Mod: Variations in Friendliness

[ExplorerBob]

Originally Posted by sgqwonkian

You might try expanding the quest out a little bit, or making another "FLAG always" quest that uses the CONDITIONs of encounter and notfriendly to make some extra text block pop up.

It's weird though that the game isn't automatically putting up any sort of text. Did you change any other files? Perhaps you deleted or inserted something in the races/zorg.ini file? Accidentally moved something around inside the file, while you were making duplicates of the races and trying other tricks to make the zorg turn evil? That's the only thing I can think of. I'd check your zorg.ini and compare it against the default files of the main game.

Nah, I didn't alter the files, beyond the flags.

I'll look into creating extra quest details, to fill in for the comm deficit.

[S.R. Krol]

Hey guys, just a quick note to say it's been awesome to see the mod forum getting all peppy again in the past month. I'll probably throw something in this month's newsletter about it, and definitely want to point people to the Teeming With Life mod.

[sgqwonkian]

Originally Posted by S.R. Krol

Hey guys, just a quick note to say it's been awesome to see the mod forum getting all peppy again in the past month. I'll probably throw something in this month's newsletter about it, and definitely want to point people to the Teeming With Life mod.

Thanks!

It feels good to be modding again.

[ExplorerBob]

Experimentation seems to have proven that using ENMY doesn't give you hostile first encounter messages. To test this, I acquired the Mantle of Babulon before encountering the Garthans, and upon meeting them, got the usual mantle response message. Afterwards, when I removed it, I just entered combat, with no prior warning.

The problem with using notfriendly is that it includes both neutrality and hostility, which is very inconvenient; it's somewhat annoying how neutrality is so disregarded in current WW.

Anyway, it seems the way to do this is to have the hatezorg/muk quests set triggers that allow for the notfriendly message to take its toll. Can you transfer uvar settings from one quest to another?

[sgqwonkian]

Originally Posted by ExplorerBob

Can you transfer uvar settings from one quest to another?

It's been more than a year since I've messed with UVAR, and the mod I was making that used it got eaten when my laptop died. IIRC, the uvars exist outside of the quests. Any uvar may be accessed by multiple quests. I think.

In fact, I seem to recall that if you play the game, and an UVAR is set to some value, and then play again without exiting to the desktop, it'll retain the uvar value. You may be able to use that, so that multiple games in a row end up with an ever-more-complicated political situation. If you don't want that, you might have to include a few lines in the quests/gameover.ini file to reset all your variables at the end of each game.

P.S.: Man, you've really got to put this mod up on the site when you've got it running. The more I think about all the cool things you can do with swapping allegiances around, the more excited I get. You could trigger alliance changes at the homeworlds of other races. Like, if you visit the muktians, it turns the zorg against you. If you conquer the urluquai, the garthans become friendly. It could get complicated, but awesome.

[ExplorerBob]

Sorry to disappoint you, and spend more of your time, but things haven't been going well at variability central.

Testing variable relations hasn't been convenient, since the Muktians never show up on the map when the moly cone (and thus their variable relations quest) are on, but from the last times I remember bumping into them, they were stubbornly neutral.

Here's the code I'm using right now:

Originally Posted by lovemuk

FLAG event
KEYS muktian

STAR 0
FLAG existing
PLNT hope
ITEM wp_projmoly
SVAR wormthink wormlove
END STAR

CONDITION 0
TYPE preenc
STR0 muktian
END CONDITION

CONDITION 1
TYPE uvar
STR0 wormthink
STR1 wormlove
END CONDITION

PAGE 0
REQ0 0
REQ1 1
ACTN popup endquest break
MUSC music/vidcast.ogg
GFXP races/muktian.jpg 0
FRND muktian
TITL Muktian Vidcast
TEXT Greetings, outdwellers. We welcome you to Muktian space. While you enjoy sanctuary, rest assured that an array of security forces stand at the ready to deal with any problems that might arise.
END PAGE

PAGE 1
REQ0 0
REQ1 1
ACTN popup endquest
MUSC music/vidcast.ogg
GFXP races/muktian.jpg 0
FRND muktian
TITL Muktian Vidcast
TEXT Hail, allies from beyond. This is Muktian space and you are welcome here. Feel safe in the knowledge that our system is protected by all of the formidable power our military can muster.
END PAGE

PAGE 2
REQ0 0
REQ1 1
ACTN popup endquest
MUSC music/vidcast.ogg
GFXP races/muktian.jpg 0
FRND muktian
TITL Muktian Vidcast
TEXT Welcome to Muktian space, far venturers. The wonders of our deep grottoes await you. You may consider this system a Haven, even as a brace of security drones have been dispatched to assure your protection.
END PAGE

I took to inserting these texts when it became evident that artificially altering a race's relations with you prevented you from seeing their normal comm text. I inserted three of them in a half-hearted attempt at randomness that I expect will fail.

The Muktian race file hasn't been tampered in any way that would affect their appearance.

Let me know what you think of this problem, and the likelihood of this quest working.

[sgqwonkian]

Debugging suggestions:

Change "SVAR wormthink wormlove" to "UVAR wormthink wormlove" in the STAR block. UVAR initializes a variable, SVAR sets it if you're changing the variable's value after it's been initialized. You always have to UVAR before you can SVAR. Also, the modmaker's guide only lists UVAR for STAR blocks, and lists SVAR for PAGE blocks. I suspect they only work in the proper block types.

That change alone will probably solve your problems.

However, I'd also delete the entire PAGE 1 and PAGE 2 blocks. I don't think they'll generate randomly. I'm pretty sure it'll always read PAGE 0 first. Since PAGE 0 has both "endquest" and "break", it'll never check the pages after that once PAGE 0 has run. If PAGE 0 doesn't run (because you haven't UVAR'd the variable), then PAGE 1 and PAGE 2 still won't trigger.

Lastly, in PAGE 0, you might consider changing the order of the lines to ACTN, GFXP, TITL, TEXT, MUSC, FRND. (So, move MUSC to the bottom of the page, then move FRND right below it.) IIRC, the pages are sometimes very sensitive to component order, and won't load things if they occur at the wrong place in the page. Sometimes you can be lazy / sloppy and get lucky, but othertimes the game gets strict, and it's hard to predict. Some things can be out-of-order, but others can't. In general, you're best off if you try to follow the order they appear at in the Modmaker's Guide.

I'm fairly confident those changes should fix it, with the UVAR change being the most important part.

[ExplorerBob]

Unfortunately, the Muktians are as consistently neutral as ever...when they and the event show up at the same time, which is almost never. When the moly cone appears, I can almost count on there not being any Muktians -- I'll get literally almost every race but them, regularly, when the Muk variable diplomacy event comes up.

This is quite confusing, and frustrating; the code should be sound, but in spite of that it doesn't seem to work.

This is the Muktian love-code. Maybe try to test it, independently, and see if you can get anything out of it?

Originally Posted by muklove

FLAG event
KEYS muktian

STAR 0
FLAG existing
PLNT hope
ITEM wp_projmoly
UVAR wormthink wormlove
END STAR

CONDITION 0
TYPE preenc
STR0 muktian
END CONDITION

CONDITION 1
TYPE uvar
STR0 wormthink
STR1 wormlove
END CONDITION

PAGE 0
REQ0 0
REQ1 1
ACTN popup endquest break
GFXP races/muktian.jpg 0
TITL Muktian Vidcast
TEXT Greetings, outdwellers. We welcome you to Muktian space. While you enjoy sanctuary, rest assured that an array of security forces stand at the ready to deal with any problems that might arise.
MUSC music/vidcast.ogg
FRND muktian
END PAGE

[sgqwonkian]

Turns out the problem is "preenc". Try setting it to "encounter" and it'll work just fine.

Relevant snippets from another thread that clued me in to this possibility:

Phlagm:
Has anyone had success with using preenc in a condition, or do you know where it may have been used? I can get firstenc and encounter to launch the quest I'm trying to launch, but preenc does nothing.

Fingers:
The pre-encounter condition is used in mantle_gar and mantle_url to set that race to be your enemy if you arrive without the mantle and have made friends with them earlier.

The preenc is triggered just before the radar screen would pop up. The radar would not pop up if they were friendly, that's why this feature was added. It may not be possible to use preenc to pop up a quest window as it's only intended to make (invisible) preparations before the actual encounter.

I tested your quest repeatedly, but with "FLAG always" and "CONDITION TYPE encounter" and it worked every time.

[ExplorerBob]

Working on some quite complicated code at the moment. When all is said and done, variations in friendliness should fully affect how mercs/ally ships behave, and are treated by the home race.