Illicit Inspiration

Stage: 

  • Merged

Development Progress: 

100

Merged into: 

Claim Type: 

Description

(transferred from the old forum claim)
See also an earlier description for inspiration;
The NPC is found in Old Ebonheart, Neel Gymont’s Fine Art.

 
Little Secret - "Have you heard of the Wayrest painter Neel Gymont? He came to Morrowind seeking exotic inspiration as part of King Helseth Hlaalu’s and Queen Barenziah’s entourage. He’s since set up a workshop in his home next to the Mages Guild here in Old Ebonheart. From what I’ve heard, he’s rather eccentric, though what artist isn’t?"
---

A mid-ranking Legion officer stationed in OE has been offered the hand of a well-to-do man (whom she has never met in person) back in Cyrodiil. She needs to commission a suitor portrait to send to this person. The officer is very much in love (with the letter and suitor portrait she has herself received, subject to much gossip and amusement among her fellow soldiers, as well as the rest of town) and wants the most exquisite portrait she can get. She knows of an artist brought up in Wayrest under the apprenticeship of the official Court painter who lives in Old Ebonheart. He traveled to Morrowind with Helseth and Barenziah, seeking exotic influences, and was sort of forgotten. The officer wants the player to convince said painter to do her portrait. Apparently, the Breton has been turning down potential patrons like the officer lately, becoming more and more reclusive within his workshop/gallery.
In order to help the client, the player will have to form a personal connection with the painter. Thus these first two tasks are more about proving their trustworthiness to the somewhat paranoid painter rather than actually fetching needed supplies.

1- The player contacts the painter, who makes no promise but asks the player to gather pigment-bearing plants for him, either by purchase or foraging the surroundings.

2- Returning with the plants, the painter requests a small number of clay bowls to mix the pigments into paint in.

3- On returning with the bowls, the player is tasked with fetching one more thing: the painter confesses that he relies on skooma for inspiration (implying this is the cause for his fall from grace with the higher circles of society), and simply cannot work without it. He agrees to do the portrait, if the player can procure some skooma for him.

As it turns out, the painter's normal Skooma dealer has gone missing and the player has to find him a new one by slumming it in Old Ebonheart's seedier part of town. Once this is taken care of, the painter will thank the player profusely and eagerly begin work on the portrait.

Comments

It would be nice if there was

Templar Tribe's picture

It would be nice if there was either a reference to or an actual NPC placed in the OE jail who was the previous skooma dealer who happened to get caught up in a deal gone bad or something, just to have some type of link to the reason the painter has no skooma that doesn’t feel shoe-horned. NPCs can comment on how the local guard was cracking down on seedier folk and happened to throw a skooma dealer and a few of his patron into the clink, or something to that effect.

A NPC in prison perhaps name

Rot's picture

A NPC in prison perhaps name-checked by the painter can’t hurt (could even suggest another source to the PC?); the rumors topic in OE on the other hand is probably going to be too busy with local flavor and quest leads to have minor details take up its space outside of the quest itself.
(or it could be that said dealer could have been moved, or any other reason, or no reason at all even, quest designs aren’t set in stone)

Ok, so implementing it may

BomburPL's picture

Ok, so implementing it may take a bit longer than i suspected and that is because i am struggling with some bugs. When I am done with them i will consider putting the old dealer to the prison (and making it harder to aquire information from pedestrains) because that may be a good alternative way of finding a new one.

Don’t hesitate to ask if

Rot's picture

Don’t hesitate to ask if there is something you can’t resolve, the MW engine can have illogical quirks,

So I have finished all of the

BomburPL's picture

So I have finished all of the bug testing and repaired most of them, except one bugged script that I have no idea what to do with. It should remove 5 bowls from players inventory, but it really just displays “bowl removed from inventory” and does nothing more than that (bowls are still in PC inventory).

 

a quick look:RemoveItem,

Rot's picture

a quick look:

 

How to fix would depend on whether RemoveItem works with local variables or not: if it does, all you need to do is put the “GetItemCount” result in a local variable first and then use that in the above two lines; if it doesn’t (worst case scenario) you can use the “While” function instead to remove items one by one like this:

 

 

Also aside from all that you’ll probably need to add another condition above all your blocks like “if ( bowlsLeft > 0 )” in many places, otherwise it might remove more bowls from the inventory (either that or, if the script tries to remove “0”, it could still wrongly display a message), (EDIT: added some check in the above example, can add more just to not start counting bowls for nothing if it’s already done)

Can’t test on the engine right now but let me know if that doesn’t cut it,

Thanks for your help. It

BomburPL's picture

Thanks for your help. It looks like a problem i could make, since i mostly base on my expirience from more traditinal programming languages. Unfortunatly, I had to do it using the while statement, but I guess it isn’t that much of a performance impact, since this script runs only once in the entire game. 

Ok, I have finished work on

BomburPL's picture

Ok, I have finished my work on that claim. I am still not comfortable with writing my own dialogue because this is my first claim and every line of dialogue is placeholder. I am going to keep that claim just in case and will abandon it the next week or when somebody asks me for that.

Dialogue topics that need to be written: (every line is preceded with “<placeholder>”)
a new dealer
Wayrest painter
my inspiration
Greeting 5 

Merge instructions:
In “little secret” i have added two topics “Have you heard of the Wayrest painter Neel Gymont?...” that need to be merged into Old ebonhearts random dialogue

Additinal notes:
The reward is also placeholder (700 septims). If someone feels like making a better reward then please replace it with something more creative or balanced

I’d be glad to pick this up

Kevaar's picture

I’d be glad to pick this up to do the dialogue.

The little secret might be better as latest rumors, though, as little secret seems to be secrets related to game mechanics rather than quests.

The gallerist, Juilecca Suvia

Rats's picture

The gallerist, Juilecca Suvia, at Gymont’s might also have some quest-related dialogue written.

This quest should definitely have an ending with the painting finished! Could even be pretty trippy ‘cos of Skooma.

Technical nitpicks:

Despite having full access to everything from P:C athanks to Tamriel_Data, I think that TR should refrain from using Head and Hair models from that project (anything with PC abbreviation in their ID). They don’t mesh well with TR’s aesthetic, which is much closer to the vanilla game.

I’m not a big fan of creating multiple new Dialogue Topics for quests. First reason is that they will slowly clutter up player’s Journal – generic and uninformative Topics like “my home”, “my friend” or “my family” will make using the Journal tedious (vanilla game does this, TR has done this in the past, I too have done this; I still think it’s not a good way to handle new Topics). Second reason is that using generic, relatively common words/phrases for Dialogue Topics will cause issues if/when any other mod – or indeed, another TR quest – uses them: it will mess up the order in which the individual lines are in the dialogue tree, which in turn can break quests. Using proper nouns, for example, is an easy way to avoid this issue.

IMO this quest could be pulled off with two new dialogue Topics “Wayrest painter” (or you might even change that for “Neel Gymont”) and “Skooma dealers in Old Ebonheart” in place of “my inspiration” and “a new dealer”. Rest of the exposition needed for the quest could be done with dialogue Choices in these two topics. Just a bit more elegant way of handling quest dialogue. This is obviously just a matter of taste.

Cluttering journal topics is

Rot's picture

Cluttering journal topics is unavoidable and no reason not to exploit the topic system, which is one of the few things the MW game engine has going for it – rather more reason to remember to link relevant topics in journal entries, because that’s where the player should be looking for them, not in the topics list.
Common topic incompatibilities is the real issue, at least before OpenMW. If for some reason short and unspecific topic names really need to be used (for instance if several NPCs have to link it, long ones may not work; or if this painter is supposed to be coy and artsyfartsy about his addiction, something like “Skooma dealers in Old Ebonheart” may be too awkward) they need to be proofed against incompatibilities by using AddTopic “” before they are linked (eg before a “Continue”), and all the entries need to have robust conditioning (eg not relying on one entry being placed above the other to block it, so that the proper entry will be obtained even if they are out of order). Might be better to reuse vanilla topics when applicable, IIRC they don’t have this incompatibility issue?

Ok, I have done a new version

BomburPL's picture

Ok, I have done a new version, according to your and Rots advice.
Since, at least from what I know, there is no model or texture for a painting, I guess that this job falls on somebody more skilled as an artist. For anything else, I have made it so Juilecca Suvia now points you to the mages guild, when you are on an errand job for Neel, Emelia Vicici now uses Vanilla face (it wasn’t intentional for her to use one from P: C) and I have merged “my inspiration” and “a new dealer” into one dialogue.  

 

OK, here is a very small

BomburPL's picture

OK, here is a very small patch that, according to Keevar’s advice, moves the topic “Have you heard of the Wayrest painter Neel Gymont?...” from “little secret” to “latest rumor” and nothing more (so if you think that it works better as “little secret”, then using 5.12.16 is completely fine).

I think TR uses “little

Rot's picture

I think TR uses “little secret” more for individual dialogue or higher-Disposition-based tips (information that you only get if the NPC likes you)? Not impossible to use even both, but quest hooks usually go into rumors.

Did someone want to proofread this quest’s dialogue as requested earlier, or should it be left to review?

I’d be glad to take a look at

Kevaar's picture

I’d be glad to take a look at the dialogue and tweak it. Bombur, can you give me a list of all the topics you editted?

Sorry for the delay. If you

BomburPL's picture

Sorry for the delay.
If you mean the list with all the dialogue topics that are added by the mod, then I think I’ve already wriiten one, but just in case, here is a new one:

Wayrest painter
a new dealer
Greeting 5
TR_m3_OE_Inspiration (Journal)

Did a little work on the

Kevaar's picture

Did a little work on the dialogue for this one, by no means complete. Posting an UNCLEANED version of the file for safekeeping.

Not sure if you caught it but

Templar Tribe's picture

Not sure if you caught it but "He came to Morrowind seeking exotic inspiration as part of King Helseth Hlaalu’s and Queen Barenziah’s entourage." You can drop the 's behind Halaalu as you only need to refer to it on Barenziah's since it reads a little weirdly having possessive apostrophes on both.

Thanks for pointing that out.

Rats's picture

Thanks for pointing that out. Will fix it.

I'm currently in the process of reviewing this and merging this into the OE section file. Quests for OE, yay!