2011/04/17

April 17, 2011

CampaignManager

v0.13 has a new class called CampaignManager that I'm using to store the progress of the current story. Essentially it is a collection of strings. Various parts of the game engine can read/write these strings to create some persistence and progress in the game world.

Related To Do:

• Move the processDialog and chooseDialogNode into NPC
• Give each NPC a pointer to the current Map (which also contains the CampaignManager). This structure choice will allow future NPCs to move around the map.
• Create handling for Quest Items. Perhaps this should be a new base item type.
• Prevent quest items from being dropped or sold
• Add an on_pickup command to quest items that sets a campaign state
• Allow CampaignManager to check for or remove items from the player inventory (pointer to the carried MenuItemStorage)

v0.13 Quests

With this simple quest implementation in place, I need to create a few archetype quests for v0.13. My plan is to create a simple quest chain that ends in slaying the skeletal warrior Sir Evan Maddox.

• Report for duty: talk to this person, they have work for you.
• Exploration quest: I need intel from an area but it's too dangerous for me to go
• Fetch quest: get this item for me
• Key quest: take this item, now you can get into a new area
• Kill quest: kill this creature

Other common types not yet represented:

• Escort quest: universally hated so I probably won't even implement this.
• Gather quest: I don't have support for e.g. gather 10 boar lungs. That kind of tedium is more for time sink MMOs anyway. Simpler quests (e.g. gather 1 of each of these ingredients) can instead be done in a quest chain or in parallel quests.
• Genocide quest: Kill X of this creature. Again, more of an MMO time sink type quest, I might not implement this.

By covering these basic quest archetypes, I'll have the first Flare quest chain and have examples of how to create each basic type.