And now for something completely different

Tired of playing with the other stuff that is mainly conflicts with old display and the new display.  The old display not disappearing quite right.   So thought I would play with something else. 

Daisy

Guide - Quest Book

This is a guide on how to use the quest book.  Right off the bat, I want to explain that quests are EVENT controlled all this does is display the quests in the quest book.  That's a very important point as all quests are actually just a series of events put together to receive a prize at the end.  But the player doesn't need to know that what he wants to see is a spiffy display showing his current and completed quests.  With lots of hints about what to do next.  For that at least I have spent plenty of time building a reasonable interface.

Quests xml can be found in

libs/otherlib/xml/quests

to add xml files

libs/otherlilb/xml/quests/quests.xml

First off though after saying all that above I thought it would by a nice idea to show how quests are listed as started and finished.  This is of course done through the event system with the quest command.

label = the label that is used by the quest book.
start = "true" -- show the quest under current quests
finish = "true" -- show the quest under completed quests

That was really tough right.  Now jumping right onto the quest lets talk about the top level tags.

Top Level Tags

label = "something" --- this is the label called by the event system to show the quest in the quest book
name = "Displayed Text" --- The text displayed in the quest book for the name.  See top image.
reward = "Displayed Text" --- The reward for completing the quest.  This is text only and is whatever you add.  Will not display items at this time.

----------------------------------------

Text Labels

These labels display the text for the start and the end of the quest.  You can have dozens of these if you want and they pull the text from TEXT  xmls.  So that way if you want to display an entire conversation from the text xmls you just keep adding textlabel with the label of the conversation in order.

textlabel = "text"  -- Always showed labels from the text xml
textlabelend = "text"  -- Only showed on completion labels from the text xmls

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Hints

As the name imply hints guide the player to the next action they should take and then disappear upon successful action showing the next hint if you added on.  They are also pulled from the text xmls.  But use the evecheck system to decided if they should be displayed or not.  In the above example upon successfully going to the jewelry store the hint disappears.

hint label = "mainstreetvisitjewelryhint"  -- the text label to display for the hint can only be 1!       


You can have as many evechecks as you want.

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Status

Last up are statuses.  They  act as little check boxes when a part of a quest has been completed.  Giving feedback to the user and keeping a list of the remaining items to be completed.  They only read on the fly boolean variables and always only show if the boolean variable is set to true or false with a Y on N.

label    = "mainstvisitjewelry"     --- The boolean variable name from the one the fly system
name         = "Visit Jewlry Store" --- Displayed Text.

------------------------------------------------

That is a lot of options to play with and works hand in hand with the event system to provide the player with the feedback they need.  Take advantage of it when making quests.

Daisy

Bug Doc and Quests

Some people might remember that the quest system was getting a re-write.  I've been adding a few final touches to it... none of which work at the moment.  Right now when you finish the quest it doesn't add anything about finished text.  Fixing that and trying to add a hint system using the eve system....  After this I am going to settle down finish everything that need to be cleaned up and try for a release.

-----------------------------------------

Want to know the current known bugs... there's now a doc for that.

Bugs Doc

Will try to keep it updated and will add edit rights for people actually doing debugging.

Daisy

So Life...

I got a nice call from both my managers at work, basically demanding I go back to full time at work.  So that's what happening.  Probably means more time to actually work on otherworld since I do most of the programming at work...  But since come next week I'm back to full time I really don't feel like playing with it this week.

Daisy

Awesome or Ridiculous?

Awesome or Ridiculous?

Daisy

Shops movment events

Lots of fun updates to the shop system as I go around building a system I like for them.  Shops now have the option to trigger an event, just like towns, before changing rooms.  Allows for locked doors and bouncers and other fun.  Something I should have done initially but just was lazy I guess.  Anyways its a necessary feature.

Shops also now can have a frame telling you what shop or room you are in.  It's pretty customizable, allowing the change of size positioning, color what not. 

Both of these are updated in the guides.

Daisy

GAH! odd bugs and math

Still cleaning out Rudi's collection of bugs.  The reason btw he is finding all these is because he is really trying to press the system hard.  The xml he wrote up for the whore class is going to be a delightful surprise for all those old time players.  It does so much more then the old version, and adds a whole new dimension to the game.   This level of modding is what I was going for with the new event system and I'm really happy to see someone trying to max it out.

Bug fixed that was causing skills to not update correctly.  As a matter of fact they were updating just insanely as the class was updating not the skill and no one noticed...  That's fixed.

Also added a new feature to evechange that will allow it to reroll a specific evemath.  This is a nice feature if your trying to asses stuff like gold made or cleanliness on the current just learned skills rather then the old pre-change skills.  I'm sure it will also have a large number of other practical uses.  The systax is simply reroll in both evechange and evemath.

Now the only bug I know of specifically is the generics not working correctly... will play with that one in a day or 2 when not at work in worksafe mode.  If anyone else has found any bugs with the event system please tell me.

Daisy

User's always break everything

So Rudi was telling me that he couldn't get money to update right for the whore jobs.  The main issue of course was that he was trying to do something I never even considered using the mult system and an on the fly variable as the variable to be multiplied by.   Well that works now.

Also for effects the tag label and name are interchangeable.  That one created a head scratcher.  It's the simplest things that turn out to take the longest to figure out.

I keep clearing Rudi_Stoned's list and he keep sending me new problems.  Oh well better to get them worked out now before we even get to the debugging stage.

***

Hmm... blogger changed there format and like any new toy it will drive you crazy until you figure it out.

Daisy

Fixed events again bugs becoming fewer and fewer

So for some reason events were all firing at once creating an odd problem with only the last event showing. The odd part was that it worked fine in the test rig... So now events can not fire if the text engine is visible. Fixing this issue but I'm sure it will create new bugs along the way. Anyways that was the last of Rudi's bugs now just adding a feature he wanted and can go back to adding features to shops.

Edit -- Forgot there seems to be an issue with generic images will take a look at this as well when i get a chance. Daisy

Still working on event based bugs

Events seem to be firing all at once... rather then one after another creating a headache. And I am working on it. Also fixed an infinite loop caused by the furniture system having the same loop variables as the outside loop... so amateurish. Added some extra debugging features that will hopefully help everyone out.

Always seems like more to do and fix.

Daisy

Outside shop works

Events now will fire when trying to enter a shop. Allows for a lot of little options like bouncers and pay to enter. Or just odd quest events. As I run towards doing a practical guide for shops adding features and other ioys. More on that as we go along.

Daisy

Bugs and Shops

Shops now have there own permanent test rig. In the base directory for anyone interested in building one. Working on a few new tricks one is that events can fire before entering a shop... but it doesn't work yet I am working on it.

Bug fixes...

Learning class will no longer orphan an image. be advised that after a choice there is no image... unless you add one now. So learning a job currently shows nothing on learning.

The unknown label issue (950 gp) was caused by the fast forward I have removed for now.

Character screen bleed through is no longer occurring.

Daisy

Playing with the shops and adding features to them.

Spent a couple hours playing with the shops and adding features to them. Want to write up a guide for them as an example and making all the images and what not took quite a while with out any visible results. Expect a very large walkthough on shops and navigating through them, triggering events etc.

Daisy

Fixing bugs

Fixed another bug with the event system. Thanks again to Rudi.

Daisy

still lazing

Lazing Around

Blah... vacation.

Daisy

Same thing again

Still cleaning up the svn and fixing any bugs that Rudi points out to me. Not really that exciting. But still plugging away. The event system needs some hard testing before it can really be released and we find out what new bugs it creates.

Daisy

More odds and ends then anything

Sena looked at me with tears in her eyes.
"...Why don't you get to pick from premade choices and make save points in real conversations...?"
"........."
That sublimely pathetic utterance of hers creeped even me out.

Continued cleaning out files that were no longer used but taking up cycles to load in. Removed people.fla and assistants.fla as they were doing nothing but taking up load time.

Rudi_Stoned pointed out some issues with the event system that I am working on fixing he has done a HUGE amount of work in getting the room jobs up and running through the XML system. I want to give a personal thanks.

Daisy

Furniture done In test ; cleaing the svn

Furniture is now working in test correctly. And I was going to work on including it in main game but was distracted by the number of old useless files that are being compiled in for no reason except I was to lazy to delete them. So after an hour and maybe half way through have already pulled out more the 15 files. Also cleaned up the SVN branches.

These old files are being moved to

base/branches/old files

Still long way to go here as really need to strip out every single text and event and replace them with new events and text from the new system. Too lazy to do it right now though.

Daisy

Furniture Day 3

Still buggy but at least items are being made and moved. Hopefully with a little elbow grease will have it finished tomorrow. I feel close finally.

As a side note to make it easier for those writing events the svn should now run with out require compiling means its a longer download but makes it easier on those who want to play the new events they have written.

Daisy

Still furniture screen

Okay slowly...ever so slowly worked for a good 3 hours and feel like I have nothing to show for it. But getting the furniture screen up and running someday. As you can its still in independent test mode. Hope to have some items up and testing probably tomorrow. Then linking it all in and... at the rate I am going may have that done next month.

Daisy

Rebuilding the furniture screen

So still working on rebuilding the furniture screen. Mainly do to wanting to do furniture as events now rather then internally. The screen doesn't look that different externally internally its it's own swf now. Once I get it working. Furniture is going to spawn events when a girl does a job just like anything else. Makes it much more flexible and adds a lot more possibilities, if I ever get it working.

Need to also finish a minor crash bug if you buy a girl, will take a look tonight.

Daisy

Added a new feature to evechange

By the suggestion of Rudi_Stoned added a new feature in evechange that will allow you to test a condition and then only change for that condition. Should remove a lot of redundancy in the eve system. Not going to go into detail here will update the guide for it with the details. But thanks for the great suggestion Rudi!

Daisy

Lazy Day

Lazy Day

Daisy

Girl Builder 1.0

Rudi_Stoned has created a 1.0 version of his girl builder for Otherworld. Please go check it out and give him some congratulations.

http://otherworld.lehighshopping.com/index.php?option=com_agora&task=topic&id=75&Itemid=7

This should make it a lot easier to add a few dozen more girls. Which reminds me I need to write up a guide on how to do girl event intercepts. Though if you have a good understanding of the xml you can see how it would work.

There are at least a half dozen guides still to write up. Thats a lot of modding capability... oh and still working on the furniture screen re-build... This week has just been a GAH! But trying to at least get an alpha out soon.

Daisy

Guide - Events EveMath

So now we have a calculator in the event system called evemath. The advantages are so that we can choose a job based on a total of skills rather then just fixed stats. Mainly its for milking and assistants to add there loyalty + likes + a random luck. But there are some really odd rules to evemath.

First because it can and will most likely be used in evecheck it happens before the checks. This is an extremely important point. If you are doing a check through fall down don't keep reloading it because it will change. Just include once. That needs more explanation...

event 1 math
hello = hello + loyalty;
hello == (hello+loyalty)

now call it again

hello = hello + loyalty;
hello == (hello+loyalty + loyalty)

Some math expert just wanted to kill me I can feel it...

the other important note is how it does the math itself it can take up to 4 arguments but doesn't follow normal math rules instead 1 and 2 are done first then the total and 3 and then the total and 4

label = "loyaltymath" arg1 = "#rand100_2" math12 = "add" arg2 = "#asloyalty"

loyaltymath = #rand100_2 + #asloyalty

label = "loyaltymath" arg1 = "#rand100_2" math12 = "add" arg2 = "#asloyalty" math 13 = "sub" arg3 = "subthingy"

loyaltymath = #rand100_2 + #asloyalty
loyalytmath = loyaltymath - subthingy or loyaltymath = (#rand100_2 + #asloyalty) - subthingy

label = "loyaltymath" arg1 = "#rand100_2" math12 = "add" arg2 = "#asloyalty" math 13 = "sub" arg3 = "subthingy" math14 = "mult" arg4 = "multthingy"

loyaltymath = #rand100_2 + #asloyalty
loyalytmath = loyaltymath - subthingy
loyalytmath = loyaltymath * multthingy
loyalytmath = loyaltymath * multhingy or loyaltymath = ((#rand100_2 + #asloyalty) - subthingy ) * multthingy

Last this thing is a resource hag because it doesn't know any better as to the event it should check for so it sets for every event so use sparingly.

label = "loyaltymath" -- the variable being changed on the fly is best
resetstart = "true" -- reset each time events are called if not will only run once the entire game at the start...
resetevery = "false" --- reset every time a check is made... don't use
arg1 = "#rand100_2" --- the first math argument
arg2 = "#asloyalty" --- the second math argument
arg3 = "#asloyalty" --- the third math argument
arg4 = "#asloyalty" --- the third math argument
math12 = "add" --- the type of math add, sub, mult, div between arg1 and arg2
math13 = "add" --- the type of math add, sub, mult, div between arg1 and arg3
math14 = "add" --- the type of math add, sub, mult, div between arg1 and arg4

reroll = "label"  --- evechange can call specific maths to re calculate this is the label that is called... default is "" and can not be called.

If this gives you any problem let me know its pretty experimental.

----- Change Log ----

4/3/12 Math is now done outside events rather then in. Thanks to Rudi_stoned for this suggestion.
4/22/12 added reroll
4/6/13 - force set

Daisy

Some Quick notes

I have 2 volunteers more would be nice as it's a large project. But giving plenty of time for it. Hopeing to have a rough alpha this month as I have vacation mid way through and may make everyone who wants to have a looksy suffer through that version.

Reworking the furniture screen tonight. Just moving to a separate flash which will make it a bit easier for furniture to spawn there events that will change girl stats... someday its going really slow.

Daisy