'Thom Crooze haz already accepted this mission'

Ideas and suggestions for game mechanics and rules.
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Ithildur
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'Thom Crooze haz already accepted this mission'

Post by Ithildur »

I actually had a dream about this this morning, amusingly enough. It's obviously inspired by the posts towards the end of this thread: http://www.alandfaraway.info/phpBB3/vie ... 4&start=15

The jist of it is to make special static quests that are notably much tougher in difficulty/complexity than average (sufficiently so that they almost certainly require some pretty thorough group planning/prep), available INITIALLY to only one PC at a time to accept. If a PC has accepted such a quest, then it's not directly available for the time being and the NPC questgiver informs you who the assignment has been given to. The quest remains unavailable until it is successfully completed, x amount of RL days have passed without successful completion, or the PC has died, in which case the NPC questgiver's dialog changes to 'Thom has not been heard from in quite some time, would you like to take on this assignment?' or such indicating it's now available.

I say 'not directly available' because it IS available for other PCs to take part in by grouping up with the PC that accepted the quest; in fact, the initial PC probably won't succeed on the quest on his own and will require a group (they could attempt it solo but as we all know our game intentionally makes that exponentially more risky/suicidal, as it should be, or optionally it could be scripted so a group is mandatory). That's why the NPC informs you who's undertaken this crazy Mission Impossible, to facilitate people (both ICly and OOCly) seeking out PCs/players to group up, organize, discuss, plan and prepare together. Or to try and dissuade the crazy elf from another suicidal mission, etc. i.e. It's a little mechanism that faciliates/encourages people hooking up and engaging in whatever form of RP makes sense for their PCs in response to finding out 'Joe Schmoe is doing what now?! We should help him/try to talk sense into him/stalk him and loot his corpse!''

Upon successful completion of the task, the quest is no longer available at all, or at least not for some time (depending on whether it's a kobold boss or dragon, could be weeks or a year RL? up to the DM team of the server).

Conceptually it doesn't seem too complex, though I'm guessing it's not quite 'easy as pie'. It's an element that both adds to the sense of permanency/narrative consistency (vs the usual MMORPG/PW 'So it looks like we've had ten heroes go slay ten bosses last week, good thing there's a fresh neverending supply, let's go get em') and more importantly, encourages people to seek out others to interact with.

The NPC can also have dialog that informs you if a Mission Impossible/Legendary Task has been successfully completed, and gives credit/praise to the conquering heroes by name (could be done via server update or better yet typed in text, i.e. have the NPC store/recall/mention names as typed in by the point PC). If it's a suitably noteworthy task a successful completion certainly merits such props. Likewise, dialog that grimly notes 'this assignment was attempted by Thom et al and unfortunately... we haven't heard from him since. Are you sure you wish to take this on?' could be a nice touch as well.

[edited for less feather ruffleage]
Last edited by Ithildur on Fri Jul 31, 2015 3:52 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: 'Thom Crooze haz already accepted this mission'

Post by Zelknolf »

Ithildur wrote:static quests that are notably much tougher in difficulty/complexity
...
The quest remains unavailable until it is successfully completed, x amount of RL days have passed without successful completion, or the PC has died,
...
It's not complex,
So... if it's simple build, it's a good starter project and you'll do it?

If not, can you please stop asserting how complex your ideas are or how hard they would be to implement? 'cuz from my perspective, it looks like you're asking for new APIs (in quest, pps, and db_persist) and an inherently-complex build.
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Re: 'Thom Crooze haz already accepted this mission'

Post by Duck One »

Zelknolf wrote:
Ithildur wrote:static quests that are notably much tougher in difficulty/complexity
...
The quest remains unavailable until it is successfully completed, x amount of RL days have passed without successful completion, or the PC has died,
...
It's not complex,
So... if it's simple build, it's a good starter project and you'll do it?

If not, can you please stop asserting how complex your ideas are or how hard they would be to implement? 'cuz from my perspective, it looks like you're asking for new APIs (in quest, pps, and db_persist) and an inherently-complex build.
So....if he says "yes, I'll do it", you'll let him?
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Re: 'Thom Crooze haz already accepted this mission'

Post by Ithildur »

Well, I can tell you for certain that what motivation I might have had to consider undertaking such hasn't gone up just now.

For the record, no one is asking for anything. This is a brainstorming thread, not a request thread, not even the Custom Content thread. My mistake if brainstorming implies someone is asking/requesting/demanding anything at all; seems like a strange notion to me.

I have higher priorities elsewhere anyway so it's probably a good thing in the long run to be reminded of how wacky things can get here; getting motivated to invest significant time in ALFA right now is NOT what I should be doing.

Nothing to see here, move on. ;)
Last edited by Ithildur on Fri Jul 31, 2015 4:20 pm, edited 5 times in total.
Formerly: Aglaril Shaelara, Faerun's unlikeliest Bladesinger
Current main: Ky - something

It’s not the critic who counts...The credit belongs to the man who actually is in the arena, who strives violently, who errs and comes up short again and again...who if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement, but who if he fails, fails while daring greatly.-T. Roosevelt
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Re: 'Thom Crooze haz already accepted this mission'

Post by Zelknolf »

Duck One wrote:So....if he says "yes, I'll do it", you'll let him?
I only make that call for the ACR portions, but I bet an HDM would take the build half too. It's common for one HDM to say "No I don't like that idea," but pretty rare for all four to say that. There's always the possibility that Ithildur thinks things are easy because he's an expert, where it's very easy to get trapped in the mindset of "I find this easy to do, so the task must be easy."

In this case I understand the underestimate, and my only peeve is the lack of help (I'm working on this project every day, and then here's a fellow who can help, doesn't help, and asks the working people to do more). But in this hypothetical he'd be helping, and so there's nothing to be peeved about. Never hear me grump at Wynna for making a request (hell, might even notice that I give her requests priority; she does a bunch of stuff here, and I don't want her to have to stop because I'm dragging my feet on something she needs).


It's also possible that he can't help-- which is fine-- but then there's no expertise from which one can comment on the complexity of a project. Presenting a low estimate with a proposal just tells the working people that their work is underestimated and undervalued by the speaker (so much so, says the speaker, that an unskilled person could provide an accurate estimate of the project's scope).
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Re: 'Thom Crooze haz already accepted this mission'

Post by gonz.0 »

After some discussions recently in which I promised to help VS learn to build (and learn with her), I figured I should start relearning what little I knew (ie brushup), and get working on learning some new.

I recently was made aware that I probably will never be able due to health reasons hold down a full time job again. After spending some years as a stay at home dad for special needs kids, my mind is ACHING for something more stimulating to work on. I used to code for a MUD years ago (oh my god, that was 19 years ago now) and learned some fun stuff there that I don't think I remember more than the barest bit about. I don't remember coding languages, and what I do remember is likely so far out of date that it's useless.

HOWEVER; what I was always good at was figuring out new things, and learning might make my mind feel less addlepated. We already have a Curmudgeon, that's not a slot that's open for me to take, so I must find my own slot.

Thus I have decided to learn how this stuff works, partly as a challenge, and partly because I need a challenge.
ITH! That does seem horribly complicated, and as such, I will not give up until I actually understand why that is such a challenge, and possibly step up to it.

Tech team, Please offer me some advice as to how to get started. Reading material, tutorials, anything that will treat me like a 6 year old and teach me the basics at first. Once I have them down, I might be able to ask a cogent question or two about the next steps. I am not completely ignorant, I may not remember language or syntax, but I still remember principal, theory, and was very much module developer, so that bits could be used and reused in different ways.
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Re: 'Thom Crooze haz already accepted this mission'

Post by Zelknolf »

Hmm... six year olds actually absorb information incredibly fast and you can teach them very complex ideas as long as you keep within their vocabulary and those ideas don't require understanding other people.

Anyhow! I wouldn't suggest actually using this as a starter project, unless you look at it and say "Oh yeah, that could be done quickly" (or unless you want to clamp down the project's capabilities; doing it the quick way will probably mean bugs from having duplicate data that isn't necessarily updated at the same time and can't be accessed from everywhere you want to access it). But there are things you can do to build up some proficiency and tackle this later, while actually doing productive things that hopefully are enjoyable enough to not cause burnout.

1. hang out in #alfa-tech -- many like to treat code like it's a technical skill that you can pick up from a manual. It is not. It is art; as art, your first projects will suck and apprenticeship is an eerily-effective solution.

2. schmooze some HDMs; you'll want a server that will let you build for it. HDMs are usually happy for the help.

3. Read this; figure out a simple quest that you'd like to write first, get it written, get it in game, and use it to familiarize yourself with the standard stuff that you don't have to write code for. Consider some design elements like forcing players to wander on top of each other or move through common choke points as part of this, as we still want interaction (I'm more familiar with BG's travel patterns and choke points than other servers; if you work on a different server, we could probably figure out where best to put these things. I'd bet, for instance, that you could design content to make players bump into each other and congregate at the south side of the Moonbridge or the town square in Caer Corwell... folk just haven't yet). Stay in #alfa-tech; you'll have questions, and it's easier to be heard over the #alfa-players chatter when you're among other people who do complex build.

4. Make a new quest that iterates off of that-- make a quest that is simple in most regards except for some sort of check or condition that we don't provide at all. This will get you into the custom code part of things; I can provide some examples of this (the Hunter's Hunger puzzle; the Lion's Way orc scouting; the Ruqel reputation system; defense quests actually started as this and migrated to the ACR) though the important bit is learning how to work with ACR libraries and APIs. You'll probably have an easier time with this if you're familiar with languages with syntaxes similar to C++ or JavaScript (scopes are curly brackets; commands are punctuated with semicolons) and can get over NWScript's weird keywords (objects are actually uint32!) and limitations (no collections!). We in #alfa-tech have also suffered this, and can help.

5. Once you've built those previous two things, you'll probably be familiar enough with what is to effectively add to the standard offerings. You'll be looking at lower-level design here (yay for answering vague questions like "What's the best way to track this so that we can get this result?" -- the answer is probably a new SQL table that doesn't assume the presence of the player or the call coming from a specific module, but there might be other ideas) and riskier development (you will probably have to make many testing passes at it, and will likely swear at most of them; don't feel bad; I would too). We'd probably want to just have a design conversation once you're just comfortable making static content generally. There's a lot of pitfalls here, and we'd rather not have you falling into them if we can prevent it.
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Re: 'Thom Crooze haz already accepted this mission'

Post by oldgrayrogue »

Disclaimer: I have tried to write quests and I am the dumb.

Ithildur's idea: These quests are indeed possible. I have completed them on another server Middle Earth: Unfinished tales -- which is the rebake of the Rise of Sauron Tolkien server. Generally speaking that PW had very, very intricate quests, many of which required several level locked stages to complete. Basically, the way they worked was one person got the quest along with a "quest token." When in party with the token holder you could complete the quest stage at issue and get XP and loot. Then the token was handed in for the next stage of the quest and so on and so forth. Usually these quests involved joining some guild (think "If you want to join the shadow thieves you will have to do A, B, C, D, but you don't know what B.C,D are until you complete A) or gaining access to special restricted areas or distance travel portals etc. In ALFA I could conceive if many ideas for such quests (Go on a quest to recover some magic item or artifact/ become and agent for the Harpers or Shadow Thieves/ Help preserve a wilderness area for a Druid's Circle/ find and loot some hidden dungeon etc etc). They were very, very fun and interesting quests to complete that as I say could take many days if not weeks to complete the different stages. The way they were written you often completed one task and then a new NPC would take your token and give you a new token for the next task. It seemed like possessing the token when you entered certain areas of the server would "spawn" the quest in that area. It was really very story based. I mention it here only to perhaps give Gonzo some food for thought in constructing intricate quests if that is what he wants to do.

That said, if anyone would like ideas for quests, for NPCs that give out the quests, for quest dialogue that can be written into quest trees, etc., I would be happy to help create and write those. Its the coding part that is beyond me. I know Zelk would think I'm selling myself short but it just takes me so long to do any time I have tried it and is so frustrating that my motivation dies very quickly.
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Re: 'Thom Crooze haz already accepted this mission'

Post by Zelknolf »

oldgrayrogue wrote:I have completed them on another server Middle Earth: Unfinished tales -- which is the rebake of the Rise of Sauron Tolkien server. Generally speaking that PW had very, very intricate quests, many of which required several level locked stages to complete. Basically, the way they worked was one person got the quest along with a "quest token." When in party with the token holder you could complete the quest stage at issue and get XP and loot.
This doesn't sound like the difficult part? Maybe I'm missing some mechanism of passing information along that this doesn't mention-- but the trouble is more the scenario where you've given this one-person-only quest out already and that player logs off or goes to another server. How do you tell that it's been given out, how do we make that work across server resets, and how do we decide that lazy bum isn't going to finish (even 'how do we know they're dead?' if they died) are the trickier pieces. Areas that only exist when you're on a quest, are generated for the quest, or transform to suit the quest are established features of the ACR quest system (including the notion of instanced areas with arbitrarily-designated AT destinations -- though that's also on the list of features that many people said they'd use but only I actually used... and there's widgets to run the thing, which are literally "use this item to make a randomly-generated instanced place linked to here by ATs; use this item to put monsters in the place; use this item to put traps in the place" -- so... that's a big bowl of meh with a spicy cheese sauce melted on top).
I know Zelk would think I'm selling myself short
You are!
but it just takes me so long to do any time I have tried it and is so frustrating that my motivation dies very quickly.
... but I do sympathize. Burnout sucks, and it hits harder and faster if you can't get work out to an audience in a timely fashion or if the feedback sucks when you do.



// edit -- I suppose I should mention that it would be much easier to write these quests as "this quest won't be handed out if someone else who is online on this server right now already has the quest" ... foreach(uint player in GetPlayers(1)) { if(RetrieveQuestState("derpQuest", player) != 0 && RetrieveQuestState("derpQuest", player) != endState) return fasle; } return true; -- bam check's done -- though then you have to write the individual quests with awareness that there might be two people on the quest in the area right now (Player A takes quest, logs off; Player B logs in, takes quest; Player A and Player B exchange PMs, meet up, and embark on double XP extravaganza!!!1!)
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Re: 'Thom Crooze haz already accepted this mission'

Post by Ithildur »

Would it be any easier (or harder!) if the quest giving NPC just walks away/vanishes "Thank you for agreeing to help, come find me near this area when you've succeeded." after giving the quest to someone, and does not respawn until quest (or quest stage #1, whatever) is completed?

Seems a bit more organic/immersive as well at least for these types of quests, more so than 'yeah that named dude always stands around the docks 24/7 looking for help with the same problem' (although it's definitely not impossible to humorously RP around this sort of thing with most truly static quests ... hey, a new name for these, 'dynamic' quests! 'story' quests? 'quests that made Zelk hate Ith forever'?!)
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It’s not the critic who counts...The credit belongs to the man who actually is in the arena, who strives violently, who errs and comes up short again and again...who if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement, but who if he fails, fails while daring greatly.-T. Roosevelt
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Re: 'Thom Crooze haz already accepted this mission'

Post by Zelknolf »

Ithildur wrote:Would it be any easier (or harder!) if the quest giving NPC just walks away/vanishes "Thank you for agreeing to help, come find me near this area when you've succeeded." after giving the quest to someone, and does not respawn until quest (or quest stage #1, whatever) is completed?
Pretty easy to do that (this same mechanism could be used to just make the NPC say "Sorry, I gave this quest to a Scientologist.") but I'm not sure it would produce the results you want. If that person fails to complete the quest for whatever reason, the quest is disabled forever. Brief-stay new players are a thing that still happen, and those people will totally take the quest if they see it-- and then they're inactive and the build is wasted until someone manually resets it.
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Re: 'Thom Crooze haz already accepted this mission'

Post by gonz.0 »

Zelknolf wrote: 1. hang out in #alfa-tech -- many like to treat code like it's a technical skill that you can pick up from a manual. It is not. It is art; as art, your first projects will suck and apprenticeship is an eerily-effective solution.

2. schmooze some HDMs; you'll want a server that will let you build for it. HDMs are usually happy for the help.

3. Read this; figure out a simple quest that you'd like to write first, get it written, get it in game, and use it to familiarize yourself with the standard stuff that you don't have to write code for. Consider some design elements like forcing players to wander on top of each other or move through common choke points as part of this, as we still want interaction (I'm more familiar with BG's travel patterns and choke points than other servers; if you work on a different server, we could probably figure out where best to put these things. I'd bet, for instance, that you could design content to make players bump into each other and congregate at the south side of the Moonbridge or the town square in Caer Corwell... folk just haven't yet). Stay in #alfa-tech; you'll have questions, and it's easier to be heard over the #alfa-players chatter when you're among other people who do complex build.
That's what I was looking for. With only exceptions, I haven't read any of that link yet just scrolled through and saw a lot of screen shot. Is that what you all use to script? a box set in the toolset? I thought that you were doing hand coding on stuff, I suppose that's why I was a little intimidated on where to start.
Last edited by gonz.0 on Sat Aug 08, 2015 10:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 'Thom Crooze haz already accepted this mission'

Post by Zelknolf »

gonz.0 wrote:That's what I was looking for. With only exceptions, I haven't read any of that link yet just scrolled through and saw a lot of screen shot. Is that what you all use to script? a box set in the toolset? I thought that you were doing hand coding on stuff, I suppose that's why I was a little intimidated on where to start.
It depends on the project. I do a lot of work in visual studio and provide a lot of NWScript samples and templates so normal builders don't have to write any actual code. But if you're keen on advancing yourself to where you will add a new concept to the quest system, you'll be stepping up to something that looks closer to a regular IDE.
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