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Shadow Realm - Campaign

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On scenario 1 I fixed some of the found issues. Issues like the beta "delayed victory" and the "lost win case". The victory and the final dialouges are scripted.

Most of the time will spent on fixing the broken shadow realm. Otherwise I might throw in some new additions.
 
Up today all the quests have been updated and some more enemy spawners for the first scenario. The broken shadow realm has been fixed and recreated.

I connected the maps between layers and distinguish the map layouts a little further and improved the lightning in some area.

However, the only thing I will work on at the current time is the extreme amount of scripts needed to be altered for the wizard realm climate phases.

I added some scenes for the draft document that is needed for scenario 3 future progress. I cannot work with it due to all the unsolved story issues needed to confirmed for scenario 3 and the current story progression that has to be confirmed from previous scenarios.
 
HousePet said:
Semi off topic question: Does the Warband Camp work in the scenarios?
I'm trying to work out why its not appearing in the random maps.
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I'm not sure if I have tried them ever. I did a short test in the Hiliadan Test Realm and they do not appear at all inside game. They are however placed in level editor.
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Hei playing the 2nd campaign and basically finished (i think). Had a blast but am somewhat stuck now. I'm in the wizard realm the climate keeps changing and there was an insane amount of columns of champions so i got some nice champion 17 horned gods or so. But there is one deactivated teleporter there and thats pretty much how far i can go. in the shadow realm I can't reach werlac on his island. So I don't know what to do now. I'd kinda like to finish the campaign before writing up my impressions.
 
The columns are supposed to be gone after a while to increase the champion level on some of the stack in the realm. But it appears it did not work as intended.

As soon as all the main quests are completed in the wizard realm the teleporters should activate. I will check for the scripts.
 
Fluksen said:
Hei playing the 2nd campaign and basically finished (i think). Had a blast but am somewhat stuck now. I'm in the wizard realm the climate keeps changing and there was an insane amount of columns of champions so i got some nice champion 17 horned gods or so. But there is one deactivated teleporter there and thats pretty much how far i can go. in the shadow realm I can't reach werlac on his island. So I don't know what to do now. I'd kinda like to finish the campaign before writing up my impressions.
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I made an update to the maps. It turns out the collums was not availble for independent units. So I fixed this. I hopefully fixed some of the other problems. Archons should no longer have a error message in the beginning and middle part when met.

Fluksen@ Im interested knowing if you were able to complete any of the "path of ..." Subquests in the wizard realm?
 
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Fluksen said:
I'm in the wizard realm the climate keeps changing and there was an insane amount of columns of champions so i got some nice champion 17 horned gods or so. But there is one deactivated teleporter there and thats pretty much how far i can go. in the shadow realm I can't reach werlac on his island.
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You got more successful than me! I thought I needed to get to the Nexus Core to reach the Wizard Realm so didn't manage to get to the Wizard Realm. And also can't reach Werlac! :D


Copy of what I sent Refineus on Steam:
I'm doing a quick test in the campaign and I'm encountering a number of issues:
1/ I cleared the Archon Fort and explored it but the Quest is not accomplished.
2/ Ze Syrast was given to me before I reached the area: I was going directly to the Archon Fort through Dense Vegetation. So it wasn't clear the dialogue was about Ze Syrast, it looked like it was about the Fort.
3/ Meandor talked to me from a Gate south but I had not yet reached it. A bit confusing.
4/ I got the 2nd Meandor dialogue without Meandor appearing on my line of sight.
5/ the Archon Fort Quest was failed because "another player prevented me from doing it", weird.
6/ The Goblin and Orc cities got razed while I was at the Shadow Gate, very far away from them (but I had killed the stacks with 2 Beetles), very weird too. I think I know why the Gob and Orcs were destroyed: Meandor got there and triggered the destruction. I haven't met Meandor, and I'm turn 18. Probably because the Archon Fort Quest failed? Now I see 2 units of Meandor (Orc Greatsword and Orc Archer) on the Hollow Grove west of the ruins.
There is a loot with Arm Cuff of the Spirit Slayer north-west of the Orc ruins. Weird. Maybe a hero was killed?
Finally Meandor arrived on foot with only 2 units left to attack Ze Syrast :D turn 20. Something went wrong, he never attacked me with full stack and was never close to my Leader.
When Meandor took Ze Syrast, it triggered "We should move to the south side" message from Sydran...
7/ The location of Nexus Core and Krendor Thar are revealed, not sure it's normal?8/ Not sure it's normal, Kzauria razed, Yvan Rianda razed, Tondor razed, Herozia razed, Urlington razed.
9/ I reached Unoras, killed him and then got the Old Bridge of the South Quest completed.... (also the SD should attack immediately, otherwise you can kill Unoras before they attack)
10/ Meandor apparently attacked Tren and died at his city (a lot of items looted, including the Autobiography)

Balance considerations:
- seems VERY OP to give a T4 Titan after completing the Quest for the Archons. I'd remove all unit rewards (including the T1), getting a new Dwelling is more than engouh
- Tren and Unoras had basically no troops and sent no troops to attack me. I could kill them with starting units + what I collected on the way. Too easy.
 
@Refineus Did not get a single path of quest there. just got paxenaria must survive, I moved her out of the wizard realm (met her with a scout only and was a bit worried), attached is a screenshot with my questlog
wizardrealm.png

more feedback:
- I didn't complete the first Archon quest because when i went down to the draconian city the stack of Unoras just decided to liberate the archon fort immediately, which immediately made me fail the quest. No chance for me to take it. On the other side Unoras stack was in no shape to fight me after fighting the archons so that should be changed.

- There is this other archon quest though (taking over this fort from Werlac) and afterwards both archon dwellings joined me :)

- Not especially related to the campaign I guess, but I noticed that the heart of shadows kinda has an odd "flickering effect" when it is not in direct vision range of one of your units.

- I think the difficulty level is nice and challenging until the point then you take the southern draconian city and defend Meandors push and this warlords push at the archon dwelling, after I moved some scouts towards the WL and Unoras their cities get burned or controlled by independent shadow demons, it is a pretty great idea but unfortunately it leaves your enemies in a pretty dire position, they only have their capitals left and nothing else if i saw it correctly and the independent shadow demons don't really do much beside occupying some cities formerly owned by Unoras. Attached is a picture of the warlords (can't recall his name right now) final army after I already killed Unoras. It's turn 52 and he can not afford anything but a bunch of basic T1-2 units. Thats no match for anyone in turn 52 (maybe he also tries to battle the shadow demons?)

tooweak.png


- When I moved on Unoras and he reveals the shadow demons the next turn they all attacked me 1 by 1 which is of course pretty weak. I mean I came with a stack to take his cap. 1 shadow demon at a time will not stand a chance there.

- After you beat the Warlord and Unoras you get this event making peace with Meandor who invites you to go to the wizard realm via his teleporter. But you just killed the Warlord (top left) or Unoras (bottom left) so your army is somewhere there while the teleporter leading towards meandor is pretty much on the middle of the map, that is easily 4 turns just walking on a map thats already on which you already beat everything within reach. That is just annoying, maybe just also make teleporters leading to Meandor at the capitals of the Warlord and Unoras for convenience? that get activated once you have the alliance with Meandor?

But all in all I must say the campaign is looking fantastic, even though there are quite some rough edges that need some smoothing out. But the overall story and map design is great!
Thanks for doing all this !

Edit: Some spelling mistakes
 
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Overall this provides me intel on why some of the enemies are quite weak. The initial starting position gets overrun by either Meandor and Independent monster spawners. Secondly, the elemental conflux quest never activates in wizard realm, the archon forts quest get cleared by "Unoras" stack from his the draconian city. Elsewhere there are some problems and I will relocate some of the teleporters. I will travel is not the most fun thing when reaching for destinations.

Thank you
 
Also I forgot to mention but I think I somehow skipped one of Meandors attacks, he is supposed to attack twice right? But I had one hunter going down towards the draconian city and one through the teleporter to the archon dwelling and somehow Meandor attacked from the Archon dwelling using the teleporter to enter my realm but i never got attacked from the south. So i think i triggered the 2nd encounter before the first and thereby somehow skipped the first encounter. Not a big deal but also not quite as intended?
 
Latest revision feature.

Elemental conflux quest activated and should be working. (One of these "did not attach scripts to an event" not set)
Meandor second assault fixed (Timer was delayed and created undesired result)
Enemies should no longer be wiped out by Meandor and independent Shadow Demons (Fixed spawn points and added the planned gates)
Fixed a typical Hiliadan exploit avoiding scripts by the first archon fort (There was a design flaw in the void which created a shortcut)
The Archon fort(s) quest is longer doable for independents and Meandor (No a.i blockers available)
Removed "some" of the Archon defenders by the dwellings (Palace guards, titans etc)
Fixed the double bridge quest (Owner scripts changes activates everytime someone takes a city "upon a change owner script")
Fixed the double Meandor quest appearing twice in the quest log (Apparently, it applied at two different times for two separate quest leaders which it should not)
Fixed the mentioning of old related issues with Meandor again. (His wizard gate only applies once for less confusion)
Moved the central Meandor gate after the enemies are beaten (Much closer to avoid the most annoying travels without reasons)
Some of the lesser shadow demons spawn by Unoras has been modified (The intentional lonely spawns where removed)
Werlac, Unoras and Tren has been provided with a much more different approach to reach the player

In overall the map has seen some increase in difficulty in terms of balance and enemy strength. The player is still safe at the beginning from any harm, but things drastically increase after a while. I tried out some new scripts and methods to push things a little further.

Hopefully, now the most crucial scripts should be ready and the most annoying things taken care of.
 
I improved some of the map content for both maps and fixed some missing aliases in the maps.

First map
I have not figured out yet, why the first map always upon winning the scenario tells that you lost have the scenario. It's something weird with the quest/win aliases. I have not figured out why.
Some of the missing aliases icons in some the conversation where added correctly.
The clouded peaks area has been altered. It contains much more blighted/artic terrain to better cap the amount of "boring" terrain.
Some more lightning was added to the underground

Second map
Warning text altered for the campaign
New world map altered
Fixed the "Soldier" misspelling.

Regarding how script heavy scenario 2 already is, everything runs smoothly even on high graphics which is positive. When the Wizard realm is completed it will feature around 2000 individual scripts. Setting up a climate pattern rolling each turn is not something that is done in a minute, is extremely boring and takes several days to set up. Due to the fact that I have to go through every individual turn so that "tropical" is really activating when it should be"tropical" so it does not show up frozen things suddenly. etc

The wizard realm has 20 different climates zones and changes each turn with scripts. So far I completed 4 out of 20 zones and it's a cumbersome progress due to how careful I have to be with the scripting making sure everything works. So I only work little by little with the wizard realm scripts and treat it as a separate project. Finish time for the wizard realm will probably be set to January or February depending on how much things come forward with the story and nailing the last potential bugs with the scenarios. :)
 
Oh dear god that sounds like an awful amount of work... I'm sure no one would be pissed if you decide to just ditch the changing climate zones if they are so much work.
But good luck on your endeavours!
 
Fluksen said:
Oh dear god that sounds like an awful amount of work... I'm sure no one would be pissed if you decide to just ditch the changing climate zones if they are so much work.
But good luck on your endeavours!
Click to expand...

But, on the other hand, I'm currently not able to work on the third scenario due to the unfinished story progression. So it essentially leaves me with bug fixing and the eternal coping with boring scripts. It's basically copied and paste by changing numbers so it matching the markers and increasing its value and disables it on a different climate etc. The inside story progression needs to decide on so I can build something out of it. Even if the story background is finalized it's still left me with big questions marks for many characters from the previous scenario.

Surface terrain for the third scenario is almost finished and left open for the amount of content that should be in it. As soon as the draft content has been corrected for scenario 2 and the things stated in the draft content of scenario 3. Then I can probably start to organize the content. I think it's better to have working content from previously mission and not try to stack more question marks over and over again. It's essentially to straighten thing up and keep a red line throughout out the campaign. If this thing takes very long time to sort out, I might concentrate on building up my own project campaign.
 
I finished a template for the scenario 3B.

It means that we now have a template for mission 3A and 3B which is essentially is core maps for either mission and can be altered and improved to fit the story. I update the draft scenario 3 with a new overview map.
 
After Christmas holidays and new years eve. I will have more time to fully develop time to map production again. I have been working little on and off on everything so far now.

As far as it goes I have been taking care of bugs still occurring and minor issues in scenario 1 and 2. However, we are working on scenario 3A mostly for the moment.

It's getting further into the production and scriptings are taking place currently (about 4 scenes already). I think if everything goes alright in January and I can work on it fully it's likely I can finish it in the near future.

For 3C it's likely it will take part as an un-canon scenario and the map production on this map will not be prioritized as much as 3A and 3B. 3C is more a scenario where the world got destroyed.
 
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I updated many things and improved scripting for all the main scenarios. Added the alternate scenes that were supposed to have been added in the first scenario from the beginning.

Utilized some new scripting for the maps and added the possiblities of consequenses and such for the final maps.
 
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