Ripping the Guts from the Beast

[Joseph Hewitt]

Yes, that's what I was thinking too- the idea for using Mysticism as a "buffing" skill came from the talent I suggested earlier, so using the talent as a replacement for a shrine would be a good idea.

I think I'm going to get to work on a possible new rumor system, try playing through one time by myself, and then when it seems to be working ok-ish make a new release.

[Daemonward]

Do you plan to do anything more with the Super Deformed "Cute" User Interface? I thought that it looked pretty good, but we haven't seen much of it lately.

[Joseph Hewitt]

Yes, I plan to get back to that, but at the moment my drawing time is very limited. Actually, time of any sort is limited...

[Joseph Hewitt]

I think the series directory is finally all clear; I had forgotten to switch over the clueXX triggers and the SkillXP function. I've updated the clue trigger so that it no longer takes a skill index, but the actual name of the skill. I've also updated all the SkillXP calls with named constants rather than magic numbers.

As an extra bonus, I've updated the clue_survival and clue_science scripts in the monster descriptions. GearParser can now insert standardized scripts into items; this means that all the cases where you can use Survival on a corpse to get meat now use the same code (modified by parameters of course). If there's a problem or if I want to change something, I only need to do so once. Oh, one more thing- many of the space monsters now have survival rewards, meaning that the skill is finally useful in space.

[Vair]

Quoting: Joseph Hewitt

i don't want to add a supernatural element (or at least not an unambiguous one), more something like the Shaolin monks amplified with a bit of anime physics.

Well, in such case something supernatural would fit the game. Maybe not in a way of some skills, throwing blasts of energy or other telekinetic Force Push but not completely explained phenomena that could happen during quests or regular battles ('Suddenly, you have strange urge to look more closely on your right side. You notice barrage of missiles coming from that direction! You avoid them' - as a bonus chance combined with Awareness and Dodge roll). I wouldn't like Mysticism to be just a skill that provides buffs, otherwise it can be as well cut out as other skills.

Also, other than previously suggested 'mystical item examination' skill, it could serve as in quests where theological or occult knowledge would be useful - debate with some spiritual person, understanding some mystical wall inscription that can provide a hint on where to go to get this or that, solve some mystery, such kind of things.

[Joseph Hewitt]

I've started to combine the megaplot assembler with the quest generator. Actually, for the past two days I haven't done much but read through both procedures multiple times and take lots of notes.

The way it's going to work is that the megaplot generator is going to build the quest as if it were a plot, and then the deployment routine will intergrate the completed scripts into the game world. This should make things a whole lot nicer than they are now. I want to remove some of the redundancies in the system- at the moment plots, stories, and quests have separate mechanisms for recording their difficulty ratings and layer IDs.

The first quests to be reactivated after the changeover will be the mecha arenas, since I believe those can be done with little or no editing. The local quests and NPC quests will be removed in favor of the "quest ladder" model, which I believe I described somewhere.

[Joseph Hewitt]

Today I tried playing with the combined megaplot/quest generator- it crashed after about three seconds. I played around with a few things, figured out where the bug was, and plots now seem to be working.

I've disabled all of the quests for now. Most of them are going to require a lot of editing before they're ready to use again- at the very least, all of the SubQuest requests need to be changed to SubPlots and the Scene requests changed to Place requests. The good news is that plots and quests should now use exactly the same interface, and I didn't even have to do anything particularly evil to achieve it.

The first location to get a Mk2 quest will probably be Cayley Rock. Old Wynter's Mine is being removed from the Atlas and becoming a quest. Here's an outline of what should be happening:

Wynter's Mine- Generic dungeon quest. A GDQ can be attached to any dungeon, and will add something special to the bottom level. Maybe there's an artifact down there which someone up top will pay lots of money for. Maybe there's a hideout belonging to an outlaw.

Lower Wynter's Mine- Another GDQ.

Wynter's Mine Bottom- After Lower Wynter's Mine, the PC will come to a level which has been blocked by rubble. There's no way through, though there may be an elevator back to the surface.

Interlude- A local quest which activates once the PC hits Renown 40. This quest is unrelated to the mines.

Cayley Core- When the PC hits Renown 60, a news event takes place. Cayley Rock suffers a quake of some kind; cue the local disaster mood. This quake opens up the passage in Wynter's Mine Bottom and begins the Cayley Core quest.

I think this system could be extremely powerful. If everything works out like I hope it will, it'll certainly be worth all the trouble I'm going through now.

[Onisuzume]

You do realise that people will want to make their own plots with this when its done. So an explanation of how it all works (in the wiki for example) would be nice... when its done ofcourse.

[Joseph Hewitt]

I think that kind of thing would best be hashed out together on the forum. I'll start a new thread for that- I'll post the docs which exist so far, and everyone else can point out the things which are explained poorly/not explained at all.

[Joseph Hewitt]

I did the first complete test of the quest generator today. I think everything is running properly. The test case was the new Cayley Rock quest series- this was a good choice because it has a lot of difficult bits, and indeed it did crash the game on the first few attempts. Spoilers ahead... as if that's ever stopped anyone from reading.

The root quest for Cayley Rock defines the Wynter's Mine dungeon and requests several dungeon-related subplots. The structure of the dungeon is pretty much the same as before: you've got a minehouse on top, Wynter's Mine beneath it and Lower Wynter's Mine beneath that. Underneath LWM is a single level called Wynter's Mine Bottom.

One new feature is an elevator leading from the minehouse to Wynter's Mine Bottom. At first you can't use this elevator at all, but if you clear out the debris from the bottom side it becomes usable. You can also get it working with a really good repair roll on the top side. With the Mk1 quests, creating a circular loop of gates like this was impossible. In fact, it was difficult to even have multiple entrances for the same scene.

Quests associated with the first two dungeon layers are activated as soon as Cayley Rock is entered for the first time. The quests for the third and fourth layers (Cayley Caves and Cayley Core) will be activated following the earthquake incident, as described earlier. I've tested this mechanism but haven't actually added the quests for it yet.

Edit- I forgot to mention that the next thing to convert over will be the arena quests. Most of the challengers can be upgraded to the new system with a few simple applications of search-and-replace. Some of the challengers who link to other quests, such as Hammel and Kolo, will need to wait until those other quests also get re-activated.

[Joseph Hewitt]

The quest system appears to be working, and all the new capabilities are wonderful. I've started converting the old quests to the new system but for the next release most of them are probably going to remain offline. So far I've got the mecha arenas (including all challengers) and the first half of Cayley Rock up and running.

Certain quests are going to be either trashed or majorly reworked. In particular, I'm getting rid of those quests which create a new scene on the outdoors map which gets used for a single combat and then lingers about uselessly forever. Instead, this sort of thing should be handled by a dynamic encounter, but that's going to take a bit of work.

My new rules for designing content:
- If skills other than Mecha Piloting are required to succeed, there should also be a brute force workaround. Brute force can mean either combat or paying a price (cash or otherwise).
- If interaction with NPCs is being done there should always be options for Conversation and Intimidation, plus possibly Shopping, Taunt, Insight and other skills.
- If a situation involves the domain of a skill, provide special opportunities for PCs with said skill. The quest involves animals? Make sure that a character with Survival gets some kind of benefit. There's a lab involved? Make sure that Science gets used.
- Quests should have a permanent effect upon the game world. They can provide new resources for the PC such as specialty shops, skill trainers, dungeons, and so on.
- Check to see if heroic/villainous or lawful/criminal reputation should come into play. Think about how the problem would be approached by a pure warrior, a smooth talker, a thief, a techie, and a hyperactive schoolgirl.

I plan to make a new release of the game soon. I was hoping to do it tonight, but it's 11:00 and I've been up since 6 and as far as I can tell I may already be typing gibberish. There are still a lot of issues to iron out: as mentioned, most of the quests have been disabled, and my current no-Conversation character has run into a few spots where Conversation is still expected. Still, I'm enjoying the new rules a lot, and having more people play the game would help to find all the remaining bugs.

[Vair]

All fine and interesting, tho I would like to address one particular thing:

Quoting: Joseph Hewitt

- If skills other than Mecha Piloting are required to succeed, there should also be a brute force workaround. Brute force can mean either combat or paying a price (cash or otherwise).

As much as it would be great to have many ways of completing every quest, some of them still should be restricted to one group of skills - just how those skills would be used and the outcome should vary. This way there will be some more replay value and different possibilities for different characters.

[CCC]

Quite. If you don't have any skill as a medic, no doctor is going to ask you to head into the dangerous caves to rescue the trapped adventurers, after all... and without detective skills, no-one's going to ask you to track down evidence in a filing cabinet in a heavily guarded mansion (to take a couple of GH1 examples).

Of course, all of these are situations that the player will only have to face if he has the skills required to face them in the first place...

[Joseph Hewitt]

You're right. How about this: no specific skills other than Mecha Piloting, except in the case of special skill-based events, and those shouldn't even be made available to PCs who don't have the requisite skill.

I was hoping to make a release again tonight, but the final level of Cayley Rock isn't quite finished. Tomorrow I teach until almost 10 at night so maybe it can be ready by Wednesday.

Edit- Since this release will break save file compatibility, I think I'll take this opportunity to delete some of the older, uglier portraits from the image/ folder. I couldn't delete them before since doing so would break save file compatibility (or, at least, turn a lot of NPCs invisible when you speak with them).

[Ephafn]

Quoting: Joseph Hewitt

You're right. How about this: no specific skills other than Mecha Piloting, except in the case of special skill-based events, and those shouldn't even be made available to PCs who don't have the requisite skill.

That's a good new, as always giving a brute force solution would make dumb brute characters (1 Kn) a little too effective. By the way, will brute force solutions offer the same reward as the normal solutions? For example, a bounty hunting mission could give a bigger reward for getting the perp alive than in small pieces.

Quoting: Joseph Hewitt

Edit- Since this release will break save file compatibility, I think I'll take this opportunity to delete some of the older, uglier portraits from the image/ folder. I couldn't delete them before since doing so would break save file compatibility (or, at least, turn a lot of NPCs invisible when you speak with them).

That is good to ear too. Less ugly portraits mean less ugly NPCs. (Although I have no problem with portraits expressly drawn to depict ugly, low Charm NPCs.)