[Warhammer Dark Omen Forum]

Warhammer Dark Omen Forum | Modifications | Campaigns (Moderator: Malus)
Wood Elves

[cuthalion]

Already included in the latest Mod Pack download
http://forum.dark-omen.org/help-section/read-me-ultimate-dark-omen-xpvistawin7win81win10-game-fixes-t111.0.html

Wood Elves Release Notes

1. Player regiments list and stats are in file troop_stats.pdf inside folder ../Mods/Wood Elves/.. - for those who won't open plyr_all.arm in editor.

2. What was actually modified.

a. Player army is a wood-elf army with features based on Table Top wood elf army - as much as Dark Omen engine allows.
b. Player will have to fight different enemy races, including several missions vs Skaven from Shadow of the Horned Rat.
a+b. All this includes a lot of new to Dark Omen troops and unit sprites. Rat Ogres, Doom Wheels, Wild Riders and many others.
   This becamse possible due to Aqrit's extention xslots.txt - feature that allows adding new units w/o overwriting original Dark Omen units.
c. 100% of missions have altered enemy positions, armies and behaviour on the battle field. Several missions were taken from my other mod- Chaos Dwarves.
   But they are in minority.
d. The campaign game flow includes all possible original Dark Omen missions + brand new map and also extra missions in existing maps. Overall 30 missions.
e. Ranged weapon parameters were changed slightly: Pistol range (skaven and dwarves have them) was increased from short-bow range to mean between shortbow and longbow.
f. A few spell costs were adjusted. To the most part, spells used by enemy mages - in order to slightly increase game difficulty.
g. Some of the sounds were modified. In particular, battle commands used by Skaven and Dwarves were taken from Warhammer Shadow of the Horned Rat.
h. There are a few custom leaders' heads in. This became possible after a few bugs were found that caused crashes. In particular, King Orion now leads wood elf host himself.
i. Army Book has information about all player units with pictures. Also, troop roster should display unit banners correctly.
j. I tried to remove all artifacts (except potions of strength) that are found in buildings/stones/other objects. Everything that can be found is on enemy troops or between missions.
However if I missed something in this respect, please report.

3. Many thanks to those w/o whom this mod would have never been released.
- Eternal Olly, driver and inspirator of all good that's happening to community.
- Illidan who helped with sprites and army books.
- Ghabry and Aqrit - developers that provided so cool tools for modding.
- Other developers, sprite artists and community members whose works I used w/o knowing who their real authors were

4. This is first release. I have passed the campaign myself and tested it. However there may be bugs - compatibility ones or those  I did not find myself. Please report and be sure I will do everything to eliminate bugs.
Also, a few things may be updated after a while: more custom leader heads, a few new enemy units etc.

P.S. The goal was not to create a hard mod but something interesting and at the same time not annoying. Several times I adjusted/reduced difficulty in battles. If you played my other mods - Chaos Dwarves and Goblin Adventures, Wood Elves should be easier than Chaos Dwarves and even more easy than Goblin Adventures. Only a few missions are a real challenge - and even then, there are no missions that are both long and annoying, where you defeat 4 hard waves but in 5th lose something important...If you lose then you lose quickly Most of battles are doable w/o much problems as soon as you learn whereabouts and stuff.

[olly]

Excellent, this alternative campaign is going to be so cool to play through, many thanks!

[Kloppo]

Hi Cuthalion,

I've recently started playing DO again, after I saw SOTHR appear on GOG. This site has helped me enormously in getting it to run in 3D mode.

Back when I was 13 (and didn't understand English as well) I couldn't do it, but I've finished the campaign rather quickly and with 24k+ gold to spare. So I decided to try and fight my way through one of the alternative campaigns I found here.

Your Woodelves one being the freshest (and presumably very good, being the product of so much experience) became my challenge of choice. And man is it tough. I know it's supposed to be easier than the other campaigns you made, but when you're used to the AI just sitting there having their behinds bombarded, it takes a little getting used to.

Eventually I managed to progress, but now I'm stuck. I think it is the 8th mission. It has the cutscene/dialogue and background for the Helmgart mission, but I guess that's not where the actual battle will take place, because I've already attacked and defended the tower before.

My game crashes while in the 'preparing for battle screen'. I can play all my previous save games without a problem, so I think it's related to this level specifically. I have no further information for you, Windows just states that the program has stopped working and will not give me any specifics. All I can say is that I've got all my units alive (and made a little money since the start too, it's not like all my troops have been dying every mission), in case there might be a conflict in the unit allocations or some such thing I don't know anything about.

I hope you can help me solve this problem, because I was seriously enjoying this campaign

PS I gather there's no easy way to actually change the dialogues and travelmap to actually fit the campaign you're presenting. I guess if it could be done it would have been done

PPS In the meantime I will give your Chaos Dwarves campaign a shot. I expect ragequits.

[olly]

Welcome and good to here you're finding it as tough as I am.

Assuming I counted the missions correctly in whmtg.txt script, its B1_08 that loads Axebite Pass with Dark Elves and there is one sprite that is too big for 3d mode, that he must have missed reducing in size when we tested last week. I will see which one it is but if you want to progress immediately then you could switch to CPU mode within Dark Omen game Options menu and play that mission.

There is a way Ghabry found to change the map dots, so will reinvestigate again.




****UPDATE**** I think the problem sprite is the 053DarkElfSorcerers.spr that appears corrupted, as unable to export its sprite sheet properly in our sprite tool or scroll through its frames (only 1st sheet DarkElfMage_23.tga works)*******


****UPDATE2*** It was the Hydra that was causing issue with 3D Mode***********
Replacement Hydra ->
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8ztdf3nnei0017y/Hyrda3d.zip?dl=0

[Kloppo]

Hi,

Thanks for your quick reply. I've tried your solution and the level works in CPU mode. I don't know whether this confirms or disconfirms your suspicion about the sprite. I've seen it casting spells at me so it cannot be entirely corrupted right?

It is indeed Axebite Pass and there are  doing what they do best. Much fun, the forced pace and  give it a hectic feel that's a lot more like real battle (I'd imagine) than some of the missions in the original campaign.

Good luck in battle!

[cuthalion]

Hi guys,
Yea, unfortunately I cannot run game in 3d mode so I will have to adjust it using your experience.

Olly, I substituted Rat Ogre (1229 pixels high previously) to original SoTHR Rat Ogre size - it happened that it was exactly 1024 pixels - you said it was maximum possible. Also, Rat Ogres are encountered earlier in the campaign. So if campaign did not crash in 3d, then yes, 1024 is enough small for DO not to crash. And that mission - B1_08 -  is vs another race. So this must be another sprite, I have a suspicion about one large sprite from that mission, I will check sheet demensions and report to you.

Kloppo,
It appears damn hard and annoying to make good artificial intelligence for enemy archers and/or mobile artillery in DO, unfortunately So yes, in this mission it behaves cool but this is not the case for most of missions. Anyway thanks that you are enjoying this campaign.

[illidan]

congratulation cuthalion for your very great  campaign !!!  i am having great fun with

[cuthalion]

Thank you Illidan for both opinion and help with sprites

I made a fix that crashed game in 3d mode in Dark Elf missions. Same first post link is still valid.

[hari8]

Do you mean that next mission after Blighted Towers siege? I cannot recall missions where there were more than 2 wizards.

exactly, two indeed. made it once, but lost two regiments... just keeping on trying.

[hari8]

Holy crap, Troll Land was even harder - but I did it, as you have enough money to rebuy all them splattered men

[cuthalion]

Yeah, I add plenty of money in my campaigns. It's enough fun to pass missions. It might be too annoying to reload in case you do not have money for reinforcements.

[cuthalion]

Also, about game difficulty.
In original campaign missions are easy whatever spells or units you use.
In Wood Elves, difficulty of a mission often depends on whether or not your Spellsinger has his stopper-spell Snow Blizzard.
If I used Snow Blizzard and a mission seemed too easy, I added more enemies. Next time, if I did not have Blizzard at the same mission, it became too hard.
And the other way around. In a mission where there was no Blizzard, I adjusted game difficulty to moderate or even hard. But another time my wizard got the Blizzard and the whole battle was too easy.
Unfortunately there was no proper way for me to control it.

For instance, in Chaos Dwarces player army did not have pure wizards as Dark Omen engine suggests it. All spells were provided directly in ctl scripts, not at random.

[hari8]

Ok the one before Nagash was a bit frustrating, in particular because I "won" once with no unit lost and it didnt showed "Mission complete" ... after ~20-30 tries I switched to another tactic and then it was ok the missions after that until Loren Forest are pretty doable, I didnt need that much tries...

btw

i. Army Book has information about all player units with pictures. Also, troop roster should display unit banners correctly.

I dont have that information i think; what are these 4 flying guys good for? Plus my Shadowdancer has the same banner as the Wardancers (in Army book, in the game it's ok).

[cuthalion]

I downloaded version using first post link, and army book looks good there. You are right, Shadowdancer has the same banner as wardancers. But if you go to detailed description of a unit, everything looks good, warhawk riders included.
By the way, somehow that download link misses a pdf file with a table of unit statistics. I will check it again when I come home.
Warhawk riders are veru useful at solving tactical problems during the battle: to neutralize enemy artillery or to put down enemy wizard hiding behind advancing armies, or to lure enemies and escape direct battle while your mages/archers are doing their work. They are extremely strong archers. Just don't throw them in the midst of melee unless urgent need. They will not last very long because there are only 4 of them.

[hari8]

Yepp, Information is there, my fail  : but them Chaos Dwarves in/after Vingtienne (the last GS battle in original campaign) is tough...

Edit: just a matter of tactic. I thought it's a you-cant-sit-in-the-edge-and-shoot-them-campaign as the original one is, but it's a decent approach in some missions