Example Quest Toolings

[Zelknolf]

OK, so, I'm still hearing grumps that documentation isn't enough, but the documentation that we have covers the simplest quests that can be constructed with screenshots and red arrows and circles on things, so I'm not sure how I could make that more verbose.

So, next strategy-- teach by example and open the floor to questions. Thus, I'm putting this in a forum thread, so that there's opportunity to discuss how and why I'm doing things or to ask for clarification about points. I might brandish moderator power to rearrange the questions and answers as more content-containing posts go onto the thread, but people should feel free to ask questions and work along. This first post is mostly a declaration of intent.

As a rough outline of what I'm going to make-- I'm starting with a small-town rugged-surrounds inn, looking to have CR 1-2 content which can be done in chunks with party mates optional and ideally doesn't get used up too quickly. Centipedes are a very good choice here because they're not very threatening, and we can thus deploy many of them in sequence to produce the sense of hostile grounds that need to be slugged through (the tiny ones can be reliably killed by cantrips and are slower than PCs, they do 1 HP damage with DC 10 dex poison -- they well earn their CR of 0.125), when we tend to be stuck having CR 1 content be done in a couple minutes.

The current outline looks like so, which I'll update to be links as the discussion of making each part gets put together.

• The bartender at the inn mentions aside that a patron got a rather-nasty bite, but was too drunk to remember by what exactly. Looked like a giant insect, and she'd like to know more about it.
• PC finds drunk mercenary who tells a story about the bite, but it indeed just sounds like a drunk fellow. PC can try a number of skill challenges to get more information:
  • Knowledge: Nature (DC 11) -- Identify the creature (a 0.25 HD vermin) by its description.
  • Heal (DC 15) -- Identify the wound, determining that it's a monstrous centipede.
  • Survival (DC 15) -- Identify likely candidates based on the tale and the surroundings.
  • Search (DC 15) -- Find a bit of chitin left behind from the scuffle
  • If all checks fail, PC misses out on a little XP but gets helped along by the mercenary having a moment of clarity.
• PC returns to the bartender to relay information, and she hires the PC to investigate.
  • Knowledge: Nature (DC 11) -- know the critter, and thus know its habitat; suggest they're probably underground.
  • Amble about like a mook until you bump into an insect hole.
• PC once again returns to the bartender with information, and she hires the PC to poke about in the centipede lair, and gather information about how many are down there.
  • This will be a demonstration of tiered rewards, and will resemble the orc scouting quest out of Ruqel.
• PC returns with the results from scouting (bonus cookies if they're thorough). Bartender says she can afford to hire the PCs to kill off some of them-- just make there not be so many until she can get help from the powers that be.
  • This will be a demonstration of an area-clearing quest, where PCs are "done" after they've slain an arbitrary number of a creature.
• PC returns with tales of slaughtered centipedes. Apparently that was a terrible idea, because now they're angry and all scuttling about, causing trouble. The PCs will need to hold them at bay while the authorities get the ones already on the surface.
  • This will be an example of a multiple-challenge quest and a defense quest-- specifically, probably "bounty" / "defense" / "bounty" / "defense" for taking ground and then holding it twice.
• Bartender relates that the authorities have posted a bounty on the largest of these centipedes, as in the rucks while the PCs were underground literally beating centipedes back with a stick there was a larger, more-vicious one that got away.
  • This will be a simple assault/bounty type-quest, with a higher-CR (for the quest, so CR 1) "boss" centipede to fight, along with its attendents.
• PCs hopefully didn't die, and have a final turnin.

1. Defining the Scope of Work
2. Tooling an Antagonist
3. Tooling a Lair

• Tiles
• Walkmeshes
• Placeables
• Area Transition
• Spawns

Q&As

[20:12] <Rumple_C> zelknolf, how about a slight expansion on area transitions to include transition from a usable. like clicking on a ladder, for example.

Unfortunately, placeables aren't really designed to be used this way. It's possible, certainly, because placeables have a tidy slot for code to execute when they're used-- and therefore we can do pretty much anything when a placeable is used. But this walkthrough is in theory to be an example of me using very simple tools to get a relatively-long-playing and complex (hopefully interesting!) quest.

If this one actually produces results, I'll likely make some advanced stuff and document the process, and will include stuff like using events and sending people places (which will also allow you to make cool stuff like portals with randomized destinations. Just in case you have an NPC with Craft Portal who is a jerk).

[Zelknolf]

Step 1: Evaluating Work that Actually Needs Doing
Alternate Title: "Mise en Place, Bitches"

So, I have an idea of what I'm putting together, so now's the time to go through each of the steps and try to find out what already exists.

On a high level, the ability to save the state of a quest, load that state after a server reset, update journals, assign XP, log the activity, etc-- that all exists in the ACR, and lives in acr_quest_i.

On a more-specific level, the ability to access acr_quest_i based on killing monsters or having a conversation already exists.

Two things that our existing documentation that don't exist:
-- The ability to complete a quest by killing lots of arbitrary things
-- The ability to have a quest centered on defending a point. Making the failure condition be losing the ground or letting the bad guys run through a space.

At this point, we'd contact tech normally. But I am tech. So, that first one it turns out is probably possible anyway, by just spawning a bunch of stuff and setting the quest state upper limit high. Well, that doesn't sound very helpful to most people, but I'll explain it when we get to that part.

The second one, though, we don't have. I'll have to write that. But because I'm the only person involved, I've clearly already had that conversation with myself, and you can tell because I'm talking about it.

And then the last piece. Centipedes. We don't have those. We'll have to tool those-- but new creature templates aren't usually something you can bother tech about. Such things are usually the responsibility of the server, and thus of the toolsetter, so that will be our next piece.

// edit, 6/20/2014-- and like with all quest-related things, I forgot something while I was figuring out what there is to do. Given that we don't have any centipedes, we also don't have any centipede lairs -- also have to tool an area and link it to an existing one to make this quest work.

[Zelknolf]

Step 2: Tooling Antagonists (Part 1 of 7)
Alternate Title: Screw the Attachment Limit

Centipedes aren't currently a thing in ALFA. Or they weren't; of course, because I'm posting this, I have tooled them. So for the purposes of this tutorial, they're not here, and we have to make them.

Fortunately, Monstrous Centipedes are an SRD creature, so we have a good idea what our target is. This will often be the sort of task involved in tooling a new creature, even-- turning a stat block into a NWN2 creature.

So starting from the top, the first thing you want to do is copy an existing creature that is similar to what you want. Giant beetles are a good choice, on account that they're also mindless bitey chitinous hostile vermin. So starting from the top of the stat block,

tooling_centipede_1.png (126.01 KiB) Viewed 6452 times

Creature size is determined by appearance. So we have to pick something as close as we can. Of course, we don't have a centipede model, so what you can see here is that I took a beetle appearance and made it short, thin, and long. (Scale is 0.25, 2, 0.25). The fact that we picked a small appearance instead of a tiny one matters mechanically, and we're going to be compensating for that later.

tooling_centipede_2.png (126.02 KiB) Viewed 6452 times

We'll also need to set the creature's racial type. We want to make sure our vermin-slaying arrows and vermin-bane weapons appropriately demolish our bitey chitinous hostiles. It was already set here, because I copied a beetle, but that won't always be the case, so it's smart to check.

tooling_centipede_3.png (127.75 KiB) Viewed 6452 times

Then we need to set the number of hit dice on the creature. This is important because it will power things like the creature's attack bonus and saving throws, and might determine if they're vulnerable to certain spells (like sleep or blasphemy).

[Zelknolf]

Step 2: Tooling Antagonists (Part 2 of 7)
Alternate Title: Screw the Attachment Limit

tooling_centipede_4.png (135.75 KiB) Viewed 6452 times

Hit points are fairly straightforward, but one should note that standards might vary by your server. I'm tooling for BG, because BG is the open-source server, and Shad0wfax prefers SRD hit points. However, some HDMs prefer max hit points to keep their pre-tooled NPCs closer to the dynamically-generated NPCs.

tooling_centipede_5.png (128.45 KiB) Viewed 6452 times

I call out initiative, because it's usually best to literally read down the stat block, but because we're doing that, there's nothing to do here.

tooling_centipede_6.png (123.94 KiB) Viewed 6452 times

Movement rate is somewhat arbitrary, but it is something that should be considered. I give the piece of advice to not use PC movement rates on NPCs, as that tends to do terrible damage to the attack of opportunity mechanic. Usually, a creature that moves 20' is "slow," a 10' is "very slow", 40' is "fast" and more than that is "very fast".

Movement rate is on the big spammy tab, so it tends to help to collapse the appearance and basics nodes on the tree.

[Zelknolf]

Step 2: Tooling Antagonists (Part 3 of 7)
Alternate Title: Screw the Attachment Limit

tooling_centipede_7.png (134.91 KiB) Viewed 6452 times

Armor class tends to only need special attention for natural armor, which needs some distinction made-- the kinds of natural armor you fill out in this field is just "natural armor," while the natural armor that you get from spells like Barkskin or magic items is "natural armor enhancement"-- and the two stack, just like magic vestment with plate armor. Also why you don't want to put an armor bonus on a creature hide (which we'll call out below).

tooling_centipede_8.png (132.71 KiB) Viewed 6452 times

Again we're on a thing that's on the stat block, but you don't have to do anything special about

tooling_centipede_10.png (120.56 KiB) Viewed 6452 times

But the bite is a little more complicated. This is actually an item in the creature's inventory, which is equipped on a hidden equipment slot -- presumably because NWN2 loves us unconditionally.

[Zelknolf]

Step 2: Tooling Antagonists (Part 4 of 7)
Alternate Title: Screw the Attachment Limit

tooling_centipede_9.png (30.78 KiB) Viewed 6452 times

Inside the creature's inventory, we can search for a bite of this sort. For right now, we're going to assume the bites already tooled. However, the centipede's poison does need some special attention, which you can find documentation for here.

tooling_centipede_11.png (123.22 KiB) Viewed 6452 times

We want to review the creature's special attacks, because that might not be covered by equipping the creature's bite attack. But if it is, like in this case, we have nothing to do.

tooling_centipede_12.png (112.51 KiB) Viewed 6452 times

And then on to special qualities, which again has us going into the creature's inventory-- but I call out darkvision here, because it's basically useless on an NPC.

[Zelknolf]

Step 2: Tooling Antagonists (Part 5 of 7)
Alternate Title: Screw the Attachment Limit

tooling_centipede_13.png (26.88 KiB) Viewed 6451 times

So, because the only other thing the centipede has is vermin properties, we can use the generic one-- this is going to make the centipede immune to mind-affecting spells; so we can explode them with a ray of frost, but not a sleep or a charm monster.

tooling_centipede_14.png (129.92 KiB) Viewed 6451 times

Saving throws are usually self-managing. Sometimes we're doing weird things to try to make an NPC work, so this might need fiddling. The statistics tab halfway down has fields for special adjustments to saving throws, if that's necessary.

tooling_centipede_15.png (130.23 KiB) Viewed 6451 times

And then we're onto ability scores-- which is straight data entry. You may be frustrated by the tab order on this form; everyone is. It's terrible.

[Zelknolf]

Step 2: Tooling Antagonists (Part 6 of 7)
Alternate Title: Screw the Attachment Limit

tooling_centipede_16.png (143.73 KiB) Viewed 6451 times

Actually four things to remember-- but the text should speak for itself. It's very important to note, though, that the skill bonus in the stat block is what you want the skill modifier to be in play. It is not the number of ranks you have to give the creature.

tooling_centipede_17.png (126.61 KiB) Viewed 6451 times

Giving a creature feats tends to be awful, so I especially call out that there's a field which lets you search in here. You should use it.

tooling_centipede_18.png (139.65 KiB) Viewed 6451 times

This tends to be in the stat block. We're going to need to make note of it for our spawn points, and being that we're tooling this for a static, there might be some sanity checks in how we're using this antagonist. Like if we were deploying a solitary creature in a drooling hoard, we're probably doing it wrong.

[Zelknolf]

Step 2: Tooling Antagonists (Part 7 of 7)
Alternate Title: Screw the Attachment Limit

Last, and most importantly, make sure you set the CR on your creature. Everything breaks if the CR is wrong. Everything.

tooling_centipede_19.png (127.64 KiB) Viewed 6451 times

[Zelknolf]

Part 2 Addendum: Tooling a Monster Weapon
Alternate Title: Oh come on, that bite isn't standard content

This is fortunately simpler. There are a lot of monster bites in the wide wide world, and you can copy any of them as a starting point. Rename it, retag it, and open up the item properties.

tooling_bite.png (62.31 KiB) Viewed 6450 times

Because we've picked a custom poison, I get to link to the custom poison documentation again. That poison will do 1 point of strength damage primary and secondary unless you tell it otherwise, and we want to tell it otherwise (namely, we want it to do 1 point of dex damage).

[Zelknolf]

3. Tooling the Antagonist's Lair (Tiles, Part 1 of 2)
"You always forget a thing. For me, it was where the hell this is going to happen."

In my original estimate, I forgot to mention that these centipedes have to... be... somewhere. And putting them at the door of an inn that we expect to get any use would be a very bad idea. People tend to AFK in and around their social spaces. Even a CR 0.125 creature will kill someone who really-quick just needs to go get the door and pay for pizza.

Thus, we're going to cover making an area. Again, I advocate picking something that's close to what you want to make and copying it-- this will help keep you consistent with other parts of the module (so you aren't the one cave that's lit up like Lathander modeling underpants) and save you some work. Usual things to do-- right click, properties, name it and tag it. Same as you did with items and creatures.

We're going to cover interiors. They're a far better introduction to area building than exteriors, and also much cheaper for the module. Interiors are assembled from tiles, which you can see in the toolset by turning on the occlusion grid:

tooling_area_tiles_grid.png (8.02 KiB) Viewed 6435 times

You assemble interiors, then, by selecting tiles of a particular shape from a list of tiles so that the floors connect to each other. Tiles are a little hard to find at first. There's a tab on the same part of your toolset as creatures and items:

tooling_area_tiles_tab.png (34.94 KiB) Viewed 6435 times

And then the tiles themselves live inside of the tree nodes inside

tooling_area_tiles_tileselect.png (23.85 KiB) Viewed 6435 times

From there, you're picking things from the tree and clicking on the grid to put them together, like toy blocks, really. You'll need to use your keyboard to get around the scene, which I can't give good screenshots for. So, a few commands you might find handy here.

• Use your mouse wheel to zoom in and out.
• Hold down control, then right click and drag to rotate your camera.
• Right click to rotate the tile you're about to place.

When you're first putting things together, the important thing is to make sure that the floors of all of your tiles line up, and that there are walls where there ceases to be stuff to walk on.

[Zelknolf]

3. Tooling the Antagonist's Lair (Tiles, Part 2 of 2)
"You always forget a thing. For me, it was where the hell this is going to happen."

Once you have the shape of the floor down, it's often worth looking at variants of tiles. To do this, you need to not have a tile selected-- it tends to be easy to do this from the toolbar ("select objects", then right click in the scene, then click "tiles")-- though you do need to be in tiles mode to select a tile and change its properties.

tooling_area_tiles_toolbar.png (9.61 KiB) Viewed 6435 times

Then, you just click on a tile that you've placed and use the up and down arrows on your keyboard to cycle through the different tiles with that same general shape of floors and walls. For instance, in the "Estate" tile, the four walls/ one door tile can have a number of looks that pretty seriously change the feel of the room:

tooling_area_tiles_variants.png (230.83 KiB) Viewed 6435 times

And you can also right click a tile that you've already placed to get at its properties, which can change the texture or color of the floors/ceilings/walls.

tooling_area_tiles_properties.png (6.31 KiB) Viewed 6435 times

And with that done, you should have a pretty good base built for your area.

[Zelknolf]

3. Tooling the Antagonist's Lair (Walkmeshes 1 of 2)
"It's really a nice guy, once you get to know it"

Once you have your area in the shape you like, you should have something looking like this.

tooling_area_walkmesh.png (111.03 KiB) Viewed 6435 times

Given that, at a quick glance, it looks like everything fits together, we're ready to give this a bake. Make sure it holds together. That's on your file menu.

tooling_area_walkmesh_bakearea.png (9.27 KiB) Viewed 6435 times

That usually takes a minute-- the exact amount of time will depend in your computer, as walkmeshes are expensive to make. Once it's done, you can turn on viewing of walkmeshes, to look for things that didn't bake right.

tooling_area_walkmesh_toolbar.png (8.06 KiB) Viewed 6435 times

[Zelknolf]

3. Tooling the Antagonist's Lair (Walkmeshes 2 of 2)
"It's really a nice guy, once you get to know it"

For most tilesets, that's enough to get a walkmesh and a (granted, very basic) area. But for argument's sake, let's say you like one of the more-complex tilesets-- like one of the RWS ones. Or you want to use tiles from multiple tilesets. You might find tiles that just don't transition well. Baking and looking at the walkmesh will show you where they are.

tooling_area_walkmesh_error.png (247.88 KiB) Viewed 6435 times

The white lines are what tell you that something is wrong. PCs can't walk over the white or yellow lines-- the green triangles are what they can walk on.


Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot you can do about that. You can't use that tile, and just have to replace it with other similarly-shaped tiles and rebake until something works. When it's right, the walkmesh will look like this:

tooling_area_walkmesh_fix.png (200.41 KiB) Viewed 6435 times

[Zelknolf]

3. Tooling the Antagonist's Lair (Placeables and Environment Objects)
Artsy and/or Fartsy Additions

This section is optional. If you have a working walkmesh, you have an area that can be used for adventure. But, you can put stuff in it. Stuff that might look good. I can't give much advice here except to let your artistic side shine, if it's there. I can, however, explain how to do things.

Environment objects start as placeables and are converted, usually. Technically, you can create a blueprint for an environment object, but no one does. To do this, select them (by clicking on them) or select lots of them (by clicking empty space and dragging over them), then right click > convert > placeables to environment objects (or vice versa).

Now, for whether or not you want an environment object, questions.
1. If I am standing at one side of this thing I put down, should I be stopped from seeing or shooting someone on the other side of it?
2. Do I need to walk on this thing?
3. Do I expect people to use or examine this thing?
If yes to any, placeable. If no to all, environment object. Important to make things that can be environment objects into environment objects because it's cheaper, especially if there's to be fighting in an area. Spell scripts can "see" placeables, but not environment objects, and pathfinding has to account for placeables, but not environment objects, so all of those cool explosions happen faster and smoother in an area that doesn't have excessive placeables.