Revenge of the Lord - a good campaign v0.99

[alexsa2015sa]

"The kingdom of Dominus is ancient, its royalty tracing its lineage to the first Avatar himself. Today, your inheritance is all but destroyed by vile monsters from the underworld, and you are backed into the corner at Dwarfton. The city of hard-working folk is under siege, and it seems all but impossible to repel the invaders. In desperation, you perform a mystical ritual, found in the moldy tome spirited from your ancestors' library during your flight from evil. At the price of your humanity, it bestows great powers of omniscience upon you, allowing you to direct your subjects with superb ease.

The evil keepers will suffer, as you pursue Revenge of the Lord."

A "good keeper" campaign designed for use with KeeperFX 0.4.6 unofficial , 9 levels + two secret levels. For obvious thematic as well as balancing reasons you normally get no functional prison, no functional torture chamber (but there are some capturable slabs to unlock Samurai as per KeeperFX-defined attractions), and of course no graveyard. ...That doesn't mean the AI keepers don't get these rooms, though (Vampires in particular are pure evil). Scavenger room is buildable, but isn't all that useful with maps having few neutral/heroic creatures to scavenge and Priestesses are infamous for Wind/Gas poorly interacting combo. Bridge building is limited at 1 slab, since the Attack Rooms AI for some reason will target a bridge if it sees one (...was that ever reported as a bug, btw? Since it is one)... and to prevent walling in at liquid corners.

Difficulty level is somewhere along the lines of "at least as hard as original DK later levels but easier than AK"; it's impossible to wall in for one reason or another on most levels, there are no gems until the latter half of level and even then their mining triggers more attackers, and half the time you don't even get to design the dungeon layout (4 of 9 levels start with pre-dug dungeon with the remaining map taken up by enemies). All of your enemies are always allied. Transfer creature specials are present, winning without them is possible but may be more challenging. The final level might be the most challenging, especially if you feed the AI with corpses and let it build up an army of vampires.

There should be no puzzles using true exploits here. And I did make sure to patch the walls with impenetrable rock when necessary. Some of the maps (Sparkleforest, Misty Bog, maybe other ones) did hang unannounced a couple of times, but it did not happen often enough - I only reloaded saves three times throught the campaign on last testing playthrough, or something like (less than once per map).

There is a file containing mentor scripts, but they're not voiced because 1) there's only 1 terrible voice actor easily available for me - myself (and I'm severely rusty at spoken English) and 2) they're still subject to change.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MKx...ew?usp=sharing

v 0.994 - more helpful messages across campaign.

v 1.00 - finally got around to fixing most bugs. Reduced difficulty for earlier levels somewhat, still challenging enough. A few helpful messages were added.

[YourMaster]

I took a quick look, and first impressions are very nice. Will actually play something soon.

I've uploaded it for you: https://keeperklan.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=130.
You're the 'uploader', so I think you can update it as you please. I can't.

EDIT:

I've attempted the first level and failed. I enjoyed it though and will try again, very good map. Next time I'll try to push on more, see if that stops some parties from coming and try to use the boulders for defense in the meantime. Those hounds from the south are killer though.
Also, I hope next time I can prevent the enemies from destroying my temples, I'd like to get monks.

[alexsa2015sa]

Um, well, this version (edited post-haste after last playtest) seems to contain an incorrect endless loop for level 1, which launches an unstoppable horde of attackers, so... well. I honestly lost count how many times I have scripted this kind of errror.
I fixed this, but unless I misunderstand the interface, I can't edit file here because I'm not mapmaker (as of this post).

[YourMaster]

Well, since I gave ownership to you, neither can I. I messaged Rex for you, so he can give you the permissions you need.

And you seem to make pretty advanced and complex maps/scripts, it's quite a surprise to see a campaign like this come out of the blue. Have you made maps before? Have you been lurking here for a bit to see what was out there?

And no, I don't think there has ever been a bug report about the 'attack rooms' objective, you can make one here.
I must say, I don't even remember playing a map where heroes come in and destroy your rooms, very interesting mechanic.
I peaked at the script of your first map, and did notice that indeed if even a single temple piece is destroyed you can never claim Monks. If this is not intended you can consider changing the temple availability from 'player0 >= 8' to 'player_good <= 0' temple tiles. This way you can research a temple as soon as you've claimed all temples. (provided there are 8 on the map).

I also think the 'just one tile of bridge' is an interesting new mechanic.

[alexsa2015sa]

...
And you seem to make pretty advanced and complex maps/scripts, it's quite a surprise to see a campaign like this come out of the blue. Have you made maps before? Have you been lurking here for a bit to see what was out there?
...
I peaked at the script of your first map, and did notice that indeed if even a single temple piece is destroyed you can never claim Monks. If this is not intended you can consider changing the temple availability from 'player0 >= 8' to 'player_good <= 0' temple tiles. This way you can research a temple as soon as you've claimed all temples. (provided there are 8 on the map).

Mapmaking and modding is my primary hobby - I frankly don't even play that much anymore, last few years. DK1 was one of the first games I ever played back in 90s, when I was more of a gamer. Some months ago I've decided to play it once again, was surfing the net, stumbled upob KeeperFX, played it for a while,.. and then I thought "why not?" There are several maps I've designed before making this campaign, but they're not as polished and several suffer from perpetual hangs; I'll see which are worth publishing later this week (they're mostly classic evil keeper maps). Room destruction and capture-to-research is one of things I played around with one of those maps, actually; you don't even get to build treasure rooms until enough tiles are captured, never mind the library!

Concerning level 1:, there are actually a lot of temple tiles, with several 8-tile clusters, so it's not quite as painful to lose slabs here. And the inability to claim Monks if you manage to lose all Temples on the map is intentional, given that it's borderline impossible for a surviving player. I've actually toned down difficultly for this level multiple times; one version (with different map layout) did have exactly 8 tiles which were to be protected at all costs.

[Woudo]

First level took me a paltry THREE HOURS to do. I decided to do a blind playthrough video of it so I was avoiding loading the game and lost a lot of troops to boulders and just generally really dumb shit. By the time I reached the heart, the map had actually hit the creature limit with how many reinforcements had spawned in the hero heart. The classic 30 vs 220 / David v Goliath fight which I did eventually win.

Problems I encountered;

If you approach the hero heart early from the north, it'll spawn some "boss parties" in the heart room which have Vampires and Mistresses in them. If that happens, you can no longer clear out the 'lieuntenants' and disable party spawning until you open up the heart.
Why is there no Power_hand_slap?
I had a moment where the tier 1 undead harass just endlessly spawned until it hit creature limit. I'm not sure how that happened. It was right after I cleared out all the monsters in the heart.
You need to add fireball effects to the lava so it doesn't look so dark.

And what's with that small bit of path on the west side of the player's dungeon?

[DBlac]

I can imagine the lack of a slap would be a thematic choice, i doubt a "Good Keeper" would be slapping their heroes about.

[alexsa2015sa]

Problems I encountered;
...

Thanks, those oversights will be addressed - the boss parties weren't meant to prevent you from stopping attacks, and the 220 vs 30 wasn't meant to happen either (even the level 9 has at most dozen of Reapers zipping around). The endless undead spawn occurs because of a wrong script, too (reset timer washidden within conditional statement). As for fireballs... odd, but I was certain I did place them on this level. The bit of path was meant to prevent player from expanding 3x4 room to 5x4... although the 3x3 on east can be expanded.

The lack of slap is, indeed, thematic choice. I think I'll add this tidbit to description of campaign if not ingame information, since it's not evident and, let's face it, slapping imps is intrisic part of playing DK. You can't direct your boulder traps, as well.

I can't yet manage files here (and unless I fundamentally misunderstand something, it'll require permission as mapmaker), and as long as the link in the OP remains external, it's the latest version.

[YourMaster]

You could try to PM Metal Gear Rex or Dotted directly for those permissions.

I noticed the lack of slapping right away, and immediately understood it to be disabled because of the 'good keeper' thing, so for me it did not require further explanation.

EDIT: I've finished the first map, I enjoyed it. The difficulty was quite manageable the second go around. That's the thing with hounds, either they destroy you or you destroy them, this time I was strong enough to defend against those mid-level parties going straight for the hearth without any units. I even made some mistakes, I did not train thieves because I assumed I would never get them past level 10, but in the end I had many increase level specials that would have taken me over the edge. Also, for some reason I forgot to make an actual temple to sacrifice imps and I lost many against traps and hounds.

The objective did not click with me, as you mention I had to destroy the 'lieutenants', but I never did figure out how to do it. Right before the end when I cleared the south-west I got the message I cleared out the Warlocks. This is when I got Destroy Walls, so used all the specials I collected, breached the heart-room from the south with the spell and cast CTA on the hearth and won. There was a troll-counter attack, but that came too late as they came right before I won and I did not have to fight them.

EDIT2: If you describe your issue about what's wrong with the bridge-attack and why, and have a map(+save) where it happens, I think I can fix it.

[Woudo]

I did the same thing with the Thieves; assumed you wouldn't be able to ascend to Knights, so focused on Dwarves instead. It was a mistake, Dwarves are terrible.
I remembered Dwarves being much, much tankier than they were in this campaign.