inferno8 / wesnoth-to_lands_unknown

add-on for Battle for Wesnoth

About

To Lands Unknown is an add-on for Battle for Wesnoth (BfW), providing a single-player (offline) campaign and associated artwork. For instructions on how to use, see the BfW documentation at:

http://www.wesnoth.org/

For a discussion of this add-on, visit:

https://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=31799

License

The add-on's source code is provided under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2, or (at your option) any later version, under the same terms as the main BfW project.

The artwork specified in ART_LICENSE is under CC-BY-SA, please see that file for more information.

Installing

This add-on is best installed through the BfW add-on interface. Please see the BfW help for more information.

wesnoth-to_lands_unknown's Issues

S14 Tar-Tabar badass mode refers events from normal mode S04/Southern Nations

S14:

I think that my vice might have been involved in illegal summoning of Efreet. The reason I'm saying this is that they suddenly changed allegiance from him to me like it was no big deal.

S04:
Efreet lamps are granted after meeting Rhazix's messenger, which may only happen in normal mode.

State of easy difficulty

I tested it by playing in a very naive way (*) and I found the following failure points and/or issues.

• S03 Quick lizards may easily exterminate player's army. Suggestion: Lower incidence of quick lizards or entirely make them intelligent/resistant.

• S06 Rescued lizards' HP too low. Suggestion: Automatically summon Forest Spirits in easy/normal and maybe even directly heal-sacrifice them in easy. Lv2 EoMa_Blood_Warrior guard at 25 26 may be too strong.

• S10 Shadow Mage's slowing Rashti may result in protracted war in front of the red circle and heavy losses.
  Suggestion: Don't let the mage use his slowing attack on offense.

• S12 (23,19) is a castle slot but disconnected from the rest of the castle/portal circle. There should be a well west to cure poison. If there is, I cannot find it. Incidentally, there are supposedly 3 wells in this scenario, but I can only find the one next to Kalib and the one north.
  Despite an empty recall list, beat this scenario without major issues.

• S15 Might be a bit too easy.

• S16 Definitely too easy. Lower 100 gold?

(*) Naive way (TM)

• Mehir stays in Keep
• No ZoC
• No gold/exp farming (end scenario ASAP).
• No items/secrets picked up
• Recall everything and recruit til gold runs out
• Prioritize slowing, then attack mindlessly

Suggestion: Variable recall cost and expensive early djinns

Under the Burning Suns recently implemented a new feature to modify units recall cost depending on the unit cost and campaign difficulty (wesnoth/wesnoth#7450). That implementation has its merits and might be worthy of testing because of the following issues.

1. Mystical Djinn and Summons Masters are way too viable in a monopolistic sense. There is basically no reason to advance Neutral or Heavy Summoners. Early djinn? Locked. Early rhamis? You get a HS for free in S04. Drain? Tons of mechanical, magical, and undead/destroyer foes. Rushing to get a Summon Master even rewards the player with a free AMLA.
2. Recalling Carpet Riders, Lv1 Elementals feels like a huge waste of gold. A large cost for dimensional gates (Mehir's "collection") doesn't make sense flavor-wise either.

On the other hand, I am not a priori exhilarated by the huge costs such a proposal implies for the highest difficulty (equivalent to recruiting a brand new unit).

Other than that, I believe that implementing variable recall cost would make early djinns a possibility. Given that the cost of summoning decreases the further the player progresses in the campaign, it wouldn't be a stretch to make the costs of recalling djinn (summoned by a Neutral Summoner) large in the first few scenarios. It could even be said that even Mehir's army wants to rip him off when recalling djinns. After Mehir becomes the leader of Tar-Tabar, he could confiscate (just to use badass terms) those djinn, so that their overcost is gone.

It should be possible to summon with Ultimate Circle

S06 Fire Canyon Badass Mode - Win condition unclear

S06 Fire Canyon normal behavior is for

Spoiler

Goblin units to kill their own leader once Mehir reaches his own camp

However, if by that time only the foe leader remains standing, he will remain alive. Then, victory won't be triggered unless the player sends units to kill the leader (which takes 3+ turns). However, there is no visual indication that the win condition has changed, and the camp will still be marked as a destination.

S15 Message error with [unstore_unit] empty variable

Each turn there is a 25% chance that some low level units of the player's side will be captured. But if there are not enough units to capture I get an error message (even without debug mode).

wesnoth-To_Lands_Unknown/scenarios/15_Abyssal_Rebellion.cfg

Line 871 in 43fea3d

#random capturing event

I suggest adding a check with {IF_VAR capture[x] not_equals $empty_var etc.

Status of translations

Language	Valid	Invalid (Fuzzy)	Empty
German (de)	492	664	1430
Spanish (es)	2586	0	0
French (fr)	1709	427	450
Hungarian (hu)	237	431	1918
Italian (it)	243	431	1912
Polish (pl)	2418	62	106
Russian (ru)	270	324	1992
Chinese (zh_CN)	309	500	1777

It can be seen that there is a large amount of missing strings in German, Hungarian, Italian, Russian, and Chinese. So I'd like to propose and step forward to handle these through machine translation (i.e. no guarantee about quality. See also Cunningham's Law).

French and/or fuzzy strings can be updated too, if so desired.

Translation updates

stuff involved in this:

• regenerate the potfile with wmlxgettext
• get pofiles out of the mofiles by using msgunfmt
• update the pofiles from the newly-updated potfile by using msgmerge

cc @Toranks

Screenshots?

Hey Inferno8,

I know you are busy but if you may have the time in the coming weeks or months, perhaps a few screenshots (say 2-3 or so) could be added or linked in from the main README? Simply for people to get a firs tvisual impression, in particular if the artwork may be unusual (which it is!).

S14-15: Banishment Staff for Semir?

It doesn't matter much if the player has taken the staff for later use (i.e. for when they recruit a Dispeller in this scenario.)

But if they haven't, it would be nice to let Semir own it from the start (maybe even from S14).

Circle of resistance stacks with ultimate circle

• Mehir gets +20% resistances from the CoR AMLA.
• Adjacent allies get +20% resistances from the CoR ability.
• Adjacent allies get +20% resistances from the UC ability (further).
• And yet Mehir gets +80 XP in "compensation" for their supposed not stacking.

Update tips

A few scenarios have too many tips, while others lack important ones. This is particularly notable for the Hard difficulty, in which they could/should be removed.

1. S01 Highest Tiers - It's not clear that the player absolutely MUST hurry in order not to loss on turn limit.
2. S03 Near the Jungle

• No mention of the healing properties of oasis.
• [Normal mode] Rhaxiz could use an "invulnerable" icon. (wesnoth/wesnoth#7363)

3. S08 Ka-gatta - There's an oasis here, too.
4. S15 Abyssal Rebellion

• Way too many tips (mostly voiced by banisher Semir)
• In particular, that Semir will leave is mostly an irrelevant fact and an spoiler.

5. S16 Deffense of Saffaros

• Spoiler on Atiros' fate can be left out.

6. S19 Sky Kingdom

• Except for possibly some niche gameplay, gold is meaningless afterwards. This should be conveyed or fixed somehow. (Fixed in #28)

S12: If Living Gate kills Fiothel/Anaraclya, the cutscene & dialog make no sense

New AMLAs

Context

• 92100b2 added Ultimate Focus and Skirmisher to Rashti.
• inferno8/wesnoth-Era_of_Magic@8a901b21 added support for fast summon.
• TLU TODO for 2022+:

enable custom AMLAs and summon options for Rashti(COMPLETED v3.6)

While Rashti is quite powerful after 92100b2, imo the main selling point of AMLAs is player agency, so I hope she gets some options, such as:

1. Definitive Strength: +10% "physical" damage.
2. Definitive Magic: +10% "magical" damage.
3. Definitive Intellect: -30% Max XP required for other AMLAs. (Though she's not Nomolas).
4. Sadism: +25% damage to enemies below 40% HP (flavor: red Rashti).
5. Majesty: On offense, defender retaliates with one less strike, but at least 1 (aka "Shock" from Eastern Invasion) (flavor: blue Rashti).
6. Fast Summon: Rashti may summon a rhami or elemental, and still move afterwards (but no longer attack).

Other possible recipients for Fast Summon include Neutral Summoner, Heavy Summoner, Summons Masters, Mehir Commander, Mehir Leader, and Last Summoner (btw, currently Last Summoner doesn't have Mehir Leader's AMLAs available, bug?). IMO, they should all get it in the campaign.

Finally, Mehir could use a few special AMLAs (i.e. not just raw numbers bonuses). I like Meditation, so I'd like to propose "Meditation II", among others. Summing up:

1. Good at using scrolls (Guard and later): Adds "first strike" to scroll spell.
2. Meditation II (Commander and later, requires "Meditation"): Further +3 XP per turn.
3. Synchronization (Commander and later, requires "Good at using scrolls"): Adds "first strike" to circle of destruction, but losses regeneration (harmed 'cause stayed too long in circle).
4. Fast Summon (Commander and later, wbu making it and synchronization exclusive branches after "Good at using scrolls"?)

Villages in S10 Chaos

• It's not obvious that the tents next to the starting castle are actually villages.
• After the red abyss portal is opened, Aerius' villages are razed, but the former aren't. Yet, any units standing on the villages or further from the portal will get sucked.

Mehir's Meditation doesn't work if Grand Summoner or higher

See inferno8/wesnoth-Era_of_Magic#44

Mehir is downgraded from commander of 2nd degree to 3rd degree

In S07 Dome of Elements, he's 2nd degree. By S12, he's 3rd degree.

AFAIK, military progression should go 3rd degree into 2nd degree into 1st degree.

Dimensional gate recovers all advancements when load a savegame

A Dimensional Gate recover all of its advancements and the ability to level up simply by loading a savegame.

I'm wondering if this is because the unit advances have been edited directly instead of using [object]

Maybe this is a better alternative:

[event]
    name=recruit,recall,unit placed
    id=eoma_soulcatcher_event4
    first_time_only=no
    [filter]
        ability=soul_catcher
    [/filter]

[modify_unit]
   [filter]
      x,y=$x1,$y1
   [/filter]
  [object]
    id=delete_advancements
    [effect]
       apply_to=remove_advancements
       type=EoMa_Rhami,EoMa_Fire_Elemental,EoMa_Water_Elemental,EoMa_Air_Elemental,EoMa_Earth_Elemental,EoMa_Jinn,EoMa_RhamiKai,EoMa_RhamiDatu,EoMa_Fire_Avatar,EoMa_Water_Avatar,EoMa_Air_Avatar,EoMa_Earth_Avatar,EoMa_Great_Jinn,EoMa_Efreet
    [/effect]
  [/object]
 [/modify_unit]

    [allow_undo]
    [/allow_undo]
[/event]

This need to change the code on other parts too, but from what i've seen in various parts of the code, the solution of using object is simpler than currently exists.

If you want, I can fix it in several parts and send a PR proposal @inferno8

This PR is related, because of it I discovered that neither my fix nor the original method works correctly:
#17

Metamorph ability refills all HP every transformation

That makes it a practically invincible unit.

Proposed change: #15

S23 Ruins sometimes freezes

Possibly related to Kamikaze drones (inferno8/wesnoth-Era_of_Magic#44) ?

Ally leaves his keep in Defense of Saffaros

That makes Mehir's idea of sacrificing jinn pointless, since he may simply steal Dedylos' castle.

He shouldn't leave it for, at least, the first 5 turns or until Mehir reinforces the outer wall.

S16: Hydras spawn algorithm has too large power variance.

Currently, each turn there is a 50% chance of spawning a Lv2 Hydra, as well as an independent 50% chance of spawning a Lv3 Hydra. This means there is a 25% chance of spawning nothing vs 25% chance of spawning them together.

Suggestion: Spawn either 1 Lv2 Hydra or 1 Lv3 Hydra per turn (at random).

S06 - Saurians teleporting back to the cage

If you rescue the saurians while an enemy is trying to thrown down a cage, and you don't kill that enemy, the saurian that was in the cage teleports back to the cage each turn (and the cage respawns), and may eventually die and lost the scenario. To avoid it, you have to mandatory kill the enemy who pushes the cage in the following turns.