Quest making information and real world examples

[Venalan]

So for a while I've wanted to try and open up the back end of quest writing so that people can really see what goes on, because there really is very little offical documentation regarding the whole process. The end goal would be to have enough information avaible that people could write a fully quest and submit it to me and it would just ... work.

To this end, I'm making available the 5 current tutorial quests, and a manual (of sorts) I've written which details base quest set up and what sort of functions we have available.

The files are vailable here

If you have an interest in the quest systen them please take a look at these, any questions you have please ask here and I'll explain.

[Aeghiss]

Thank you a lot for this Venalan. I will make good use of it.

It seems quite clear to my eyes, except something that I haven't been able to find in your guide : what is the syntax for having a npc calling the player character by his/her/kra name, something like "Oh, hey PlayerName, what's news ?"

[Sirial]

$Player name (?)

[Ravna]

Close, but actually without a space or capital P. ( $playername  )
There is also $playerrace ( for use in cases like "NPC: my my, what a strong $playerrace you are...")

Also from an RP perspective, you should always consider if an NPC is supposed to know your name before using $playername

But Venalan can likely provide more accurate guidelines on that.

[Venalan]

Totally hadn't noticed this was missing so I've added the following.


There are a number of wild cards that can be used, they include

$playername – This adds the player’s name
$playerrace – This adds the player’s race
$sir – This shows the player correct version of Sir/Madam/Gemma
$his – This show the player correct version of his/her/kras
$time – This adds ‘night’ (0:00-6:00) ‘morning’ (6:01-12:00) ‘afternoon’ (12:01-18:00) or ‘evening’ (18:01-23:59) based on in game time.
$npc – this adds in the NPC name

Example,

P: dummy.
Menu: Hello $npc, good $time. I am $sir $playername, the best of all $playerrace.
Harnquist : [Harnquist looks at $playername, then $his boots, and laughs.]

A male Dermorian call Venalan talking to Harnquist at 10:00am will see
Menu: Hello Harnquist, good morning. I am Sir Venalan, the best of all Dermorian.
Harnquist: [Harnquist looks at Venalan, then his boots, and laughs.]

[Venalan]

I added another file which has examples for the majority of the base things we use in game currently.

And to answer ravna about when to use $playername. We have no system to know globally if an NPC knows a player's name (except if the npc and player are both klyros when the npc should always use the player's name). So it is really a judgment quest by quest as to how or if we use the name.

[Venalan]

Something else...

We have a web based quest validator which should point out to you all the syntax errors in your script. But it won't point out any logic errors in how you have written the script, or if you have written the quest badly in terms of how you -should- write a quest. But you have people like me for pointing that stuff out to you.

http://planeshift.teamix.org/questvalidator/prospectQuestValidator.php

All you need to do is write in the quest name, paste in the script and click validate. If you are making new npcs or items those will always give errors as they may not exsist yet, but as long as the name you are using is the name which will be used it is fine to ignore it.

[Illysia]

Bump! I'm starting to look through this myself.

[Emaline]

Bump! I'm starting to look through this myself.

Why does this need a bump less than 24hrs after the last post

[Illysia]

Because a lot of people only skim the forum index page. Many people only look to see what is on the recent thread list at the bottom then don't dig further, but I don't want this thread to drop too far from being visible. It was my fault that it got bumped from the most recent threads widget, so I bumped it back up.

Edit: And I've promptly gone and buried it again...  *sighs*

[Emaline]

Totally hadn't noticed this was missing so I've added the following.


There are a number of wild cards that can be used, they include

$playername – This adds the player’s name
$playerrace – This adds the player’s race
$sir – This shows the player correct version of Sir/Madam/Gemma
$his – This show the player correct version of his/her/kras
$time – This adds ‘night’ (0:00-6:00) ‘morning’ (6:01-12:00) ‘afternoon’ (12:01-18:00) or ‘evening’ (18:01-23:59) based on in game time.
$npc – this adds in the NPC name

Example,

P: dummy.
Menu: Hello $npc, good $time. I am $sir $playername, the best of all $playerrace.
Harnquist : [Harnquist looks at $playername, then $his boots, and laughs.]

A male Dermorian call Venalan talking to Harnquist at 10:00am will see
Menu: Hello Harnquist, good morning. I am Sir Venalan, the best of all Dermorian.
Harnquist: [Harnquist looks at Venalan, then his boots, and laughs.]

This looks amazing and I'm going to have to play with some short cuts in game as well so see if these not only work for quests for shortcuts with targeted players. Would be very useful for events and really just my guard character could use several of these. Thanks!

[Sirial]

Check the Help->Interface->shortcuts for similar wildcards:

• $target (uses the targeted item/player/npc)
• $race (refers to target's race)
• $sir (refers to the target's gender)
• $guild (refers to target's guild) (still have to find a practical use for it)

[Ravna]

Notice: this is about shortcuts, not quests!  (also offtopic, so if you want a more in depth post about it, make a new topic)

Shortcuts have their own (different) set of variables:

$target $race $guild and $sir
$target being your targets name, $race being their race and $guild being their guild name and $sir being either sir/madam/gemma
These variables only work if you have a target selected while you use that shortcut.

[Emaline]

Notice: this is about shortcuts, not quests!  (also offtopic, so if you want a more in depth post about it, make a new topic)

Shortcuts have their own (different) set of variables:

$target $race $guild and $sir
$target being your targets name, $race being their race and $guild being their guild name and $sir being either sir/madam/gemma
These variables only work if you have a target selected while you use that shortcut.

  Yes sorry it was  . My bad!

[Venalan]

I just updated the quest making manual with a few corrections.