Volunteering to spruce up the dialogue in one particular campaign

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lujo86
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Re: Volunteering to spruce up the dialogue in one particular campaign

Post by lujo86 »

egallager wrote: February 6th, 2023, 5:15 pm
lujo86 wrote: February 6th, 2023, 10:38 am I tried getting straight to Alduin, but the lines there are messed up beyond belief because Delfador starts talking about needing experienced troops for Elesenfar, but it doesn't seem like Elesenfar was mentioned anywhere previously, so the player reading those lines would have no idea about its significance. Or that there's a destination beyone Alduin. Unless that info is in the intro somewhere, but I don't think it is.
Oh yeah that was actually a recent change in 9f780903abfa592752cb02c767a4ef5992f6f9c7, which came out of PR#7214; you should probably talk to octalot about it
Ty. I mean it turns out that some (if not all of this) shows up outside of dialogue, and I get why it was added. The only real reason why it looked like a mess is because the previous two levels are a disjointed mess that doesn't introduce Elesenfar at all and is caught between scenario objectives and gamer objectives in the first scenario, while the second scenario tries to be a horseman tutorial that doesn't really set up the following story. Konrad and Delfador really ought to be talking about Elesenfar, and the whole "going to Alduin" thing should be different in scenario 2.

The way it would make sense would be that at the end of Blackwater, the returning troops report that Elesenfar is under siege and that orcish detachements were moving even further to the west and south. And since Alduin is already taken, Kaylan (the lord of Blackwater) should inform Delfador that ships haven't been returning from Alduin. So, the trip to alduin should really be about finding out what's going on over there and rallying the mages to help defend Elesenfar, because the horsemen can't as they're tied down between the Elesenfar besiegers and the great host attacking Aethelwood.

That would make strategic sense for the Queens armies, as it wedges 2 armies (the one besieging Elesenfar and the one attacking Aethelwood) between the horsemen and their allies, allowing the queen to really conquer the west without anyone being able to reinforce anyone else. And then Delfador and Konrad could, mostly by chance, throw a wrench in that plan, and it would link up the disjonted early scenarios.

So if this campaign could have an actual story a player could follow, that builds towards Elesenfar early on, that would be the story.
lujo86
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Re: Volunteering to spruce up the dialogue in one particular campaign

Post by lujo86 »

Helmet wrote: February 6th, 2023, 5:33 pm I prefer this mainline sentence: "Orcish mercenaries were hired and dispatched to bring about their ruin." I did not like the revised, "The great forest woke to the howling of wolves, the bellows of trolls and the cries of orcs, brought down from the North with promises of plunder, slaves and land." In my opinion, the simple, direct language of the mainline original gets the job done. If I were reading a novel, sure, I might prefer the sentence in the revised version, but for a Wesnoth campaign? No. Florid writing seems out-of-place.
Ok, I could tone it down, as the rest of my edits are mostly attempts to make the whole thing less florid where it's florid but inept (this becomes very jarring in later scenarios) and less functional where you need to hook the player.

However, the "simple, direct language" undersells the gravity of the situation, and, specifically in the example of "orcish mercenaries were hired" contradicts the stuff that the orcs (and their victims) are saying and doing throughout the next several scenarios. In the first scenarios Orcs, in the original lines, claim that this land belongs to them. They conquer Alduin, and they set up operations in the Bay of Pearls. Here one simple sentence says "orcish mercenaries were hired", but that's actually wrong info, because these orcs seem to have been promised everything short of actual titles, meaning land, settlement, exploitation of the local populace and resources. So they're in fact allies of the Queen, and she basically allowed them to conquer all this western and south-western stuff with her as their sovereign, because she had problems with the folks who ruled there but wouldn't recognize her as their sovereign.

So just writing them off as mercenaries is... for fact contrary to what's really going on. These guys would absolutely love the queen, and would proclaim the legitimacy of them being there all over the place, since they're basically doing what they want to be doing anyway, but no pinkskins from the east will show up to help, in fact the pinkskins from the east invited them and told them to go nuts. I just tried to make this come to life, if I was too florid about it, my bad, I can try to simplify. Although the excellently written "Liberty" campaign goes in-depth down to the level of individual village politics all in thick accents and class differences between the actors, which makes practically everything in this campaign look like inept placeholder dialogue, so making it a bit more involving shouldn't really be a bad thing?
I like the mainline version more, because "...whom she despised" is a more powerful sentiment than the much weaker "a thorn in her side."


To me "whom she despized" just looked like somebody couldn't come up with anything else to say about why any of this is happening so they wrote "cuz she dint like em". Again, after playing through Liberty, this looks like kindergardeners playing D&D.

The reason why I wrote it like that is that the Elves would really be a thorn the Queens side, because as long as they're a force they can come reinforce the west - which is openly defying her - if she tries to move in on the west. This would make her promising the orcs that "it's all their land" make way more sense, because she doesn't care what happens to the elven lands, and doesn't mind them all being burnt and taken over by orcs.

Like, why have the Queen be a Disney villain (or even worse), when you have perfectly good motivations for her spelled out by the map?
Perhaps even worse, "they" (the mercenaries) evidently scream in unison, "The Queen wills it! Give us the boy!" Am I supposed to believe they have adopted this mouthful of blatant exposition as a battle cry? No way.
Sure this might've been an unfortunate implication, as I was trying to avoid passive tense. But if it is actually implying that they're chanting in unison ( :lol: ) I can easily change it.
Again, I like the mainline version more. "...there are orcs coming from all directions" conveys that Konrad is panicking.
To me it conveys that it was written by a gamer. It's something a battle commander would say while briefing you, not a panicking boy. I can probably do better with the edit. I mean, Konrad said the same thing twice - adding the queen to the other one - because that's what a person panicking would do, not inform you about whether all strategic approaches are being taken by the opposing force :lol: I can edit it easily enough, tho.
Mainline:
Delfador says,
"There are too many to fight, far too many. We must escape!"


Revised version:
Delfador says,
"I'm afraid that this is only the vanguard, my dear boy. When the main force arrives, they will be far too many for us to fight. We must make our escape while there is still time!"


I prefer the mainline version. It's simple and to the point, exactly the kind of thing a person might quickly say when their doom is fast approaching.

The first two sentences of the revised version indicate that Delfador is calm; after all, he has time to be didactic in his response, and he calls Konrad a "dear boy." Delfador's revised dialogue also makes me wonder how he knows that the approaching orcs are only the vanguard. If Delfador had prior knowledge of the approaching army, why didn't he say something earlier? This is a flaw, as it confuses the reader.
Ok, I see your point to a degree, but the problem is that when I kept the "we must flee" sentiment, i got the gamer response of "this is wrong, they should stay and fight to get XP". This is moreso a problem of the scenario being a cutscene that lets you - if you go against it's intended tone and message - get some long-term gaming objectives done, and whatever I or anyone does is going to be some degree of clumsy and contradictory.

What I went for was, and obviously I should've done a better job, make Konrad the one panicking after seeing more orcs than he saw in his life, but the absurdly experienced battlemage Delfador remain calmer because he can assess that what they're seeing is just the vanguard. And the reason why I went with this, and I'm sure it's the right approach, is that this lets the scenario be about getting away before the main army shows up, so that instead of running for your life from moment one, you make a fighting retreat, help the defenders as much as you can, and get some XP.

---

Btw ty for the feedback, I feel bad that I have to argue so much for what I did, and don't think I'm unwilling to change things. What you note are mostly just matters of phrasing, honestly, and can be improved.

Or, otherwise, if it is actually preffered that this campaign have an excuse plot that looks like someone just left a bunch of placeholders or let their younger sibling fill it in because "who cares about the story, this is a fighting game", I can give it up, also not a problem. It was always pretty bad, but now that Liberty is the campaign you play right before it people are going to wonder how come this one is even allowed to be a mainline campaign when they start it up right afterwards.
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JamesRichey
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Re: Volunteering to spruce up the dialogue in one particular campaign

Post by JamesRichey »

I noticed you're trying to fix some story issues with Heir to the Throne. If you are looking for better dialogue, you can find some good lines in the novel version of Heir to the Throne I posted a few years back to the Forum. It's a full blown novel filled with lots of good dialogue. Perhaps you can get some good lines from it. Let me know if you need any help.
Created an open-source novel on Battle for Wesnoth: Heir to the Throne (based on the campaign). The source code (manuscript) is posted for free on my website http://jamesrichey.com/Wesnoth.html.
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nemaara
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Re: Volunteering to spruce up the dialogue in one particular campaign

Post by nemaara »

Send me a script for the first couple scenarios, I'll take a look. You can send it via PM or on discord if you use that.
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Celtic_Minstrel
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Re: Volunteering to spruce up the dialogue in one particular campaign

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

I think many of the concerns you raise in your revisions are definitely justified, and some of the changes do seem like an improvement. I find the format of your changes confusing, however, as you're just cherry-picking from the pot file and I can't really tell how any of the lines fit together. I think it would be easier to follow if you used the source files as a reference instead of the pot file.

Regarding Konrad's age, it doesn't really seem a stretch to suggest he's 20 years old. I think he must be at least 18. (Originally I believe he was supposed to be 16, but a few years ago the campaign was revised to make him and Li'sar older.)
Author of The Black Cross of Aleron campaign and Default++ era.
Former maintainer of Steelhive.
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octalot
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Re: Volunteering to spruce up the dialogue in one particular campaign

Post by octalot »

egallager wrote: February 6th, 2023, 5:15 pm
lujo86 wrote: February 6th, 2023, 10:38 am Delfador starts talking about needing experienced troops for Elesenfar, but it doesn't seem like Elesenfar was mentioned anywhere previously
Oh yeah that was actually a recent change in 9f780903abfa592752cb02c767a4ef5992f6f9c7, which came out of PR#7214; you should probably talk to octalot about it
Good catch, thanks.

I've been trying to work out if I can improve this by changing the already-changed lines, or just those plus a few others. The reason is that PR 7214 is also going into the next stable release (so it helps players on 1.16, rather than waiting for 1.18 to be released next year), but the new text hasn't yet been sent to the translation teams, so changing it again doesn't create more work. I'm wondering about changing it to the following, however it conflicts with some mages staying on Alduin, which suggests that they can still hold it:

Delfador: "If the orcs have already come here, they must be even more numerous than I feared. Only Elensefar has defenses that are likely to hold against sheer numbers, it lies at the mouth of the Great River and uses part of the river as its moat." # po (translation hint for this one): The current scenario has rivers and bridges, but the forests are more important here. When talking about Elensefar’s geography, avoid misdirecting the player about the rivers and bridges in the current scenario.

Delfador: "Konrad, training is important. If we only have inexperienced troops when we reach Elensefar, then our journey is likely to end in sight of the city’s gates."

Delfador: "This island is the place where I was born, and where I learned magic; it used to be so beautiful. We must rescue anyone still here! To arms!". Here the "rescue" replaces "recapture it" as they might soon lose it again.

Revised version:
Delfador says,
"I'm afraid that this is only the vanguard, my dear boy. When the main force arrives, they will be far too many for us to fight. We must make our escape while there is still time!"


Delfador's revised dialogue also makes me wonder how he knows that the approaching orcs are only the vanguard. If Delfador had prior knowledge of the approaching army, why didn't he say something earlier? This is a flaw, as it confuses the reader.
In the scenario the elves are just starting to react on turn 1, which implies that the orcs kept quiet until then. Once the fighting starts, there could be the noise of a much larger horde approaching, and no longer trying to be quiet about it. The could also be when the orcs start making fires, but I'm not sure they would; the orcs are going to be fighting in these woods, starting fires at this point would put themselves in danger too.

There could be something about the elvish sentries failing to raise the alarm because they thought they could hold off a few orcs from the vanguard, and then finding that the assassins had crept behind them and taken control of the alarm horns (or whatever) before the sentries could sound the alarm. Possibly triggered by noticing that some of the orcs have taken the sentries' better-crafted swords.
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octalot
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Re: Volunteering to spruce up the dialogue in one particular campaign

Post by octalot »

nemaara wrote: February 15th, 2023, 7:13 pm Send me a script for the first couple scenarios, I'll take a look.
Are there any revisions to the Alduin dialogue that are currently work-in-progress? I ask because I'm wondering writing a PR changing Delfador's reasoning to say that the ship needs to be resupplied with food before sailing back to the mainland. Even if the ship would normally have enough, they left Blackwater Port when it was preparing an army, so it makes sense that they left as much as they could at Blackwater.
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nemaara
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Re: Volunteering to spruce up the dialogue in one particular campaign

Post by nemaara »

octalot wrote: May 17th, 2023, 8:37 am
nemaara wrote: February 15th, 2023, 7:13 pm Send me a script for the first couple scenarios, I'll take a look.
Are there any revisions to the Alduin dialogue that are currently work-in-progress? I ask because I'm wondering writing a PR changing Delfador's reasoning to say that the ship needs to be resupplied with food before sailing back to the mainland. Even if the ship would normally have enough, they left Blackwater Port when it was preparing an army, so it makes sense that they left as much as they could at Blackwater.
There's no WIP stuff that anyone has sent me or that I have planned so please feel free to open a PR.
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