AcrylicFrog's Quest Showcase

Interested in joining? Show off your skills here
Post Reply
User avatar
AcrylicFrog
PT Modder
Posts: 25
Joined: Wed Dec 09, 2020 11:19 pm

AcrylicFrog's Quest Showcase

Post by AcrylicFrog »

Hello!
This showcase takes place near the dwemer ruin of Bthuand in the ashlands. The quest takes place primarily in two redoran huts near the ruin, just over the hill. It includes two new interiors and some minor exterior edits but these are frankly very poorly made and I do not intend for this to be a showcase for either interiors or exteriors, just the quest. To start the quest talk to either of the two npc's in the huts. Let me know if you would rather me move the npc's and the quest and drop the interiors and exterior edits. The quest involves the player character trying to figure out which of the two npc's are lying to them, as they are both accusing each other of necromancy. There are multiple endings to the quest. It should be clean but you might want to look at it just because I am not sure that I cleaned thoroughly enough. Let me know if there is anything you would like me to change about the quest.
Attachments
Clean showcase.ESP
(270.43 KiB) Downloaded 96 times

Violet
Lead Dev
Posts: 273
Joined: Mon Apr 30, 2018 11:07 am

Post by Violet »

Hello! I took a look at your showcase. The quest was a lot of fun, it did take me a second to find the trapdoor, but I loved the idea. I could tell you had fun writing some of the dialogue and it shows. I didn't actually catch all of it though, which I'll get to in the issues. There are a few problems that you'll need to take care of which you can see down below. Feel free to ask on discord or here if you have any questions. I also liked the quaint feel of the Redoran houses, btw. Now on to the issues.

Review time!
Spoiler
Issues
-This file needs cleaned quite a bit. I would suggest TESAME for anything not Cell related. After looking at it in the TESAME there are quite a lot of Globals that are dirtied. This is very common, so don't feel bad for it. This is why they're called "Evil GMSTs", especially these ones in particular. There's also a daedric ruin cell that looks like it's dirtied as well, but that might just be Folms house having a corner in the cell or something.

-The local scripts on both Folms and Ferya don't have anything that blocks them from updating the journal on their deaths before, after, or within points of the quest that doesn't make sense (like killing Ferya immediately after getting the quest for her before speaking to Folms). Make sure there's "if (GetJournalEntry"s that keeps them from updating the journal before and after the quests are complete. Also, it might be better to either change the wording to be more vague and acceptable for those "off" points in time, or create new Journal entries that are specific to those edge cases.

-I noticed that in the CS there's Ferya Drimas and Folms Drothis dialogue for vanilla characters and factions, but none for the two NPCs you'll mainly be interacting with (this is the dialogue I never got, for the record). This is a problem. You see, Morrowind's dialogue only adds a topic if an NPC who has the topic mentions it - or if during their dialogue there's an Addtopic "(topic)" within the Resultbox. So with neither characters having dialogue about the other or themselves, they can't give you the topic for you to then ask those other NPCs in Balmora, the Temple, or the Ashlanders about them. So you'll need to either Addtopic them in to all of the relevant dialogue (at least both character's lines where they give the quest), or you need to give them each a line about the other AND about themselves (a simple "Yes, you're talking to him/her" will suffice for the lines about themselves). In general, for quests that involve a lot of topics, or just important info in general, you'll want to do both for dialogue and topics you really want the player to see.

-As said before, the local script on Folms has some issues. The other issue has is the "journal MS_necromancer 40" part causes two bugs, which I'll split into issue A and B:

Issue A: This part of it can trigger whenever you are in the story, including if the story is over or has already started (including when Folms is already dead).

Issue B: As the journal entry can trigger whenever, as long as you're in the same cell 1000+ units away from Folms, this leads to a Journal loop, in which it constantly updates the journal (you can see this for yourself by running around in the basement and you'll see "Your Journal has been updated" spam in the bottom of the screen over and over ad infinium, which also makes things impossible to view correctly when looting something). To fix this part of the bug, you'll need to do a "DoOnce" NOTE: This variable doesn't need to be named "DoOnce", it's just what a lot of people name it.

you do this by adding the following:

"short DoOnce" (since this is a short variable)

Then, right before the "if" that would allow the journal update to happen, put an "if ( DoOnce == 0 )" right before it. Then include a "set DoOnce to 1" in the result along with the journal update and it should keep that journal update from only firing once, as the condition that would allow the journal to update again (DoOnce equaling 0) doesn't fit anymore, since DoOnce is now set to 1, instead of 0.
NOTE: You don't need to do this with OnDeath since OnDeath is already something that only fires once.
I'll have another look when these issues are taken care of. And again, I really did enjoy the quest. These mistakes are all incredibly common beginner ones and I can almost guarantee that if someone dug up my old showcase that I probably made the same mistakes if not worse ones.

User avatar
AcrylicFrog
PT Modder
Posts: 25
Joined: Wed Dec 09, 2020 11:19 pm

Post by AcrylicFrog »

Thank you for reviewing my showcase so promptly and I'll get right on fixing those issues that you mentioned. I actually did try cleaning that daedric ruin cell but it caused some minor issues with the terrain making some spikes appear.

User avatar
AcrylicFrog
PT Modder
Posts: 25
Joined: Wed Dec 09, 2020 11:19 pm

Post by AcrylicFrog »

Here is the edited file. I think I fixed all of the things that you mentioned, let me know if I missed anything.
Attachments
Clean showcase.ESP
(237.65 KiB) Downloaded 106 times

User avatar
AcrylicFrog
PT Modder
Posts: 25
Joined: Wed Dec 09, 2020 11:19 pm

Post by AcrylicFrog »

Reattached
Attachments
Clean showcase.ESP
(237.65 KiB) Downloaded 95 times

User avatar
AcrylicFrog
PT Modder
Posts: 25
Joined: Wed Dec 09, 2020 11:19 pm

Post by AcrylicFrog »

Cleaned out empty topic
Attachments
Clean showcase.ESP
(237.6 KiB) Downloaded 92 times

User avatar
Rakanishu
Lead Dev
Posts: 886
Joined: Thu Sep 15, 2016 9:16 pm

Post by Rakanishu »

I'll take a look at this either today or tomorrow

User avatar
Rakanishu
Lead Dev
Posts: 886
Joined: Thu Sep 15, 2016 9:16 pm

Post by Rakanishu »

- Please use proper spacing in your scripts to prevent any odd errors. I also recommend not using commas since they're not required and can only cause issues if used incorrectly. Spacing examples:

if ( Death == 0 )

if ( GetJournalIndex "MS_necromancer" == 40 )

Greeting 5:
- Both NPCs should have Greeting 5 entries that cover all in-progress entries; something like "Have you taken care of Folms Drothas yet?"
- Post-quest Greeting 5s would be nice, too

Topic: "background":
- Folms Drothas calls himself a necromancer which spoils the surprise. Both Ferya and Folms should get custom "background" entries to override the fallback entries.

Topic: "Ferya Drimas":
- Folms Drothas asks "Have you found proof of her crimes yet?" before you talk to him about his "problem"; this can be solved by adding a journal filter
- Immediately after killing Ferya and asking Folms about "Ferya Drimas" causes him to say "Have you found proof of her crimes yet?" Choosing "problem" afterwards ends the quest. This could be solved by having another entry in "Ferya Drimas" that checks for her death and redirects to the "problem" topic for conclusion, something like "Have you taken care of my problem?"

Topic: "Folms Drothas":
- Ferya Drimas asks "You got any proof yet?" before you talk to her about anything; this can be solved by adding a journal filter
- Immediately after killing Folms and asking Ferya about "Folms Drothas" causes her to say "Do you have proof of his crimes yet?" Choosing "Necromancer" afterwards ends the quest. This could be solved by having another entry in "Folms Drothas" that checks for his death and redirects to the "necromancer" topic for conclusion, something like "So was he was a necromancer after all?"

Topic: "questions":
- If you get a journal entry from one of the NPCs and get this dialogue, then you can talk to the other about "questions" before you get their journal entry.

NPC "ondres nerano" is dirtied, likely from checking the NPC's record in the CS.

User avatar
AcrylicFrog
PT Modder
Posts: 25
Joined: Wed Dec 09, 2020 11:19 pm

Post by AcrylicFrog »

Sorry for the wait, here's the updated showcase. Because of the way that I set up the journal, I had to make a new local variable to keep track of when they tell the player to do their part of the quest. I believe that I addressed all of the issues that you mentioned, let me know if there are any that I missed/should still fix.
Attachments
Showcase.ESP
(238.81 KiB) Downloaded 91 times

User avatar
AcrylicFrog
PT Modder
Posts: 25
Joined: Wed Dec 09, 2020 11:19 pm

Post by AcrylicFrog »

Updated
Attachments
Showcase.ESP
(240.91 KiB) Downloaded 96 times

User avatar
Rakanishu
Lead Dev
Posts: 886
Joined: Thu Sep 15, 2016 9:16 pm

Post by Rakanishu »

AcrylicFrog resolved the one remaining script error over PMs so I recommend promotion.

User avatar
roerich
Cruel Warlord
Posts: 2166
Joined: Sat Jan 03, 2015 3:10 pm
Location: Denmark

Post by roerich »

Member promoted.

Welcome aboard!
"I don't know if you are kidding but I 100% support a Big Mouth Billy Bass in PC"
- Taniquetil

Post Reply

Return to “Modder Showcase”