Why's showcase thread

[Why]

Hello TR team.

I'm relatively new when it comes to modding, but since I've heard about this project, I've been wanting to join and contribute. I tried making a couple of interiors, but I always hit a dead end halfway; I'm simply out of inspiration and my motivation drops, causing me to abandon my work and start something new. I feel I'd be able to build interiors, but, to be honest, I don't like it.

When I realized that, I decided to shift my focus to questing. I've made a couple for myself, just to try it out and learn the scripting language. Nothing very special though, so I won't be showcasing them (I'd be rather embarrassed if you saw them, really, they're nothing compared to what you guys have done in map 1 and 2). So far I really like questing (because I actually see it as a challenge, opposed to making interiors) and as you guys seem to be somewhat short on questers I've decided it is time for me to make a more elaborate, unique quest this time, which I might deem worthy of showcasing. A couple of questions though:

While there is a lot of documentation about interior and exterior showcases on this forum, I can't find much about quest showcases. Therefore, would it be okay if my quest showcase includes no new interiors and exteriors? Also, how elaborate should a quest showcase be? Should it span a questline, or would one larger-than-average quest be enough? (Ideally, could you point to (an) in-game quest(s) so that I can see what is expected of me, concerning length and depth of the quest?)

Looking forward to a reaction and getting to work.

[MMMowSkwoz]

That's a very good question (and therefore difficult to answer). We do need some guidelines on quest showcases, but it's never been enough of a priority I guess. To start you off, here's a shortlist of what we'd probably want to see:

A short-medium sized quest with at least two possible outcomes: Not just a "go here, fetch this" quest, but something with a little bit more complexity. On the other hand, nothing huge that would take an age for us to test/review. It should only be a single quest, not a full questline or anything like that.

Evidence of intermediate scripting ability:
You need to show you can handle everyday issues like updating journal entries, making items appear/disappear at the appropriate points, using local variables to modify dialogue, making NPCs move, making NPCs fight, using gloabl scripts, etc (I don't mean you need to show all of these, but this kind of thing). Knowledge of how to reference one script from another and how to use (or not use) global variables is also useful.

Knowledge of the dialogue system:
A fair number of dialogue entries, with choices for the player, dialogue results such as journal updates/removal of items, correct and appropriate filters, appropriate use of topics. Good grammar (don't forget American English!) is important, as well as sticking to the feel of the vanilla dialogue.

Evidence that you've thought of all the possible outcomes:
This is very important. You need to have thought of every reasonable action the player could take at any point during the quest, and create contingencies so the quest still makes sense. Often this just means adding in extra dialogue entries in case the player has already found the item/killed the target/etc, but can also mean more complex "backup routes" are required.

Obviously, you'd also need to show you can clean a file and all the other usual shiz. To answer your other question, no, there's no need to create any interiors or exteriors. As a quester, you wouldn't be doing either of those things.

Thinking about it, the size of the quest isn't particularly important: a small quest which shows you know your stuff is far more preferable than a massive quest where you just use very simple methods. If you want specific examples, try looking at the showcases of the existing questers maybe?

I hope that helps. Looking forward to seeing your work.

[Why]

Thank you for the fast reply. I've come up with an idea and have written the journal entries. There's a whole lot of them, but I'm actually incorporating some elements from my earlier work into this which should save me some time. I'll post any questions I have here in this thread.

[Why]

Double post (but with sufficient timespan, I hope)

Moral question: Halfway during my quest, if the player does something stupid, I curse the PC with 99% blind. I intend to let this effect wear off in time. Would it be unreasonably cruel if I used GetSecondsPassed for this, so that the player can't just "rest" and have the curse worn off? For reference, it is really meant as a punishment, but getting cursed already eliminates some outcomes of the quest.

edit: disregard that. I just playtested it and it is friggin annoying to have your screen blacked out for five minutes. The good news is my quest is well underway. I expect to have it finished before the end of this week.

another edit: work is drawing to a close. I only have the last scene of the second ending left to finish (which is kinda hard, since it's something I've never done before, but so far everything is going swimmingly. Came up with the original idea when I read this [url=http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=20002&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=5](link)[/url] but it's gonna be different (and less complicated I guess)) and after that I'll post my work here (including a walkthrough in which I'll highlight special decisions I made while scripting) once I'm done playtesting it myself.
Also, I noticed my quest appears to be, well, long. I guess I could scrap the parts I still need to do and fix up the dialogue (or is that dialog in American?) so that it all makes sense and just submit it, but now that I've come so far I really want to stick to my original plan and finish it up like I intended to. I must say I'm pretty damn impressed with what I have so far seeing this really only is the second quest I've ever written. Ain't got the faintest idea what you guys will think of it though.

yet another edit: I'm getting there. Found a couple of bugs that took quite some time to fix, and didn't really have a chance to work on this since Thursday, contrary to my expectations.

edit: I realize this is taking way longer than I predicted. That partially has to do with a recent burglary in my house. None of my valuables were stolen but my housemate's laptop and tv were, and it took some time to clear up the mess. Haven't had the time to open the CS since. I expect to get back to it soon, but can't give you an estimate of when it will be done. It's close to completion, but I'm a dreadful perfectionist.

[Why]

Finally, here it is. Sorry it took me so long to get it finished, I haven't been able to work on it for a long time, but finally completed it yesterday night and playtested, debugged and cleaned it today.

Quick walkthrough:

To start the quest, speak with Mavon Drenim at the Telvanni tower in Vivec when you have completed at least stage two of your Telvanni stronghold. Mavon Drenim will ask you to help him grow his own mushroom tower. I took the "two different endings" requirement a bit too literally, I guess, so it's possible to either help him or turn him in to the Ordinators.

If you choose to help him, he will ask you to buy slaves from a Telvanni slave trader. This can be the guy in the Telvanni Chanalworks, or the slave traders at Sadrith Mora or Tel Aruhn. After buying slaves, Drenim will tell you to deliver a scroll to the Ordinator in the Telvanni Plaza, with the explicit instruction not to read it. If you read it, you won't be able to progress on the Telvanni side of the quest, and instead will again be able to do the Ordinator side. After you have delivered the scroll to the Ordinator, Drenim will tell you to return to him in three days time. When you return you will find Drenim is absent, speaking with his servants reveals he has been arrested by the Ordinators. You'll have to choose which instruction to give the servant, and are teleported to the High Fane, where the finale of the quest will take place.

If you instead chose to refuse to help Drenim, you can report him to any Ordinator guard in Vivec. They'll direct you to Elam Andras, head of the Order of the Watch in Vivec. He'll ask you to keep an eye on the situation, and once Drenim starts constructing his tower without your help, he'll order you to rendezvous with the Ordinator at Telvanni Plaza and confront Drenim. Drenim will attack you and you'll have to kill him, after which you can destroy the crystal that has been powering the growth of his tower by activating it. (I added the crystal part purely to show I know how to use rotate and scale functions, really, it doesn't add much to the quest but I thought it was a nice touch nonetheless)

Of the vanilla stuff, I had to edit the "BILL_MT_WritMavon" script because it contains an OnDeath check, which means I couldn't use OnDeath for Drenim in other scripts. I hope that's not a problem. I haven't tested compatibility with the Morag Tong writ quest, but what I know of scripting tells me there should be no conflicts. I could be wrong though. Also I created a small interior cell, "Vivec, Tel Drenim", mainly for placeholder purposes. Really, it's just a placeholder, it isn't cluttered, the lighting is default, et cetera. I'm not here to showcase interiors, so I hope that's not a problem.

I do fear the quest is a bit excessively large though. My apologies. Also, as this is my first attempt at scripting a large quest, I think my scripts could be a bit longwinded and unorthodox. Anyway, I hope you guys like it, and if you have any suggestions please share them. Also, as I'm not native English, typing American English is rather hard for me since I've had excessive training in British English. Please point out any spelling mistakes I've made.

All scripts, NPCs, activators and such I added are prefixed HT_ or HT_VivecTower_

[RelinQ]

okay 2 issues.

1) Getting to stage 2 of a Telvanni stronghold for me is one hell of a problem, as Ive never got that far with House Telvanni, so sadly I cant test it out, but the quest sounds fairly decent.

2) You shouldnt edit anything vanilla, I can see why in this case you did but really if you need to edit a script just make a new script, exactly the same as the original, change the stuff then save it as the new one.
I mean afterall your making a quest showcase, new scripts are okay.

saying that though, you would have to be very carefull for editing a script like that on an npc, when you have multiple quests going on a script thats when it becomes a mess. So I guess you could probably make a new short and test another clause in the script, but scripting isnt my strongest skill, so I'll leave it upto you.

[Bloodthirsty Crustacean]

I will have a look at this later (this weekend latest).

I don't quite understand why you're limited to one OnDeath per NPC? This is a rule I was not aware of. Anyway, yeah, in principle, don't change vanilla stuff, but I'll look this over anyway.

It's always nice to see a quest showcase.

[Why]

Getting to stage 2 of a Telvanni stronghold for me is one hell of a problem

The dialogue on Mavon Drenim checks for the Global called "Stronghold", on which all stronghold quests rely, and membership of the Telvanni faction. Simply join House Telvanni and use the console to "Set Stronghold to 2". If his disposition is 30 or higher the quest should start normally.

I don't quite understand why you're limited to one OnDeath per NPC?

I haven't tested this personally, but

OnDeath
Returns 1 for 1 frame when the Actor is killed. OnDeath seems to reset itself once it is used.
This also means that only one script can reliably detect death this way: if you have both a
global and a local script using this function, only the global script will detect OnDeath.

Which would cause the Morag Tong quest to break. If it's a problem, I could possibly clean the altered script, write a new targeted script using GetHealth instead of OnDeath, but simply altering the existing script is way easier. Also, if you check out the script you can see I clearly indicated what I added.

Thanks for the quick responses both.

Edit: Currently working on a replacement for the script altering among other things 'cause I love challenges.

[Why]

Double post, forgive me.

I've fixed the altered script and some other things. Now I'm having a slight problem cleaning my file though. In the process of making the mod, I've made small alterations to a couple of statics and NPCs which I do not want changed, within cells which I want to change. For instance, in "Vivec, Telvanni tower" the NPC "dals sadri" is marked as edited, and I can't seem to figure out how to clean that without undoing ALL changes to the cell. Can anyone tell me how to clean specific references, please? It is all that's holding me back from posting my updated file - it's clean, except for those few specific references.

[MMMowSkwoz]

Cleaning mods: download the program TESAME (we have it here on the site under the "main" section). Google will reveal several tutorials on how to use it, but it's fairly intuitive. This is definitely a skill you will need in order to be promoted.

This quest showcase sounds really promising. I only wish I had the time to review it.

[Why]

I'm going to assume I'm too much of a perfectionist, my file seems to be what everyone refers to as "clean" in tutorials, and as far as I can see removing the altered reference I was talking about is not something that can be done with TESAME. I do know how to use TESAME, in fact I have used it to clean this mod a couple of times already, I just think I was digging too deep into the whole cleaning business. Also, my explanation in my post above is rather flawed, I guess.

Anyway, here's the updated file!

Edit: Also, I'd love to have some feedback about how the quest "feels", so if you don't have time to look it all over in the CS (which might indeed take long as it's pretty large) but can give it a quick playthrough and tell me what you think about it from a regular gamer's point of view, I'd really appreciate that. No need to rush though, I've got time and I understand other matters such as life and actual modding take priority over reviewing showcases

[Bloodthirsty Crustacean]

Okay, my time is limited so I've only done as much a review as I need.

Your dialogue is very good, and so is your scripting.

There were a bunch of plausibility issues with your quest (i.e. the ease of murdering an Ordinator and getting awway with it), but it was fun so for a showcase I don't care. In the actual mod you'd be working from plans, or if you're making a plan yourself there'd be people around to make sure everything stays thematic for Morrowind. And I imagine you'd make a very good quest planner.

As a matter of protocol, please avoid using small topics like 'scroll' and 'slaves' (or worse 'task' etc.) unless they are vanilla topics (and I know 'slaves' is, so no worries), otherwise it causes problems with other mods. Either use very specific topics that no other mod would write (i.e. name an NPC, or use a very specific title) or recycle vanilla ones.

Also, there were some instances where you didn't give out journal updates for key moments when the quest progressed. Always give a journal for everything that changes the status of the quest (e.g. 'slaves purchased', 'ordinator given scroll')

The biggest problem I encountered was that some objects you placed had yellow-! errors, which was inconvenient. I imagine that was a one off though, and anyway you won't be building many interiors as a quester.

So yeah, member promoted for quests. At present if you could stick to doing Map 2 quests, as those are our priority, that would be great. (Okay, I say this; there aren't any right now) Also if you might give a thought to planning some of the Quests on Map 2 still in Design, that would also be great. I think you'd also be an eligible candidate for NPCing, as long as you show an awareness of the 'Morrowind feel' when it comes to naming and dressing NPCs etc.

Welcome to the team! An admin will give you your modder tag sometime soon I hope.


IMPORTANT THING

Make a post telling me what the naming conventions would be in TR for:

An NPC
A Journal
A Script
An Object


Assuming each of the above is one from your quest, and your quest was a fictional TR claim q0-12-Mis.



Please just learn these naming conventions, and show me how you would have used them in your quest. These things are very important to me.

[Kiteflyer61]

Congrats Why, welcome to the team.

[Why]

Wow, thanks!

I guess I misnamed one of the files I extracted from my bsa to create the new activators, my bad.

Names:

[url=http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=21296&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=]This (link)[/url] is the most recent quest guide right?

An NPC: TR_m0_q_12_Tel_guard (Telvanni_guard wouldn't fit)
A Journal: TR_m0_Viv_TheTowerandtheTemple (Assuming the abbreviation of Vivec would be Viv)
A Script: TR_m0_q_12_finale
An Object: TR_m0_q_12_bk_cursedscroll

Though, as this quest is exclusive for Telvanni members, wouldn't the claim be q0-12-Tel instead of q0-12-Mis? If that would be the case, I think above names still apply except for the Journal, which would be TR_m0_HT_TheTowerandtheTemple. Please correct me if I'm wrong, I want to get this right.

I'll probably be joining the quest discussions soon. I might even claim one of the unclaimed m1 Tel quests as holidays are coming up and I have a lot of free time to do some questing, even though I know they're not top priority at the moment. First though I'm gonna read the sections of the forum that have just opened up for me

So, my third quest ever will actually be my first real quest for Tamriel Rebuilt. Rofl. Thanks for having me on the team! I can't wait to get to work!

[Bloodthirsty Crustacean]

Yep, that's absolutely perfect. (And yes, my mistake, it would be a House Telvanni quest, and yes, that is how you would name the journal - well done! )

If you really want to grab something already planned, please finish Stryker's Faruna claim (you could start from scratch if you really so desired) but don't claim either Vaerin or Telsaran. I'd definitely prefer it if you avoided Telvanni for now if you can.

In terms of Map 2 quests that need planning, there's Tel Muthada and Helnim misc quests, and the Thieves and Fighters Guilds for Helnim. For planning, just use your head, and what's already there in the mod (i.e. characters/dialogue hooks). If you want to look at a faction, check out gro-Dhal's plan for the Imperial Cult, in Reviewing. That's what you're aiming for.

Hopefully we'll also have some more Map 3 NPC claims up shortly, and they'll be including the (as yet unplanned) misc quests for the wilderness and their cities in those claims, so that's the other avenue for questing right now.

[Thrignar Fraxix]

Let me just load up my buttons
confirm my password
user management
look you up
set your title as modder
aaaaaaaand done

oh and I added you to the modder usergroup, before you were just in quests.

[Nalin]

Congratulations!

[Why]

Thanks everyone Okay BC, will do!

[Why]

Necromancy!

Here's my interior showcase. It's a 2x3+2x2 Hlaalu alchemist, 135 objects. Should fit ex_hlaalu_b_14.

The guy living in this house recently got ill, hence the bucket and handkerchief near his bed. To make matters worse, his creditors sent in an assassin to kill him, who entered through the door on the first floor. A fight broke out and some stuff got knocked over (mainly to show off my awesome rotation skills).

[Thrignar Fraxix]

Uploading the file would help a lot

[OTRaw]

*cough*nofile*cough*

Ninja'd

[Why]

Cell is called TR_i0-1

edit: file removed, see below for new version.

[RelinQ]

Since we have limited Int reviewers around atm, I'll give some feedback just as an average Int modder.

File Cleaned: Yes
Lighting Set: Yes
Gridsnap Set: Yes
North Market Set: Yes
Fits Exterior: Yes (ex_hlaalu_b_14)

Its pretty decent Why, but I would just be watching some of the items and funiture.

Theres a few odd things that, they're not really floating, but they look like they need to be lowered or dropped just a very tiny amount. You could maybe just 'F' key these or manually drop then down by small decimal values it until they look sunk.

One example would be the Dresser upstairs.

Cheers, Rel

[Katze]

This interior is damn near perfect. You have a fine eye for detail and there is absolutely nothing in here that would make me hesitate in giving you a good rating, were this a real claim.

The only errors I found were the bucket by the bed bleeds slightly into the bed frame, and the aforementioned floating dresser.

You have my recommendation. Well done!

[RelinQ]

Good work, Congrats.

[Haplo]

One of the cups on the floor (the one that's tilted on its side) is bleeding into the floor. It should be raised a bit.

[Why]

File with some minor fixes below. The things mentioned above have been corrected as well as some things that I found (bleeding grass in the planter, .1 rotation of the lute, repositioning of a lamp and hook to avoid bleeding with an opening door, very minor adjustment of some bottles). This should be close to perfect now, I dare say so.

[Thrignar Fraxix]

Member Promoted for Interiors

Looked through this and it was a detailed, unique, and well made interior. Didn't see any problems.

[Why]

Thank you

[Scamp]

ah well congratz!

[The Greatness]

Well done Why! And you got a recommendation with your first file! I bet that doesn't happen everyday. This reminds me, I ought to do a bit more work on the OE interior someday.

[Kiteflyer61]

Congrats Why.

The second one feels good too, doesn't it?

[Katze]

Well done, Why! Knew you could do it eventually. Welcome to the elite realm of the multi-departmenter!

[Why]

Thanks!

But I'm not stopping here! Here's an early WIP shot of my next, exterior showcase!

http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t141/WhyAreWeFighting/ExteriorWIP.png

Interiors + Quests really is enough for me, for the time being xD

[Haplo]

I look forward to seeing the most epic and creative smiley face island ever!

[Yeti]

Congratulations Why!

[The Greatness]

That's an insta-download if I ever saw one.