Creating content for GHAR: dynamic plot and story content

[PlaintextMan]

The title says it all. Story / misc plot content is of course important, but I'm still pretty baffled regarding how this should be done in GHAR, especially with Lua available.

I want to start off small: recreate the infamous sewer cleaning plot. I'm not having too much trouble understanding Metascenes and putting entrances on the world map. I am having trouble conceiving how previously Plot content fits in and, importantly, how to teleport the PC into the first level of the randomized sewer from within Lua (I'm guessing this is another case of 'not implemented yet'; I could try doing it if I understood how the gears system and Pascal approach this)

Maybe that should be re-thought: how about several (or just one) predefined static-positioned sewer entrances into, say Snake Lake or Hogye, which provide access to the randomized sewers that should be cleared out (optionally each being a different difficulty or theme) but which could be accessed even if the heroic sewer cleaning plot isn't loaded. Ostensibly then, the upper few levels of the sewer caverns, the ones which the city actually uses, would have very few monsters most of the time, and then sometimes the monsters from the lower levels will start infesting them, prompting the mayor to ask for help. Also, perhaps static content such as the GH1 Snake Lake sewer with the student doing research down there could be integrated into a specific sewer entrance, while the rest of the sewer is still randomized like in the GH1 sewer cleaning quest.

Advice? Thoughts?

[magic.coding.fairy.peridot]

For now I'd say just get the old sewer cleaning quest going as is. I'd say priority one for GHAR should be getting the old GH1 content up and running - as I understand it, we're not really trying to create an improved GH1, we're trying to get the machinery in place so we can easily build GH2.

It might be easier to start with a destroy-the-raiders quest, just because it only involves one map. It might help to look at how the arena is implemented, because really it's not so different from an arena fight.

[Joseph Hewitt]

Some quick notes: Plots and stories aren't yet working, quests are mostly working but I think there are some problems. (A plot is an event generated while playing the game, such as a mission. A story is a controller of plots, such as the core story. A quest is a series of events generated when the campaign is started, such as most dungeons and the mecha arenas)

Plot/Quest handling is going to be a bit different in the Lua version. As before, a plot/quest is going to be a tree of subplot nodes. Upon creation the parent node is active. A node can activate its child subplots, deactivate its child subplots, or deactivate itself. During cleanup deactivated subplots are deleted; any active children become root nodes themselves.

As before, subplots may be part of the same plotline or different plotlines. Only one node from a given plotline can be active at once. If a node activates a subplot which is of the same plotline as itself, the node is automatically deactivated. A plot/quest can have as many active plotlines as you want.

[PlaintextMan]

For now I'd say just get the old sewer cleaning quest going as is. I'd say priority one for GHAR should be getting the old GH1 content up and running - as I understand it, we're not really trying to create an improved GH1, we're trying to get the machinery in place so we can easily build GH2.

I differ, and stubbornly refuse to dump the old arenascripts into my GHAR dir, because that would defy the point of GHAR for me. As I understand it, we are trying to make an improved GH1, because the GH1 setting still has a lot of untapped potential. And in doing this, we are developing a brand new content system that will benifit GH2 as well.

(Anouncement) Who knows, maybe this time the rusty scepter quest can even be finished.

It might be easier to start with a destroy-the-raiders quest, just because it only involves one map. It might help to look at how the arena is implemented, because really it's not so different from an arena fight.

Noted, thanks for the advice. Arghh, it was late when I posted so I missed that obvious thing: look at the arena code and notice gh_GotoScene.

[PlaintextMan]

Some quick notes: Plots and stories aren't yet working, quests are mostly working but I think there are some problems.
...
Plot/Quest handling is going to be a bit different in the Lua version. As before, a plot/quest is going to be a tree of subplot nodes. Upon creation the parent node is active. A node can activate its child subplots, deactivate its child subplots, or deactivate itself. During cleanup deactivated subplots are deleted; any active children become root nodes themselves.

Not working yet? That's a pity. Although it is good to know that that part of GH is also being redesigned a bit.

Say, this has me thinking. If I were to spawn and populate a plot gear into the running game world via the yellow button (similiar to how I spawned rubble) that wouldn't get the plot up and running as expected, would it?

Edit: At that, where did Plot gears use to go? I mean, children of which gear?

[Joseph Hewitt]

Say, this has me thinking. If I were to spawn and populate a plot gear into the running game world via the yellow button (similiar to how I spawned rubble) that wouldn't get the plot up and running as expected, would it?

Edit: At that, where did Plot gears use to go? I mean, children of which gear?

Children of the adventure; invcon I think. I suspect that it wouldn't work- at the very least the subplot activation/cleanup system isn't there yet, and starting up a plot is more complicated than just sticking it in the right place. Then again I wouldn't have guessed that generating rubble would be possible yet either.

I'll try to get the proper plot handling up and running soon.

[PlaintextMan]

Children of the adventure; invcon I think. I suspect that it wouldn't work- at the very least the subplot activation/cleanup system isn't there yet, and starting up a plot is more complicated than just sticking it in the right place. Then again I wouldn't have guessed that generating rubble would be possible yet either.

So ostensibly plots yet won't work at all. But I'll give it a shot. The adventure gear is... which one? Core Story? The -7/0/0 gear? I'm using Peridot's simplified gear and the Shift-number keys to try figure this out from the Lua and Pascal sides. How could I locate the adventure gear?

Hehe yeah, the rubble spawning isn't too involved, actually. Just need to make sure in goes in the right com list, and that I terminate the linked lists. Otherwise batshit happens, like four different versions of both yourself and Quentin appearing on screen. At least that's a very visible indicator to me of "you're doing it wrong". I think I'm going to put all these experiments and improvements into my fork of Peridot's repository at github.

I'll try to get the proper plot handling up and running soon.

That'd be appreciated. Do you perhaps intend on working from Peridot's unofficial master branch?

[Joseph Hewitt]

That'd be appreciated. Do you perhaps intend on working from Peridot's unofficial master branch?

I need to take a look at it, and probably merge it in with my working branch.

[magic.coding.fairy.peridot]

That'd be appreciated. Do you perhaps intend on working from Peridot's unofficial master branch?

I need to take a look at it, and probably merge it in with my working branch.

I know you're used to CVS, but if you're willing to give git a try it makes merging *way* easier - as in, it took me about ten minutes to merge all my topic branches and the Snake Lake one. And the only reason it took that long was because we had conflicting changes to yellow.lua. Plus github's public hosting makes it easy to keep track of who's working on what.