Strategic Campaign

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

 

I think the game's engine could support Narrative Campaigns for single player, but due to the sheer amount of work involved, specifically recording sound FX, dialogue tracks, writing the story and dialogue, camera work and cut scenes, building 20 scenarios, etc., WFG can't put that kind of effort into making something official. We could adapt work from others, such as the Macedonian campaign, but to truly make a narrative campaign from scratch would be nigh impossible. 

That's why I think some kind of Strategic Campaign or multiple Campaigns would be easier to achieve for single player. What do you think? The image above is from an aborted projects I was involved in 14-15 years ago, but is illustrative of the concept.

[ShadowOfHassen]

I like the idea of a strategic campaign, but while I don't have a full grasp on WFG's resources, but I think it is still a possibility to do narrative campaign. Yes, it'd take a lot of work, but you have a story and dialogue writer right here. Scenarios should also be pretty easy, all we need is some exited map builders. Things like sound effects and voice-overs would have to be added later, but we can just use closed captions at first and then hire/ use volunteers for the voices.

And as for cutscenes, what happened if instead of cutscenes we wrote interludes somewhat like Wesnoth and then have scripted cutscenes in the beginning of the scenarios? That would simply animating to just the in game animations (which are already done).

Plus a narrative tutorial campaign would help newbies with the learning curve.

 

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Could a basic narrative campaign be done? Sure, but because of the nature of the game it would have to be historically based, and that limits how many civs you can use. We could go the AOE2 route and have a dozen different historical campaigns, but that's now 12x the work. Audio tracks alone, a lot of work. Finding voice actors, etc., making music cues. 

 

5 hours ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

Plus a narrative tutorial campaign would help newbies with the learning curve.

A narrative tutorial is necessary, I agree. But that will need to be done regardless. Creating fully-realized narrative campaigns would be the difficulty.

[chrstgtr]

14 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

That's why I think some kind of Strategic Campaign or multiple Campaigns would be easier to achieve for single player. What do you think? The image above is from an aborted projects I was involved in 14-15 years ago, but is illustrative of the concept.

I think this (and the lack of a smarter AI) is the biggest obstacle to gaining a larger player base. The lack of a campaign mode (and a smarter AI) makes new players less likely to engage with the game for a sustained period of time. 

Anecdotally, I know when I started playing 0AD, I played the game for about a week until I learned the basics and could regularly beat AI. Then I stopped playing for a week or so because it didn't feel like I was "building" towards anything. Then I started playing again until I beat the hard AI on every map. Then I stopped playing again for like a month because I felt like everything was repetitive and boring. Then I randomly decided to try the multiplayer lobby and haven't really stopped playing since. 

[Stan`]

I mean the Macedonia campaign could be a good start...

[Vantha]

I totally agree, narrative campaigns, especially if connected to an actually useful tutorial, would be awesome.

If someone starts working on it, count me in, contact me. Im down to helping as I can.

[Genava55]

Have the compatibility issues been resolved?

[Stan`]

IIRC it was almost ready for A27 and now someone is bringing it back to A26 in their own fork of the repo.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I still don't think everyone understands the work necessary to create a good narrative campaign that will work for modern players. Yes, we can string scenarios together and put some text on the screen. That was fine 20 years ago. Today, people will want to see cut scenes (whether pre-rendered or with camera tracks in-engine) and have audio tracks and dialogue. You'll want custom animations too for the cut scenes.

 

What you're talking about is:

• A screenplay for the entire thing
• New animations
• Camera tracks
• Scripted events
• 20+ custom maps
• New code for cut scenes and other things
• Foley work for new sound effects
• Voice acting work and sound editing - Huge
• UI work
• ---

 

Essentially, you are taking what we've done for the game so far and then almost doubling it. 

 

The Macedonian campaign took and is taking a lot of work. Good work has been done. Even then, it has almost none of the things I listed and what an official campaign will need. I'm not poo pooing anyone's ideas. But if it's the will of the Council to cast the Ring into the fires of Mt. Doom, then I'll see it done. I just think a Strat Campaign, while taking a lot of work in itself, would be easier to achieve.

[ShadowOfHassen]

Quote

What you're talking about is:

• A screenplay for the entire thing
• New animations
• Camera tracks
• Scripted events
• 20+ custom maps
• New code for cut scenes and other things
• Foley work for new sound effects
• Voice acting work and sound editing - Huge
• UI work
• ---

 

Essentially, you are taking what we've done for the game so far and then almost doubling it. 

 

The Macedonian campaign took and is taking a lot of work. Good work has been done. Even then, it has almost none of the things I listed and what an official campaign will need. I'm not poo pooing anyone's ideas. But if it's the will of the Council to cast the Ring into the fires of Mt. Doom, then I'll see it done. I just think a Strat Campaign, while taking a lot of work in itself, would be easier to achieve.

I like the strat idea, and it would be easier to make and I think it would be fun. And I'd love to see it in the game.

 

However, I don't think narrative campaigns are that hard. I think between me and @Vantha we have the history/ screenplay/ dialogue covered.

 

It looks like there's cut scenes already as well. (That's already 2/9 issues)

I don't know about sound effects/ animations, but I think we can reuse a lot of what's already done.

It doesn't have to be right away, though. The engine developers can work on adding a few of the engine thinks while we finish the encyclopedia and nail down the civilization balances (We do not want to make a properly balanced campaign and then have it unbalanced by someone rebalancing the civilizations.)

 

If WFG pulled back on making new civilizations(for a little bit) and polish the ones that are currently in 0 A.D. Then the first few campaigns. I think the game would be good enough to put on Steam. More civs and campaigns can be added later, and with the bigger audience we might have more help.

Also, would it be easier to hire we hire voice actors for 0 A.D. than have volunteers?

 

[ShadowOfHassen]

@wowgetoffyourcellphone would the strat campaign allow you to keep soldiers after each battle? If so, would that be suitable to add to the narrative campaign? It would make the campaigns more Empire At War/ Battle for Middle earth than Age of Empires, but It's an idea I like. Of course, not all the soldiers would be able to be transferred it'd have to be something like Battle for Middle Earth with only the level2+ soldiers be kept?

Also in order to simply the code bases then we could have the map be the progression of the narrative and what would give information of the battle in strat campaign be the overview land info be the prologue/ briefing for the narrative. We just only have the player in the narrative campaigns so the AI doesn't try to "Retake" one of the pervious campaigns.

 

[LienRag]

Could you explain what you mean by a Strategic Campaign ?

[Gurken Khan]

10 hours ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

Of course, not all the soldiers would be able to be transferred it'd have to be something like Battle for Middle Earth with only the level2+ soldiers be kept?

Maybe the soldiers could be put in a "recall pool", so you could draw out of that for the next scenario. (If I had already half-leveled units I'd prefer them over completely fresh meat.)

[ShadowOfHassen]

6 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

Maybe the soldiers could be put in a "recall pool", so you could draw out of that for the next scenario. (If I had already half-leveled units I'd prefer them over completely fresh meat.)

That's something similar to what Battle For Wesnoth does, except in wesnoth you have to pay extra for them. It's a possibility, but it might make things tricky. Usually at the end of a game I have 50+ random low level meat shields, and an extra 50 soldiers would do a lot for setting up a civilization. This could be an issue as you'd have to build later campaigns with a much higher difficulty to challenge people with 100 soldiers left over, and the person with only 5 soldiers would be in a very bad position.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

7 hours ago, LienRag said:

Could you explain what you mean by a Strategic Campaign ?

Have a map of the ancient world and you move armies and characters around and take cities, etc. There would be the high level "strat" map of the Mediterran, Middle East, North Africa, Greece, or wherever the campaign takes place. You'd drop into RTS level to play out the moves. So, if you want to take a province, you'd drop down to the level of a skirmish map and play it out against the AI. If you win the match, you're given the province. 

[hyperion]

https://github.com/wraitii/0ad_grand_strat

[Stan`]

25 minutes ago, hyperion said:

https://github.com/wraitii/0ad_grand_strat

Needs => https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4979 IIRC

[LienRag]

On 26/11/2023 at 7:12 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Have a map of the ancient world and you move armies and characters around and take cities, etc. There would be the high level "strat" map of the Mediterran, Middle East, North Africa, Greece, or wherever the campaign takes place. You'd drop into RTS level to play out the moves. So, if you want to take a province, you'd drop down to the level of a skirmish map and play it out against the AI. If you win the match, you're given the province. 

Thanks, I understand.

I played Shogun : Total War for a while and yes I loved the concept.

I believe that it's a bit complicated to do it right in a RTS where you can build armies in the skirmish map rather than on the strategic maps.

I didn't really like Age of Kings campaigns, for example, they're more "farming" that actually strategic or tactical.

Maybe with time limits (not hard ones, but for example the sooner you finish, the more troops you can take with you to the next map), or if you know in advance how scarce resources will be on the future Skirmish maps, or even better if keeping untouched resources on a Skirmish map will provide for strategic resources afterward ?

[alre]

49 minutes ago, LienRag said:

Thanks, I understand.

I played Shogun : Total War for a while and yes I loved the concept.

I believe that it's a bit complicated to do it right in a RTS where you can build armies in the skirmish map rather than on the strategic maps.

I didn't really like Age of Kings campaigns, for example, they're more "farming" that actually strategic or tactical.

Maybe with time limits (not hard ones, but for example the sooner you finish, the more troops you can take with you to the next map), or if you know in advance how scarce resources will be on the future Skirmish maps, or even better if keeping untouched resources on a Skirmish map will provide for strategic resources afterward ?

I think time being a factor is a potentially fun concept.

But otherwise, remember 0AD is a game with its core mechanics which should be the same of any in-game campaign. probably something like Rise of Nations strat campaign is best: simple, fun, mostly the same as playing any skirmish map.

[zozio32]

I think you should be able to carry over part of your unused collected resource to the next skirmish, but on the ennemy side, their starting resource would depend on the time spent as well. To make it "strategic",  you could have a system were the enemy resource level in the next map is linked to the time spent on the previous one, and on the level of resource in the map. This way, there is an advantage in being quick even if you don't ocllect much in the present map (that will deny your next ennemy to start with too much), or on the contrary you might decide to dev a lot of economy in the present map if the next one is poor.   Of course, you might not know very well how is the resource level in the next map:   some potential spying action?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

18 hours ago, zozio32 said:

I think you should be able to carry over part of your unused collected resource to the next skirmish, but on the ennemy side, their starting resource would depend on the time spent as well. To make it "strategic",  you could have a system were the enemy resource level in the next map is linked to the time spent on the previous one, and on the level of resource in the map. This way, there is an advantage in being quick even if you don't ocllect much in the present map (that will deny your next ennemy to start with too much), or on the contrary you might decide to dev a lot of economy in the present map if the next one is poor.   Of course, you might not know very well how is the resource level in the next map:   some potential spying action?

I think there could be a Strat Level of resources that you get from holding territories and winning battles, and then you can translate those resources to upgrading your territories and choosing bigger amounts of starting resources for the next skirmish match.

 

So, let's say the campaign map is Greece/Aegean/Asia Minor. The Campaign resource could be called "Talents." It's a nice neutral, but historic money designation. Each territory you hold could either grant you more talents or cost you talents. Holding Laurium, for example, where historically there was a very famous and productive silver mine, would grant you talents, but holding Marathon would be neutral or cost you talents. What you use talents on is you could buy starting buildings for each territory. So, if you erect a Storehouse in the Marathon territory you'd start any skirmish in that territory with a free Storehouse. Buy a garrison with your talents and that territory will start with extra soldiers or defend itself against an enemy attack even if you have no Hero or General there. The enemy could take it before you get there, but it would be costlier for them to take it in deaths. 

You could even "store" talents in specific territories so that you start a skirmish map there with extra resources. 

[chrstgtr]

On 25/11/2023 at 11:27 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I still don't think everyone understands the work necessary to create a good narrative campaign that will work for modern players. Yes, we can string scenarios together and put some text on the screen. That was fine 20 years ago. Today, people will want to see cut scenes (whether pre-rendered or with camera tracks in-engine) and have audio tracks and dialogue. You'll want custom animations too for the cut scenes.

 

Perfect is the enemy of good. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

7 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Perfect is the enemy of good. 

Good in 2023 means what?  

[chrstgtr]

3 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Good in 2023 means what?  

Fair. My point is that something is better than nothing. And, I wouldn't let the giant mass of work to paralyze you from doing something to improve the current state of SP. 

Just my two cents. You do you. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

15 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Fair. My point is that something is better than nothing. And, I wouldn't let the giant mass of work to paralyze you from doing something to improve the current state of SP. 

Just my two cents. You do you. 

I guess it depends if we want to to release something relatively complete or if we are comfortable iterating such a campaign over multiple alphas.