[CPT] Tutorial area academy quests

Content and general development discussion, including quest scripts and server code. TMW Classic is a project comprising the Legacy tmwAthena server & the designated improved engine server based on evolHercules.


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Crush
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[CPT] Tutorial area academy quests

Post by Crush »

Copy&Paste from the other thread:

1. Player spawns in a bed in the adventurer academies dormitory. An NPC immediately initiates a dialog "Wake up #NAME#! Finally our last day at adventurer academy! Stand up or you will be late!" followed by a brief explanation of the movement controls.
2. When the player tries to leave the room he/she is stopped by the NPC: "Wait, don't you want to get dressed first?" followed by an explanation of the equipment screen.
3. Player leaves the dormitory and reaches a room with a professor. "Today is your last day, but before you can get your diploma you have to complete the final tests". Brief description of the quest system follows.
4. The following steps can be done in any order by talking to teachers in different classrooms:
4A: Combat training
4B: Magic training
4C: History (basic introduction of the background story)
4D: Economy (trading system)
4E: Rhetorics (chat system)
4F: Art (crafting system)
5. Player receives the Graduation Cap item as a quest reward and is allowed to leave the academy to explore the world. The professor asks the player "What do you want to do with your life now?". Possible answers: "I want to become a mighty warrior", "I want to become a powerful magician", "I want to become a wealthy merchant", "I have no idea". In every case the character is referred to a different character in the first town as a plot hook for world exploration.

To avoid annoying veteran players who create new characters the steps 4-5 can be skipped by talking to some delinquents near the universities wall who help the player to break out of the adventurer academy.
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Jaxad0127
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Re: TMWServ content: release1

Post by Jaxad0127 »

Crush wrote:To avoid annoying veteran players who create new characters the steps 4-5 can be skipped by talking to some delinquents near the universities wall who help the player to break out of the adventurer academy.
How about a simple dialog that asks if you want to go through the tutorial/introduction(/...) or not?
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Bertram
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Re: TMWServ content: release1

Post by Bertram »

Hi,

Crush, I like your idea very much in every details! :)

:arrow: Jaxad, ok for future development, once we reached the generic client? ;)
Jaxad wrote:How about a simple dialogue that asks if you want to go through the tutorial/introduction(/...) or not?
Crush wrote:To avoid annoying veteran players who create new characters the steps 4-5 can be skipped by talking to some delinquents near the universities wall who help the player to break out of the adventurer academy.
:arrow: I'm for both. The delinquents should even deliver a false graduation cap to be able to quit the island.

The false graduation cap could be used to change one dialogues or two, like getting little less rewards from the first quests, or even make them a little more difficult, because the NPC's suspicion about the cap.

As for content, if we all agree about Crush's grounds, woodland interiors tileset could fit this?

I'd propose this:
1. The proving grounds (The school) need to be sketched, an mapped. Once it's done,
the scripting can be tested and will undercover the lacking facilities.
This for once, represent already some amount of work!
2. See what's next on the island... (Parties, guilds, emote, ...)

As for technical facilities:
1: Basic movements: Keyboard walking will have to usable, of course. I'm on it. ;)
Mouse movement is ready for more testing.
2: Equipement system: How is doing TMWserv with it?
4A: Combat training -> already playable even if could be improved.
4B: Magic training: To be implemented.
4C: History (basic introduction of the background story). Only scripting, but the backstory is to prepared.
4D: Economy (trading system) -> Is the trading system working?
4E: Rhetorics (chat system) -> Well, I didn't know if the chat channelling is working.
4F: Art (crafting system) -> ?
**4E: Skills system?

Regards,
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Jaxad0127
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Re: TMWServ content: release1

Post by Jaxad0127 »

Bertram wrote:1: Basic movements: Keyboard walking will have to usable, of course. I'm on it. ;)
Mouse movement is ready for more testing.
I think we should focus on keyboard movement and mention that mouse movement is possible ("click on an area and you'll walk there automatically").
Bertram wrote:2: Equipement system: How is doing TMWserv with it?
Equipping works fine. There isn't a function available yet for scripts to query a being's equipment.
Bertram wrote:4A: Combat training -> already playable even if could be improved.
Should be scriptable right now.
Bertram wrote:4B: Magic training: To be implemented.
Maybe we should leave this out of the tutorial completely. Once we finish the magic system, we can have a magic academy in the starting town.
Bertram wrote:4C: History (basic introduction of the background story). Only scripting, but the backstory is to prepared.
Yes, still waiting for enough world history from John Pyle.
Bertram wrote:4D: Economy (trading system) -> Is the trading system working?
Trade works, though it could use some fixing. We should also describe the auction system (once it's finished).
Bertram wrote:4E: Rhetorics (chat system) -> Well, I didn't know if the chat channelling is working.
Chat works fine. Channels are mostly implemented (if not completely; possibly missing all planned channel control functions).
Bertram wrote:4F: Art (crafting system) -> ?
Like magic, crafting could be left out in favor of crafting guilds in the starting town. This would also let us focus it more.
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Re: TMWServ content: release1

Post by Bertram »

Hi,
Maybe we should leave this [magic] out of the tutorial completely. Once we finish the magic system, we can have a magic academy in the starting town.
...
Like magic, crafting could be left out in favor of crafting guilds in the starting town. This would also let us focus it more.
:arrow: Completely agree.

I'm also agree with the other points.

What about skills?

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Jaxad0127
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Re: TMWServ content: release1

Post by Jaxad0127 »

The other skills we're planning on using are all combat-based. So they'd be part of the combat tutorial.
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Bertram
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Re: TMWServ content: release1

Post by Bertram »

It would be ok for me as discussed, then. :D

Let's start the sketchs, Rotonen?
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Re: TMWServ content: release1

Post by John P »

Do not overburden the tutorial with game story. Most is meant to be learned through interacting with the world and completing quests.

Perhaps, for this portion of introducing the player to back story, only the history of the earthquake and the birth of magic (from man's perspective) should be discussed, which I can make into conversational dialogue if you like.

The Gods' involvement in the earthquake and magic should be left to NPC clergymen in-game once religions become involved.
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Bertram
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Re: TMWServ content: release1

Post by Bertram »

Hi again,

It is true that backstory is more appreciated by players if they learn about the world History little by little from NPCs, in general.

So why not spreading a bit of the backstory throughout the village (in release2)?

Secondly, on a technical side, we need pieces to show what the intended player actions are, in order to succeed on each floor:

I mean something like:
- A nice arrow animation (in the height direction) used by server to point out a place to go, where to look in a window menu, etc...
- Maybe an animated circle used to show where to place the character, exactly.
:arrow: Both would require base graphics on client, and some lua scripting flexible functions in TMWserv.

When I talked about a trigger manager, well, it was real:
- We need triggers to display text from NPCs (done).
- Triggers to make NPC move, do something (partially done).
- Triggers to make the arrow and the circle appear, move, change direction (for the arrow), and disappear.
- Triggers to make a specific window: appear, move, be resized, disappear.
- ...

On top of that, in order to get a proper logic of following sequences, we'll need to upgrade the quest manager to make it able to compute the player's tutorial overall progress, but also handle some kind of cut-scenes, pragmatically speaking:
- Follow achieved action (Mostly done with quest variables).
- Make the character move somewhere, stop, sit, emote, strike, ... (Ignoring moving or such message from client).
- Ignore client->server messages in cut scenes, but also client->client message properly, with the possibility to stop a cut scene, and keep on playing as if the cut-scene went to the end.
- Make viewpoint change. (useful to show a far away check point, for instance.)
- ...

Regards,
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Rotonen
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Re: [CPT] Tutorial area academy quests

Post by Rotonen »

So who will assign him/herself to the oversight of building all the scripts and lore for both the tutorial academy and then the island outside of it?
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Bertram
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Re: [CPT] Tutorial area academy quests

Post by Bertram »

Hi Rotonen,

Being on the movement protocol and in the logic move in nethandlers, for one,
and then, on particle editor, as you asked, I won't be able to handle this by now,
new asked prerogatives apart.

Regards.
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Crush
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Re: [CPT] Tutorial area academy quests

Post by Crush »

Don't count on me either. Although I enjoyed managing the graveyard update and would like to use the same management techniques for a new project I don't have time for this.

My weekly time budget for TMW is greatly reduced since my new job has started and I would prefer to use it to make sure that there will be a server software to run this on in the first place.
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Rotonen
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Re: [CPT] Tutorial area academy quests

Post by Rotonen »

Well if it works for our current resources better to just do it collaboratively instead of having someone in charge of the project, just do it.

If someone wants to take direct control over this, you can just voice your desire for this and we'll see which approach will prove better.
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