Campaigns revisited

[Jens Granseuer <jensgr@gmx.net>]

All,

there are still a few open questions with regards to the recent
thread about campaigns and difficulty levels. I'd like to reach
a conclusion soon so I can actually start working on those points.

I'll shortly outline my current plan and the unresolved issues:

1) There will be three difficulty settings, dubbed [adv p1],
[normal], [adv p2] for now. Any ideas how to actually label
them in-game?

2) Campaigns can only be played as Player 1 (or in multiplayer?
There are a few problems with that. See below). Campaign maps
won't be available in the single-map list until they have been
unlocked by playing the campaign. I'll probably also get rid of
the passwords.

3) When playing against the computer, you can choose which side
to play.

Issues:

a) How to implement difficulty levels? I think we can defer this
decision. When the general infrastructure is done it should be
easy to try one of the suggested general approaches. If that
doesn't work, we'll go for events.

b) Campaigns in multiplayer
b1) When playing a campaign against the computer, maps will get
harder the farther the campaign progresses. This means that later
maps will not be balanced for multiplayer.

b2) Multiplayer campaigns get really complex. When playing
against the computer the player will only advance to the next map
if he wins. You can still have branches (e.g. a map with two main
objectives, and choose the next map depending on which one the
player accomplished). In multiplayer you'd basically need to
provide a branch for each map. That doesn't seem feasible.

That's why I propose to make campaigns single-player only.

(In that case we could actually call difficulty levels "easy",
"medium", and "hard" for campaigns. We'd still need names for
single-map games, though)

c) Difficulty for campaign maps in multiplayer (single-map) games.
As mentioned before, campaign maps tend to be biased. Do we just
accept that as it is or can we do something about it? If we live
with it, I guess that means we need to keep the (1) or (2) player
markers in the map list.

That's what's currently on my list. Solutions and suggestions
requested. Now's also the last chance for (major) corrections and
objections.

Jens