Summer Camp-aigns

[beetlenaut]

I have a group of high-school students who spent the last four days learning how to play Wesnoth, learning WML, then making short campaigns. (Yes, four days!) We hope you try them out and enjoy them! The students are anxious to get some feedback, so leave some comments in this thread!

The Revenge of Kumakatok (3 scenarios)
The Battle for the Contrabass Clarinet (2 scenarios)
Hive Mind (2 scenarios)
Invasion of the Undead (5 scenarios)
The Revenge of the Five (4 scenarios)

You can search for "summer camp" in the add-ons list to see them all at once.

[Landiss]

Oh, that sounds interesting. Will give it a try.

First small feedback - after downloading all of the campaigns, Revenge of Kumakatok is shown at the beginning of the campaign list (with the default sorting). I don't know if it this is a bug in Wesnoth itself or something with this campaign, but in general add-on campaigns land at the bottom of the list in the default sorting.

[Landiss]

Ok, played the first one - The Battle for the Contrabass Clarinet (chosen because how could I not choose it as the first one with such name...).

First scenario:
- interesting map, reminds me a lot of Heroes of Might and Magic 3, visually, with the distinct parts separated by mountains. Looks very nice.
- too many bottlenecks on terrain that is difficult to move (in general I would avoid paths that are only 1 hex wide, it makes for a slow and boring gameplay, especially so if the units can move 1 or 2 hexes per turn).
- I didn't realize it at first, but leaving the first part of the troops and move forward only with quenoth from the moment you get them would be much better strategy, because both HI and spearman have terrible movement on sand and even worse in swamp and water. This could be hinted to the player somehow.
- the quenoth are too cheap. You get lvl 2 units for a price of lvl 1 unit.
- I played on the highest difficulty, but it was easy, especially the second half (though I admit because of the points above and below I had not enough time to actually kill the second enemy)
- at first I thought I need to reach the end with my leader, as that is how usually it works in campaigns. However, around the half of the map I realized it probably isn't even possible. Nevertheless, I would make it more clear that any unit will do, in the victory conditions window.
- there are villages on the edge of the map that cannot be reach. It's confusing and I wasted a turn trying to reach one.

Second scenario:
- oh, so I somehow missed getting mages in the first scenario? Because the hint here tells me to use mages...
- nevertheless, it was very easy, as I had more than double the amount of gold than enemy + I got access to very cheap lvl 2 units.
- again the map visual design was quite interesting, although not as polished as in the first scenario.
- the ending itself was a bit disappointing, I hoped there would be at least some info about clarinet. There was no final words from the enemy or any kind of outro. To be honest, I kind of expected some joke explaining what is the deal with the clarinet.

[Landiss]

Next up is Hive Mind.

First scenario:
- enemy keep is way too big. The amount of units it spams is slowing down the game a lot. Even with x16 speed it takes ages to finish a turn.
- not much else to say, the scenario feels more like a prolonged, interactive cutscene. Perhaps there should be some more dialogs that would explain what's happening and would allow the player to figure out the solution instead of just stumbling upon it.

Second scenario:
- well, what can I say, not much was happening here and then it was over .

[Konrad2]

Hive Mind
'The Hive'
Well...Not enough information? I mean, sure, the losing condition is the key to figuring this out fast, but except that, there is pretty much nothing. No explantion why I won. Or what happened. No idea.

'Mindscape'
...I have to say, this is probably the most uneventful scenario I've played in my life. Again, a lack of information. What happens with the mage after he destroyed the Hive Mind? No-one knows.

Revenge of Kumakatok
'Just the beginning'
When the Quenoth Shaman curses you, there is a '.' missing at the end.


I have to say, those kings and kingdoms are weak. That's some extremely peaceful age right there.

[Xara]

The Revenge of the Five

Chose the 2nd difficulty, it's still easy. Basically I kept fighting enemies with 1:1 gold, plus I had 5 heroes.

I have no comment on the story.

Scenario Design: Map 3 is unpleasant in the sense that it's a full-cave scenario. [edit] If the campaign is harder it would be a tomato surprise, because the value of different troops you developed in the previous scenarios differ greatly. [/edit] Map 4 is too simply big.

Bug: in scenario 3, the enemy can't recruit because there is no keep tile.

[beetlenaut]

I have to say, those kings and kingdoms are weak. That's some extremely peaceful age right there.

I realize that the campaigns are too easy. That's a fair criticism. It's not really the students' fault though, because they had only played Wesnoth for two hours before they started designing and testing their campaigns.

Bug: in scenario 3, the enemy can't recruit because there is no keep tile.

That group did finish up at the last minute, but I still don't know how they managed to do that. I hadn't played that scenario yet, so I didn't know.

[Konrad2]

I realize that the campaigns are too easy. That's a fair criticism. It's not really the students' fault though, because they had only played Wesnoth for two hours before they started designing and testing their campaigns.

That's not what I meant (though your answer still manages to be valid). I was pointing out that the kings are lvl 1 units, with lvl 1 recruits.

EDIT:
Revenge of the Five, Goblin Attack (btw they named their campaign 'Our Awesome Campaign')
The additions to my recruit list is confusing. I mean, why? How? Especially the Elvish Shaman.
And the distribution of villages is very much skewed towards the player. Poor goblins.
And the lose conditions are wrong. 'Death of Todd' (Spearman leader) instead of 'Death of ...' (all 5 leaders) (same for 'Dragon Cave'/'The Final Assault' (which needs a full Glider offensive))

[Konrad2]

That group did finish up at the last minute, but I still don't know how they managed to do that. I hadn't played that scenario yet, so I didn't know.

Looking at the code: It's a mess. xD You'd better not look at it. Anyway, side 2 has no recruit list, so maybe the Dragon isn't supposed to recruit?

EDIT: TBftCC 'The Travel'
Why would a Saurian lead a Goblin Army? (they allowed extra recruits for him, but forgot to disallow the goblins)
And the merman don't appear so I guess soemthing went wrong with that event...

'Cave Fight for the Clarinet'
Regarding the mages...looks like they never added them. ._.

[Konrad2]

Triple post for visibility:
Revenge of Kumakatok S2
I don't think that this is winnable on hard. Maybe if the scenario started at dusk instead of dawn...

[Heindal]

Cool idea beetlenaut! What did your student say about BfW und WML?
Awesome that they did that in four days only. That´s remarkable.

I must admit that I spent the last 4 days debugging strange legacy and testing the new features -,-.

[Konrad2]

Hive Mind doesn't give a laurel upon completion. It seems to skip the credits in favor of going back to the main menu once you complete it.

[beetlenaut]

Thanks for the report, but I don't have the .pbl passwords for these, and that one in particular has more issues than I could fix anyway. (One of the students working on it stopped coming, and left just one person to finish everything. He didn't finish it in time for me to check it out before he uploaded it.) Also, I don't see an obvious problem after a quick look, and don't know how a campaign could skip the credits in the first place--that's handled by the engine.

[lhybrideur]

Maybe it just crash in the end, going back to the main menu instead of displaying the credits ?

[Konrad2]

I totally forgot that I didn't upload the replays for this set of summer campaigns. Maybe it will help with solving this mystery.