"A Xia's Diary IV" - Gweilo's design blog and commentary

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"A Xia's Diary IV" - Gweilo's design blog and commentary

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Gweilo
Angel

posted 10-17-17 06:32 ET (US)

Here I go again! I've started developing the 4th installment in the Xia Diary series. This time I will focus on ancient Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia (collectively known as Annam). I've chosen the Tran Dynasty of Vietnam (13th century CE) to be the background for the storyline. Here are some of the historic events from that region and period (I hope to include as many of these as possible).

1226 CE - The Tran family takes power in Annam after a successful coup of the Ly Dynasty, orchestrated by Prime Minister Tran Thu Do.

1226 CE - Nguyen Non and Doan Thuong lead revolts against the new Tran Dynasty. They try to rally support in the mountainous region of Bac Giang and Hao Duong.

1229 CE - Tran Thu Do puts down the revolt of Nguyen Non and Doan Thuong.

1232 CE - The Tran dynasty kills the last members of the Ly royal family.

1252 CE - The Tran dynasty under Emperor Tran Th�i T�ng send a punitive expedition against Champa (south Vietnam) for its continued piracy of the �ai Viet coast. The expedition is successful and brings back the Champa Queen Bo-da-la and the king's concubines as prisoners.

1255-1257 - The Mongols under command of Kublai Khan capture the Kingdom of Dali, located just northwest of Annam.

1258 CE - The Mongols invade Annam from Dali. The Dai Viet lose a major battle and the Tran royal family flees to an offshore island for refuge. The Mongols capture Chiao-chih, and massacre the population there.

1259 - The Tran Dynasty surrenders to Kublai Khan and promises to pay tribute. The Mongols withdraw from Annam. Mongke Khan, the Great Khan of the Mongols dies. The mongols halt further conquests until a new leader can be elected.

1264 - After 5 years of civil war among the Mongols, Kublai Khan emerges as the new Great Khan.

1268 - The Mongols begin the invasion of the Song Dynasty.

1279 - The Song Dynasty is conquered by the Mongols of Kublai Khan.

1281 - Kublai sends envoy Tran Di Ai back to Chiao-Chih in a coup attempt, but his small army is ambushed and destroyed by the Dai Viet. The Tran Dynasty rebels against the Mongols.

1282 - Kublai Khan captures Champa from his base in Guangzhou.

1285 - Kublai Khan invades Annam and captures Chiao-chih, but his Mongol army is soon defeated by the Dai Viet. The Mongols withdraw from Annam.

1287-88 - Kublai Khan again invades Annam, this time using a large naval invasion. The Mongol fleet is destroyed by the Dai Viet, and the invasion fails.

Woven amid those events will be diary entries that chronicle a son's quest to find his missing father.

As with all Xia Diary installments, this one will have the maximum scope of 10 missions. However, due to limitations on space on the empire map, I only plan for 5 new custom maps in this campaign. So there will be many continuation missions.

I will use Shaun's modified pricing scheme for commodities.

This campaign, like others in this series, will be rated 'Very Hard'.

Everything is in the very early stages, but I have created the empire map. I will build a teaser album in the Emperor Heaven Gallery soon.

Right now my goal is to complete this before the Year of the Rooster is over (i.e., January 2018). That estimate is pretty fluid right now.

Stay tuned for further updates and feel free to leave comments, questions, etc.

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[This message has been edited by Gweilo (edited 10-17-2017 @ 06:42 AM).]

Author

Replies:

Gweilo
Angel

posted 10-17-17 13:07 ET (US) 1 / 50

The storyline and mission flow is coming to me. Alot of it is going to be fictional, but it will be punctuated by real events. Here is my first draft of the mission teaser titles:

M1 - "Adventure on Steel Island" - 6 years, from 1221 CE to the end of 1226 CE.
M2 - "To Quell a Rebellion" - 3 years, from 1227 CE to the end of 1229 CE.
M3 - "A Quest for Spice" - 5 years, from 1230 CE to the end of 1234 CE.
M4 - "A Xia's Wrath" - 6 years, from 1235 CE to the end of 1240 CE.
M5 - "Old Bones Resurrected" - 7 years, from 1241 CE to the end of 1247 CE.
M6 - "The Threat of Champa" - 5 years, from 1248 CE to the end of 1252 CE.
M7 - "The Two Treasures of Tamralipti" - 5 years, from 1253 CE to the end of 1257 CE.
M8 - "Escape to Steel Island" - 2 years, from 1258 CE to the end of 1259 CE.
M9 - "The Mongol's Yoke" - 10 years, from 1260 CE to the end of 1269 CE
M10 - "Grand Xia of Dai Viet" - no time limit, starts in 1270 CE

UPDATED: I changed some of the mission titles and added their time limit years.

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[This message has been edited by Gweilo (edited 11-20-2017 @ 05:36 AM).]

user3
Pleb

posted 10-17-17 18:02 ET (US) 2 / 50

lol, some book and movie references in the titles, yes.
Dune, I got immediately, not so sure about the others.

Gweilo
Angel

posted 10-18-17 05:47 ET (US) 3 / 50

Correct, those Dune references just popped into my mind. Those are just draft mission titles; I may change them later depending on how the storyline turns out.

I've built the campaign teaser album and uploaded the first picture. The campaign will include the map of Weizhou Island.

http://emperor.heavengames.com/gallery/A-Xias-Diary-IV

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[This message has been edited by Gweilo (edited 10-18-2017 @ 06:32 AM).]

Gweilo
Angel

posted 10-19-17 08:19 ET (US) 4 / 50

I added 3 new images to the teaser album, including the first draft of the empire map.

http://emperor.heavengames.com/gallery/A-Xias-Diary-IV

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Gweilo
Angel

posted 10-19-17 17:04 ET (US) 5 / 50

I completed the draft of the first map, Wiezhou Island. It is based on the actual topography of the island. I'm happy with it, but I'll see how it plays. I uploaded the minimap of it plus 2 more screenshots into the teaser album.

http://emperor.heavengames.com/gallery/A-Xias-Diary-IV

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user3
Pleb

posted 10-19-17 18:36 ET (US) 6 / 50

Nice adaption of RL landscape for a game city. I'm assuming the few liberties are for gameplay restrictions.

Not being hypercritical, scaling seems high 60meter per tile, but I don't have the grid to measure accurately. A swampy area near the natural harbor? I would assume that the natural harbor area would make for a more accurate entry/exit point, but I don't know the historical settlement area of the 7th century island and the influences on 13th century uses.

You just raised the bar on what a '5' means for map reviews.

[This message has been edited by user3 (edited 10-19-2017 @ 06:41 PM).]

Gweilo
Angel

posted 10-20-17 05:30 ET (US) 7 / 50

It's always a challenge to build a map based on a RL location, as I learned with "Challenge at Westlake", "The Imperial Forbidden City", and "Hero of Wudang Mountain". The scaling is always off, as you noticed. Other liberties were taken too, based on what I have learned from other island maps I've built, and how this map fits into the overall campaign.

What you noticed as 'swampy area' on the map is actually an adaptation of your idea for beach dunes surrounding something the player needs. In this case, I've got iron ore deposits scattered in that river delta where it meets the sea, and the deposits are surrounded by some beach dunes. Because the river would block pathing I can't completely surround it like your image showed, but I can turn it into a puzzle where the player has to place bridges just right to open up access to the iron ore deposits. Right now this is still experimental; it should work but playtesting will tell more. If the miner's pathing is too restricted even with bridges I will have to tweak things. If this idea works out I'll upload a screenshot of it to the teaser album.

It made more sense to put the land entry/exit point on the north edge of the map since that direction is closer to the mainland. However the river entry/exit point is on the south edge. You may have noticed the scattering of 8 tiny islands around the map edges, what could those be? ....

...invasion points....

.....

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Gweilo
Angel

posted 10-20-17 21:59 ET (US) 8 / 50

I'm playtesting missions 1 and 2 on the Wiezhou map. The map seems to play quite well, I only need to tweak minor things. I uploaded two more screenshots to the playtest teaser album, including this one that shows the miners in the sand:

http://emperor.heavengames.com/gallery/A-Xias-Diary-IV/aai

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Gweilo
Angel

posted 10-22-17 10:46 ET (US) 9 / 50

After playtesting missions 1 and 2, I decided I needed to add 1 year to the time limit of mission 1. I also tweaked the Weizhou map slightly.

I've started building the Fu map, and it seems to be coming together pretty well. The Fu map will be used in missions 3 and 4. It's another enormous, humid climate map. Since this campaign only has 5 player-maps in it, I've decided to spend some extra time on their design. One thing I'm going to do is to create at least two of the maps as 'destroyed' cities, that a player will have to rebuild. I haven't done that design feature since my old "Bandit Lord's Destiny" campaign.

I have the storyline written up through the mission 2 introduction. I did decide to change the mission 2 title, and updated the post above to reflect it. I do have extensive notes on how I plan the storyline to develop for all 10 missions.

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[This message has been edited by Gweilo (edited 10-22-2017 @ 10:49 AM).]

Gweilo
Angel

posted 10-24-17 07:33 ET (US) 10 / 50

I worked some more on the Fu map last night, but I got side-tracked doing research on the ancient cities of southeast Asia.

The vietnamese city of Hue is a location a player will build at in this campaign. 'Hue' isn't a name available in the campaign creator, so I will substitute 'Hao' for it, which is available. I found a map of Hue that I will use as a reference when I build the game-map; I plan to include the Perfume River and have it flow all the way to the sea.

Angkor was the ancient name of the Khmer empire located in present-day Cambodia. It's capital city, Angkor Wat, was built in the late 12th century CE. A few hundred years later, Angkor Wat became known as Siem Reap, which is a city name available in this game. A player will need to do some building at Siem Reap, but they will only have a brief stay there (1 mission). I also found a map of the real Angkor Wat that I will use as a reference to build the game map (I uploaded it into the playtest album). I won't be able to pre-place any temples but I can place the river/moat layout.

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Gweilo
Angel

posted 10-25-17 05:45 ET (US) 11 / 50

Last night's progress:

1. The Fu map is now 80% completed. I like what I'm seeing.

2. I have written the storyline up through the mission 3 introduction.

3. Did some research on the topography of Hue (Hao) and Hanoi (Chiao-Chih) to prepare for their map designs.

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Gweilo
Angel

posted 10-26-17 18:33 ET (US) 12 / 50

Today's progress:

1. I fleshed out the storyline more, and it prompted me to change the title of mission 3 to "A Xia's Wrath" (I updated the post above to reflect this in the mission teaser titles).

2. I have completed the first draft of the Fu map, where missions 3 and 4 will take place. I uploaded the minimap of it to the campaign teaser album, you can see it here:

http://emperor.heavengames.com/gallery/A-Xias-Diary-IV/aam

3. I completed initial scripting of mission 3.

I hope to begin playtesting missions 3 and 4 soon.

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Gweilo
Angel

posted 10-27-17 22:41 ET (US) 13 / 50

I had my first playtest of mission 3 tonight. The new Fu map plays well and looks really good (if I do say so myself). However, my scripting was a little off as I had failed to account for the longer distances for immigrants, traders, delivery men, etc., on the enormous map. I need to tone down the scripting a little bit to accommodate. Suffice it to say I had fun up until getting overrun by the second invasion from the Champa pirate rogues.

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Gweilo
Angel

posted 10-30-17 21:14 ET (US) 14 / 50

Tonight's progress:

1. I completed first playthroughs of missions 3 and 4. The Fu map seems to play VERY well. It has a lot of different building options and is aesthetically appealing. I only tweaked a few minor tiles on it. I have a lot of tricky scripting going on in mission 4 but it seemed to fire correctly.

2. I have the storyline now written through the Mission 5 introduction. So it's officially half way done!

3. I began work on the Hao map. It is also an enormous-size map with a humid climate. It is an adaptation of the topography of the real city of Hue. It's still in the early stages but I like what is coming together.

I uploaded two new screenshots to the playtest teaser album. Viewable here: http://emperor.heavengames.com/gallery/A-Xias-Diary-IV

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Gweilo
Angel

posted 11-01-17 07:18 ET (US) 15 / 50

I spent a couple of hours working on the Hao (Hue) map last night. It is probably 60% finished. I like what I'm seeing. I am introducing an adaptation of the Hue Imperial city about 600 years before it was actually built, but it is just too interesting to ignore. I will justify this historical deviation by not making it entirely historically-accurate; for example I'll leave out the moat around it. Perhaps it can be viewed as an earlier version of the walled city that was later rebuilt in the 19th century CE when Hue was offically built by the Nguyen Dynasty.

I also revised some of the mission titles and have tweaked their time limits. Here is the revised information:

M1 - "Adventure on Steel Island" - 6 years, from 1221 CE to the end of 1226 CE.
M2 - "To Quell a Rebellion" - 3 years, from 1227 CE to the end of 1229 CE.
M3 - "A Quest for Spice" - 5 years, from 1230 CE to the end of 1234 CE.
M4 - "A Xia's Wrath" - 6 years, from 1235 CE to the end of 1240 CE.
M5 - "Old Bones Resurrected" - 7 years, from 1241 CE to the end of 1247 CE.
M6 - "The Threat of Champa" - 5 years, from 1248 CE to the end of 1252 CE.
M7 - "The Two Treasures of Tamralipti" - 5 years, from 1253 CE to the end of 1257 CE.
M8 - "Escape to Steel Island" - 2 years, from 1258 CE to the end of 1259 CE.
M9 - "The Mongol's Yoke" - 10 years, from 1260 CE to the end of 1269 CE
M10 - "Grand Xia of Annam" - no time limit, starts in 1270 CE

Updated: to reflect tweaks to mission titles and time limits.

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[This message has been edited by Gweilo (edited 11-05-2017 @ 06:15 AM).]

Gweilo
Angel

posted 11-03-17 05:35 ET (US) 16 / 50

Progress last night:

1. Completed the draft of the Hao (Hue) map. I'll upload a minimap of it to the teaser album in a day or two.

2. Finished writing the storyline through the end of mission 5.

3. Released a newsflash on this project at Emperor Heaven and Heavengames.com main.

At this point I need to pause the forward progress and do regression testing. This is necessary since I made tweaks to some city configurations (commodites, trade routes, etc.), and those can only be tested properly by replay from the beginning of the campaign. I started that last night and finished mission 1. I plan to do alot more playtesting over the next few days.

Overall, this project seems tp be on schedule for a release in December. Maybe I can release it before Christmas as a gift.

Expand your fun by downloading free custom campaigns for Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom.
Visit Zeus Heaven to expand your knowledge of Zeus and Poseidon.

[This message has been edited by Gweilo (edited 11-03-2017 @ 08:08 AM).]

Gweilo
Angel

posted 11-04-17 12:06 ET (US) 17 / 50

Progress:

1. I've replayed the campaign through winning mission 4. I only needed some minor tweaks to the prior missions' scriptings.

2. I finished initial event scripting for mission 5 on the Hao map. I hope to begin playtesting it tonight or tomorrow. I did rename the mission title (and mission 6 title) to better fit the storyline.

3. I've uploaded several new screenshots to the playtest album. This includes the draft of the Hao map. Viewable here:

http://emperor.heavengames.com/gallery/A-Xias-Diary-IV

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Visit Zeus Heaven to expand your knowledge of Zeus and Poseidon.

user3
Pleb

posted 11-04-17 12:22 ET (US) 18 / 50

Impressive map, and I did not know "tigers can walk or water", assuming a bridge collapsed.

Gweilo
Angel

posted 11-05-17 06:20 ET (US) 19 / 50

The game A.I. had calculated the tiger's movement and built pathing for it to walk across a bridge, and the tiger was just about to touch it when I used the shovel tool to delete the bridge. So the tiger just kept going across the river, as if the bridge was still there. I don't know if that really qualifies as a bug, probably not.

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user3
Pleb

posted 11-05-17 12:18 ET (US) 20 / 50

Timing was a key factor, I observed that most animation cycles have to complete before a path re-calculation is done.

Example: Placing roadblocks in front of road restricted walkers. If the current animation cycle carries the walker into the newly road-blocked tile then they ignore its presence, so placing a temporary 'bounce' roadblock 2 tiles away is effect but farther you may risk the 'undo' getting cleared before the walker bounces off the roadblock.

Apology for these off-topic comments.
-user3

Gweilo
Angel

posted 11-05-17 13:31 ET (US) 21 / 50

I just finished a binge of playtesting. Before I take a break, I wanted to share the updates. I completed testing missions 5 and 6 on the Hao map. It seems to play really well. This could be one of the best maps I've made; I'll let you in the player community decide. The 'rebuilding a ruined city' concept is not new but it does add an extra depth to the map. I did have to bump up the starting treasury funds in order to provide the extra money for 'ruins removal' using the shovel icon.

I uploaded 5 new screenshots into the playtest album, viewable here: http://emperor.heavengames.com/gallery/A-Xias-Diary-IV

Expand your fun by downloading free custom campaigns for Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom.
Visit Zeus Heaven to expand your knowledge of Zeus and Poseidon.

Gweilo
Angel

posted 11-06-17 16:23 ET (US) 22 / 50

Today's progress:

1. Completed writing the storyline through the end of mission 7.

2. Completed initial event scripting for mission 7.

3. Did more research on the ancient city of Angkor (Siem Reap). I now need to begin building the map for Siem Reap, and I want to make it as historically accurate to Angkor as possible.

On a side note, the storyline and events in mission 7 begin the Mongol's involvement in the campaign. Since they will play a prominent role in the final 4 missions of the campaign, I began re-watching the Netflix series "Marco Polo". I wanted to get inspired with the proper mind-set to inject the mongols in this campaign.

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Visit Zeus Heaven to expand your knowledge of Zeus and Poseidon.

Gweilo
Angel

posted 11-08-17 07:58 ET (US) 23 / 50

I started work on the Angkor map (Siem Reap, mission 7). I have a good start on it, but after doing more research I find that I'm stuck in a little historical quandry. Most of the temple complexes at Angkor had been completed by the early 13th century, but a player will not arrive at Angkor until 1253 CE. So using Angkor as a location at this point in the campaign timeline will force me to deviate from actual history. My options are:

1. Show the Angkor temple complexes as ruins on the map.
2. Show no ruins on the map, but show the correct topography of Angkor (moats and lakes), as if the temple complexes were in the early construction phase.

I am leaning towards option 2 because it lets me finish the map quicker (placing ruins logically takes a LONG time) and positions it better for release as an Open Play map later. Also, these Angkor temple complexes built over 1000 years ago are still standing today, so it wouldn't make much sense to show them as ruins.

I'm open to other ideas about this, if any of you care to share them.

Expand your fun by downloading free custom campaigns for Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom.
Visit Zeus Heaven to expand your knowledge of Zeus and Poseidon.

Gweilo
Angel

posted 11-09-17 17:02 ET (US) 24 / 50

After two days of intense map-making I have the draft of the Siem Reap map completed. It is enormous size with a humid climate, and is based on the actual topography of the ancient city of Angkor, which lies just north of Siem Reap. I think it looks pretty good but I'm not sure how it will play. It may need some tweaking. I uploaded a minimap of it into the teaser album, you can take a peek here:
http://emperor.heavengames.com/gallery/A-Xias-Diary-IV/abb

Expand your fun by downloading free custom campaigns for Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom.
Visit Zeus Heaven to expand your knowledge of Zeus and Poseidon.

Gweilo
Angel

posted 11-10-17 18:12 ET (US) 25 / 50

Tonight I playtested mission 7. The Siem Reap map plays fine, but for where this mission fits in on the campaign timeline I could have built a much smaller and less detailed map. This was a case of me obsessing to build a historical adaptation of Angkor, when something less would have sufficed. The big map still works fine, but it is overkill for the 5 game-years of mission 7. Still, I believe it will be a fine map to release for Open Play, so I have no regrets.

I also completed initial scripting for mission 8. It is a continuation mission of short duration.

I still have one more enormous map to build for the final missions 9 and 10. This map will be for Chiao-chih (the historical Dai Viet capital at ancient Thang Long, which we know as Hanoi, Vietnam today). I hope to make that map special too.

Overall, progress is good, even faster than I anticipated. Everything seems to be on schedule to release this campaign before Christmas 2017.

Expand your fun by downloading free custom campaigns for Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom.
Visit Zeus Heaven to expand your knowledge of Zeus and Poseidon.

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