rockbiter68's Quest Showcase [The Proud Redoran]

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rockbiter68
Joined:
2020-01-31 22:39
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4 years 7 months ago

EDIT: The plugin should be clean. I did, however, edit a few things in Bodrem Hall, because I noticed some clipping with the plates. That's literally it. That may be out of line, and if so, the entry can safely be deleted in TESAME.

Hello everyone,

This is my showcase for the quest "The Proud Redoran." Currently, it is an unclaimed quest in the Claims Browser (link: https://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/claims/proud-redoran). I notified some of you I would be doing a showcase of it on Discord.

I have used existing NPCs for this quest. "Brelora Tharen" is instead Seryn Lloth, who works in the Bodrem Hall, and is a friend to Treram Varalaryn, who takes the place of Orvyn Tharen. I have added the NPC Eleanor as outlined, with the exception that she currently stands outside Treram Varalaryn's house in Bodrem (instead of in Andothren), as it was suggested to me to do so until Andothren was more fleshed out.

I have implemented all (but one, which I'll get to in a moment) of the possible endings/branches, with some slight tweaks:

- Seryn Lloth does not know about Eleanor. You have to obtain that information from Treram Varalaryn either via a disposition check or through getting him drunk of matze. Once the player learns about Eleanor, they can go speak to Seryn, who will offer them 10 gold to cover the expenses to get to Andothren.

- Offering to pay the debt for Treram Varalaryn (when speaking to Treram Varalaryn) does not auto fail the quest for you. I felt as though most players would try this option, and the penalty felt disproporitionate. Instead, Treram will get angry at the player, and the player will suffer a huge disposition loss.

- The player can take on the debt in full (750 septims), take on the debt partially (250 septims, changed from the 225), or reduce the remaining debt from 250 to 100 and either pay the 100 or inform Treram. All are viable options for quest completion, although simply reducing the debt will result in a lesser reward. Mercantile/disposition checks are in place for these options.

- The debt can be waived entirely through a strength/disposition check. This results in the same quest result as paying off the debt.

- Eleanor can be killed to finish the quest for a substantially reduced reward.

- Killing Seryn has no impact on the quest (other than you not being able to complete it), as I couldn't find a logical way to have Treram know his friend was killed. Killing Treram and informing Seryn will net you a bounty.

This brings me to the one option I have not implemented, which involves the chest. I have replaced the chest in Treram's house with a chest that has a custom ID and the 500 gold he's saved up to pay off the debt (it also comes with a 65 lock and a key), but I am not skilled in scripting at all; I can work with templements, and that's about it. So right now, this feature is not implemented.

Items Added:
Valarayn House Amulet
Chest

Topics Added:
preoccupied (to start the quest. I considered adding rumors to help with this, but I did not know if I was allowed; still, for my part, I think it would be helpful in directing the player to Seryn Lloth, as she's kind of out of the way. I could do this quickly if necessary).
debt
Treram Valarayn
Eleanor
 

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Binary Data TR_ProudRedoran_Showcase_rockbiter68.ESP53.72 KB2020-04-05 01:41
The Violet Euphemism's picture
The Violet Euphemism
Quest Developer
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2 weeks 2 days ago

It should be noted, I have NOT looked at it in the CS, only in TESAME and a playthrough. As such, this isn't a full review.

General thoughts: I really like how things were written. The dialogue itself was all functional I found (no infinite loops, as are common with Choice-heavy dialogue based quests. There are some issues that I've noticed, but that's to be expected (there is no such thing as a perfect quest showcase (or quest claim, really. There will always be at least one typo or scripting issue that sneaks its way in there lol). So don't stress too much over it. overall this was far better than my showcase.

-GetDead, that is, having a dialogue line or script use the "Dead "name" = x" function is generally not recommended, as on longer playthroughs it can noticably slow down the game while checking if that particular NPC is dead or not. It's better to give the NPC a unique script that will update the journal accordingly if said NPC is dead, as is what TR and PT usually do with the important NPCs in quests. (More on the actual script below). I haven't actually checked the CS to know if this is true, but I don't see unique scripts for any of the characters nor did the journal update when I killed Eleanor, so this is most likely the case.

-Valarayn House Amulet is waayyyyy over powered. 10pts of Sanctuary and Reflect is approaching Artifact territory if it was Cast On Use, but as a Constant Effect that's not exactly difficult to get either is something that just shouldn't exist imo. Amulet is fine as is for the showcase, but just know once the showcase gets approved and becomes a claim proper then it'll need to be nerfed like crazy. So IMO it'd be best to do that now.

-This file isn't clean. There's both an Ascadian Bluffs cell and a Greeting 1 that this file touches, standard cleaning tools would be TESAME or the CS itself (I prefer TESAME). The file will need to be clean before it can be approved.

-"Well, I suppose killing Eleanor will  mean that Treram[...]" From the looks of it, there seems to be a double space in "will mean" that I've replicated here. 

Scripting:

Basic run down of a bunch of stuff here; https://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/content/tutorial-morrowind-scripting-dummies 
And here's a handy list of functions that I have bookmarked on my browser. I wouldn't suggest going crazy with stuff just yet, but handy when tackling a new kind of script (or when I feel I need a refresher):
http://en.uesp.net/morrow/editor/mw_cscommands.shtml

The usual script attached to most NPCs (in the area you're working in - Bodrem), is "T_ScNpc_Mw_Map4". This essentially is just there to filter dialogue.

 

Begin T_ScNpc_Mw_Map4
; This short script is there to allow dialogue to be filtered on the TR_Map local variable, 
; allowing for regional topics such as "Morrowind Lore" or "Geographic Regions" to be
; appropriate to the location the NPC is.

short TR_Map
short control
short controlQ

if ( TR_Map == 4 )
    return
endif

set TR_Map to 4

End

The name would be different for each NPC, but the rest will mostly be the same here. Except this time you're gonna be putting stuff inbetween "short controlQ" and "if ( TR_Map == 4 )". It's very important that anything unique is between them and not after the TR_Map == 4 block of the script because otherwise that "return" would block it from firing altogether. "short control" gives you the option to use the variable "control" for pretty much anything you want (dialogue, scripts, whatever, so long as it's specific to that NPC), "controlQ" is the same but with quests specifically. Feel free to use them instead of making a new variable (any new variables would be "short [variable name]" right under "short controlQ").

Now, to update the journal ondeath. This is a very important piece of scripting to have in your toolbox, so I'll write one that should work. Keep in mind everything iafter ";" in a script is not something the game worries about, so we'll use it to explain what's going on.

 

You could of course do other things during the OnDeath, or before, or after, whatever you feel like (as long as the CS allows it of course). Anyways, that should be a usable template for the 3 scripts. Again, there needs to be 3 of them, one for each of the 3 NPCs involved. Hopefully I didn't mess it up, as that would be a bit embarrassing. smiley

As for the chest thing, Generally speaking, it's not a good idea to replace things, as that causes doubling in game and on merge. My advice would be to leave a note on the claim page to delete your chest and copy anything that was in there, lock level, key name, etc into the one that's already there. Though as far as for now is concerned, I'd make sure it's not in the same place as the original so that it's easier to tell (both for the reviewers and merger). I didn't notice a chest tbh so Idk if it is or not. 

Rawr.

rockbiter68's picture
rockbiter68
Joined:
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4 years 7 months ago

Okay! So I've gotten around to correcting some of the errors with the showcase. Here's what I did:

- Replaced the "Dead" variable in the Journal Menu with a script to check for relevant NPC deaths and update the journal accordingly (thank you to everyone who helped).

- Valaryn House Amulet is... probably nerfed? Removed reflect, and changed it to just be 5 - 10 points of Sanctuary for a few seconds (on cast).

- The file shoud be clean now. I couldn't find a reference to the Ascadian Bluffs in either TESAME or the CS, but I'm a bit unobservant sometimes, so I may have missed it.

- As for the chest: I simply deleted my references to Treram's house, the custom chest included; I'll leave a note on the claims page once this gets approved. I have, however, left in Treram's key.

- I fixed the above mentioned typo, as well as a few other ones I missed. There actually was also some looping dialogue that I fixed with some blank journal entries.

- Seryn also maintains her "get away from me" attitude if you tell her you've killed Treram.

- If you kill Eleanor, you now suffer a massive disposition loss from Treram repeatedly; this was more practical than inserting a blank journal entry to deal with multiple greetings and responses.

Other things worthy of note: I forgot to mention this before, but there's a unique, rank-dependent dialogue option for solving the quest if you're a member of House Hlaalu. Also, I do believe that Seryn Lloth, the quest giver, is pretty hard to find in a normal playthrough; I feel like I should implement a "latest rumors" blurb to nudge the player towards her, but I'll wait until some weighs in on that and gives it a go-ahead.

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Binary Data Updated showcase.56.27 KB2020-04-22 20:33
Arvisrend's picture
Arvisrend
Developer EmeritusQuest Developer
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5 min 5 sec ago

A few random comments for now:

- Several times: "Matze" -> "Mazte". (This might be a good case for tes3cmd modify.)

- Journal stage 10: "Haalu debtor" -> "Hlaalu moneylender". By the way, I am used to seeing it spelt "lender" rather than "lendor", but I can't find precedent for either spelling in vanilla Morrowind or TR; can anyone with a better feel for the language comment?

- Script TR_m4_q_Eleanor has comments that don't quite fit what it does (30 is not 65, for one, and the journal entry would not fire infinitely either way, since OnDeath is only 1 for one frame).

- You have a Record: CELL "ascadian bluffs region (3, -15)" Flags:0x0000 () in the file. It's harmless as such, but it suggests you are missing some part of cleaning the file.

- You have several unconditioned responses "He lives on the north side of town. His house is just before the stairs down to the silt strider." to topic "treram varalaryn" (below the one response that is conditioned to cell Bodrem). What happened there?

- The greeting 1 by TR_m4_S_Ilveshirr doesn't seem to belong into this esp. Should probably be cleaned out, right?

- In the third and fourth responses to topic "Eleanor", I suspect "wreckless" should be "reckless".

- On topic "debt", response "Yes, this is a fine drink. A fine drink." has no ID condition. Is that intentional?

- The syntax "removeitem->" is wrong. A space, not an arrow, goes after "removeitem".

Arvisrend's picture
Arvisrend
Developer EmeritusQuest Developer
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2014-01-02 23:57
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5 min 5 sec ago

Bumping. If something about the above comments is unclear or you don't know how to fix them, ping me (@arvisrend) on the discord or post here.

Dunmerius's picture
Dunmerius
Quest Developer
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2019-12-29 03:25
Last seen:
3 years 2 weeks ago

Here is the latest version of this showcase (up to this date)

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Binary Data New TR_ProudRedoran_Showcase_rockbiter68.ESP60.37 KB2021-09-29 20:42