You know your code project is huge when you can start a recompile, get some coffee, take a shower, return, write a blog post, start up your SVN server computer, commit the changes and it's still goi...oh wait it just finished :D
I gave Unseen Studios a file-header and added it to a bunch of files. Anywho, I'll be implementing quests today so let's see how that goes.
Wow, it's eleven already?
Implementing quests is genuinely hard! It's quite an interesting challenge though--there are lots of things to paramaterize. For instance, we should be able to define competitive quests where a certain number of people succeeding at the quest causes the rest to fail (i.e. frontiering). Another flag specifies whether meeting criteria for termination causes an instant or delayed effect. For frontier quests, when the time limit is up everyone fails and they are teleported to a given location. For delivery quests with a time limit, if the limit is succeeded the quest isn't failed until the player talks to someone involved with the quest and they inform them of the fact. Also, some quests are succeeded by simply arriving at a given location or talking to an NPC--these external triggers force a quest to succeed, so it's not even necessary for a quest to be innately competeable.
Somewhere along the way I lost my list-of-three. Gotta keep it going!
- Finish building the quest server format
- Create the quest client format
- Integrate quests into the game compiler
Played a bit today and noticed a bug with the auto-refresher in the bazaar. Fixed it, will release change with next update. Also reducing timer to 10 seconds instead of 15 so there are 3 refreshes per cycle.
(I'm just talking myself through this and organizing my thoughts)
It's possible that I could be trying to be a bit too general with the quest system. I was doing some mental simulation on how to format competitive quests, and I think competitive quests might better be modeled as a different kind of quest altogether. Quests of the natural type are independent of each other: multiple players can get the "kill bugs" quest at different points in time (or simultaneously) and complete it without any affect on one another.
Competitions, however, are generally launched simultaneously, can have a limit on participation, have an end-trigger that affects all involved parties, and when terminated ranks participants and performs an action on each based on their placement.
For instance, a frontering quest could be a competition whose end is triggered either by time limit (5 minutes) or by a participant finding 10 Red Charms. When either of these is triggered, all players are ranked and given prizes: an individual succeeding at the quest (finding all 10 before the time limit) gets the success prize. Others could get a ranking prize. All participants are teleported back to the frontiering geosid where they started.
Ranking prizes would be difficult to hand out properly, however, since a frontier could begin with only 2 participants, which would make 2nd place accessible with zero effort. Perhaps it's better not to have these at all.
Aha! Just had an awesome idea: since action-click (right-click for a RH mouse) will be used to activate information about NPCs/locations for quests and stuff, why not use it for the player too? I'll make it so that right-clicking yourself brings up the central avatar menu. This should make it really intuitive to navigate the world since everything's consistent!
Se7en
That's how you do that right? Still working. Do be doo. Compiling code has been written, stubbed out the encryption stuff. Time to add it to the main editor...w00t!
eleven again...sigh
Watchin' hockey. Sa-weet. Editor compiles quests correctly for both client and server, double-sweet. Both client and server can load! Working on GlobalQuestManager. Recognized need for being able to specify the creation of indices in database.cfg, have been wanting to do this for a while so I finally got it working. Just add a * in front of the name and suddenly a linear search turns into a binary or even hash-speed query. Will be very helpful once more queries are being executed. ...tested, works perfectly!
Yawn! No bed until 11:30. That's my schedule: 7 AM to 11:30 PM. YEAH! I'm sleepy though so I'm going to work on the new website's layout.
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