[Historical] Son of the Black Eye Updated!

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Taurus
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[Historical] Son of the Black Eye Updated!

Post by Taurus »

As most of you probobally already know, I have voulenteered to take over the maintanince and compleation of "Son of the Black Eye". For now I am just going to post it on the campaign server untill the developers get around to adding it to the official package... if they like it.

Anyhow, I am not sure what version this campaign is currently at so i'll just start the versioning numbers from the start, 0.0.0 being what SotBE was in the official realease of Wesnoth 0.9.6.

So version 0.0.1 is going up on the server in a couple mins. There isn't really anything new or exciting in this version, and you can check the changelog for details (it should be in the SotBE folder in your downloaded campagins folder). All I basically did so far was get the structure set up so I could post it as a user campaign and ballance a few of the scenarios to make them beatable for the adverage player.

Comments, suggestions and feedback would be most appreciated.
Creater of the campaign, "Northern Rebirth"

Compleater of the campaign, "Son of the Black Eye"
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ivanovic
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Post by ivanovic »

Just looking at the diff. It is good to see, that you give the players that choose easy more turns. But in mainline the campaign is almost unbeatable on hard. If you do decrease the number of turns, it will be impossible. You should take the number of turns that are there in the mainline as the number of turns for hard. Give the other difficulty degrees more turns instead of taking the number that currently is there for normal.
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Post by bruno »

ivanovic wrote:Just looking at the diff. It is good to see, that you give the players that choose easy more turns. But in mainline the campaign is almost unbeatable on hard. If you do decrease the number of turns, it will be impossible. You should take the number of turns that are there in the mainline as the number of turns for hard. Give the other difficulty degrees more turns instead of taking the number that currently is there for normal.
I disagree. I have been play sotbe on the medium setting
and it is not too hard. I have to replay silent forest again,
but I was doing well and then did some stupid stuff to
mess up the scenario, It may be that the easy setting is
too hard, but the medium setting isn't. I think someone
is working on seeing if the AI can get through campaigns.
I don't know that they have tried it on sotbe.
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Post by Dave »

Some people like very challenging campaigns. It might be nice to keep the challenge level but rename the difficulties to 'medium', 'hard', 'impossible' to reflect the difficulty of the campaign.

David
“At Gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck.” -- Ian Fleming
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ivanovic
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Post by ivanovic »

Dave wrote:Some people like very challenging campaigns. It might be nice to keep the challenge level but rename the difficulties to 'medium', 'hard', 'impossible' to reflect the difficulty of the campaign.
That is already done. But with less turns it will be impossible on many maps to play on hard. Even for the best Wesnoth players out there it is almost impossible at the moment. If it is too hard it is only frustrating. That is why there should be no changes to make the highest difficulty level even harder.
Taurus
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Post by Taurus »

Ok ok ok, tell you what, I'll add another whole new difficulty level, making four all together (like I did in Northern Rebirth). Easy, Medium, Hard and Impossible. How is that?
Creater of the campaign, "Northern Rebirth"

Compleater of the campaign, "Son of the Black Eye"
sanna
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Post by sanna »

Anyway, please try playing it on hard, before making hard harder. *smile*
Most changes to SotBE lately have been to in fact make hard slightly less hard. It should still be hard, but not unbeatable, for a skilled player.
ott
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Post by ott »

I have been semi-maintaining SotBE with some input from original author benj for several months now. Extracts from the changelog:

Code: Select all

CVS HEAD:
     * Watch Towers can no longer be recalled in Clash of Armies
     * Saving Inarix no longer ends if enemy leaders are killed
Version 0.9.5:
     * fixed untranslatable strings in Saving Inarix
     * start of making Clash of Armies harder: arrival of more reinforcements
Version 0.9.4:
   * Son of the Black Eye: revised map for Desert of Death
Version 0.9.3:
     * made To The Harbour of Tirigaz and Black Flag easier
Version 0.9.2:
     * prevented the shamans from being recallable (#11932)
     * Siege of Barag Gor: killing enemy leader is no longer a win
     * End of Peace: increased turn limit 24 -> 26 due to Lieutenant upgrade
     * Desert of Death: fixed invalid type=RogueAssassin on Hard
     * removed duplicate file inclusion - campaign should now start faster
     * more accurate difficulty labels
     * Toward Mountains of Haag: fixed enemy making "never pushed so far" speech
The basic idea here has been to make the campaign barely playable on Hard by a good player, with the usual proviso of no save-loading. Given my other commitments, I have playtested the campaign extensively and just focused on bugfixes and tweaks to improve playability, while keeping the campaign as close as possible to the original. I also posted a series of saved games illustrating my reasoning to the forum, which elicited some but not much discussion.

It is great that we are getting interest in this campaign from campaign authors, especially on the easier difficulties. However, it is sad that we are only getting interest so close to 1.0, since we are now reduced to making small tweaks by the string freeze, and can't make any larger changes The consensus about this campaign was that it is meant to be hard, but not impossible: note the "more accurate difficulty labels" changelog entry above, these are "challenging, difficult, experts only".

On my todo list for SotBE:
  • * add another village or two to Black Flag so Desert of Death can be started with >100 gold
    * improve the last scenario that is too easy (finish boat arriving)
Especially the last point is important -- I added a dummy event just to get the string in before the freeze: benj wanted a boat to arrive to beef up the attack.

I am extremely resistant to tweaks that make "experts only" even harder, unless they are supported by a series of savegames showing how to get to that point in the campaign. I would especially like to see a series of savegames that starts with a win in End of Peace with the 20 turn limit, or a win in The Siege of Barag Gor in 12 turns which includes Jetto being rescued (or if not, then a win in Black Flag without any assassins). Right now the 26 turn limit in End of Peace is approximately right, given the amount of gold required later. It may be reasonable to drop it to 23 or 24, but then some additional gold is required for The Siege of Barag Gor and especially To the Harbour of Tirigaz.

-- ott
This quote is not attributable to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Taurus
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Post by Taurus »

Alright, I finally made some substantial updates on SotBE. Check the changelog for details, but the main changes are some new (and more) diologe in the first scenario, and I added an option in the first scenario as well. Check it out and let me know what you think.

As far as difficult goes, I reverted back to the original names (Challenging, Diffucult and Experts Only) at ott's suggestion. I left the hard difficulty as it was but I just added a couple more turns for easy and normal. It's not a huge difference and it is still challenging but I think it makes it playable for the adverage player without save/reloading 50 million times.

Please let me know what you think of it.
Creater of the campaign, "Northern Rebirth"

Compleater of the campaign, "Son of the Black Eye"
bruno
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Post by bruno »

I was playing sotbe about two weeks ago on the middle
difficulty. While some of the scenarios were very hard,
Desert of Death wasn't. I only had 100 gold at the start of
the scenario, I just headed for the thief leader and killed him
when I got there. The scorpions poisoned a few guys, but
they don't normally use their poison attack on their turn so it
wasn't that many guys. The thieves mostly went north
leaving the leader alone and he died quickly. I played this
one through in one shot with no reloads.
Taurus
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Post by Taurus »

I actually haven't gotten that far yet in updating the campaign. But when i get to it, I'll fix that. Thanks for pointing that out.
Creater of the campaign, "Northern Rebirth"

Compleater of the campaign, "Son of the Black Eye"
unsung
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Post by unsung »

you work fast!
Oh no look out its a ray gun.
You should move to avoid the rays
the rays are coming out of the gun
if you are hit by the rays
you will be shot by the rays
the rays are fast so you should be fast to
can you win against the fast rays from the gun?
Taurus
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Post by Taurus »

unsung wrote:you work fast!
Thanks. I try my best :D Besides, programing campaigns is a lot of fun.
Creater of the campaign, "Northern Rebirth"

Compleater of the campaign, "Son of the Black Eye"
dtw
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Post by dtw »

I have never played this campaign before because I wasn't a big orc fan. However, I am playing on the easiest setting and finding it marginally easier than HttT on Normal. However, I am getting to a point where I am somewhat poor and just about to start the silent forest - I guess we'll see how that goes :) Otherwise it is good fun :)
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dtw
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Post by dtw »

OK am now at Saving Inarix - not started playing yet but can't see the saurians at the start of turn 1, is that normal.

Still not having big problems - I think I have a good grasp of orc tactics already relying mainly on troll whelps and making full use of terrain. Hardest level so far has been the Harbour, mainly because the dark adepts do so much damage to the trolls up in the North.
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