logic questions

artgod

Are sidequests only possible with npc dialogue or is there some other way to set them up via interactions with items?

elcymerian

By "side" quests I think you mean things to do within a quest that do not progress through the story board? If so, then yes. You could have an inspect item and a dialogue goes through that telling the player what they could do. Or some intractable items that needs to be collected.

nimmanu

You can set them up with interactions with items, because you can make an item interactive as well as also a contact so that it will give a brief description or even a full-fledged dialogue tree.

artgod

How do you make an an item a contact? Do you just put in dialogue and pick the item as component? Is that possible? I understand interact, like how you hide key in item, and use it later in a door... but is it possible to do more than that sort of simple stuff?

Also, is is possible to initiate a side quest with an item without talking to an NPC first? It would seem impossible at first glance since you can't start branching logic easily from just an item interaction unless I'm missing something? I suspect that it might be possible since logic can become binary... yes, no based on what item you have in inventory and what item gets eaten by the next interactive item,etc... but can you have it like where you have multiple interactive items are your 'goal' on map now instead of just one at a time in a linear way?... trying to get it so that it's possible to do more than one thing at a time or have multiple quest sections opened at once, but it seems like it's rather difficult to do since the story setup thingy sort of makes you want to do one thing then another... not open ended.

mosby1

All the elements added to your Story are mandatory (some can be done in parallel, but all must be done).

Side quests (i.e. optional quests?) cannot be part of the story. But you can have NPCs or other Objects which the player can interact with, and they can ask the player to do side quests. But there's no way to force players to do optional quests. And there's no way for you to track optional quests.

There are some tricks you can do. You could have 3 encounters, and only require the player to complete any 1 of them (See the DM's Studio for an example and explanation for that). Basically, when the player completes any of them, it kills of a hidden mob, which is the element actually in your story.

So you can kind of do what you want, but you have to fake it, and you can't force the player to do optional things. Your best bet is to encourage them to do so, by making interesting settings and stories. I use hidden items tagged with "[ACCOLADE]" to encourage exploration. I add a "DM" NPC at the end, who will tell you more about the items if you have them.

artgod

like if you have multiple keys hidden in an area that unlock different doors... is there some way to have all the keys active as a quest in the map at the same time? So far I haven't figured out a way of doing that... it's only working right now as one at a time... find this key, unlock this door... next find the next key, unlock that door, etc.... can you have multiple 'sparkly' interactive items active at the same time? If so, how?

elcymerian

Yeah, if it's part of the story board it must be linear. Only one direction thing and move the quest on. Now, I haven't practiced it much, you could use way points as the linear part. The player has to reach X spot to progress, but you could put things in the way of that spot for the to choose. For example, The player has to get to a certain building. There are 3 roads that go to that building and they are blocked by 3 different obstacles, a troll, a riddle, and a castle wall. The player than could decide which way to go and which obstacle to overcome to get to the building.

Does that make sense? You end up playing with items (or NPCs) individual menus of Contact and Interactable and it just takes time.

If the item has to be use in the story board then use "Inspect Item" and adds a dialogue to that item when it is interacted with. You can add as many as you would like, but it's on the story board so its mandatory.

artgod

makes sense. Too bad you can't like cause dialogue section to initiate an item interact mission via the pick 1 or 2 box thing in the dialoge.

agentjaspor

Yes, items can be made "Contact" and have full dialogues. Honestly, "Interact" is fairly limited and "Contact" is much more robust, aside from dropping/consuming items. (Sadly you can't drop or consume items in non-story dialogues.)

Complex "side quest" type content is probably going to need:
1) Use of advanced dialogues, and yes, these can be attached by items by making them "Contact" items.
2) A bunch of hide/show logic in order to control the "flow" of the objectives.
3) Invisible walls! Use them, love them.

What you are describing is absolutely possible. Multiple objectives can be required to make things happen, so this can be used for "non linear" type goals outside the main story path.

agentjaspor

artgod wrote: »

makes sense. Too bad you can't like cause dialogue section to initiate an item interact mission via the pick 1 or 2 box thing in the dialoge.

You can absolutely do this. Make the interactable item(s) visible based upon dialogue choices.

nimmanu

Okay, so here's the thing. I hope I can make this clear.

Let's say that your story goes like this:

Go talk to Joe
Get a key to the next door
Find the incense
Put it on the altar to summon elemental badguy
Kill elemental bad guy


You can, instead, do this... make two items. The key, and the incense.

Now you can make the quest do this:

Talk to joe (main quest line)

Get the key from either doing the puzzle (at the end of the puzzle, you finally open a room that has a orb in it... the orb give you the key).... OR you can kill a bunch of monsters in the mausoleum and take the key from the last guy (who drops an item you interact with that gives the key).

Map transition using the key...

Now you move to the next map, which instead has 4 areas laid out. Here, there are 4 ways you can choose to get the incense. You can gather a bunch of pearls for the crazy witch. She'll leave the key to the chest in the center area for you on the table, if you do. Or you could kill a bunch of monsters in the ship and get the key from the captain's foot locker... and open the central chest that has the incense. Maybe you can do another section where they have to round up horses. The last section could be another puzzle.

You get the incense an transition to the next map and use the incense on the burner... but that spawns a bunch of monsters between you and your final goal...


..............

As you can see, you can make the quest as linear or non-linear as you want outside of the MAIN quest line using tricks. No, an NPC won't hand you an item if it's not part of the major quest line... but you can fudge that... "oops, I dropped it on the floor" or "oh that? It's been on the table the whole time." Stuff like that.

nimmanu

artgod wrote: »

like if you have multiple keys hidden in an area that unlock different doors... is there some way to have all the keys active as a quest in the map at the same time? So far I haven't figured out a way of doing that... it's only working right now as one at a time... find this key, unlock this door... next find the next key, unlock that door, etc.... can you have multiple 'sparkly' interactive items active at the same time? If so, how?

Yes, you can have multiple interactive things at a time. What you want to do is make EXTENSIVE use of "disappear when" and "appear when" and dialogue prompts or markers.

So for your example here, here's what I would do:

NPC Joe: "Hello nickname, go to the end of the marsh and meet with ariadne."

Now, there are 4 keys (within 250 feet of Joe) that are set to "appear when" dialogue prompt "Hello nickname, go to the end of the marsh and meet with ariadne."

The problem that you have is that you either have to be okay with the person having all 4 at the same time, or you set the activation of one to make walls or doors appear around the other 3.

So key A would activate walls 1, 2, and 3 (1 is around key B, 2 is around key C, and 3 is around key D).

If you pick up key B, though, it activates walls 4, 5, and 6 (4 is around key A, 5 is around key C, and 6 is around key D).

So on and so forth.


Now, none of these walls appear (appear when) until activated. So maybe wall 1 will just never be used because it's key B the person takes. Now only the area opened by key B can be opened...

But in each of the 4 areas, you have an end backpack (or tree, or whatever) item that drops the SAME quest item (The Master Key). Once done with their chosen area, they can now activate whatever The Master Key activates.

eldarth

One of the problems with "side-quests" is they don't show up in the PCs quest goals. Not a big deal.
You can make "markers" by spawning a contact NPC just below the terrain - this "marker" (little yellow dialog balloon) will show up when PC is within 250' of the NPC. And I think you won't be able to dialog with the NPC, but you'll see the contact dialog blue diamond just above the terrain surface. And you can "name" the non-contactable NPC marker something descriptive - like "Ogre tracks here"

Here's another quick example I'm working on right now...

I've got a NPC young lady who has lost her dog.
Once the PC picks the response that they'll look for her dog, I then spawn (Visible When Dialog Reached) the dog (another NPC contact-ignore all), and a wooden cage around it. If the PC hadn't picked that response, no dog in cage.
If PC finds dog in cage - interacts with cage door -- frees NPC dog, NPC dog despawns and I spawn a NPC "follow" dog.
If PC takes dog "home" to girl, she spawns and runs (one way patrol) to meet them, etc.

One of the biggest problems is there is no way to "reward" the PC for doing side quests other than addition encounters.
For example, in my lost-dog quest, I could tell the PC that they caught the dog napper and "spawn" an easy encounter for the PC to kill and get any "drops" from the encounter.

artgod

agentjaspor wrote: »

Complex "side quest" type content is probably going to need:
1) Use of advanced dialogues, and yes, these can be attached by items by making them "Contact" items.
2) A bunch of hide/show logic in order to control the "flow" of the objectives.
3) Invisible walls! Use them, love them.

by "contact" do you mean 'item required' and drop items in the interact and dialogue or do you mean something else?

nimmanu

artgod wrote: »

by "contact" do you mean 'item required' and drop items in the interact and dialogue or do you mean something else?

When in 2D editing mode, when you click on an item's box, it brings up a bubble. Scroll down the bubble, and you will see "Contact" with a little check box. If you check this box as well as the 'interactable' box, you can make the object talk to the person with a dialogue when they click on it.

artgod

Thanks. the examples really helped!

Makes a lot more sense now... basically you still get the same goal items but you pick the way you reach those items through dialogue... I just basically need to probably put more npcs and dialogues in to make the middle part of the story have more substance to it.


Also will need to rethink how to approach boss battles... instead of putting them in as 'kill' whatever objectives... simply put them in as appears when dialogues come up...?... going to take a bit to get this right, but I think I can figure it out somehow.

Thanks again.

Going to have to check out that contact thing.... sounds like it has some interesting uses...

nimmanu

Well, for the end boss... here's the thing... you can kind of do whatever you want with the "rest" of it, and have just ONE objective that needs to be completed.

Say that you want them to interact with a statue. Make one "side" of the debate want you to sabotage it... the other side wants you to put the final touches on it. Either way, you have to interact with it... and that's the final step. What happens when you interact with it can be changed entirely. In one case you get attacked by all the townspeople. In the other case you get cheered for your good deeds.

The only thing that's linear is that you MUST interact with X or you MUST kill Y.

You can make it so that you have to kill Target. But if you pick the bad guy's side, the bad guy is all like, "Kill Target because he was pretending to be on my side the whole time, but was undermining me." While the good guys would be like, "Kill Target because he's a traitor!"

The person doesn't know that, either way, they would have had to kill X or interact with statue Y. Or if they're a foundry author, they might know it... but would appreciate your cleverness in allowing them (the illusion of) choice.