This Is A Catchy Title

Did I forget to write conversations, as I had in the previous post with such an entry? Did I really just switch between persons in the same short snippet? Yes. Yes to both.

No one can accuse me of being a decent writer.

An Overlong Intro

We've reached a turning point in our demo – our hero has just learnt that his friend had been cooped up in his room for months now – very unlike him. He's sure something's up, and decides to investigate, starting with Fishface's room.

Two main events we need to set up at this stage -

1. The NPC who informs Chester of this strange behaviour of his friend's.

2. Updating the main quest log to reflect this new bit of information.

Clearly, since I'm an awful storyteller, Chester would not be able to find anything worthy in Fishface's room until he's learnt of this bit of information. This means we need to have a switch which gets activated once Chester speaks to Fishface's neighbour, which will in turn activate the clues in the room. This same switch can be used to trigger a new page in the main quest event of the quest log too.

Keep a note of whatever you name the switch, and if there are any trivial elements in the game you want to change according to story progression, you can simply create a new page in the event that gets triggered whenever this switch is on.

An example of this would be if you, let's say, have split your game into days, or chapters (this is a simplified example). Then you can have 1 switch for each day, and use that same switch to trigger the corresponding events and maps and everything. Like, Cave A is only available from day 3 onwards? The entrance will open only when SwitchDay3 is on. The local blacksmith doesn't sell his his best goods to strangers? He sells standard goods on days 1 to 3, but once it's day 4, he's seen you around enough to start showing you his special wares. So on Page 1 of the blacksmith NPC/event (the default), the shop would show normal stuff for sale, and on Page 2, which gets triggered once SwitchDay4 is on, he'll start revealing the good stuff.

It's the same logic even if you don't have days or chapters in the game, like in this demo. In such cases, you'll just need to make note of turning points in your game where you want to make these changes show up.

Bear in mind that event pages are looked up in reverse order. The later in your game the trigger switch is turned on, the higher will be the corresponding page number of the event that gets modified by the trigger switch. So the page number for Day 5 would be higher than the page number meant for Day 2 and so on.

Dealing With Accessibility Like a Generic Lazy Dev

As mentioned above, the clues in Fishface's room don't get activated until Chester speaks to Fishface's housemate, and we'd need to use a switch as a trigger. This means if Chester visits Fishface's house before talking to the housemate, the clues in the room will be 'hidden', but anytime he visits after talking to the housemate, the clues will become visible and stay that way.

We can bypass the need for using switches to activate the clues, by simply preventing Chester from entering his friend's house before talking to the housemate. There are many ways to do this I'm sure, but like the plot chicken in Chester's house, I'm going to make the housemate block the entrance, forcing Chester to talk to him lel

The Actual Tutorial

Here's what my map looks like, and the sheep highlighted below is the housemate Chester needs to talk to. The house behind him, the one he's blocking the entrance to, is where Fishface lives.

An obstrusive sheep

I just created a new map that can be reached from the eastern exit of the market map in the previous post, and have conveniently blocked further movement on this map beyond Fishface's house, as we don't really need it for the demo. But feel free to expand your own maps in whichever way you want!

Here're the commands and settings on page 1 of the housemate NPC -

The crucial commands, anyway

Other settings

The critical part is the switch that I've turned on at the end. The rest of it is the conversations + some random cutscene-like movements that are totally optional. Further, the graphic 'Movement Type' must be fixed.

NOTE: The first and last commands in this optional section (Player Through ON and Through OFF) control whether an event can pass through your player or not. Through ON => the sheep can easily walk through you. Since I make the sheep move forward after the conversation, these commands are essential to ensure the sheep's movements are not blocked by Chester.

And on page 2 -

Maybe, Carl, maybe.

Moar Settings

NOTE: The second page graphic has to have random movement as the 'Movement Type', otherwise the entrance will be forever blocked.

We're done with the first main event! Now only after the conversation will Chester be able to access Fishface's house.

ANOTHER NOTE: As you will soon notice, one downside to the lazy approach here is that every time Chester exits Fishface's house, the sheep will be right back there blocking the entrance for a moment, before he starts to move randomly.

An alternative would be that you create another event somewhere else on the map for the NPC (i.e., there will be 2 events on the map for the same NPC). You can then make this doorway NPC 'disappear' once the trigger switch is ON (by setting the graphic to a blank and priority to 'below characters' on page 2, with no commands added), and simultaneously make the 2nd event appear thereafter (which means that the trigger condition for this event to appear is the trigger switch - 'ffRoomSearch' in my case).

But then that wouldn't be very lazy of you, would it.

You've Progressed In Your Quest (for jUsTiCe!)

Now we need to make a quick update to the quest book event. Create a new page in the quest book NPC and set the trigger condition to the switch we just created above (in my case, 'ffRoomSearch'). Add the text you want displayed, and done! That easy.

Page 2 of the quest event

IMPORTANT NOTE: Usually, when you build a decent game-sized game, you'll realise that it might not be so straightforward to update quest events all the time. For example, your trigger switch might get turned off at some point in the game because you've designed it so, in which case the quest book will display the wrong text.

In such cases, the easiest way to maintain the integrity of the quest book events is to have a separate set of questbook-related switches (like MainQuest01, MainQuest02 and so on), and make sure you turn them on as the story progresses. Since these are switches used only for questbook events, there's less of a chance you'll accidentally turn them ON or OFF in the wrong part of the game.

Also, this is a bit late in coming, but it's crucial to always run test playthroughs of the parts of your game you develop, as you develop them.

That said, let's run a quick test playthrough and see our progress so far! Remember – we've set up the questbook to be accessible only if Chester speaks to the plot chicken in house right at the beginning of the game. So you'd need to start this test play either from the beginning of the game, or temporarily disable that behaviour.

Whoops

But not for long

Only the one with the Face of a Fish can Answer

Next post, we'll introduce cut-scenes. We'll be using one as soon as Chester enters Fishface's room, just for a more dramatic than necessary pause in the game (it is a Turning Point after all).

Laterzzz,

Meesling