Envy's Quest Showcase

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Envy123's picture
Envy123
Quest Developer
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2021-11-24 17:22
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1 year 2 months ago

As discussed on Discord, I'd be more than happy to help TR with the implementation of quests. I have been modding for over a decade and have a few released quest mods.

Here's a recent small one, although not entirely lore-friendly, given how you literally fight St Velothi who looks exactly like Vivec.

https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/45641

If this is not acceptable quality (I'd understand that), I can come up with something else.

Envy123's picture
Envy123
Quest Developer
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1 year 2 months ago

Here's a very simple quest from a bigger mod of mine. Speak to Gih-Me in Seyda Neen's tradehouse to start the quest.

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Binary Data Clean Envy_TR_showcase.ESP6.37 KB2021-12-14 18:07
Sultan of Rum's picture
Sultan of Rum
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56 min 48 sec ago

Not a reviewer, but I decided to take a look in the CS and OpenMW anyhow, just to see if I can help.

It's a very simple quest indeed (your last file), but most things seem in good order. The is, however, one breaking issue and a few smaller ones:

  • What breaks the quest currently -- Sharli is checking for Journal EN_Show = 20 for her dialogue, but Gih-Me only gets you up to Journal 10. Hence, it's impossible to complete the quest, save for killing either Sharli or Gih-Me.
  • Gih-Me has a ridiculously high level (45) and is a Battlemage service provider. This high a level should be reserved for the rarest and most high-ranking characters. Battlemages, too, tend to be very rare in the Morrowind province and their presence must be well-justified.
  • A disposition requirement of 80 (which is needed for Gih-Me to fire his greeting) seems awfully high to start such a relatively low-level quest. Up to your taste, but I'd lower it a little. At least you should add a hint that the character has a quest for you at a higher level of disposition, so that players wouldn't miss the content.
  • Another matter of taste, but I'd add another entry to both Gih-Me and Sharli for the "Sharli" topic after the first time you ask them about it. Sometimes the player will accidentally click the dialogue window closed and it'll be frustrating if the topic is just gone the next time.
  • The identation in the scripts is not correct -- make sure that all `If` and matching `endif` statements are at the same level of identation and that nested blocks are uniformly indented. Like this:
    https://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/sites/default/files/forumimages/Screenshot from 2021-12-15 14-56-41.png
  • You have a space on the inside of the parentheses, which is good, but most scripts usually have a space between `if` and the starting parenthesis, too. Meaning `If ( OnDeath == 1 )`, not `If( OnDeath == 1 )`. Though this probably isn't an issue for the game, at least according to MSFD, it is still better to be consistent with other TR scripts.
  • The greeting 5 entry for Gih-Me: "Well, have you found out what happened to Sharli?" does not appear, since you have two filters -- one checking for Journal En_Show >= 10, the other for = 0. Both of these can't be true at the same time, so the dialogue does not appear.
  • After you fix the above point -- you should add a filter to the same greeting to remove it after Journal EN_Show >= 100, so that Gih-Me wouldn't keep asking you about Sharli forever, even after you finished the quest.
  • Totally not sure, but I worry that if Sharli doesn't have "Corpses Persist" checked, perhaps the 'Dead >= 1' filter in Gih-Me's dialogue will not work correctly? E.g., once the corpse is unloaded from the game? I may very well be wrong. In any case I'd avoid any potential issues by updating the journal once Sharli dies and only checking for the journal entry in Gih-Me's dialogue.

Otherwise, the dialogue has no language or style issues that I could see and the file appears clean.

Sultan of Rum's picture
Sultan of Rum
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I checked in OpenMW and discovered another issue -- if you already saw this, please read the above post again.

Envy123's picture
Envy123
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Here - the issues should be fixed.

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Binary Data Clean Envy_TR_showcase.ESP6.85 KB2021-12-15 15:48
Sultan of Rum's picture
Sultan of Rum
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EN_show_sharliScript still has a small issue with identation (the first `endif` is indented twice, but should be only once), but this is super minor and everything else looks good to me.

The Violet Euphemism's picture
The Violet Euphemism
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2 weeks 5 days ago

It seems Sultan did all the hard work for me, ha. 

I didn't encounter any bugs, your file is clean, and the two things that I noticed in the CS aren't major enough to warrant holding back a promotion IMO. So with that being said, I recommend Envy for promotion.

The first thing is the double "My wife is dead?" line. One I assume is to account for the Journal entry that fires during the quest and the other is a failsafe in case you kill her before you start the quest, but unless you want the response to be different depending on those two circumstances, you generally only need the one with the Get Dead condition. It's not a problem, but it will save both developing time (on your part) and a tiny bit of bloat if you only double up when absolutely necessary.

The other thing I notice that isn't a bug, but should be kept in mind for future TR or PT work, is AiWander. Gih-Me (great name, btw) has the default AiWander setting of 512. This is perfectly fine for when an NPC is outside, but inside it means that they can often block your path and be a bit frustrating (if you've ever been annoyed at an Imperial Guard for wandering into the middle of the staircase, making it a pain to go up/down, that's the reason).

For future NPCing; if an NPC is meant to be indoors or otherwise standing about in one spot, click the "AI" button, double click "AiWander" in there, and change the value to 0 - which will prevent them from wandering about (you're also free to experiment with different variables. I generally like to give NPCs unique AiWander values like 30 or 50, but that's not necessary the vast majority of the time).

 

Rawr.

Mark's picture
Mark
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6 days 17 hours ago

Done, congrats!

Envy123's picture
Envy123
Quest Developer
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1 year 2 months ago

Thank you - I'll keep those in mind for next time. :)