$12256 / $11500
So in my efforts to figure out where I can push, prod, and pull this system, as well as make the areas a little more full-figured, I created this small mod. It creates a small refugee band in the Frontier Outpost, led by Altea, their priest. While fleeing from the zombie plague, they lost two things: Altea's holy amulet in a graveyard, and their High Priest to the zombie plague. Altea is asking you to please find her amulet and kill the old Priest.
I deliberately put both of these quest objectives in different locations, which the text hopefully makes clear. The idea is that there is ONE questgiver for TWO quest chains, which can be completed singly or simultaneously.
When putting in the dialog options, one has to be very aware of their statuses, so that a quest-giver will give each quest without waiting for the player to finsih one or the other. Both COULD be assigned using the same dialog set, but I wanted to make sure that it'd work, even if one chain didn't begin with this quest-giver.
One also has to be very attentive to the order in which the dialogs are listed. As I'm sure Clint can confirm, the last item in the questgiver.txt file is the first one checked for. If you're not careful with the order and the statuses, you can end up blocking the dialog tree.
The artwork for Altea's profile was nabbed from OpenGameArt.org
Let me know what you think. Next up I'm thinking of adding a smuggler near the trader, a mourning villager near the gravestones, and a witch or a knight or someone on the Alchemist's dock.
Should be accessible from here on my dropbox: http://db.tt/vOss8jOo
And I just noticed that I left the sell price on the ring very high, and left the quality at epic... those should be brought back down to high and maybe 30g...
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Whoops! USe this frontier_plains.txt file instead:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/937624/makrohn/maps/frontier_plains.txt
makrohn, good job!
It seemed to work flawlessly for me. (Though I didn't try to break it.) Three things I noticed that might make the quest a bit smoother or a bit better:
Things I absolutely loved:
All in all, I'd definitely recommend this little side quest. :)
On a side note, in the latest version of Flare (github trunk), your Zombie Priest can move only one direction. This is because we changed one of the names of the attributes to make it clearer. Once the new version of Flare is released, you'll need to change "dir_favor" to "turn_delay" in your creature definition file.
I did try to break it a few different ways (and did break it, and fixed it). I may have missed something, but right now, there's a pretty limited number of permutations.
For clicking the tombstone, I'm not sure how to set clickable hotspots yet. The existing files make it seem kind of arcane. I'll poke through the files and see if I can't find a different art piece. Maybe I'll look for a more distinct looking zombie graphic and use that as well. Too bad I can't draw a pixellated miter.
As I put in more quests, I'll probably lower the rewards of each. I did note above that I do intend to drop the amulet to a green, and make it only sell for maybe 30g.
The way I see it, the frontier_plains are a huge area, and should be chock-full of quest objectives. My personal goal is to make that happen, by gradually adding NPCs and quests. I played with creating my own maps, but I don't think I have the patience - I find scripting quest chains (and testing them) to be far more engaging. I would love to work in conjunction with everyone else to get my quests added to the trunk, and after getting through one map, to start populating more maps with more quests. To that end, I welcome any and all feedback about these first ones I've created to test my limits and skills. Also, the NPCs I have are VERY stock at the moment, and I would be downright thrilled if other people created new and better sprite art for them.
The portrait I found by just searching open game art for "portrait," and fell in love with four of the portraits by one particular artist. I imagine all four will turn into NPCs. It's awesome what good art can inspire. It was not posted by the original artist, though, so I'd probably head over to the artists' deviant art page and email her for official permission before widely distributing anything.
And I hope to turn this into a huge set of quest chains, not just a side quest!
And finally, the Zombie Priest I just renamed from a zombie_brute and added a defeat_status, so in the new version I'll probably just recopy it...
makrohn, glad to see you're not stopping with one quest. :) I'm excited to see some more in the future.
To my knowledge there's not a different zombie sprite available, but if you can find one, great! My guess is that using a different sprite would be more trouble than it's worth.
To create a "clickable" event, you can use a line like the following:
hotspot=-24,-32,48,48
I think the hotspot is measured from the center of the tile's base. (For a flat tile, that would be the exact center.) the first two values create the top-left point of the click rectangle and the second two define width and height of the rectangle. Naturally, the first two usually are negative, because the clickable area typically contains that centerpoint. It can take some fiddling around with to get right.
Use the following line to specify what the player reads when they hover over the hotspot:
tooltip=Supplies
Ah! Hotspot wasn't that hard after all. Well, okay, I just grabbed the line you presented right there... but it worked!
I've also added a Quest Debugger npc for now, who'll just reset all your makrohn quests statuses and remove your makrohn quest items, in case you want to redo my quests to test them. Yeah, SURE, you could go into your save file, but hopefully this makes it easier. I DID note that remove_item won't take your equipped items.
The gravestone where Altea's Amulet is found now has a hotspot and a tooltip
Altea's Amulet now is a high quality item with a net worth of 120g, sells for 30g.
The Zombie Priest temporarily has a skeleton graphic.
Completing the Zombie Priest quest now grants 225 XP instead of 450 XP.
I'll be working on another quest this morning and afternoon; it'll be granted by another NPC, and the second branch of the quest will be triggered somewhere along the way (by an item drop), so the second quest will be missable if you're not thorough! Being a beginning area, though, it shouldn't be too tough to miss.
Submitted for the community to play and to test, and any and all criticism is welcome!
I put a README and a CHANGELOG in the base directory for those who are curious. Essentially, I added two more quests. Though independent, it is easy to stumble upon one on your way to the other.
I also tweaked Madrigan a little bit.
Right now, as written, the quests got me about 2/3 of the way through Level 3. Ideally, I'll be writing in at least one or two more quests to really flesh out the Outpost, and get the player to Level 4 in time for Ydrakka Pass. I'm sure the numbers will be tweaked once the reward_xp attribute is implemented in the main release.
I noticed an interesting "limitation" which would probably never affect the game in any meaningful way, so I'd be hesitant to call it a problem - more of a design consideration for any other modders. I have an NPC called makrohn, whose only function is to reset your quest status and items back to null. Any [dialog] can only take sixteen actions at a time, so I had to split him into two - one to unset_status and one to remove_item.
One bug I cannot wrap my head around is why Cedric doesn't properly reward the player with one mana potion and one health potion. If anyone can shed some light on that, awesome.
Finally, I noticed that quest.txt invokes other .txt files. Can the same be done with items? Could one then divvy up the items.txt file into swords.txt, wants.txt, etc?
As I continue on with this, I need to give the mod a proper name, probably. Unless it gets folded into frontier. Ideas are welcome.
I still have not come up with any original art, because I completely stink at visual art. But hey, that's why this is collaborative, right?
Anyhow, here it is on my dropbox! http://db.tt/XSOVUXiP
Makrohn,
All I can say is: Loved the update!
I think that your quests gave me enough to do to bring me up to level 4 in time for the Averguard Keep, with no grinding. Really great.
I'm hoping to see more of this in the future.
Now, to answer a few of your questions:
As far as I know, only quests.txt can "include" other files. You can't do that with items and powers, though that would be a cool feature for the future.
I have no idea why the rewards didn't work properly on the alchemist quest. I'll look into it when I have time and see what the issue is. Chances are you found a very old bug that's never exhibited itself before.
It should be easy to increase the upper limit of dialog actions. We've been doing this as needed. (I remember events originally only allowed 8 actions at a time, so a big mapmod event could be split into 5 or 6 individual events. :/ )
For my living bones mod, instead of creating original art (because I suck at that too) I simply recolored some of the art. You'll notice the 3 necromancer brothers are simply the hero, with the sprites differently colored. Perhaps this is something you could consider to add a little variety in your NPCs?
Lastly, I have a few ideas for content that you may be interested in using in the future. There's a couple of features we're currently not using but have programmed that may be good quest rewards or enemies. For instance: Vampiric Items (restore health or mana proportional to damage you do), Knockback Items (hit also knocks target back), and Summoner Enemies (enemies which spawn other enemies). Another thing you may be interested in is how to add traps to the maps.
Once again, this is a pretty awesome mod. Love to see the extra content in Flare.
Hi guys o/ first post!! :D
This game/engine is awesome!! I've been playing the game and I wanna contribute :D What can I do? I'm more of an "art guy" (have yet to build a portfolio..meh xD) but I can also code a bit and I have years of experience in all sorts of genres so quest storyline development is easy for me :)
But to be on topic - I'm loving the mods and I make mine pennomi's words
To improve:
-When I try to deliver the amulet to Altea a textbox appears "I found your amulet." but nothing happens afterwards -
him=Oh, thank you! It is a symbol of our goddess and...
you=It's glowing!
him=How surprising! Truly, you must be blessed. <-- this naver happened but perhaps my client bugged or something :S
-Npc's placement is a bit awkward but I feel that its the city layout that is at fault here, it needs a nice overhaull - I'll try to play around with tiled and some models. Also that curch/temple that is on the Flare's page is really nice and would fit nice in the city, perhaps it could be the shelter for refugees and Altea
-The log messages needs some tweaking and I think a quest tracker would really improve makrohn's hard work :)
It's really late so I'll edit this post with more input about makrohn's mod when I wake up ; )
Cheers
Only the Good die young
Pennomi, thanks!
I actually ran into a second issue once I got into Averguard Keep (Goblin Warrens), which I don't know if you saw or not. For some horrible reason, the Shamans are still dropping their wands for me, even though I've completed the quest. Grr, arrgh.
I'll probably recolor a zombie for the Priest, and maybe recolor a gravestone. Is it easy enough to just use the magic select and color tools in GIMP to do that? I'd also really like to recolor my NPCs - maybe put Gretel in brown and her lackey in green, Altea into white, and Cedric into white.
Vampiric Items I think would be awesome for sword rewards, and knockback for a bow. How did you like being able to swap out your rewards from Gretel? Was that obvious enough? And did you find the Shaman quest?
Sudit, thanks as well!
Are you on 0.15 or on master? I wrote the whole thing in 0.15, and I hope to update it to master over the next couple of days. I didn't run into the Altea bug on 0.15. You might try editing your character file (or uncommenting the makrohn quest-resetters) to replay the Amulet quest, see if you can get it to happen again?
I think Gretel is the npc I really need to move, as she kind of blends in a bit. I wanted to make sure she was near the docks, though. Is there anyone else you think needs to be moved?
I like the idea of the church entrance being near the graveyard, and putting Altea in there, but pretty soon we'd need to change the name of the Frontier Outpost to somthing that sounds a little more permanent! I'm certainly not against that.
I am slightly amused by the idea of changing the game setting's developmental history into the in-game history. "What started out as a small mining outpost in the frontier soon built it's own church when missionaries arrived in FA (Flare Age) 115. That was the same year that they finally named the town ____."
Well my game screen says "FlareAlphav0.15" and wt I did was adding your mod file in the original flare mods dir and then edited mods.txt to make your mod the last on the list (I believe it's how you overwrite the other mods right?) I'm sorry if that dsnt answer your question but I dunno wt master is xD maybe the up-to-date version?
I think she fits very well near the docks as often in games you see guild npc's near trading outposts/commerce routes just outside or right at the edge of the village/city or in the docks - the docks layout could be more flattering though and that is why I think the npc's feel sort of misplaced, I'll be working on editing that bit and maybe add a church/temple/chapel(My vote is for a chapel as this is a long-term outpost but not quite a village or a city and although I think we could develop the outpost to seem more like a village - it still remains an outpost (: ) then I'll post it here for testing :D
I dont know if this is pratical in terms of game development but it certainly would be a test to the engine :P
Age of Conan did that whit it's quests - You would "unlock" the city as you completed certain quests i.e. If a boat was destroyed but you did a quest where you help rebuild it, in your client you would always see it as a repaired boat beyond that point. Perhaps the same "technique" could be aplied here - You quest and some of the quests eventualy develop the outpost.
I like the ideas!! :D
I'm still a BIG newb with linux - installed it 2 days ago xD but i'm a quick learner and Tiled is more friendly that I thought it would be - I'm gonna tryout GIMP and Blender for 2D stuff.
Cheers
Only the Good die young
To add in extra tiles to the current outpost tileset would be a bit complicated, but feel free to try.
sudit, if you're enjoying Tiled, it would be pretty cool to get some new maps out there. There's plenty of warp points that are "stubbed out" just waiting for data to link into. Perhaps building out one of those would be easiest?
makrohn,
I didn't actually notice the ability to swap out things in the Gretel quest... maybe I'll have to pay closer attention. I did find the shaman quest though.
For vampiric swords, you can create a new power with an hp_steal (or mp_steal) attribute.
You can assign any power to an item like this: (use like a power) or like this (always active)
Creating a knockback effect would also work, with a power that uses this effect: knockback
If you have questions, please ask! :)
Sudit - you are on0.15 just like me. I know some of my stuff is broken on the latest build, so I just wanted to check.
When I was joking about the developmental history, I didn't really mean to have the town change in game. Just that, as design changes happen, I could use those changes as inspiration for backstory.
Pennomi - I want the player to be able to choose their reward from Gretel, so if you have your Raven Co Shortsword in your inventory unequipped, she'll trade it out for a Raven Co Shortbow, then that for a wand, then back to a shortsword, as long as the weapon is unequipped, so that the player can get a Raven Co. Weapon specific to their build.
makrohn - Ooooohhhhh! Love the idea of tradeable items. Yeah, I must've missed that one because I ended up selling the shortsword, as I was a mage. Does she tell you that if you don't like the item, she'll trade you for a new one?
I'll have to check - I think she actually tells you to bug off, which is a bit counterproductive!
Refinement still needs to happen on these frontier quests, but do people think I should add one or two more, or start filling other maps (eg Averguard Keep. Ydrakka pass)?
Hmm, I'm not sure if the Averguard Keep needs any more quests, as it's pretty story-based already. The Ydrakka pass may need something, though; really, I think the levels after after the Averguard Keep preparing for the Cave of Living Bones are the hardest (requiring too much grinding). Perhaps there's something that can be done in between?
Clint once mentioned that maybe a book or scroll in the Averguard Library could be a good plot hook. Maybe it could direct you to the location of some artifact or other.
The Ydrakka pass is pretty tight to put in a bunch of side quests; maybe you'll want a new map? If so, I wouldn't mind putting something together for you to work on. I think I even have some old maps that ended up not getting used.
Sure! Just toss me a map and some teleport locations and I'll see what I can put together.
I won't be able to until tonight; don't have my laptop with me. :) But I'll get one or two to you asap.
Hey there just got home :D so.. updates!
@makrohn - I used the quest reset and all went well, only thing that bugged was the amulet from the first try, it remained in the inventory bag.
btw do you want me to make a white dress for altea? :D
I scribbled around with Gimp and made a little chapel from a grassland house model
http://db.tt/QOM4s3KI I have not checked it myself so it probably dsnt even work but I hope you like it
As for more quests - keep them commin :D Especially chain quests
@pennomi Sure I'll map :D I just need a background story or a quest to make a theme, perhaps I could use some of those old maps if you guys are okay with it.
(probably a dumb question) -Can the game handle animations like campfire and torches, spells, weapon glows(this should be easy though) ? - I mean more complex stuff
Cheers
Only the Good die young
Here's a map I did a while back, but never used. The spawn point for entering is (36,91). Feel free to name it whatever you like; I called it Goblin Manor, but I suppose it could end up as just about anything. I'd recommend linking it into one of the existing unused waypoints.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/23175651/goblin_manor.txt
The original idea of the entry is to shoot the switches (which have dummy non-motile invisible enemies with one hp as a trigger) to open the gates. I was originally going to make an alternate entrance for melee characters.
It's pretty bare bones; only tile data is included, so you'll have to do enemies and plot and, well, basically everything. I bet you could do something like having it be a small dungeon with a good artifact locked in a chest you can't open without a key. That key could possibly be retrieved in the Averguard Keep with a scroll or something detailing the location of the artifact. Just an idea.
I'll keep looking around for more maps. I think I had a grasslands one lying around somewhere...
EDIT: Yeah, that grasslands map is pretty much too old to be compatible. We've seen some tileset changes since then and it's caused that map to basically be broken.
sudit, to answer your question: No, animated tiles aren't currently possible... without tricks. Theoretically (this has never been done) you could create a visual power effect and insert it in the map as a repeating event.
If you want to start mapping, you'll need Tiled (a great map editor that can export to Flare format). The best place to start is by messing around with the example .tmx files in the Flare data. Clint and I have been talking about doing a mapping tutorial for some time now.
Yeah I have Tiled :) I'm gonna read some tutorials so if you guys make one it would be awesome.
btw do you think it would be possible to make a menu with settings and stuff? I'm asking because it would be really nice to have an option to choose the mods you want to load in the game, well changing sound volume and screen res would be cool aswell but yeah.. xD
Only the Good die young
If you want to check out the latest news for FLARE, the best place to look is usually clintbellanger.net/rpg. The config screen is in the works right now, being worked on by several folks. All of what you've mentioned is being worked on, but you can check out the ongoing config screen discussion at https://github.com/clintbellanger/flare/issues/335 FLARE is still in alpha, so features are being reworked and added all the time!
Oh thanks makrohn! I usually pay attention to everything on a site really but I completely missed that and yes, this is exactly what I was talking about.
Did you take a look at the chapel image? I know it's very basic but still.. xD
I was thinking about making an ice themed map, with crystal skeletons and tundra goblins or something like that wt do you think?
This what I had in mind for the place of the church/chapel:
http://i.imgur.com/XDTN9.jpg
And this is a life-saver http://code.google.com/p/flare-engine/wiki/MapEditing How
How updated is it? xD Well I'll check when I get home
Cheers
Only the Good die young
A white dress for Altea would be awesome.
The google code page is out of date in at least a few ways... Look around at my posts for some hints. Example, for a [layer], don't use the attribute "id", it's "type", and enemies don't use "spawnpoint", it's "location". When it doubt, check out the existing files.
You shouldn't ever really use the Google Code pages, they're all *really* old. Try this link:
https://github.com/clintbellanger/flare/wiki/Mapmaking
Pen, do you have that goblin manor as the .tmx as well?
makrohn, I do have that .tmx... ah crap. Never mind. I don't have it. However, it *should* be fairly easy to recreate by pasting tile data into an existing map...
And here it is!
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/23175651/goblin_manor.tmx
It will probably need to be in your flare/tiled folder to work properly. (Since that's where the images for tiled are).
Temporarily derailed by a busy work schedule and Diablo 3, but hatching some story ideas for goblin_manor. I fiddled around with Altea's and Gretel's graphics today as well, but I have a terrible eye for color, and their colorings look completely out-of-touch with the rest of the atmosphere. I also looked into adding a mitre to the Zombie Priest, or a recolor, but my modest GIMP skills are wicked intimidated by the idea of redoing all 48 or 72 or however-many frames.
Glad you're cooking up something for that map!
I'm doing a game for the LPC with the Flare engine. (Coding starts in ~1 week.) Any chance you'd be interested in contributing over the next month?
Edit: Oh, and if you haven't already, check out the newest GitHub source - the new settings menu makes mod handling much easier!
Ooo, sounds like fun, Pennomi! Let me know what kind of flavor you're thinking about and I'll see what I can do.
makrohn: I've created a new LPC ideas thread. Post there if you'd like to discuss plans for the LPC!