Mod: Variations in Friendliness

[ExplorerBob]

It turns out that the lack of items on planets is because the itemless star is where the ship should be -- only it fails to generate.

If/when you have the time, please take a look at this code and see what you think of it. "Wormapathy" is generated by haven.ini; wormhate and wormlove are generated by the lovemuk and hatemuk files. It's been a while since I released the other files, but I think they should still be compatible?

The idea is to have three types of merc, one for each diplomatic state. hatemuk should trigger a Muktian mercenary; the others trigger allies that are functionally equivalent.

Composition of the zip file should be similar to last time; few tweaks to the love/hate files to get them to work better, and the currently-malfunctioning mercs.

[sgqwonkian]

Have you ever tried to mod a quest that uses the THIF or SABT commands? I did, a while back, and I found there's all sorts of problems. Neither of those two codes will work with anything but the "explore" CONDITION. Put any other trigger on the quest, and it'll never take an item from you. There's some other weirdness specific to those codes as well, like THIF needing to be in the first PAGE, and it parses haveitem differently then it should. Point being, all the codes pertaining to Esmerelda are really wonky, and only reliably work in the specific scenarios used in the maingame. Stray far from the example, and it'll break.

So, after much tinkering and testing, I've come to the conclusion that MERC has similar restrictions. The problem isn't your code, it's the the very coding of the game itself. As near as I can tell, the MERC command doesn't work with CONDITION TYPE uvar. (It may just be that CONDITION uvar evaluates after the point where the game needs to already have launched the special MERC hiring window and protocol.)

I draw this conclusion most based on these two observations:

1. If I change all your MERC entries to ALLY, it generates the ship in every scenario and combination.
   
2. If I change all your ALLY entries to MERC, it never generates a ship.

I'll go add that to the big debugging list at the wiki.

So, your possible choices for the mod under discussion seem to be:

• Revert to the default quest without modding it, since it works.
• Remove the CONDITION TYPE uvar, and set them all to MERC.
• Set that one MERC to ALLY instead, but keep the uvar CONDITION and use alternate text to hint that he's an outlaw.
• Move the MERC code to the first PAGE, and test to see if that works. I doubt it will, but given how weird the THIF and SABT codes are, I can rule it out till it's been tested.
• Surprise me with something clever, new and fun that's not on this list.

Sorry it took so long for me to figure out the problem. It wasn't till this morning that I thought far enough outside the box to realize the issue might not be your coding. The past couple days, I'd been looking for a typo that didn't exist.


One more thing. I found this other possible bug (depending on how you view it, you might see it as a feature) in the mod. Wormhate overrides the Mantle of Babulon. I had the mantle and met the Muktians. They gave me the "cruel Slorn" speech, like we were gonna fight. Then they gave me the "return of the ancient ones! We exude ooze in jubilation" greeting in a second window. Then they attacked me. You might want to go tweak mantle_muk to make it less surreal.

[sgqwonkian]

Move the MERC code to the first PAGE, and test to see if that works. I doubt it will, but given how weird the THIF and SABT codes are, I can rule it out till it's been tested.

That was, of course, supposed to say "I can't rule it out till it's been tested."

[ExplorerBob]

I wonder if having any variations in the ally pages at all prohibits generation. I've been trying #3, changing the merc to an ally and having slightly variant text, but it never generates.

I'm getting inclined to give up on the merc side of variable relations and just get VR working again (since I managed to break it while I was working on the merc side).

[sgqwonkian]

Originally Posted by ExplorerBob

I wonder if having any variations in the ally pages at all prohibits generation. I've been trying #3, changing the merc to an ally and having slightly variant text, but it never generates.

Really? I'm pretty sure it worked just fine when I tested it. I'm fairly certain that I got the ally version to generate, with the mercs text, at a time when the wormhate variable was in play. They even took him away later. Weird.

You're putting the ally line in the right spot? After TEXT, not before it where MERC goes? Just double-checking, 'cause off the top of my head I can't think of anything else that would wind up with in me getting one result, and you getting the other. So bizarre.

I guess I'll try to play around with it again sometime in the next few days, and see if I can reproduce what I remember happening. Maybe I'm remembering wrong?

[ExplorerBob]

Muktians, for some reason, always give me the ally message now.

FLAG event
KEYS muktian

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

CONDITION 0
TYPE encounter
STR0 muktian
END CONDITION

CONDITION 1
TYPE uvar
STR0 wormthink
STR1 wormhate
END CONDITION

CONDITION 2
TYPE noitem
STR0 ps_mukamb
END CONDITION

CONDITION 3
TYPE noitem
STR0 mantle
END CONDITION

CONDITION 4
TYPE haveshiprace
STR0 muktian
END CONDITION

CONDITION 5
TYPE nothome
STR0 muktian
END CONDITION

PAGE 0
REQ0 0
REQ1 1
REQ2 2
REQ3 3
REQ4 4
REQ5 5
ACTN popup endquest break
MUSC music/vidcast.ogg
GFXP races/muktian.jpg 0
FRND muktian
TITL Muktian Vidcast
TEXT It is good that you come accompanied by one of our own! Since cooperation is your intent, we urge you to visit Bandur, our home world colony located in the system, to meet with our potentates.
END PAGE

PAGE 0
REQ0 0
REQ1 1
REQ2 2
REQ3 3
REQ4 4
ACTN popup endquest break
MUSC music/vidcast.ogg
GFXP races/muktian.jpg 0
FRND muktian
TITL Muktian Vidcast
TEXT It is good that you come accompanied by one of our own! Since cooperation is your obvious intent, we grant you safe passage through our star systems that you may know our ventures are profitable.
END PAGE

PAGE 0
REQ0 0
REQ1 1
REQ2 2
REQ3 3
ACTN popup endquest
GFXP races/muktian.jpg 0
ENMY muktian
TITL Muktian Vidcast
TEXT Trespassers! As the cruel Slorn attacks the weak and the sick, we swarm now to attack you with horrific weapons and the hunger of victory in our digestive tracts. From deep caves of steel and stone, we come!
MUSC music/vidcast.ogg
END PAGE

This makes no sense to me. Both of the ally messages require having a friendly ship, and I don't.

[sgqwonkian]

Found the problem.

According to the Modmaker's Guide:

REQ0 , REQ1 , REQ2 , REQ3
Required conditions. All of these must be TRUE for the event to occur. Up to four conditions can be defined for each PAGE block, and several PAGE blocks may use the same conditions (although the GOTO command is preferred over fully identical condition sets).

(emphasis mine)

REQ0 to REQ3 are all triggering. REQ4 and REQ5 have no meaning, and will never be taken into account, as the game doesn't even have a REQ4 command.

The game goes to PAGE 1, and evaluates it. REQ0 to REQ3 hold true, so the game launches the page. The game doesn't care that REQ4 and REQ5 aren't true, as it never looks at them. Then, since PAGE 1 loaded and ran, endquest and break keep it from ever considering the other PAGEs.

[ExplorerBob]

As you can see by the ever-increasing length of this topic, I've gone through major trouble ever since I embarked on this project. I can't be sure anymore as to whether my code is necessarily high-quality; testing things are impractical, at best. Therefore, I'm going to put the Muktian variable relation work on hold indefinitely; testing the mod isn't really fun anymore, and I want to change that. Hopefully I can come back to this part of the project with a new lease on things, and get it working to how it was before I started on the mercenaries (which messed everything up); right now, though, it's on hold and will be until I indicate otherwise.

[sgqwonkian]

it's on hold and will be until I indicate otherwise.

That's a bummer, but I understand.

I got really angry with my current modding project earlier today, but stumbled across the solution just as I was about to give up. So, I hear you.

[ExplorerBob]

This project is back on. I'm attempting to recreate my original success based on the information provided earlier in the topic.