May 02
Quests
Spent time today on quest visualisation and editing. Still not done, but there’s been some visible progress.
First, I’ve now got a generic way to put UI components inside a frame (currently being used by the quest text display in the middle of the screen). This obviously needs some new controls added, and there’s some weird bug with the text which is causing the first line to be a dark blue instead of white, but it’s getting there.
The part that took a surprisingly amount of time is the arrow pointing from the quest giver to the quest destination. In part, it’s similar to the “cursor” system that’s used for the player and for drawing the AI developers, but it needs to support much larger arrows, and more extreme curvature of the shape. I’m not convinced that the “black arrow with glowing outline” look is right for this sort of thing, but at least it gives us a visual display of where a particular quest is targetted.
Next up: setting the target of a quest, and moving that quest data display over to the left side of the screen, instead of smack in the middle. Also, some way to close the quest data display again, once it’s been shown. Probably just deselecting the quest giver should hide the display again. (Currently, once you start editing quests, you can never close that display again)
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:32 pm
What kind of quest can we expect? Is it only “Kill 10 X” and quests like that?
May 6th, 2010 at 12:00 am
There are two types of quest right now; there are “hunt” quests and “fetch” quests. Hunt quests are the “Kill 10 X” quests that you already mentioned. “Fetch” quests is my blanket term for a quest which just tells you to go to a certain place.
In the automatically generated quest text, “hunt” quests usually talk about culling animal populations, while “fetch” quests ask you to find some forgotten or misplaced object.
For the future, I’ve been thinking about adding “Go-And-Do-Something” quests, which would involve going to a particular building, and then interacting with that building (socialising in an inn, buying a weapon at a weapon shop, taking a quest from another quest giver, etc.) The current fetch quests just have the PC go to the destination, and then it’s up to them whether or not they interact with whatever they’ve been sent to. On the other hand, it seems to be pretty rare to actually see these in real-world MMORPGs; usually they just ask you to go somewhere as a time-sink.
I’ve also been thinking about “multi-stage” quests, where you’re given a list of different objectives which must all be completed, before you’re given credit for completing the quest. In WoW, for example, these are rather common in the late-game. (In the early and mid-game, they seem to focus more on giving multiple parallel lines of quests that all lead you into one place, so you can be completing five or six quests at once. Later on, many quests force you to visit many different widely-spaced places just to complete one quest)
Anyhow, that’s all future stuff. For the first release, it’s just hunt quests and fetch quests.