfire" are synonymous.
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Secrets of the Ancients,
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octalot
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by octalot »

Antro wrote: August 12th, 2022, 2:04 pm So, the date should be something like
Blackfire 9, 22 YW
This one's been discussed in #5898, and it might be worth reopening that. I still have the same arguments against the change, but originally the time-pressure of releasing 1.16 was also a factor.
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beetlenaut
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by beetlenaut »

Hmm. I invented that roman numeral notation myself, but I never discussed with anyone if it should be considered an official Wesnothian standard usage. I just made it that way. It seems like the month names are cannon (?), and it goes without saying that Ardonna would know them. However, in the linked discussion, some people have good justifications for the roman numerals, so I'm more relaxed about it now, and they can stay as far as I'm concerned.
stevecotton wrote:
  • She's got an unusual mindset, using a numerical style for her personal journal feels right to me.
  • The story is trying to tell the player how much time passed, and month numbers are easy to understand.
Campaigns: Dead Water,
The Founding of Borstep,
Secrets of the Ancients,
and WML Guide
dwarftough
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by dwarftough »

My humble opinion on this, I believe these month's names weren't the best idea, as I doubt many people will learn their order and to which season they relate. So if no roman numerals used or any similar tips, people will just skip the dates without reading, if they can't understand. Only the most devout fans of Wesnoth lore will dig enough to learn, I fear
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gnombat
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by gnombat »

beetlenaut wrote: August 13th, 2022, 2:15 pm Hmm. I invented that roman numeral notation myself, but I never discussed with anyone if it should be considered an official Wesnothian standard usage.
I think you're misremembering history here - dates were actually written like that in A Tale of Two Brothers first. Recall this discussion.
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beetlenaut
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by beetlenaut »

Wow. I'd completely forgotten ever having that discussion. I'm either getting old, or I've just been around here too long. Or both.
Campaigns: Dead Water,
The Founding of Borstep,
Secrets of the Ancients,
and WML Guide
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Antro
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by Antro »

beetlenaut wrote: August 13th, 2022, 2:15 pm Hmm. I invented that roman numeral notation myself, but I never discussed with anyone if it should be considered an official Wesnothian standard usage. I just made it that way. It seems like the month names are cannon (?), and it goes without saying that Ardonna would know them. However, in the linked discussion, some people have good justifications for the roman numerals, so I'm more relaxed about it now, and they can stay as far as I'm concerned.
stevecotton wrote:
  • She's got an unusual mindset, using a numerical style for her personal journal feels right to me.
  • The story is trying to tell the player how much time passed, and month numbers are easy to understand.
Well... interesting arguments. I think that the name of the months add some salt to the whole system, so I prefer to use them instead of the numbers. I can agree that Ardonna could have developed an her own enumeration, but why change the name of the months and not reset the years to "0", the beginning of the journey? :D

I also doubt that a player can remember the roman number mentioned in an early message and get the perception of the passing time: it is far more effective adding something to the message itself, something like:
"From my last note, 4 months ago, I made great progress in learning magic bla bla bla ..."
"Today, after 6 months of experiments, ... bla bla bla"
"Yes! I got it! One full month of study and now I can ... "
Alex_Stargazer
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by Alex_Stargazer »

This is the only undead campaign I genuinely enjoyed; it’s really good. Descent Into Darkness was terrible in comparison—too difficult to keep your units alive and very biased towards ghost-type enemies. In this campaign, every unit (except for ghouls) had to be used: ghost type enemies against trolls and woses; skeletons against knights and aquatic units; and adept-type units shone against dwarves. I also find Ardonna considerably more interesting than Malin Keshar—less whiny and more intelligent. Furthermore, I appreciated the fact that I didn’t have to fight my ex-ally, Ras Taban, even though it’s clear from the story that they will eventually be drawn into conflict.

Ardonna is interesting because she’s someone you can reason with, and in fact, never sets out to harm anybody, but is basically forced to defend herself. It communicates the idea that practitioners of the dark arts are persecuted, even when leaving her alone to pursue her goals would have resulted in far fewer lives lost.
Tharry
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by Tharry »

Just finished the campaign. I liked it!

I really liked how you need to use every unit form the roster (bats at the begining, skeletons and mages to deal most of the damage, a couple ghouls to serve as damage sponge, corpses to discract, ghosts to have mobility...).
The only exception is at the end, where I mostly used lichs and anciens lichs once they became available (against the world is the exception of the exception, as I recalled skeletons, ghost and ancient lich).

I think only the loyals necromancers should be able to become anciens lich (Ras-Tabahn, Ardonna,Shynal and Carcyn) you already have 4 of them with this restriction, and allow the use of other strategies than recall the lichs to destroy everything.
It would also make the choice between a lich and a necromancer more impactful, as an ancien lich is just better, there is no choice now.

I said that but with only lich I was short of time in North Knalga mission, as I barely finish it.
I don't know how I could killed the dwarves faster. I put a replay to see.

The captain don't really scale with the other loyals, and he was almost useless in cave level ( he could become level 3, or have a new ability, for exemple the chocobone mount).



I like the scenario, Ardonna is actually raisonable, and genuinely believe that this quest could help everybody (a shame some teenager just use it to pursue this vengance against orcs, killing his master in the process).

The only downside I don't really understand why I have to fight the trolls and th dwarves in the cave: Ardonna just want to exit the tunnels, not killing everybody!

Also some scenarios lack ending dialogs. It makes abrupt on the narrative.

About the difficulty: I played on corrupted, and I didn't find the campaign that hard (in comparaison , your campaign dead water is for me way harder, as I didn't manage to beat the first level).

I did some restarts of level, mostly due to a bad strategy (recalling specters in the mage level wasn't a good idea), or restarted a turn because I lose an important unit due to a reckless move, but it wasn't that much.

I think it is because you fight a lot of various races (and not just loyalist/orcs for almost all the campaign, so a good point), with little variation: usually the enemy only spwan two-three enemy types, so you can find a composition to hard-counter him.

For the mission "against" the world, all leaders execept the paladin, the saurian and the naga came to attack me. At least the triton protect himself with his units but the other were isolated, so I could kill the leaders easely. It is normal?


Sorry to point mostly problems, you did a good job for the campaign!
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