Kevaar's Questing Showcase

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Kevaar
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Link to the old thread:

http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25066

 

And attached, my first quest showcase mod: Rathra Likes Bugs. This mod is FINISHED and READY FOR REVIEW. As earlier discussed, this isn't really suited for merging with TR, but is an example of my skills and writing.

 

Below, copy-pasta'ed readme. Changelogs can be found in the old thread.

*******

README

******

A few things of note while playing through this quest, in no particular order:

--Before the quest starts, all three Rathras appear in Rathra's Chambers. I'm not going to worry about this for a showcase, but it is pretty funny looking.

--Once the quest starts, the TR version of Rathra disappears and never respawns. So be extra careful with your save games while testing this quest if you don't want to lose access to TR Rathra and her associated quests!

--All showcase Rathras are level 1. If this were a real quest, this imbalance would be corrected, but I'm not going to worry about it for a showcase.

--When the Rathras start attacking each other, they have had their health dialed up to 999. This is a quick and dirty fix so they don't kill each other before the player has a chance to react. Killing them at this point is still possible and will progress the quest properly; it might just take a while.

--After casting the Calm spell, you will have to speak to the Calmed Rathra QUICKLY or the other will hit her with a fireball and start the fight all over again. Wizard spats, lol...whatcha gonna do? (Talking to either will calm them both down, fortunately.)
 

*******

Bare Bones Walkthrough

1) To begin the quest, talk to Hadran Brelilos in his room at the Magic Mudcrab. Latest rumors can give you a breadcrumb to get to him, but with all the other rumors in the Tel Ouada area, it can take a few tries to find it.

2) Fly over the mountains to Soludanni Egg Mine. Talk to Mistress Rathra there.

3) Go back to Tel Ouada and talk to Hadran. The fastest way back is to cast Divine Intervention while in the eggmine, then take the boat to Tel Ouada.

4) Talk to Jeky Trilbright, a Redguard in the Magic Mudcrab, about hoarvors. You can also talk to any savant in the game about hoarvors for the update.

5) Talk to Hadran again. Once you get the egg, return to the mine.

6) Talk to Mistress Rathra. Deal with the consequences of your actions. Either Mistress Rathra in the mine or Hadran Brelilos can give you hints of where to go next.

7) Return to Tel Ouada and head up to Mistress Rathra's chambers. Talk to your choice of the Rathras.

8) Either help kill one of the Rathras (long), or cast a Calm spell on one and talk to her again. Decide which one you're going to help, then kill the other.

9) Fetch your reward from the last living Rathra. And you're all done!

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Binary Data Rathra Likes Bugs Quest40.08 KB2016-01-19 19:40
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Kevaar
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And attached, my second showcase mod, Vhul Comedy Act. This mod is FINISHED and READY FOR REVIEW. This mod is written to be a candidate for inclusion in TR.

To start the quest, head to the Howling Hound in Vhul and talk to Sirret Nedyra. The rest should be self explanatory.

*****

Changelog v1.1.0

--killing the vampire should now update the quest properly

--the golden saint has been weakened

--the vampire has been given a new, less powerful sword

--the audience member now accepts your apology if you Calm her

--quest journal entries have been appropriately labeled title or finished

--deleted spaces after %PCName

--MorrowindPatch and TR_Mainland dependencies removed

--cleaned

AttachmentSizeDate
Binary Data KS_Quest_VhulComedyAct.ESP26.39 KB2016-02-02 22:53
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Kevaar
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So I can't change the bench locations to make it easier to get to the bard. Just like the NPCs, it just spawns copies of the moved benches rather than in any way changing TR_Mainland's version of them. I guess I could get around this by using a disable script, but that might cause bloating when/if this gets merged.

 

Anyhow, calling this quest COMPLETED. I'll edit the second post with the new version.

 

Changelog:

--turned summoned hunger into a summoned vampire

--a couple dialogue changes for better readability

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Hello, I took a look at KS_Quest_VhulComedyAct, here are some quick comments (on the previous version! disregard anything that doesn't apply):

Clever design, and more importantly yet it's tight, ie it doesn't generate complications - so I'll try not to flood you with additional suggestions, but:
- it could be nice to give the smart or savvy (and possibly low-level and fragile) player an inkling of what is going on with the NPC before they spring eg a hostile Golden Saint on themselves (though I can't think of a simple way to do so, maybe in dialogue... I suppose that, necessarily, either the curse is preventing him from giving explicit warning, and/or he wouldn't want to do so and the whole play thing is his attempt at getting his woman conjured still, despite the risks? not sure I've made sense of it),
- if you're spawning critters, it's reasonable enough to assume the PC is going to kill them; if it's a NPC and especially one who the more kindly minded player could think was a regular audience member, they could conceivably try to Calm her instead. Some resolution on this front (through her greeting?) would make sense.
- last: there is no need to accommodate homicidal PCs when it comes to quest endings, but in this case, this being all so crowded and all, it isn't impossible that the player would kill the bard, maybe even out of panic thinking it'd make the monster disappear - so you could add a journal entry ending the quest if he dies.
- edit- oh also, I'm not too up to date on the whole puffed-up bullsh lore thing, but regarding the bard asking you to make the thing comedic, aren't Dunmer supposed to not be especially partial or receptive to light humour/ humour for its own sake? (if so the bard could be another race, or mention that he doesn't understand it but is catering to an outlander audience, or that it's fashionable, or that he's an outlander, or whatever)

More on the technical side:
- can't speak for the TR_Mainland.esm requirement on principle, since apparently the .esp version isn't used as the staple to mod with anymore? (either that or no-one's been modding on the Mainland recently... used to be it was required that mods meant for it be based on the .ESP, because making it for the .ESM could create awful issues upon merging), but I don't think your plugin needs anything from the Mainland? in this case the dependency should be removed. Same goes for the Morrowind_patch_x.xx dependency (which I removed with wryemash to be able to test it)
- your plugin 'dirties' some vanilla cells - this should be removed eg with TESAME;
- no need for a space after %PCName , else it shows up in dialogue,
- if you want your quest to appear in the Quests log, it needs an entry marked as title (and the finishing ones marked as finished so as to remove it from there). More FYI, since it's not important here and perhaps better off without it, with everything happening at once and in the same place.

- as to moving the objects and NPC in the way, which I guess from your previous message you've been justifiably trying to do, this would need to be done directly on the ESP? (IIRC one of the advantages in working on ESMs is that these references can be modified by a plugin without doubling...)

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Heyo, glad you enjoyed it! Replies to your points in no particular order!:

I'm not sure I could warn the player in a sufficient enough way without spoiling the premise of the quest. I could modify the stats of the golden saint so it's not such a "ah fudge" for a low level player. Dial down to...level 10 I think is the same as the clannfear? Another option is to have the bard scream at the player to run, and on their exiting the zone, the daedra is unsummoned.

Will look into the journal issues/alternate endings mentioned.

Dunmer and comedy: for the most part, I think you're right. Dunmer are noted for being dour, and I think I remember seeing somewhere that the Temple consider eccentricity a  very dangerous thing (for good reason, as it's often the sign of a Sleeper). He could be an outlander Dunmer, and/or thats part of Sheogorath's curse. Or catering, yeah. I'll throw in a line or two about that.

I replied to the duplicating and AI issues in my other thread. I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing when I'm cleaning mods, but I'll give it a go after making the aforementioned changes.

Thanks for the review! As far as being a showcase, what happens now? Will I be eligible to start doing quest claims, or how does that work?

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I gave Vhul Comedy Act a shot also. I should mention that I'm not a TR dev, so just take this as constructive feedback rather than anything official.

 

I really liked it, but I agree with a lot of what Rot said. I had a hard time picturing how the curse worked. Why is he forced to keep telling stories? Also, do creatues spawn every time he tells one? If that's the case, maybe you should throw in a line about how he just arrived in town, because I doubt the Inn would let him stay after this happened even once. That could be an interesting quest hook. Maybe there is an inn in another nearby town that has been trashed by a creature, and NPC's will talk about how they saw the bard run out before anyone knew what had happened.

 

Also, the first time I played the quest, I hit a bug where after I killed the creature my journal didn't update and I couldn't continue the quest because the bard didn't have any further dialogue. If it helps, I had gone through the quest by reading all the correct lines and spawned a vampire.

 

One more thing: each time that I played through the quest, the creature spawned behind the benches and couldn't navigate past them to actually hit me. This made the battle really easy, because I was able to stand back and crossbow the enemy to death at my leisure (even with a level 4 character).

 

Anyway, those little issues aside, I could see this quest being a part of TR. Nice job!

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Kevaar

I'm not sure I could warn the player in a sufficient enough way without spoiling the premise of the quest. I could modify the stats of the golden saint so it's not such a "ah fudge" for a low level player. Dial down to...level 10 I think is the same as the clannfear? Another option is to have the bard scream at the player to run, and on their exiting the zone, the daedra is unsummoned.

Sounds reasonable, damage specifically rather than level would be the worst offender if the player can run away from them (ie not necessarily a need to lower the creatures' health amounts... but don't forget to tone down the Soul values too if they're significantly weakened)
As fufufu said, I didn't get the guy's explanation at all afterwards, was it killing the creature that freed him from the curse? what happened the last times, since apparently that's a thing with him, did he end up dead or...?

An aside, isn't Sheogorath overused (though might just be an impression, what with every quest idea that involves magic hijinks always going for either Sheo or A Telvanni Wizard Did It)? He might be the most likely to meddle in mortal affairs, and it's true they can be summoned and all, but there are other princes or lesser daedra... just a thought.

 

As to the showcase process I don't know how exactly things are supposed to be conducted now, but by common sense getting a quest into TR should be grounds for promotion and getting to work on quest claims.

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Wooops. The quest not updating is me forgetting to transfer the coding from the stand-in hunger to the vampire. Easy fix, at least.

Creature spawning behind benches--it spawns based on where you're standing. Keeping it from being trapped behind the benches would be fixed by me changing the positions of the benches (as its hard for the player to get back there, too), but since I'm not editing TR_Preview directly for the showcase, I can't make this change.

The guy's explanation not making sense is me getting a random idea and not thinking it all the way through. blush I was thinking something along the lines of the player being entertaining enough to break the spell. This is where Sheogorath would make the most sense, as he undoes the curse almost on a whim. "Oh, okay, that was funny. Go and be uncursed! It was getting kind of boring anyway.." (Perhaps this is why the bard wants you to make it humorous, in hopes to placate him?)

Another explanation might have something to do with the player killing the daedra. This could work if it's a daedra other than Sheogorath. Something along the lines of the daedra has "possessed" the bard (not in the mind-screwy way, but just hangs around him constantly as a noncorporeal entity), and comes out to wreak havoc by shaping its life force into a character taken from the story. The player killing the creature means the bard is no longer possessed, because the daedra is "dead" or weakened severely enough to not be able to maintain its hold on the bard anymore.  Plot hole: why doesn't the bard just stop telling stories if that's what summons the daedra?

Finding the breadcrumb trail of another tavern down the way that got trashed by the bard's curse could be fun. I think it might be easiest to just add a latest rumor: "Did you hear <next town over> got trashed?" rather than fixing up a whole interior, though.

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Minor update for technical bugs, mod cleaned and re-attached.

Changelog v1.1.0

--killing the vampire should now update the quest properly

--the golden saint has been weakened

--the vampire has been given a new, less powerful sword

--the audience member now accepts your apology if you Calm her

--quest journal entries have been appropriately labeled title or finished

--deleted spaces after %PCName

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Excellent, sounds good. I’mma check this out tomorrow! :D

Not another memory

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Just a heads up, but if this quest is to be implemented in Vhul, it might need to be tweaked to fit the village’s current personality. Probably just the tone of dialouge, and that kind of stuff.

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Very religious sounding. So definitely would need to make the bard some sort of outlander or traveler.

Let’s see...below suggested additions and changes to the dialogue.

latest rumors (Vhul, Temple faithful) ADDITION

A bard is staying over at the Howling Hound. An outlander by his accent, as well as by his odd fixation with frivolity. Hopefully he moves on soon.

latest rumors (Vhul, general) ADDITION

An Ordinator came through here the other day, looking for a foreign conjuror who caused some trouble up in Almas Thirr. I’m not sure why she thought he’d come all the way out here. Beyond trade with the Syvvit Tong, there’s not much in Vhul that would attract an outlander.

latest rumors (Almas Thirr) ADDITION

The Thirsty Saint Cornerclub was attacked by daedra the other night! I heard that a conjuror was staying at the inn, tried to pass himself off as a pilgrim. That such things could occur in this enlightened age... Tribunal preserve us!

Greeting 5 (Dolyn Gavo, cornerclub’s owner) ADDITION

Try not to break anything. I just got this place cleaned up from the antics of the last outlander who came through here. A bard, he said. HA! A conjuror, is more like. He’s probably well into the next town by now. If he has any sense, further.

Greeting 5 (Siret Nedyra) CHANGE (blessed Tribunal--> by the gods)

By the gods, this is a tough crowd. Ah, hello! %PCname, is it? You wouldn’t be open to helping a bard with his act tonight, would you?

Background (Siret Nedyra) ADDITION

Yes, I’m an outlander, as I’m sure the locals will tell you soon enough. I was born in Cyrodiil, where the worship of the aedra is the norm, and daedra are considered as mischievous and malevolent spirits, or worse. I came to Morrowind to learn more about my people and their ways. Let us just say that I learned more about daedra than I ever wanted to.

helping a bard CHANGE (n’wah--> native fetchers)

Oh, thank you! This will make things so much easier...here, take this script. It's a rough one, so I don't expect you to follow the lines exactly. Just try to make it comedic, yes? Maybe what these native fetchers need is more levity. Tell me when you're ready to start the show. You'll be playing the part of the Mabrigash.

helping a bard CHANGE (Sheogorath --> generic daedra curse )

I suppose I must explain what is going on. I’ve been cursed by a daedra. I poked around in a daedric ruin, you see, thinking I’d finally understand why my people honor them so. Well, one of them chose to honor me instead by offering to make my story telling more interesting. Heh. Can you believe my naviety? I accepted, thinking they must be benevolent beings like the aedra I am used to in Cyrodiil.

Player: “And like the Mabrigash, the daedra granted your wish in a way you didn’t intend.”

You could certainly say that! Yes. But now that you have slain it, I am free to go back to telling my boring tales in peace. Lucky me, huh? Here, take this. I used to use it in a comedy act, but I’m finding it’s a litle too real. Nine Divines guide you, my friend...or as I suppose as they say around here, Almsivi bless.

 

 

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Excellent dialoguge, Kevaar. Those entries fit perfectly alongside what has already been written for these settlements. I apprecite the flexibility you’ve shown modifying your quest – especeilly since I should have pointed you towards that Google Doc much earlier than I did.

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Hey, no worries. :) Fleshing out quests based on the surrounding lore is fun. Let the random ideas flow freely! laugh

So, the dialogue started doing really odd things when I worked on this earlier (coding disappearing, NPCs saying all sorts of things out of order), so going to have to restart with my backup and edit in this new dialogue on a later date when I have more time.

However, I also noticed something that puts a kink in my plan to use the Thirsty Saint Cornerclub as the place you pick up the rumor about the bard. I wrote the dialogue basing it on this services topic from Parker’s link:

 

Visit the Tribunal Temple in the Canalworks for healing and guidance. Nearby, Dolyn Gavo offers drink and grub at the Thirsty Saint Cornerclub. Outside the canton, you can rent a bed at The Limping Scrib and barter with Dralas Vando at the tradehouse. If you’re a pilgrim, you can sleep at the Temple Hostel. Most merchants are only in Almas Thirr passing through, but a few set up stalls at the market along the western bridge. Dralosa Arethi at the Tailors and Dyers Hall trades with travelers, as does Darane Navur, the pawnbroker and Anmoleth, the outfitter. Ralis Nalor moors his boat at the western dock and will take you downriver to Andothren or Old Ebonheart, or upriver to Ald Mar. Or you can ride Gadyni Othril’s siltstrider to Emayn Mor, Othmura, Othren or Vhul.

 

But when I went to add the dialogue, I couldn’t find anything to do with Dolyn or the Cornerclub in the files. Am I just blind or has this interior not been created yet?

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Oh yeah. I forgot about that. Almas Thirr’s canton interiors are going to be updated and rearranged. The Thirsy Saint Cornerclub will be located in the new canalworks, and will use the current interior for the Limping Scrib Corner Club. Dolyn Gavo will be the new publican, since I didn’t like my old name for the current one. 

This does create a bit of a dilemna here. Perhaps you could use the Tipped Pitcher inn instead? Just know that it’s name will be changed to the Limping Scrib once I get around to updating the city’s NPCs.

 

 

 

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So I’ve taken a look at this, but I keep getting the “Who’s there?” bug, no matter what I do or where I stand. Is that just me or are other people having that issue too? Also, I did test out this quest using the openmw engine and it worked fine, I was just wondering if this was just me or if others are having this problem as well.

Not another memory

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Looking around on the internet, there might be a conflict between the Unofficial Morrowind Patch and Tamriel Rebuilt, and possibly other mods that affect dialogue. This mod was first created with the Patch as a dependency, and removing it might have caused some errors. That said, I run Morrowind on Steam, and haven’t been able to reproduce the error. with or without the Patch enabled. I recleaned the mod though, and found some references to dialogue that I had missed before, so maybe that was part of it.

I’m reattaching an updated version of the mod to this post rather than the first one in case I need the backup again. See if the cleaning corrected your problem, Not. I haven’t added any dialogue to Almas Thirr; I figure that can wait until the Thirsty Saint Cornerclub (or whatever it turns into) is completed.

Changelog v1.2.0

--Virana no longer wanders

--bard dialogue corrected and added to make the backstory behind the daedric curse more clear

--latest rumors added to Vhul

--more thorough cleaning

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Binary Data KS_Quest_VhulComedyAct.ESP26.18 KB2016-02-13 08:25
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I’ve tested this mod out, and I gotta say, nicely done!

The vampire didn’t attack me when it was summoned though; just acted like a normal NPC and I’m pretty sure that’s not supposed to happen. However, I’m not really sure if that’s an issue with your mod or the openmw engine. Either way, not really worried about it right now. Also, apparently it’s just me getting that annoying bug, so no worries there. Again, it still worked great with the openmw engine anyway.

Anyway, I liked the dialogue, it fit well and you do stick to lore quite well. I need to talk with some people about seeing if this can’t be put into TR, (addressing Rot’s comments from his earlier post,) and figuring out exactly what’s happening with the new canal works.

Unfortunately, a lot of that is going to be you simply waiting because TR can’t make up its mind and that’s not fair to you at all. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve shown incredible dedication, you don’t give up and from what I’ve play tested, you did the dialogue quite well, you know your way around scripts and understand the fundamentals of a quest. It has a lot of replay value and you can choose to accept it later. I’d say this quest is (pretty much) ready to be put into TR, pending some final decisions on TR’s part regarding cell and NPC names which isn’t your fault. If we do decide to put it in (it has my vote,) then we’ll see if we can’t change a few dialogue lines to reflect that. Anywho,

Member promoted for Quests!

If you have any questions, feel free to post them here or PM myself or any other lead developer.

Not another memory

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I’m fine with putting this quest in when the right time reveals itself. In the meantime, I’d love to see you start on one of our Old Ebonheart misc quests, Kevaar. I believe some of those have already been sufficently vetted.

Oh, and congratualtions on the promotion. smiley

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Kevaar
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Eep! Thank you. laugh I’ll start looking into those claims now.

Dumb question though. How do I claim things? I’d be happy to give Oh What Customs a go. (Or any of those, though I’m a little fuzzy on the scripts for a bounty remover.)

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Went ahead and stuck an updated file of the comedy act into the Add Content area. Beyond naming conventions, latest rumors conventions, and the Almas Thirr dialogue, this quest should be good to go. File also posted here for backup.

Changelog v.1.3.0

--added a quest name in the journal, CORRECTLY this time.

--changed conditions for the latest rumors topic: these now only appear in the Vhul cell and before the quest has been completed. However, these topics still need to be integrated into TR’s special way of handling latest rumors at some point. They also do not have a Random function implemented, as there are no other Vhul rumors to compete with yet: this may eventually need implementation too.

--all Almas Thirr related dialogue is still waiting on Almas Thirr to be completed before adding

--all ObjectIDs created by me have the “KS_” prefix for easy reference

--this mod file has been cleaned

AttachmentSizeDate
Binary Data v1.3.025.72 KB2016-04-16 18:05