Gweiwen's Slave Trouble - Quest Showcase

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Mephala Worshipper's picture
Mephala Worshipper
Quest Developer
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7 months 20 hours ago

Done with my quest, at this point I couldn't tought of anything that I messed up, but as you review it you will probably spot mistakes.

I'm quite happy with it, have fun while playtesting it!

First time I ever did modding, and Construction Set!

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Revane's picture
Revane
Developer EmeritusSenior DeveloperQuest Reviewer
Joined:
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Last seen:
2 days 22 hours ago

Quest flow
1) If you pick up the dagger before you're talking to LaD for the first time after accepting the quest, the journal entry that you found a dagger will suddenly pop up during this conversation, even though you found it earlier.

2) If you tell Gweiwen that you no longer want to be involved, LaD still asks you if you've informed her, even though the quest can't go anywhere at this point.

3) If you pick up the dagger, give it to LaD, then attack him, the script will add a second dagger to his inventory and you'll get two when he dies. I know that this is a silly thing for the player to do, but please fix this.

4) If Gweiwen has learned that LaD is dead, she should despawn when you leave and come back. She has no reason to stick around.

 

Objects
5) TR_m7_SlaveTrouble_note_b & TR_m7_SlaveTrouble_note_b_d: "With your help, I managed to lure Gweiwen and kill her. You kept your word in helping me lure her here." - these two sentences are clunky, repeating the words lure and help, and mostly overlapping in content. This should be shortened to just one sentence (or kept as two sentences, but with the second one just being "You kept your word.")

6) All the letters: "I just wanted to roam free" is a very weird way to describe escaping from slavery. It evokes more being tied down by family than actual "if she catches me I'll go back to being locked up". You should find a less stilted way to say this.

7) TR_m7_SlaveTrouble_amulet: The name would suggest that it fortifies Hand-to-hand, and that's what it says in your doc too. I assume you set it to the top skill on the list (Acrobatics) by accident.

TR_m7_SlaveTrouble_dagger:
8) You don't need to make a unique enchantment for the dagger. It's just a small poison effect, there's several generic enchantments already in vanilla or in Tamriel_Data that do almost the same thing. Pick one of those instead (search for enchantments called poison, venom, spider, viper...). Multiple weapons using the same enchant is normal (see how many use cruel flame_en), in-game it will be displayed with the name of the enchanted item.

9) Since it's enchanted, the dagger should have Ignores Normal Weapon Resistance ticked. This is not entirely consistent (neither in vanilla nor in PTR), but enchanted weapons being able to harm ghosts etc. seems to be the default assumption.

10) It has a higher Thrust and  Enchantment, and lower Health stat than the normal Chitin Dagger. Unless there's a particular reason, enchanted versions of generic items should retain the same stats (except value)

11) Speaking of value, 120 is unusually high. A whole steel sword with a poison enchantment is worth less.

 

NPCs
12) TR_m7_Long-Are-Days: He only has 17 skill in Short Blade. It should be at least in the 50s if this is the weapon he will attack the player or Gweiwen with. Similarly, he only has 11 skill in Unarmored, making him even worse of a fighter.

13) TR_m7_Gweiwen: Her base disposition is only 30. Since she needs 30 to say her quest greeting, there's a good chance players will never even find the quest if someone else knocks down her disposition. I would just give her the standard 50 base disposition that most NPCs have.

 

Scripts
14) TR_m7_NPC_Gweiwen: This script doesn't do anything that the generic T_ScNpc_Mw_Map7Nolore doesn't already cover. This is probably a relic from when the script on her had another function, but since it doesn't anymore, it should be removed in the final version.

15) TR_m7_NPC_Long-Are-Days: The command that sets TR_Map to 7 on him would pointlessly run over and over again, not just once. See your script on Gweiwen for how to do this correctly - there you have
if ( TR_Map == 7 )
    return
endif

set TR_Map to 7
and so it will only be done once.

 

Dialogue
16) You haven't added a latest rumor entry. That's part of the showcase requirements, to see that you can weave your own lines into existing topics and filter them correctly. Other people at Stormgate Pass (for whom it makes sense) should tell you that there's a slave catcher hanging around, and they should also have an alternative rumor for when she's gone. In your specific case, you'll probably need to also edit the "Cat-catchers steer clear of Stormgate Pass, in spite of its proximity to the border. Too scared to tussle with a squad of Legion-trained Argonians, I expect."-rumor, since that kinda contradicts your quest.

17) You use %PCRace A LOT. The problem with that is that it sounds very unnatural in certain cases. If the player and the speaker are the same race it's a bit weird in some contexts. It's especially weird with elves, because they generally call themselves -mer, but if you're playing as a Bosmer, Gweiwin will say "Greetings, Wood Elf." to you, which just sounds silly. I know vanilla didn't care most of the time, but we can do better. Try replacing those with another word or variable (like %PCclass), or just remove them. You can also add alternate lines filtered to Function SameRace if you think it fits really well. I know %PCRace is also in the letters and it'd be harder to change there, so it's fine if you leave it for those (an Argonian calling another Argonian "Argonian" is probably okay, as long as it isn't every other sentence).

18) It's not "the Black Marsh", it's just "Black Marsh".

19) It's not "Stormgate's Pass", it's just "Stormgate Pass".

20) You've used the phrase "surrender unarmed" a few times. Unarmed really is implied in surrender, and I'd remove the word.

22) [Lie] goes at the front of a choice, not at the back (and no full stop after it)

 
General
Long-Are-Days (the topic)
23) "the Census and Excise's precious time" - you need to make this "the Census and Excise OFFICE's precious time, or reword it.

24) The generic response at the inn starts three sentences in a row with "He". Try to vary your writing more.


Gweiwen
Greeting
25) "I understand." is weird for a greeting after you've gone and come back. It'd be better if you add a second sentence here that links up to the Long-Are-Days topic, so the player can immediately see which job she's talking about. "The job is up" is also not a fitting turn of phrase.

26) This line also still plays even if LaD is dead and you no longer have the topic to take the job.

27) If your journal is already set to 60 because you found the dagger, but haven't questioned LaD about it, Gweiwen will no longer greet you asking if you've found him, which doesn't make sense (you can still tell her that you found him just fine, though).

Long-Are-Days (the topic)
28) "get precious info" is a weird use of the word precious, in my opinion. It's also usually "information", although there's at least one vanilla instance of "info" too.

29) "pays well I asure you" - missing comma and typo

30) "to ask around the locals" - it's either "ask the locals" or "ask around".

31) You need to add some more information to Gweiwen's response for if you killed LaD after learning of his plan. She goes to "Thanks for saving my life" way too abruptly. If the lead-in choice is only saying "Yes", then you have to imply the player telling her more information in her response. Something like "so he was trying to ambush me? And attacked you?" etc.

32) "get an easy job for once" - wrong tense. Should be "I've got". You got it right in the other line.

33) "I'd definitely be more cautious approaching him" - "I'll", not "I'd"

34) "get him myself then" - missing a comma.

35) All the outcomes where she gives you a reward should also increase her disposition. Currently only the one where you learned of the ambush and killed LaD does.


Long-Are-Days (the NPC)
36) If you meet him before you have the quest topic, he will have no dialogue topics available at all. The same is true for certain quest stages. We try to avoid that, it makes NPCs look unfinished. At the very least he should have a simple Background entry that's always available, but responses to some other relevant topics are fine too. It adds character to quest NPCs.

Greeting
37) "once I finish my rest." - this should be rewritten to be less stilted.

38) "Let me rest for a bit more..." - This should be rephrased - if he's still pretending to be a traveling merchant, he wouldn't ask you to let him rest, why would that be any of your business?

inform Gweiwen
39) On the lines where you have "startcombat player", you should also have "setfight 100".

40) "Even with your gold, I'd soon run out of it." - find a less clunky way to phrase this. "Even if you give me gold, it'd soon run out", for example.

41) "I plan to ambush Gweiwen murder her" is missing a comma.

42) "I'll finally be free to journey wherever I'd like" this sounds a bit weird to me for when we're talking about an escape from slavery. His goal is to escape to Black Marsh, not just a vague aspiration to "travel freely".

43) "Nice." is a bit too much of an internet colloquialism - make that "Thank you."


Journal
44) "the hiding Argonian" sounds weird, and the qualifyer isn't necessary.

45) "dagger nearby the Argonian" - either nearby or near the Argonian, not both. The latter is preferable to add context.

46) "this dispute" is not a good way to refer to the situation. "more involved" is stilted as well.

47) Since entry 150 only triggers when you find the body it should mention that you found the body in the canyons, not just state that she's dead.

Mephala Worshipper's picture
Mephala Worshipper
Quest Developer
Joined:
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Last seen:
7 months 20 hours ago

Quest Flow 1-4

1) Fixed dagger popping up if the player picks it up before talking to LaD.

2) Long-Are-Days no longer wishes to speak with you now.

3) No duplicate dagger now.

4) Gweiwen now despawns correctly if she learn the LoA is dead.

Objects 5-11

5) Letters should flow better now. Instead of two sentence there is a restructured single one.

6) instead of "I just wanted to roam free" all letters now specify the Argonian settling in Argonia.

7) TR_m7_SlaveTrouble_amulet amulet is now the proper amulet I originally intendend if my clunky hands hadn't selected the wrong enchantment :)

8) TR_m7_SlaveTrouble_dagger picked an another poison enchantment. Deleted mine.

9) Dagger now has Ignores Normal Weapon Resistance ticked.

10) All stats except value has the vanilla Chitin Dagger stats

11) Except item value which is now 15

NPCs 12-13

12) TR_m7_Long-Are-Days should have appropiate skills now buffed Short Blade and Unarmed

13) TR_m7_Gweiwen set to standard disposition of 50

Scripts 14-15

14) TR_m7_NPC_Gweiwen uses standard T_ScNpc_Mw_Map7Nolore now. Other is deleted

15) TR_m7_NPC_Long-Are-Days modified script with return

Dialogue

16) Dunmer now have a latest rumor about a cat-catcher arriving to Stormgate Pass. Also edited a current one to better fit the quest.

17) Trimmed most of the %PCRace usage in my dialogue. Saved it for the letters.

18) "the Black Marsh" lines are now "Black Marsh"

19) "Stormgate's Pass" lines are now "Stormgate Pass"

20) now just "surrender" not "surrender unarmed"

22) Brought [Lie] to the dialogue choicefront.

General

Long-Are-Days (the topic) 

23) line changed to "Don't waste the Census and Excise Office's precious time."

24) The generic response in the inn should be more varied now.

Gweiwen

Greeting

25) Greetings should be more natural and varied now

26) Fixed this

27) Greeting should show up now even if you find the dagger

Long-Are-Days (the topic)

28) Fixed word usage in this dialogue should be more natural dialogue than what I had before.

29) Fixed comma and typo

30) Fixed instances of this -> now it's "ask the locals"

31) Dialogue should be less abrupt now

32) Fixed tense

33) Fixed this

34) Added missing comma

35) Now all choices where she rewards you raises her disposition.

Long-Are-Days ( the NPC )

36) Now has added Backgrounds.

Greeting 37-38

37) changed to "I'll continue my journey to the Black Marsh to sell goods once I've had a brief rest."

38) "Let me rest for a bit more..." changed to "Leave me alone!" goodbye

inform Gweiwen 39-43

39) all "starcombat player" have been changed to "setfight 100"

40) changed line to flow better
"I appreciate your kindness, but I can't take this from you.
Even if you gave me gold, my purse would empty quickly.
I better just get back to my owners... At least there was always food on the table."

41) added comma

42) changed to "I'll finally be free to reach Argonia and settle there."

43) "Nice." changed to "Thank you."

Journal Fixes 44-47

44) removed "hiding" -> "I found the Argonian."

45) now reads "I found a poisoned dagger near the Argonian."

46) now reads "I have chosen not to work with Gweiwen any further. She was disappointed."

47) Journal entry now reads "I found Gweiwen's dead body in the canyons."

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Revane's picture
Revane
Developer EmeritusSenior DeveloperQuest Reviewer
Joined:
2022-10-06 08:56
Last seen:
2 days 22 hours ago

Still a few more things to do, but you've improved the dialogue a lot. Apologies that this new feedback contains some things I missed the first time or that you had shown me in messages but I didn't pick up on. Still, all of these should be quick fixes. 16) is the only major bug, but it's also easy to solve.

 

Objects:
1) TR_m7_SlaveTrouble_dagger: A value of just 15 is perhaps a bit low for the dagger, I would probably put it at like 30-40. But this is pretty pedantic.

2) If you change value on the dagger, please untick Ignores Normal Weapon Resistance again. Evil Eye has convinced me it's better to not have that for an enchanted chitin dagger. This one's totally not your fault.

 

Scripts
3) TR_m7_SlaveTrouble_sc: Sorry, here's something I forgot on the first feedback - NPCs should not be disabled or teleport away if they're already dead. So if you've told Gweiwen that LaD is dead, and then decide to kill her, her body will be removed, even though she isn't exactly capable of walking away. This is another one of those things that a player is unlikely to do, but since it's quite an easy fix (just add a death check above the disable command and only do the disable if that NPC is still alive) this should be accounted for.

 


Dialogue

General
latest rumors
4) All the new rumors should require Disposition 30, like the existing ones do.

5) You filtered two of your new entries to only play inside the inn. That's not necessarily wrong, but I don't see the need. Other people at the fort should still be able to tell you that rumor, and it won't affect Gweiwen herself, because she's NoLore.

Long-Are-Days (the topic)
6) In the generic inn answer, you solved the issue of the three "He"s in a row by just deleting them. This creates very frantic, curt dialogue, where the speaker isn't speaking in full sentences ("Spoke with Thales" instead of "He spoke with Thales"). That can be fine for certain situations, but a calm conversation at the inn isn't one. Here is how I would reword this line:
"Yes, an Argonian arrived here a while ago, but he didn't stay the night. He was in a hurry and looked impoverished. Before he left he spoke to Thales Dalano, the local trader. You should ask him about it."
There's nothing wrong with using super basic sentence building blocks like "he", "is", etc. several sentences in a row, it only reads stilted if it's always at the very beginning of the sentence, like you had in your first version.

7) Side note on that last sentence: avoid saying stuff like "a few days ago". This is an open world game where you can leave quests forever, so the player might very well have been at the pass for days themselves. This isn't always completely avoidable, but in general you should use vague terms like "a while ago", "recently", etc..

8) In the response for Legion members you forgot to add an exclusion for T_Local_NoLore NPCs. You got that right for most of the other lines. Every line of dialogue that isn't filtered to one specific NPC needs that filter added, with some rare exceptions like "go free" for slaves.

9) Same for the generic line for people at the inn.

10) Conversely, the line for Elloondale has a T_Local_NoLore filter and shouldn't have. This doesn't matter in game terms, because this condition is just inherently true for her, but it's good to remove stray superfluous filters like that, if only so that the validator doesn't complain about them.

11) And the same applies to the next line for Samtarra, who should have neither the NoLore nor the Khajiit filter condition.

 

Gweiwen
Long-Are-Days (the topic)
12) "Will you help me track down the hiding runaway" is still clunky. I would just suggest "the runaway".

13) "Maybe you'll have better luck with it than I have" - this should be "had" if she's already tried talking to people, and "I'd have" if she hasn't talked to people but thinks it would be pointless. "Have" as a tense doesn't make sense, because right at the moment you're talking to her, she isn't asking the locals for information.

14) "I see. So that's where he was hiding at. Nice work!" - in the choice text here you moved the [Lie], but you still have "surrender unarmed".

15) And on a second read, I'd put "where he was hiding" and remove the "at". Just sounds more natural to me. Some of those are admittedly pretty subjective.

16) When you tell her about the ambush and she thanks you, you're setting the wrong journal entry. You're setting it to 140 (Not working with her anymore) instead of 120.


Greeting
17) "some coins about finding" should be "some coin for finding". Coin used in the abstract sense to mean "money" is always in the singular. Also if you use "you know where I am", you avoid two "finds" in consecutive sentences.

18) You now filtered the "Have you brought any news about Long-Are-Days?" in a way that it still plays if you've found the dagger, but it really should also still play if he's told you that he's going to ambush her and if you've killed him (so stages 65 and 70), since in those cases Gweiwen is still expecting you to return with news. Sorry, that was my fault for only mentioning the dagger journal entry in my first feedback.

 

Long-Are-Days (the NPC)
Background
19) "I'm just an escaped slave who tried to reach Argonia. Barely surviving in these canyons, I'm not accustomed to the climate there." has a sentence order problem. Because the statement about the "climate there" makes it sound like he's talking about the canyons, but he is currently in the canyons, so in that case it would be "the climate here". I assume what you want is for him to be talking about the climate in Argonia. In addition, it should be "I'm barely surviving", not just "Barely" alone at the start of sentence. It's probably easier to just rewrite the first half of this line.

Greeting
20) "Leave me alone!" feels like a bit of an aggressive escalation after he was super friendly the first time you talk to him. You should find a middle ground between the sheepishness you had originally and him just being rude.

Mephala Worshipper's picture
Mephala Worshipper
Quest Developer
Joined:
2024-05-03 16:01
Last seen:
7 months 20 hours ago

Gweiwen's Slave Trouble - Second Feedback

Objects

1) Value is now 30 instead of 15

2) Unticked

Scripts

TR_m7_SlaveTrouble_sc

3) This should works now

Dialogue

General

latest rumors

4) All latest rumors now have 30 disposition

5) Necessary to rumors show up in interiors since Gweiwen didn't disable yet but if you get inside she does, and didn't want to use global for this!

Long-Are-Days (the topic)

6) Fixed this line of dialogue so it's now more fitting for a relaxed inn dialogue.

7) Will try to avoid this in the future!

8) Added T_Local_NoLore for Legion NPCs.

9) Added that for the inn line too.

10) Fixed this.

11) Fixed this too. ( -NoLore / -Khajiit filters )

Gweiwen

Long-Are-Days (the topic)

12) now just "the runaway"

13) True. fixed tense. Now it makes more sense.

14) Fixed choice

15) Removed "at"

16) Fixed to correct journal entry!

Greeting

17) now "coin" not "coins" and improved last sentence.

18) Yeah, I should have done that. Now it's working as it should.

Long-Are-Days (the NPC)

Background

19) Refit for better sentence structure.

20) Now it's more balanced between sheepish and agressive.


 

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Revane's picture
Revane
Developer EmeritusSenior DeveloperQuest Reviewer
Joined:
2022-10-06 08:56
Last seen:
2 days 22 hours ago

You've unfortunately introduced a major issue in that latest version, since this one affects one of the more obvious routes for the player to take. The rest are more minor things that I might've just fixed myself and not send it back for another round, but 1) really matters.

 

1) If you tell Gweiwen that LaD is trying to ambush you, her corpse now appears in the canyons. The script runs from her final line of dialogue ("Typical...") and is only checking for whether the quest is at stage 100 or higher before setting the control on her corpse that makes it appear. It only checks for whether it's specifically at stage 100 or 110 later when it places the note. As a result, the body appears, it just hasn't got a note on it.

2) The dagger on the ground should be disabled if LaD is. He wouldn't leave it behind.

3) A stylistic thing I haven't picked up on earlier, you're using "..." several times - those are fairly uncommon in Morrowind writing, especially in the middle of dialogue lines. Most of the time just doing a full stop here is better. I think it's fine for the "Typical...", but I'd replace it at "that's the Argonian I'm after..."

4) In the generic Stormgate Pass response for Long-Are-Days you got the name of the inn wrong. It's "The Saxhleel Balladeer".

5) Since Gweiwen doesn't just give you gold, she also gives you an amulet if you warn her about the ambush, this should be part of the journal entry too. Just add "and an enchanted amulet." to the end of that entry.

Mephala Worshipper's picture
Mephala Worshipper
Quest Developer
Joined:
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Last seen:
7 months 20 hours ago

All of those should be fixed now!

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Revane's picture
Revane
Developer EmeritusSenior DeveloperQuest Reviewer
Joined:
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Last seen:
2 days 22 hours ago

Very good! That's your showcase passed. There's three small issues, but I'm not sending you back to fix them, I'll do that myself before setting the quest ready to merge. Just for transparency, these are:

1) You've accidentally put two full stops at the end of your "got the amulet" journal entry now.

2) Missing comma in "It's a border-crossing after all."

3) "settle in the region of Murkwood." sounds a bit weird, imo, I'm going to change that to just "in Murkwood".