Journal Rewrites?

Eris made a good point in the sign-up post about how to handle rewriting journal entries. On the vanilla entries, sometimes you'll get an update for a very small thing, like choosing to follow Hadvar or Ralof in the tutorial. It really doesn't make sense for the PC to jot that note down while avoiding a dragon attack, so I think we'll need to keep things like that in mind while rewriting.

I did a quick run-through on the tutorial a while ago and rewrote the journal as follows:


Original:
I have been captured by the Empire and sentenced to death alongside the Stormcloak rebels. We were taken to Helgen, but before I could be executed a dragon appeared and attacked the town. I need to find some way to escape.
* Make your way to the Keep
* Enter the Keep with Hadvar or Ralof
* Escape Helgen
* Find some equipment
* (Optional) Search the barrels for potions
* (Optional) Attempt to pick the lock to the cage

I have escaped both my execution and a dragon attack. I now have my freedom to do as I see fit in Skyrim.

My version:

I have been captured by the Empire and sentenced to death alongside the Stormcloak rebels. We were taken to Helgen, but before I could be executed a dragon appeared and attacked the town. One of the Stormcloaks, Ralof, suggested I follow him to safety. There's a large Keep in town, which would offer better protection from the dragon's assault; I should make my way there.

I've made it to the Keep, but I'm not alone. I decided to follow <Hadvar/Ralof>; He freed me from my bindings and suggested I take some equipment from <a chest/Gunjar>. Fighting my way out of Helgen doesn't seem like much of an option, but at least the dragon can't reach me here. It might be wise to explore the Keep and see if there's another way out.

(Optional) There's a lot of junk in this storeroom; it wouldn't hurt to look around and see if I can't find some potions. I may need them.

(Optional) There's a dead mage locked inside a cell in the torture chamber. It looks like he had some useful things on him before he died. I should try to find something to pick the lock with.

I have escaped both my execution and a dragon attack. I now have my freedom to do as I see fit in Skyrim.



Would something like that make more sense; Where you lump descriptions from the short objectives together? What do you guys/girls think?

Excellent example, though not everyone may agree.

We should also consider where we will start directions. Will it be the nearest town, the nearest known place,...? It would be great, but hard to implement, if we could start the directions from the nearest visited place.

Not sure what you mean by directions?

If you mean giving directions for quests, I'd think it wouldn't be too hard to say 'a fort east of Riverwood' or something to that effect. That's how Morrowind always handled it. Or they'd give you landmarks that you had to follow along the way to verify that you were going in the right direction. IE 'travel south until you come to a ruined fort, turn left and keep going until you see the large cairn - the cave will be on a rocky hill, overlooking the lake.'

It'll all depend on the quest, really, but I don't think it'll be too hard...

Surely. But where do we start the directions. It would be great to start directions from the nearest place the player visited before, though that would be hard to implement.

Wouldn't you just give directions from wherever the quest begins?

In some cases, that might be not possible. If the quest is given in Solitude but leads you to Riften, for instance.

(( Disclaimer to Post: I write a lot. Please forgive me. I also have programmer-brain, which means I will always be thinking about implementation when talking about something. ))

Because the CK is not out, we don't even know how the game references quest-objectives, particularly when involving the Radiant Story. Obviously, it has to have SOME manner of doing it, or the NPCs would not be able to communicate to you the correct destination. I recommend also taking a look at SKSE to see what sort of manipulation functions will be brought to our disposal.

A lot of these problems can be inched around being appropriately vague. For instance, take a quest wherein we have to find one of the khajiit caravans. Because these move, we can write a journal entry that makes it clear that the character knows these caravans are mobile. In fact, if the player has already talked to the woman in Whiterun that trades with the khajiit, we can do a check for that and dynamically add that those caravans squat just outside of city walls, either changing the original entry BEFORE it's made, OR adding a new one, like a quest update.

(( While it would be extra work and may create conflicts/weird dialogue, we can also add a short line of dialogue to khajiit caravaneers when the right quest is active. Like, "Is [khajiit] in your party?" "No. We don't know him. He may be working for Ri'saad. Last we heard from him, he was on the road to Markaarth. Or was it Whiterun?" This would reveal information to hint where each of the three khajiit parties have their runs. ))

For major quests, I believe that these are generally very static, so they should not be much of a problem. For example, Arvel in Riverwood will tell you to go the Jarl of Whiterun. You can simply describe it like the NPCs do, because this will never change. You may want to wait before adding a journal entry, however, until a character has FULLY closed dialogue; that way, we can add the directions only after the NPC gives them. ["How do I get from Whiterun?"] We can then add a note later if the player asks another NPC for help. For quests where no directions are given, we can just kinda futz around a bit, so long as it looks natural, or add new dialogue options ourselves (like described above).

For Radiant Story quests, I can see a few ways to do this. Both would require a lot of work, but one idea would be a lot of trouble but may make the game more 'realistic'.

(( Disclaimer: I write in C-alike languages, and do not know the capabilities of TES scripting. As a result, my examples ASSUME certain capabilities.))

Idea #1 requires that we write 'routing' function that, when called, will return the appropriate string description. For example, "Bob told me to find " + get_location() + ". To get there, I need to " + get_directions(get_location()) + "."

'get_location()' is a function provided by the game to find the name of the target zone/dungeon/cave. get_directions() is the function that we would write. It would take the name returned by get_location(), and find the corresponding string stored inside (either a massive switch statement, or a constant string, or I don't know because I don't know TES scripting) - so the result would be, "Bob told me to find Whatever Cave. To get there, I need to search in the valley northwest of Whiterun."

The main problem with this is that these static descriptions will need to assume that the player knows where certain landmarks are. At the beginning of the game, the only places you will know are the cities, and MAYBE High Hrothgar. This is not good, because the type of player that will download this mod will PROBABLY download mods that remove quest markers, prevent fast-travel, and may even turn off the cities from the starting map until they're found.


Idea #2

Idea #2 is involved and will make us all cry, especially come time to do testing. It involves writing functions that:

1.) Detect the player's location when the quest is given.
2.) Detect the player's current list of known locations, filtered to only include those which should be well known (forts, major landmarks, cities, and towns).
3.) Uses the destination and tests the list against it, looking for a priority location (one known to be closest). If none is found, then the starting location must be used.
4.) Returns an appropriate string direction description, based on the output of #3.

The actual programming involved is probably not that bad; the greatest hurdle will be going through ALL of the quest locations in the game and compiling a list of priority locations to be implemented in the switch in #3. (It's probably too much to ask for a function that automatically can measure the distance between two given grid points, the game obviously doesn't support this.)

The thing that will make us cry is the writing of strings for ALL the potential outputs in the game.



To top it off, you MUST have defaults or a sort of API to ensure that new content mods that add new locations or quests to existing locations do not break this mod.

*Blinks* I-- This is why I can't do the heavy modding stuff. That just blew my mind, and I only half know what you're saying.

This is going to be a lot more involved than I imagined...

Well, most of the work would be on the writer's shoulders.

If you were to attempt something like I described in Idea #2, we are talking literally THOUSANDS of strings.

Edited:

To put this in perspective, the last kind of project I worked on for something like that was for another game where I was writing descriptions for various degrees of wetness ("it is sopping wet", "it is drenched", "it is mildly damp", etc). By the end of it, it included some 200+ descriptors, and took about 6 to 8 hours to do, and another 12 to test.

*sobs* Oh god, please let #1 work!

They would both work -- and #1 will be no small task, either (although its entries may be somewhere in the hundreds, I'm not certain how many quest areas are in the game).

The purpose of #2 is to achieve aesthetics and 'awesomeness'.

I'm hoping someone more familiar with what the scripting is capable of can offer a third option.

#2 was exactly wat I was talking about. It would make it awesome and may make this mod one of the "must have's" for immersion-based play. It would be hard to implement, that was obvious for me. But if we (eh, I mean you, ofcourse) can pull it off...
I would also mean a lot more work for the writers, since we would have to describe routes for all locations ingame.

I've slept on it and did some thinking on how to get the work for #2 organized, if that's really what you'd like to try.

Step One:

I think the best thing to do before even getting started is to make a list of what we would consider a "priority location." This will be a list of inhabited towns, cities, and properly controlled forts, and possibly major landmarks that are mentioned by NPCs in the game (like High Hrothgar). I would exclude anything that qualifies as a 'ruin' or bandit den, or locations that would be too danderous for the common traveller (like those spriggan groves), because nobody in their right mind is going to give those directions unless they wanted to purposefully kill you.

I don't know if we should include any of the Imperial and Stormcloak camps. I think it may be cool to exclude them altogether UNLESS the player has joined one faction or the other. (Joining the Imperials gives access to directions from Imperial camps, etc.) The reason being is that I'm not so sure that most of the denizens of Skyrim actually care about what's going on between them. Most just seem to want to put their fingers in their ears and go "LALALALALA THIS IS NOT HAPPENING LALALALA."

Anyway, what is and isn't included is entirely up for discussion.


Step Two:

Make a list of all known Radiant Story locations that do not move once they've been set (basically, all of the dungeon-crawlers).

Take each one of these on the list and then look at where they are on the map -- determine which priority locations we would want to try to use for that given location, and assign it a 'priority' score. This will be the computer's way of knowing that it should choose one location over another. We don't have to do ALL of the priority locations, just the ones that make sense and are within a certain range (you won't be telling anyone how to get to Wolfskull Cave from Riften). Maybe pick 5-7 priority locations and assign them a value for each one.

Once we have the list, we'll have a better idea of the number of strings we'll need to write and can divvy it up, or set up a baseline formula/standard and request submissions from the community. Then our editors can sort out the mess, picking the best ones and fixing them. Whatever you'd want to do in this scenario.


Step Three:

Write the directions that would be described between each Radiant Story location and it's various priority locations.

We will also need to write a "default" direction that will occur if the player doesn't know ANY priority locations within range. This can occur if a player takes a quest that is located in a hold they've never been to before, and while not the best, they will probably feel more real and will be less of a headache for our writers to deal with (as opposed to doing ALL possible priority locations). These descriptions could give the player a general idea of which quadrant in which hold he or she should look for the quest location. "I was told the cave could be found near the coast between Winterhold and Dawnstar." And hey, doing it this way will be our way of promoting exploration, right? <.<


Step Four:

The horror that is writing the actual journal entries.


Step Five:

Conflict contingencies - we will need to come up with a way to deal with custom content quests, missed quests, DLC, or expansions that will be using the old system. We don't want to break anyone's game.

Create a simple-to-use, VERY WELL DOCUMENTED API-like interface for other modders to use to ensure compatibility and then promote the heck out of it. If we see major quest mods that are getting a lot of downloads, we are going to need to do the footwork involved with making sure our mod stays in people's mod lists.


Step Six:

UI design. Must be compatible with all those wonderful UI overhauls that we know are coming. I don't know how this can be done, as we may end up having to have separate patches for the most popular ones. :[ (Moar work!)

For Town-related quests (if you have to talk to someone in town), we could make some sort of "yellow pages" for the towns like the "guide to Balmora",.... It would list all inhabitants, their job description and their home. This would be up for sale at the general merchants. . Maybe we can even create streetnames with corresponding signs in game. This way, we wouldn't need to create custom directions in towns.
The DLC will need the same work, and should get the same treatment as the main game. Hopefully, we can re-use the scripts. We should offer two seperate downloads, a full version (for the Goty edition or plain new installments) and the seperate (for those players that have mod #1 already installed. We should make sure the latter don't conflict, obviously.


I would prioritise like this:

• Major towns (like Whiterun)
  
• Major locations (like High Hrotgar)
  
• Small towns (like Riverwood)
  
• Forts
  
• Villages, Taverns, Meadery's, Crossroads (depending on the situation)