Wasteland Warrior

[Gurimu]

Hi. I havent posted before but I will say first of all this forum has been a big help. I recently started playing Tactics again and I forgot how much I enjoy fallout in real time hehe. This time around I took a look at the editor and a day later I got me my first mission. Alot of it thanks to picking apart the missions and searching these forums. Me and a few others are kinda big fallout fans so I started making a campaign and I thought I might ask for a little help.

One thing I needed and I sort of solved is the whole npc speach tree stuff.

I use a simple scripted sequence of "Pickup lines" for the npcs.
You choose a char from your party to talk to him first so he "activates". The activation is important as it checks the stats of the player who activated the npc. So charisma and Intel play big roles in determining responses and actions.

The issues I'm having (being brand new to FOT modding and all) are these.

1) if you switch to a diff char I would like it to re check the stats but atm its a 1 shot deal for the npc. It's like a first impression system and thats ok but i'd like that extra bit of versatility.

2) I still don't know how to use timers properly

3) Is there seriously no way to strip the players inventpry?

4) When an actor is following waypoints and encounters enemies or what not does he forget about the waypoints or will he eventually get back to them?

5) How is the effects spawner used :/

6) how does retreat work? how can I make a cpu player retreat his troops to a zone,


and lastly. here is a little demo of the npc speech system im using.
If anyone could help me improve it I would be most thankful.

http://senduit.com/645bb1

 

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

You choose a char from your party to talk to him first so he "activates". The activation is important as it checks the stats of the player who activated the npc.

How? The game checks against the total stats of the entire party not individuals. There are ways around this, use of tagnames and or zones, but tagnames are destroyed on traveling to the world map. Which makes that method only viable in standalone maps or when you first recruit an npc.

1) if you switch to a diff char I would like it to re check the stats but atm its a 1 shot deal for the npc. It's like a first impression system and thats ok but i'd like that extra bit of versatility.

You can use the preserved check box to make triggers fire again and again.

2) I still don't know how to use timers properly

You'll have to read the tutorial pages (linked in the FAQ), I can't think about timers at this time of the early hours.

3) Is there seriously no way to strip the players inventpry?

When? You can strip the starting items by duplicating the items and editing the originals to be 'removed on exit' but this only works for the start of a campaign or travelling to the world map. Otherwise you'll have to force the player to strip manually.

4) When an actor is following waypoints and encounters enemies or what not does he forget about the waypoints or will he eventually get back to them?

They'll go back to them, as long as combat hasn't taken them too far from their path and they can still find the next waypoint.

5) How is the effects spawner used :/

I'll have to get back to you on that, it's another 'not at 2am in the morning question'.

6) how does retreat work? how can I make a cpu player retreat his troops to a zone,

Set them to use the retreat tactic in the edit entity section of the level editor, set up a zone and give it an unique name. Then in the player index 'set up ai 'screen choose that name from the pop up list when you click on the button under retreat zone.

here is a little demo of the npc speech system im using.
If anyone could help me improve it I would be most thankful.

Ew rar files, never touch them. Just post your triggers.

 

[Gurimu]

Ah thanks for your help. I know I could be called a fool for wanting to make a tactics campaign but I'm not alone so I have some friends I can entertain and whoever else wish for some new missions with a story. And I enjoy making it :X

sry about the rar
heres zip
http://senduit.com/b7bbbd

I feel stupid for not getting the preserve stuff right but I was deep into the scripting stuff for the first time and its a small thing to overlook ;x (I was using them wrong)

Lets say I check the starting stats at the beginning of the campaign and store them as a campaign var. Will that work? A 1 time determining of npc reactions. Altho the benefit of using a teammate kinda tempts me :X. I could go either way on this so ill probably use both.

I checked the post about that changing the ents and I guess thats ok.

Thx for ur help. I'll keep you aprised of this campaign's status.
Lots of bad voice acting to look forward too!

 

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

I'd use a combination of scripting, but I'd definately use Magnum Opus' speech system. It can easily be combined with stat checks, the trouble with floating speech answers is that they are so easily missed or confused with the random speech.

Plus there's the added bonus of being able to choose what dialogue your character actually says, even if you go for the more simplified version as Ogreb suggested .

Probably the easiest method of distinguishing between the main character and recruits is race. Use a zone around the npc as you have done and then have the condition check the trait 'race'. When you create a new character at the start of a campaign then they will be race 0 (Bos) so make all human recruits using tribals, raiders and reavers. You can change the description shown in the character screen by editing locale\game\race.txt if you wish.

Then an npc can have two different dialogue trees where they reference gender with stat checks to determine replies plus a different tree for recruits (no stat checks needed for them). One thing I'd say though is make the zones very small and try and tile the map so access to the zone is limited. The character sprites might be different sizes but for most of them the bounding box is the same size so even though the graphic might not enter a zone the edge of the character's bounding box will have done. Affecting the stat/trait checks.

***

Effect spawns. There is an explodespawn in entities/misc add that to a map and give it a tag name. In the entity edit section of the level editor you can change the sprite that will spawn (big explosion etc) and the wav to play any extra lighting effects. Most effect sprites have only one sequence IIRC so you can leave that as default. Then when you want to set off the effect just have a trigger to change the object script state.

Action:
Set [tagname] script state (ticked)

Mission22.mis is a good map to look at to see how they are set up and used.

 

[Gurimu]

er well I'm not exactly comfortable with talking to npc's by swapping some letters. I do like the idea of choices but I would need some sort of gimmick i suppose to feel comfortable with it.

How about some "translator" items?
Translator a/b/c/d
Maybe add some early bonus quests to find them. I can make the gfx for them If someone want's to help me make sprites.

I will probably for the most part have npc's with the random pickup line stuff and combinations of other stuff to help represent choice.
And I'm not 100% sure but I think a campaign variable can be used to check the results of the first stat check in the intro level to be used as a generic main char value (for npc reaction)

 

[Vault Maker]

A disclaimer here: I don't mod, I've just read about it. But anyway.

Admittedly swapping the letters from inventory into active slot is a big kludge in terms of looks, but compared to all the other ways of making multiple-path dialog, it looks worlds easier to do the Magnum Opus system. At least, from a mod-makers perspective. Anyone who is going to load up a Tactics mod and have multiple dialog fully implemented shouldn't complain about this detail.

Anyone who did complain about that would probably also whinge about (gasp!) no "pushing" FO1 NPCs out of the way, or having Marcus cut 5 party members in half with a minigun. Big babies.

And, if the modder can't finish the mod, nobody can play it and complain...so make your modding easier "and don't be the bottleneck!", as Action Item Man says.

The idea of getting another item that opens up other speech paths is interesting. In fact, it's so interesting that it gives me another idea. I wonder if you could create such a thing to simulate a high "Speech" skill (like a Vault Speech Module). Since the closest skill in Tactics is Barter...maybe it's something you can only get with a huge barter skill. You could use one of the currency types to create some kind of token, then some special NPC will barter those tokens (instead of caps or scrip or whatever) for the Speech-McGuffin-thingy. It's like doing Mrs. Bishop, but having to pay for it.

Of course, then you have to sacrifice the multiple currency feature. In fact, I don't know why I brought it up...just saying.

 

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

You don't have to use letters, a simple button sprite will work just as well (if you use the colour coding) or another image such as a speech bubble or happy sad faces etc. The idea is basically that the player doesn't get the gui items mixed up with in world items.

The random pickup lines are really horrible, I don't say that to be mean, it's just a clunky technique. If I click on a character my eyes go directly to the bottom of the screen to read any response. At least with the display world text it's unmissable. You don't have to use multiple choice though, MO's speech tree system can be adapted to use stat/race checks instead of equipping items. This can either be done using campaign variables or instant checks.

Condition:
Speech Event npc_1 occurred
Human has exactly 0 trait race at Speech_zone
Campaign Variable Intelligent > 6 is T

Action:
Display Text npc_1Int>6_W
Set Click Speech for unit 'npc' to npc_A

You would have several copies of that trigger each with a different condition checking race (so you can determine which recruit is doing the talking) with each version of the trigger opening up different options depending on the character and their response to women, ghouls or idiots etc. You don't have to use the display text though this does give you the opportunity to have the player speak. But do not use the floating text!

 

[Gurimu]

Ok Ok ill *try* and use the silly item response system. But im still going to use other methods in some places and im going to try and come up with a silly but workable reason for the player having word bubbles or letters in his inventory. As for races im just going to set the prefabs up as race choices.
Other than that I'm not having too much difficulty. ( I just scripted a rocky match encounter with improvised ring \o/ )
The campaign vars do pile up fast tho heh.

 

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

The items wouldn't be in the character's inventory, not in world at least. They aren't meant to be items that the character knows about. They are gui supplements, even the dumbest of players should be able to understand that (if they have no weight and value players won't care about them anyway). As Vault Maker said anyone playing a mod with a working speech tree is unlikely to complain about such work arounds.

Though again you don't have to use inventory items you can use the same triggers with just stat, gender and race checks etc instead of offering a multiple choice, the important thing is to use the display world text or the default speech window. Try and show the character speaking not just the npc replying. One of the problems with just clicking on an npc without any dialogue from the character is that you don't know what you are getting into. In the example you posted the main character clicks on the npc, then clicks on them again and gets attacked for no reason the player can discern. There was a similar problem with Awaken, you'd keep clicking on an npc to see what they had to say and ended up taking quests you might not of wanted (and which could prevent you taking other quests later). At the very least add some text to say click on me again if you want to take the quest.

Also you don't have to use campaign variables all the time, with small zones, where you can limit access to one character at a time then you can just use regular stat checks etc.

The idea behind using race as a check is to identify the main character from the rest of the recruits. When a new campaign is started and a character is created it will always be race 0, so if you use human recruits you can set them up as the other races to identify them (since tagnames get stripped). I don't know how many recruits you are planing to make available, but since there are 2 genders, 3 other human factions (each can wear bos armours), 3 medium/large humans (who can't wear armour) super mutants, deathclaws, ghouls and humanoid robots. Giving you a total of 19 - 20 (I'm not sure that robots can be assigned gender) uniquely identifiable recruits. If you do make prefab characters from different races you'll cut that number down considerably.

Remember you don't have to stat check the recruits, just identify they are being used, the player can't change their basic stats by enough to unbalance any scripting. This does bring up a simple solution to stat checking. If you only have a handful of available recruits, and the player can only take 5 of them. Then you can set them up so that you'll know what the stat total will be with any combination. So then you can have stat checks, without complicated scripting and campaign variables, that will count the entire squad but be adjusted for the player character.

I.e if all combinations of your squad's charisma (minus the main character) equal 30 then you can use that as a base and have the trigger check to see if the player has a charisma over 35 at anywhere, rather than a total of 6 in a certain zone.

 

[Gurimu]

prefabs are going to be race selection indeed.
Instead of a history for a premade char it will just be a blurb about the race choice (and a special generic history) and mb a remark that creating a custom char forces to bos.

so straight off the bat you're choice of race will affect the campaign.

You start with an intro mission with no teammates.
(a small story of how your generic dude got there)
Later u can pick up crew so i figure i can stat check on the first level for the main char at least.

 

[Vault Maker]

Hopefully I didn't read right past the answer to this, but my brain's a bit fuzzy atm.

If you recruit NPCs by talking to them, and something uses a stat total for the whole group, won't you also need to either a) limit the number of recruits that are available, or b) have a trigger check to see how may people are on the team and prevent adding more than some number (probably 6)? If the game ran a check when you had, say, 22 NPC's...well, that would be an extreme-size Horde perhaps, but I think too many NPCs could throw this calc off.

Isn't the limit of a PC plus 5 NPCs implemented in the recruitmaster function? Assuming you ignore the clunky interface.

 

[Gurimu]

i was thinking a campaign var to check the main char since the initial mission u start alone.

 

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

Even with using campaign variables you should limit the player to 5 recruits at a time. The trigger is easy (check the pipboy encounter) and having more than 6 is really clunky with FOT's interface.

What makes using the 'talk to' recruiting method interesting is that you can have different recruits join you based on your reputation, stats or race. Say you make a Super Mutant prefab available, where normally the player would be attacked by SM's they can now recruit, likewise towns that would normally offer a human character quests, shopping and respite could become hostile.

Or have different characters and quests open up depending on if the player has a good or bad reputation.