The Harvest - a Myth: The Fallen Lords ispired scenario emulating a core campaign experience.

[Graziani]

I have finished the second scenario. The map is detailed and interesting (the shroud over the forests add to the global ambient). The zombie wolf appearing at the end of the trail scared me . I avoided the raiders and their central village to cross the river to the West. And I loved the concept of a mini-boss with the map shrinking into a sort of combat arena.
Thanks for these scenarios, they are inspiring !
Can't wait to see the future scenarios if there will be !

[BajMic]

Holy! I am so happy to read your posts, guys!

The Grave Escape:
Why did you make the dialogue 'bubbles' so long?

They were supposed to hide the sudden appearance of the two wolves watching you. The idea is for the player to only notice them when they retreat back into the darkness and wonder "wait... how long have they been there?" Not the most successful experiment. I will work on it.

Can't wait to see the future scenarios if there will be !

There certainly will be. The next one is already a work in progress.

Each following scenario takes more and more work, so I had to take a break to sort out my professional life first. Stay tuned!

[BajMic]

Can't wait to see the future scenarios if there will be !

Actually, there is one more scenario, which works as optional. It is downloadable separately as "The Harvest scenario no2".

I believe it's poorly balanced, because it's main feature is tailor-scripting the AI to play the map. I would be most grateful for any replays from that scenario, to see what needs to be changed or improved.

[WLFobe]

Is this still under development? I keep checking, but it's not updated to 1.1.18.

[BajMic]

It is still under development. There was a very long slump, but I finally managed through it.

In the meanwhile, did you try the other scenario? "The Vampire Strikes Back"? It is available in the addons menu as "Harvest Scenario no 2". I definitely need feedback on this one.



The scenario I am currently working on is called "The City of the Dam". Pun intended - it actually features a massive ancient dam in the middle. The scenario is meant to introduce new design approaches towards:

- balancing the Recall List over the course of longer campaign - the city undergoes evacuation and every 3 turns a new ship arrives that can take 3 of your units - the sooner you reach the port, the more units you can save, but the more units you save, the weaker you become in the current scenario, as the units are taken offmap

- creating map aesthetics by the means of available terrain sets, e.g., creating an illusion of depth with light and dark tiles, using bridges to represent convincing sewer drains, etc

- implementing very large numbers of custom tilesets in such a way that could be easily edited or repurposed, by creating a big map of explicit tags and a set of implicit rules that connect tag arrangement with specific terrain graphics; the rules can be copied from scenario to scenario, while the explicit tag map can be modified

- a mean tailor-scripted AI that knows how to properly slow-down a much larger force (yours)



I will post screenshots soon. I could even upload the map (with custom graphics encoded) onto the add-on server if anyone wants to use it for their own scenarios.


Before the scenario is finished I need to (i) script the cutscenes, (ii) script the ship behaviour, (iii) make images of yellow question mark, red exclamation mark and a series of white "Z...", "Zz..." "Zzz..." to appear above inactive skeleton leader's head (iv) test the scenario to see if it's balanced and the AI works as intended and finally (v) merge with with the campaign and upload.

[BajMic]

Here are the screenshots.

In order to create the dam, I edited the existing cliff images and created three maps like the one below.

Code: Select all

[terrain_graphics]
        map="
, * , * , * , * , * , * , 1 , * , * , * , * , * , * 
* , * , * , * , * , * , * , * , * , * , * , * , * , 
, * , * , * , * , * , * , 2 , 5 , * , * , * , * , * 
* , * , * , * , 5 , 13 , 3 , 4 , 6 , * , * , * , * ,
, * , * , * , 15 , 14 , 8 , * , * , 7 , 9 , * , * , * 
* , * , 13 , 16 , 8 , * , * , * , * , 8 , 10 , 9 , * , 
, * , 17 , 12 , * , * , * , * , * , * , * , 8 , 11 , * 
* , 19 , * , * , * , * , * , * , * , * , * , * , 18 , 
, * , * , * , * , * , * , * , * , * , * , * , * , * 
"
        [tile]
		pos=1
            	has_flag=center
        [/tile]

        [tile]
		pos=2
            	set_flag=wall-stone-corner-bl, x
        [/tile]

        [tile]
		pos=3
            	set_flag=wall-stone-convex-br, wall-mixed-ccw-bl, x
        [/tile]

        [tile]
		pos=4
            	set_flag=wall-stone2-convex-bl, wall-mixed-cw-r, wall-stone-convex-br, x
        [/tile]

        [tile]
		pos=5
            	set_flag= x
        [/tile]

        [tile]
		pos=6
            	set_flag=wall-mixed-ccw-l, wall-stone-concave-tr, x
        [/tile]

        [tile]
		pos=7
            	set_flag=wall-stone2-convex-bl, clean-wall-mixed-cw-br, x
        [/tile]

        [tile]
		pos=8
            	set_flag=wall-rough-convex-bl, wall-rough-convex-br, x
        [/tile]

        [tile]
		pos=9
            	set_flag=wall-mixed-corner-ccw-bl, x
        [/tile]

        [tile]
		pos=10
            	set_flag=wall-stone-convex-bl, wall-mixed-ccw-l, clean-wall-mixed-cw-br, x
        [/tile]

        [tile]
		pos=11
            	set_flag=catacomb-wall-stone2-concave-tr, x
        [/tile]

        [tile]
		pos=12
            	set_flag=earthy-wall-rough-convex-br, x
		#wall-rough-convex-bl
        [/tile]

        [tile]
		pos=13
            	set_flag=wall-mixed-corner-cw-bl, x
        [/tile]

        [tile]
		pos=14
            	set_flag=wall-mixed-ccw-bl, wall-stone-convex-br, x
        [/tile]

        [tile]
		pos=15
            	set_flag=wall-mixed-corner-cw-bl, x
        [/tile]

        [tile]
		pos=16
            	set_flag=wall-mixed-ccw-bl, wall-stone-convex-br, x
        [/tile]

        [tile]
		pos=17
            	set_flag=catacomb-wall-stone2-concave-tl, x
        [/tile]

        [tile]
		pos=18
            	set_flag=wall-stone-convex-l, x
        [/tile]

        [tile]
		pos=19
            	set_flag=wall-stone-convex-r, x
        [/tile]

        probability=100

[/terrain_graphics]

Then, I implemented some implicit rules like:

Code: Select all

[terrain_graphics]
	map="
, *
* ,
, 1
"

        [tile]
		pos=1
            	has_flag=regular-convex-tl-edge
        [/tile]

        probability=100

	[image]
		name=regular-convex-tl-edge.png
		layer= 0
    	[/image]

[/terrain_graphics]

[BajMic]

Hello,

I have resumed works on the campaign recently. I started by balancing the 2nd scenario, which still comes separate. I have been thoroughly testing it over and over, but with my level of familiarity I can't tell how challenging it is. I would be most grateful for trying it out and giving me feedback.

[WLFobe]

I went to the Add-ons to load the scenario/campaign. But there is nothing showing with Harvest in the name.

I am running 1.18.5

[BajMic]

Ah, good point. It's still in 1.16, sorry. Updating to higher versions ruined the cutscenes.

[BajMic]

Hello,

The extra scenario is available in 1.18. When you test your own level over and over, you get too good at it. I would be very grateful for any feedback on difficulty.

[Snarkus]

Hiya - I just played the Harvest Scenario 2 on Wesnoth 1.18.

I played on the middle difficulty (sargeant) - overall, on first go found it a few moderate challenges but not too difficult and was comfortable by the end. So overall - good, but could maybe have been a mite harder. I'm an experienced Wesnoth player though.

I've played a few other zombie survival-style Wesnoth scenarios that are *much* harder (have not beaten them), so this was a nice change I guess.

I guess given the mainly Level 0 battle between walking corpses and peasants/ruffians/woodsmen - if you make a few mistakes / have bad luck, there is always the risk of a "chain reaction" where enemy could quicky get a big local numerical advantages and then overwhelm your forces.

Some more detailed comments behind spoilers:

Spoiler:

The early attack on the East/left of map - quite clever how they massed for an attack and one of the peasants commented on it.
They did a job of forcing me to pin a few defenders there. When they did finally attack (at night, so good AI), they took out a couple of defenders but not too bad.

The skeletons by the river - by the time they arrived, I had a good income stream so was able to wear them down with Woodsmen mainly.

I advanced my starting spearman to a Javileneer, who then became very powerful and could assist a couple of peasants to easily hold several villages in the S-E, below the river.

The late attack from the right/West - did pose quite a challenge as I didn't have great defence there initially. They took out quite a few L0s, but with enough woodsmen and a few of my advanced units (spearman, the starting dwarf thunderer, a poacher) I dealt with it ok.

Re the evacuation order somewhere after turn 20: at first I was wondering if I should start an evac of all my combat units too. E.g. anticipating that L1,L2 undead might start popping up steadily around the map. So I moved a few good units ready to leave north, but decided to also keep defending villages etc. Then when I saw the stream of non-combatants leaving over several turns, it made sense to just let them go and the rest keep up the defence.
Not a bad thing there was a bit of ambiguity though.

[BajMic]

Thank you very much, Snarkus.

When designing these scenarios, you constantly fight the urge to just "add more units, make them stronger". If you are interested, I can tell you what happened from the code level.

Spoiler:

The initial formation assesses your defenses. If your line is too strong, they will call skeleton diversion and even postpone the attack until you open yourself up. If not called upon, the skeletons will wait until turn 20 event to emerge.

The post-20 turn evac is just there to give zombies extra opportunities to multiply, but doesn't introduce any extra loose conditions. Hence, the objectives don't change - the player simply needs not to panic.

You have inspired an interesting idea with the skeletons:

Spoiler:

Should they have an extra trigger for when you have enough gold?

My biggest issue is with the villages in the south. Putting units there is supposed to be suicidal, but the AI navigates this area poorly.

[WLFobe]

Was I supposed to get a Dwarf? I don't see one.

The Skeletons that crossed the river - one attacked me, but the other two ran to the NW corner and hooked up with some undead up there.

It looks like there is an ankh amulet stuck in a cairn in the east. Can I get it?

There's what looks like a village at 71,23 but the label says "Trash".

[WLFobe]

Color me confused. I downloaded "The Harvest Scenario 2", and it is now in my menu. I started playing it and noticed that it was saving as "The Vampire Strikes Back".

I didn't know you could do this. Why would you want to?

[BajMic]

This scenario is meant as a follow-up level after the "River Dead" scenario if you beat the enemy leaders (and thus stay in the village).

There are many scenery elements meant for storytelling purposes. The cairn with amulet surrounded by flowers is a newly arranged burial site after the previous battle. The trashed village is no longer inhabited - it was in the previous scenario.

I suppose you played the hardest difficulty - you don't get the dwarf at this setting. Instead there is a human non-combatant mayor replacing him.

The scenario itself is complete, but meant to become part of a bigger campaign. The names are meaningless, thus many are either a prank or a placeholder.