Black Cat's Showcase

Black Cat · Post by **Black Cat** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 3:02 am

This is a showcase. Not just any showcase, a showcase that will likely have you wanting to kill yourself by the weeks end. It does however, have a purpose. I have made this showcase in an attempt to become both an interior modder, and to work on quests for morrowind. I won't lie, I'm an amateur, clearly. But I worked from 8pm last night to 4am with no break whatsoever to put this useless thing together. Then the power when out, I lost half my data(I need to save more often), and had to start over. At least its cleaned. Please keep in mind as you review this, I only started modding last week.

Known Issues that I could have fixed but forgot to.

1. The high elf that gives you my very basic quest (Osriel), will repeat a few lines endlessly giving you the quest..... even after its completed. Poor man can't move on. It doesn't break the quest, or screw up the journal entries. In fact if you fuck up the quest the first time, you can try again..and again...and again.. Which is VERY annoying. I can't fix this, please help.

2. I need to mess around with the Wander AI thing, so that my NPCs will stop walking on tables. I can fix this, but forgot to do so.

3.The three shelves found in the tavern are all rotated backwards, and I didn't remember to fix this until I submitted it.

4. The Moonbright Tavern is not linked to the outside world, so you will have to use the command COC "Moonbright Tavern".

5. The trapdoor to the tomb is not placed to my liking, and
probably not to yours...

6.Though my writing is almost entirely flawless, I found one misspelling. Maybe you'll find more.

That is all I can think of, but you'll probably find more. When you do, send me a virtual slap.

MMMowSkwoz · Post by **MMMowSkwoz** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 11:26 am

Quest Review:

Cleanliness:

- in_velothismall_ndoor_agrippina is marked as changed

- Sound_Spirit_Whisper00 is also marked as changed

- 3 blank topics?

- why has Fargoth's entry for the 'ring' topic appeared below your entries in Greeting 5? Did you move it there? Anyway, it should be cleaned.

Dialogue/Journal:

- uncapitalised 'I' in your first Greeting 5 entry.

- oddly placed commas in journal entries

- why are your journal indices 31,36, and 100? There's nothing wrong with this, but 10, 20, and 30 would be more normal.

- Your quest title should be written as a title (capitalisation)

- You use far too many topics with only one or two entries in them. Most quests have only a single topic that all dialogue entries go into. This keeps things tidy and makes your job easier.

- You need to move the final "he fell in combat" entry to the top. (see explanation below)

- Uncapitalised 'I' and missing apostrophe in "I'm" in 3rd entry of "There is good news however".

- Again, you need to move the lower dialogue entries up in "There is good news however" (see explanation below)

- If I refuse the quest, it stays in my journal forever.

- In "bring me back his ring" topic:
- Why is "thousand gold" in inverted commas?
- You need to move the last entry up (see explanation below)
- "Splendid" is spelt incorrectly in the 3rd entry
- I would prefer
player-> additem gold_001 1000
to be
player->additem "gold_001" 1000 (removed space and added quotation marks)

Ok, you're obviously still learning, but this is a good start. You need to use less topics and get a little bit more familiar with how dialogue works (see below). With that you could probably be promoted for NPCing work, but I'd need to see some more complex quest constructions and at least some simple scripting before I could recommend you for quests. Hopefully someone will come along to review your interior work soon.

A quick explanation of how dialogue works:

When you select a topic, the program starts at the top-most entry and works its way down the list. The first entry it finds which satisfies all the filters is used. So, for example, if I had two entries:

(1) "Hello. Let's start a quest." (journal updates to 10)
and
(2) "The quest has started" (for journal >= 10)

I filter them both for my NPC. In the results box of (1) I put

Journal "Journal_ID" 10

and then filter entry (2) for Journal,"Journal_ID"=10

Now if I leave them in that order, the first time I ask about this topic, I will get entry (1) and my journal will update to 10. But if I ask again, I'll get entry (1) again because all the requirements (only 1: that the speaker be our NPC) are met.

To solve this I need to move entry (2) above entry (1).

Now when I first ask about this topic, entry (2) does not meet the requirements (because the journal index is less than 10), so entry (1) is spoken. Then asking again with our journal now equal to 10 will give entry (2) because it is the first entry whose requirements are all met.

In general, the more specific the filtering, the higher up the entry needs to be.

I hope that helped. If not, feel free to ask any questions here.

Black Cat · Post by **Black Cat** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 6:07 pm

You made some good points. Thank god someone was willing help straighten this mess out. Your short dialogue tutorial will be of much use when I fix all the problems you've found.

As for the Fargoth ring topic, I have no idea how that happened. Fargoth screws me over yet again.

Update: Fixed the comma thing, all the spelling errors, and the dialogue loops.

Update again: There is some basic scripting in there, which surprisingly enough works. The quest also now has two endings depending on your choices.

Update: Fixed all the problems with the interior I was able to find. Will submit corrected version soon.

Yet another Update: Have fixed the tomb interior to be....well what it should have been.

Update AGAIN: ALMOST DONE.

Black Cat · Post by **Black Cat** » Thu Feb 05, 2009 1:49 am

I hate to double post, but here we go.

Ok people, there are still a few things wrong, but nothing I can't fix in time or with a little help. Anyhow the quest runs pretty smoothly and the interior while a little bland isn't outright disgusting or fucked up. And even if it is fucked up, fear not. I'm stuck in my house for five months with nothing to do but practice guitar, walk around my neighborhood endlessly, and mod.

I have got twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week to get this right. My success is inevitable. So test this, kill yourself out of mortification, and then reply to me and tell me what a horrible person/modder I am.

MMMowSkwoz · Post by **MMMowSkwoz** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 11:24 pm

In-CS Review (not tested in-game):

1. You still use too many topics. For a quest of this size, I would expect one new topic for the quest instructions and perhaps one for some background.

2. Greeting 0 and the 'a vampire' topic are marked as changed but have no entries. Clean.

3. Typos:

Greeting 5:
"Hello friend, I hope you've found all that you need, because if you haven't, i'm certainly not getting it for you."

There is good new however:
"You have accepted the job. Now do it" [missing full stop]

4. What is the 'Ithilas' variable in his script for? Shouldn't he have a nolore variable declared (being a vampire)?

5. Vampire_BlackCat script is not used?

6. What purpose does the Followkill variable serve?

7. Please lay your scripts out with the standard indentation; it makes them far easier to read.

8. In Osriel_Disbelief script, you have a "endif ( GetJournalIndex <=35 )" that is not part of any clause. Also, why have you made him stop combat if his health goes below zero?

Black Cat · Post by **Black Cat** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 3:45 am

Yet again good points. I'll continue working on this and I hope you will continue to review this.

Black Cat · Post by **Black Cat** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 3:24 am

First things first. The entire Moonbright Tavern and quest has been scrapped. There are a staggering amount of reasons for this, but the easiest to explain is that I decided my heart wasn't really in interior work and I think I would be much more valuable to TR if I only focused on quests, as that is what I love to do. So I made this. There may be a few misspellings and such but the entire quest (if one could call it an ENTIRE quest) runs through completely. Journal entries and everything. It is rather short and has only one very basic script. You will obviously not be impressed with this. Tell me what you need to see in order to be confident enough that all quests I touch will not necessarily die.

Note: Normally the story and dialogue would be much better. This is not a crappy excuse. It is simply truth that I could make sweeter dialogue and a more in-depth story, but I really didn't feel that was necessary. (Unless you do!) Anyway here you go. Have fun MMMowskwoz, as I know you're the only person that reviews my work...God bless you man!

MMMowSkwoz · Post by **MMMowSkwoz** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 2:59 pm

Hey, I'll try to have a look at this when I get home tonight.

MMMowSkwoz · Post by **MMMowSkwoz** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 10:47 pm

Review:

Dialogue

1. In Greeting 5, there should be a comma after 'please' in "You! Please you must help me!" Also, 'the' probably shouldn't be capitalised in "It's Ithilas! He has stolen Arkay's Bane from The Temple!"

2. In Arkay's Bane, you misspelled 'artifact' in one of the entries.

3. He repeats his same request for help if you refuse. For TR, we try to avoid that. A way to do this is to add a short variable to his script. Then set this variable to 1 when the player refuses the quest and filter the initial offer for variable=0.

4. There should be another option besides the hero and coward responses when he offers you the quest. It's nice if we can offer options for most role-playing characters.

Items

5. The amulet is far too good (and far too valuable) for such a simple quest.

Script

6. This doesn't need to be a global script. It would be much better to use a local script on the NPC. Also, this script is broken. It sets his health to 500 every frame, meaning I can only kill him if I do more than 500 damage in a single hit. You should work in a DoOnce variable for this, such as:

Code: Select all

Begin Osriel_Evil ;this script makes Osriel a badass after you turn over Arkay's Bane.

Short nolore
Short DoOnce

if ( DoOnce == 0 )
	if ( GetItemCount "amulet_ID" > 0 )
		;all your effects
		Set DoOnce to 1
	endif
endif

End Osriel_Evil

This means your effects will only be applied once and only when he has the amulet. Also, the nolore variable does nothing unless the script is local and attached to an NPC.

You've obviously learnt how to do dialogue and your writing is good. However, the broken script is an issue and you should get used to having non-uber things in quests; most TR quests will offer fairly mundane rewards.

If you expand this quest a little to make it a bit longer and include a bit more scripting, I think you'll make a good quester. If you want specific areas to work on, I'd like to see:
- the use of local variables to control dialogue (like I mentioned in 3. above)
- the use of a few more scripting functions. Things like OnActivate, PositionCell, Enable/Disable, and GetJournalIndex, which are used all the time in quests.

Good luck

Black Cat · Post by **Black Cat** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 11:05 pm

Thanks, but you should know the artifact is only uber because this was a showcase and I felt like doing it. Normally it would not have been so. However it is certainly more logical to make a more "practical" item I would suppose, to demonstrate my competence. On the subject of your other advice, it will probably prove to be invaluable yet again.

I will fix this, you have my word.

Black Cat · Post by **Black Cat** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 8:42 pm

I didn't have time to extensively test this. So there are bound to be some flaws.

Stryker · Post by **Stryker** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 9:18 pm

Tried to take a look at this showcase but uhmmm...

"Unable to find script on object 'arkay-artifact_improved1'"
Could you quickly throw the proper script on it and upload it? Then I, or MowSkwoz, whoever is here at the time, will give it a proper review.

Also, I'd like to note. There was an unnamed script that had no code in it... While this may not kill the quest, so to speak, it is not wise to leave such things in your quest.

Black Cat · Post by **Black Cat** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 9:27 pm

I was certain I took care of those damned scripts...

edit: Yeah, I did. But uploaded a less worked on back-up.

Stryker · Post by **Stryker** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 9:47 pm

It'd be awesome if you could upload the latest one then... If you accidentally uploaded a backup.

Black Cat · Post by **Black Cat** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 10:25 pm

It'd be awesome if you could upload the latest one then... If you accidentally uploaded a backup.

Lol. My apologies for the wait, miss. Anyhow this should be the correct file. There is only one very obvious error. You'll find out what it is pretty quickly. If you can help teach me how to fix it that would wondeful. It's probably something obvious. Anyhow enjoy.

Stryker · Post by **Stryker** » Wed Feb 25, 2009 12:13 am

Black Cat wrote:Lol. My apologies for the wait, miss.

'tisn't a problem, sir.

Anyways, down to business:

- To kick this off, I'm not sure about having all of the reconsider dialogue and choices in greetings.
The way I've always done it was, usually, through the same topic I'll normally be using (In this case, Arkay's Bane). And just in the greetings I'd put a reminder, where then the player goes to Arkay's Bane to accept/decline the quest again.

- "I have no buisness with you." In Waya's greeting entry, it should be business.
I'm not particularly a Grammar Nazi, so I may very well have missed stuff. (Just ask Faalen, my grammar is typically pathetic

)

- I looked at the scripts and most of the problems were in Arkay_Bane:

if ( Player->GetItemCount "arkay_artifact_improved1" 0 )
return
endif

The first line should be:
if ( Player->GetItemCount "arkay_artifact_improved1" == 0 )

- You have one too many endifs on the, If ( OnPCEquip ) 'section' of the script.

- Same script:
if ( GetJournalIndex Arkay_Honor 50 )

that should be

if ( GetJournalIndex Arkay_Honor == 50 )

Simply two cases of forgetting the ==. But, those should get rid of the error messages that show up.

But I did find another issue:

- Reading the note doesn't seem to work (ie, it doesn't update the Journal). But I do believe that 'OnPCEquip' should be used rather than 'OnActivate'. Since technically you do equip it in order to read it.
Because of this one I never really finished the quest.

- Also, my humble suggestion would be that rather than using 'setfight 100' all the time, I would suggest using 'StartCombat, Player' instead.
'setfight' sometimes takes awhile to kick in, while 'StartCombat' should normally take effect immediately. Its just something that I believe helps a bit with the realism of the quest. (Because people don't normally wander around right after threatening to kill someone).

There aren't quite as many errors as it may seem, I do like to ramble which makes it seem like more is there. But I think once these are fixed and theres one last check over you could get promoted.

(EDIT: I just realized how organized MowSkwoz's report is compared to mine.

Oh well.)

Black Cat · Post by **Black Cat** » Wed Feb 25, 2009 12:31 am

Thanks for the review and the advice! About the note thing it would've updated your journal if you dropped it then picked it up again. Your solution is better, lol.

Black Cat · Post by **Black Cat** » Wed Feb 25, 2009 2:36 am

Well the whole thing functions perfectly except for the note. Which still won't provide the journal entry. To fix that while testing just open of the console and type Journal Arkay_Honor 30

MMMowSkwoz · Post by **MMMowSkwoz** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 12:51 pm

I have about 3000 words to write for tomorrow, so I don't have time to give a full review, but I opened this up briefly in TESAME and the CS. There are a lot of items marked as modified which aren't part of your quest - you need to be very thorough in cleaning these out. You seem to have taken a lot of what we've said on board, but not everything has been changed - I saw a dialogue results box with 'SetFight 100' in it, for example (see Stryker's note above).

I don't mean to be rude, but I can't emphasise enough how you need to check everything very thoroughly when making a TR quest. You can't just throw it together and keep having it sent back from review - it wastes everyone else's time and makes the whole process much longer than it needs to be. Try to understand every part of a script fully before using it and make sure it has been tested in every circumstance you can think of.

As to the note not giving the journal entry, I suspect it is to do with the standard issue with books. Scripting for Dummies has an excellent explanation of the problem and an example solution on pg.175, so checking that would be a good place to start.

I'm sorry if that was a little blunt, but don't give up. You've got some good ideas and your dialogue is great. I think you just need to spend a little more time checking everything before you submit a file.

Black Cat · Post by **Black Cat** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 6:15 pm

I don't mean to be rude, but I can't emphasise enough how you need to check everything very thoroughly when making a TR quest. You can't just throw it together and keep having it sent back from review - it wastes everyone else's time and makes the whole process much longer than it needs to be. Try to understand every part of a script fully before using it and make sure it has been tested in every circumstance you can think of.

You aren't rude at all, say whatever necessary to get the correct way through my head. I will be VERY thorough this time.

Black Cat · Post by **Black Cat** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 11:18 pm

Though admittedly submitted rather quickly (again), this latest update is horrendously, painfully, torturously thorough. I checked the file with TESAME and spent about an hour and a half scrolling through the list, checking to make sure every new dialogue, script, cell, item, and NPC was sound. As far as my computer is concerned, everything that did not belong is gone. After that I took the source you suggested and attempted quite successfully to correct the note issue. Also learned a lot of new scripting things in the process. Then I spent another hour checking for grammer errors and spelling errors and whatnot. I found seven, total. It is extremely unlikely, however possible you will find more. From my end, everything looks sound. The quest is completable, the journals operate perfectly, the items are not uber, and the scripts do exactly what they are suppose to. I am VERY confident I've gotten everything. If I haven't, you are expected, and asked, to be very disappointed if not very angry. Though I also request you still elaborate on what I haven't managed to get through my head yet. If this post is as confusing as it sounded in my mind here is the list of things I just said in a less bizarre way.

1.My scripts work, and I understand them.

2.The file is clean, I swear.

3.My spelling and grammer are reasonable.

4.I have learned to work with non-uber items.

5.Though one vanilla NPC (Telis Salvani) is changed, it does not break any other quest, and I am aware I cannot do that working with TR.

6. IT WORKS! HURRAY~!

I hope you enjoy, and remember the process: Test this. Kill yourself. Review.

Edit: Stryker's advice has been implemented. Except for the topic advice, but I have taken note of it and will make sure to use it in later quests.

MMMowSkwoz · Post by **MMMowSkwoz** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 9:07 pm

Dialogue

1. In Greeting 5, you have two identical entries - you can actually use one for both circumstances by changing the results box for the 2nd encounter to

choice "Tell me what's happened." 1 "I still have little time to spare." 4

This is also true of two pairs of identical entries in Arkay's Bane

2. 'What have you brought me' is an unusual choice of topic name and doesn't fit well. Couldn't these entries be under Arkay's Bane?

Scripts

1. Please use the standard indentation for nested if clauses. It makes it far easier to read.

2. In the script Arkay_Bane, the following clauses serve no purpose:

Code: Select all

if ( Player->GetHealth <= 0 )
	return
endif

Code: Select all

if ( Player->GetItemCount "arkay_artifact_improved1" == 0 )
	return
endif

The first does nothing because if the player is dead, the game isn't running and there's no point saving CPU power. The second one does nothing because it is at the end of the script - the script will return regardless.

NPCs

1. Waya's wander value is too high. She is almost running around the Lucky Lockup.

Contingencies

1. If I kill Waya and then ask Telis about Arkay's Bane, I get the journal update and no other options.

2. If I go to Telis after obtaining the amulet, but didn't talk to Osriel or Waya, he asks where the amulet is, even though I have it

3. If I go to Telis after obtaining the amulet and killing Osriel, but didn't talk to Waya, he mentions Waya (who I've never met) and if I do find Waya later she doesn't have the necessary topic and her greeting doesn't make sense.

4. If I meet Ithilas before I meet Osriel, there are then no dialogue options for "I already have the amulet".

Much of this is very minor, but still needs to be fixed. The biggest issue now is considering every possible contingency (within reason). Sometimes it helps to draw out a quest tree, listing all possible options a player could take at each stage.

Black Cat · Post by **Black Cat** » Tue Mar 03, 2009 7:23 pm

Thanks again for the advice, and thanks for being patient with me. Hopefully this next update will be the last.