GH2: Resetting the Core Story

[Joseph Hewitt]

The Problem
Sometimes, the random story generator will encounter a situation for which it has no components. In such a case the core story will halt and you will be presented with a deadend message, as below:

Plot deadend in core story: +P-- +C-- +T-- +F-- +H-- +Bor +G-- C:THIEF!Ne E:++ E:NOFAC
E:THIEF E:M.--- E:A.nme F:-- P:-- R:-- T:++ ...

This big list of gibberish is the story context. It describes the state of the world, the existence/nonexistence of your enemies/allies, and the choices your PC has made so far.

Restarting the Core Story
After you hit a deadend, the core story will remain inactive until it gets restarted manually. To do this you need to do two things:

• Update your series directory with new components matching the story context. Remember, the reason why you got this error in the first place is that no appropriate content could be found. If you send me the context info I'll always try to make sure the deadend is fixed in time for the next release. If you have SVN access, you can often get a fix even sooner.
• Run the "rcs" script. This script makes the core story attempt to load a new plot. To do this, open the debugging console by pressing "#", type "rcs" (without the quotes) and hit enter.

If you don't get another deadend message immediately after doing this, it worked.

Note that attempting to use "rcs" without updating your series directory will likely either have no effect, or do something very bad to your campaign. Likewise using "rcs" multiple times in a row or when the core story hasn't deadended will do bad things. "rcs" is not a panacea for all things which can go wrong in the story generator, it is only meant for restarting the plot after a deadend. Do not taunt "rcs".

If you think you should use "rcs" but want to make sure it's safe to do so, view your adventure structure by pressing "!". Find the entry marked "core story" and select that. This will show you the core story structure. If your campaign is healthy there should be one plot with a name like "Public PCFac Mission" or "Basic Friend Contact" inside the core story. If there's nothing inside but the core story itself, this means you are currently at a deadend and may use "rcs" safely. If there are two or more plots beneath the core story this means you probably used "rcs" when you didn't have to; salvaging your campaign is going to take a bit of work.

Fixing the Core Story after improper use of RCS
You'll probably want to back up your RPG save file before doing this...

If you have two or more plots in the core story, jot down their names. Next, open the RPG save file in a text editor, and do the following procedure for each plot:

• Search for "name <PLOT>", where PLOT is the name of the plot as written down above.
• You'll see a big list of string attributes. Find the attribute in this list with the key "START <...". You want the one which just says START; START_2 or .14_START are not what you are looking for.
• Delete everything in the brackets and replace it with the command "EndPlot".
• Do the same for all the other plots currently loaded.

Next, load the campaign and check the core story using "!" to make sure that all plots have been deleted. Finally, restart the core story as per the instructions given earlier. If you want to make sure that it worked use "!" again to view the adventure structure.

[Shin Majin]

This doesn't make much sense to the technically impaired.  How exactly does one "update the series directory?"