Liberal Arts Major
The Old Quest System, or: Terrible Choices
The old quest system was a three-pronged disaster:
1. There was no way to dynamically generate and evaluate conditions for a quest or "scene" - every single little detail had to be written into the code directly. This meant that adding quests was a slow, painful chore.
2. Ambushes were conceived and implemented with a heavy dose of retarded. Not only did they have to be coded in a la everything else, the necessary ingredients were dispersed all over the code and consequently a single ambush could take longer to put together than a whole quest.
3. The way everything was stored guaranteed that your quest log and so on would contain literally no useful information.
Though adding any sort of content to v.<3 was a hassle, the quest system took the cake for painful Goldberg-machine-esque script-side functionality, so there was no way the old system would work if I wanted to have more than say ten quests ever.
The Quest-Event Model
I decided to replace this with an event-driven engine that could evaluate conditions for events and decide whether to store them or whatever. Now, whenever you perform an action that the game keeps track of, like winning a battle or jumping, an "event" is created: basically, a record of what just happened. These events are then immediately referenced against a list of actual events, i.e. what used to be called cutscenes, and if all the conditions are met for one of these events, it's processed.
(Aside: the fact that these are both named the same thing is kind of confusing. The database scheme is the same as for monsters. the general records, like "jump", are called "events", while the ones that actually do something are called "real events". It ought to be clear from context which one is being discussed; the default should be the real events.)
Quests are now strings of events. NPCs are treated as events as well, albeit a special category. Similarly, treasure chests are now generated by the event system. The fact that the game keeps track of what you do in order was also slated to be the basis of a brand new mechanic, but unfortunately that had to be cut.
Plus, unlike before, events/NPCs interact fairly well with "dialogue options", so a single NPC can potentially say multiple things. This isn't necessarily important but it's still good to have!
The Questlog & Eventlog
Because quests are now composed of events, and because of the way events are generated, the questlog now actually contains a listing both of events and the text of those events, categorized under a particular quest. (I could show you a screenshot, but that would spoil the surprise!) Likewise, events that aren't associated with any quests are themselves logged, which eliminates the need for you to turn them "off" or "on" (which was stupid).
Event-Driven Quests & World Quests
As mentioned, quests are strings of events. But, not all quests will be explicitly logged as such: some quests are merely independent and potentially intertwined events. For instance, a quest that involves defeating X otherwise unrelated bosses (either in a specific order or in any order) in order to get access to something or acquire an item or whatever might not be logged as a quest, but as separate events. I've referred to these as event-driven quests, but you could refer to them as whatever.
An important distinction should be drawn between regular run-of-the-mill quests and "world" quests, those that are relevant to the storyline. Because there's no linear storyline, most quests will function as random sidequests. World quests are those that attempt to cobble together a coherent story.
Currently, no world quest is fully implemented. The first that will be made available involves Umbris (remember him?) and will have to wait a bit, as I left all my notes in Seattle like a pro.
Speaking of Umbris...
[Spoiler for Naming, Languages, and Other Boring Nerdy Things, click to show]You'll notice that there appears to be inconsistency in (a) the representation of names here, on the boards, and in-game and (b) the pattern of accents in the names of the game.
For (a), the reason is that the boards eat up all unnatural markup. So, an attempt to render "Umbrìs" here requires us to use onerous HTML codes. It's much easier to just write the word without accents, so that's what I'll do.
For (b), some words should be said about the use of constructed languages. There are a number of languages at play: English; the language of Auria, which is the entire northern half of the continent; an unnamed language for some of the elves; the language of Oden, the two cities north of The White City; and the language of Trava (a city state in the north), Balin (same), Verduria (a forest in the south-east), and Karalia (big swamp in the middle-south). There could be more, I just haven't thought of which.
(The last language is the basis for all the others with the obvious exception of English. It's also the constructed language I sort of cobbled together years back for the story that SS is loosely based on.)
So, Verduria and friends end with umlauts on the terminal vowel, while Auria does not. But, the use of accents is uniform: if Auria had the same stylistic/phonlogical features are the former, it too would end with an a-umlaut. But it's different so it doesn't.
There really isn't anything written in any of these non-languages other than names, and the only samples I will ever put will be in the form of "literature" and never in the form of people trying to communicate with you, so knowledge of this nonsense is completely superfluous. But... The more you know!
</spoiler>
That's All Folks
Tomorrow, the game goes up, and you can all enjoy the doubtless copious amount of content that won't be there!
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~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Editor
Because I always like seeing those kinds of stats. <_<
Anyway, sounds like a big upgrade for the quest system. Good stuff.
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"There's a pony in the shop, but don't buy it. It might do something unfortunate to you." ~from the first Summoner's Seal topic
Liberal Arts Major
This didn't occur to me, but it'd be quite easy to do. I don't know exactly where I'd put the numbers, however.
___
~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu