Kronifer's Quest Showcase

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kronifer
Interior DeveloperQuest Developer
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6 days 59 min ago

Adds a short-ish miscellaneous quest in the Coronati Basin region, taking place in Othmura and a cave called Sursumkah (needs to be renamed from TR_TV1_Cave_2). Centered around a family heirloom in the form of a drum that ends up becoming a feud between 2 families.

NPCs:

Madrana Varen (questgiver)

Irvar Dundras

Bandits, when they're added to the cave

 

Rewards:

If drum is given to Madrana, mercantile increase of 3 and 100 gold

If given to Irvar, 200 gold

Likely to be buggy, I playtested and things seemed to work but you never know :/

REQUIRES TR_MAINLAND, THIRR VALLEY SECTION FILE, AND REVANE'S NPC PLUGIN IN ORDER TO WORK

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Binary Data tr_m7_misc_fathers_drum.ESP16.59 KB2023-04-20 04:32
pralec's picture
pralec
Senior DeveloperWriting ReviewerExterior DeveloperQuest Reviewer
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4 hours 18 min ago

Hey Kronifer, I haven't had a chance to playtest but I've given the quest a look-over in the CS. Here are my initial notes:

- You've got a borderline "should" in Journal Index 70. Madrana tells you to get Irvar's story before making the decision, so you can probably phrase it as Madrana telling you to do that, rather than an "I should."

- It would be better if the drum was enabled from the beginning of the game. You should not have to be on the quest to find the drum. This will require some rejigging of your script, as with the drum enabled from the start of the game, as your script currently stands, it will cause a journal update if the player picks up the drum, even while not on the quest. Also in this script, you set the jUpdated variable to 0. You do not need to do this -- variables are set to 0 by default.

kronifer's picture
kronifer
Interior DeveloperQuest Developer
Joined:
2023-04-02 06:01
Last seen:
6 days 59 min ago

Update pursuant to changes requested here and on Discord

Changelog:

  • Fixed the journal entry
  • Rejigged the script, dialogue, and journal to allow for the drum to be enabled even when not playing the quest
  • Madrana moves to the cornerclub in town if she receives the drum
  • Owner of cornerclub will occasionally complain about madrana if she moves to cornerclub
  • Adds a latest rumor for the quest

Requirements above still apply

 

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Binary Data tr_m7_misc_fathers_drum.ESP20.12 KB2023-05-10 06:03

uhhhhhh post complete

pralec's picture
pralec
Senior DeveloperWriting ReviewerExterior DeveloperQuest Reviewer
Joined:
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4 hours 18 min ago

Thanks for the update, Kronifer. I've had an opportunity to do a playtest, and the first thing I notice is I get a script error when talking to Madrana about the drum. This is because the vanilla engine doesn't like that you didn't put a space between your parentheses and the command inside them. To wit:

  • if (player->GetItemCount [id] >= [x]) is wrong
  • if ( player->GetItemCount [id] >= [x] ) is right

Please make sure you playtest in the Vanilla engine for this reason. It is much less forgiving when it comes to scripting syntax.

Also, I notice that you set your global vars to 1 in the vars menu, and then immediately set them to 0 in the first dialogue. Is there a reason why you do this? You can just set the vars to 0 in the globals menu.

Further notes below:

General
You don't have any failsafes in the quest for if quest-necessary NPCs are dead. You've got two NPCs that absolutely need to be talked to for the quest to complete. It doesn't make much sense for Madrana to ask you to talk to Ivrar if he's dead for some reason. But also you've got this weird situation where if both NPCs have been talked to, then the quest is still finishable if one of them dies, but not finishable if both of them die. But if either of them die before they've been spoken to, the quest is unfinishable. I'm not sure the best way to clear this up. Bring it up in the Discord and we can discuss the best way to neatly sort this out.

Scripts
tr_m7_misc_fathers_drum_drum - add spaces inside your parentheses. Otherwise, this script looks good.
tr_m7_misc_fathers_drum_corn - add spaces inside your parentheses. Also, since you know exactly where this script is starting, you don't really need the Journal check. You may want to check if Madrana is dead, though, just so her corpse doesn't teleport over to the Cornerclub. Also, her final orientation in the cornerclub is a bit weird, facing the wall. It would be better if she were facing the stairs. You can set the orientation of an NPC using the fourth number in PositionCell. Note that the number is in minutes, rather than degrees, for the NPC, so when you find the desired orientation in the CS, you will need to multiply it by 60 to get the correct number to put in the script. For example, and orientation of 90 degrees is an orientation of 5400 minutes. Finally, remove the commas from the script, they are unnecessary and best practice to avoid.

DIalogue
Generally the dialogue is good. One note is that you use quite a lot of exclamation marks, which can make the questgiver seem a little crazy. Replace about half of them with periods.

Greeting 7 - "I wish Madrana would quit playing that infernal drum in my cornerclub... Oh, I didn't see you there, %PCName. Welcome to the High Wall Cornerclub." -> "You're the one who gave Madrana back her drum, aren't you? So I have you to thank for the infernal racket she makes every time Talms takes a break." Incorporates the existing characters in the int. Also I'm not a huge fan of the trope of distracted NPCs talking to themselves, and then noticing the player.

Drum - the directions to Sursumskah could be a little better. If she knows what it's called and that it's where the bandits are hiding out, then she knows where it is. Since it's just off the road, it wouldn't be hard to give simple directions to it.

Latest rumours - "I heard that Madrana Varen had her possessions stolen from her while she was moving here from Ald Iuval, and is looking for someone to retrieve something from the bandits who stole from her." -> I heard that Madrana Varen had her possessions stolen from her while she was moving here from Ald Iuval."