Help needed [ADDON] Empyrion Mission Board

Discussion in 'The Hangar Bay' started by byo13, May 17, 2021.

  1. Taelyn

    Taelyn Guest

    That wont be added. It got blocked for very good reasons.
    A player can abuse this on MP pretty much if it was possible
     
    #21
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  2. byo13

    byo13 Captain

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    @RexXxuS Exactly.
    And I messed that up because I've been programming in Java for too long now to remember that functions have no ";" at the end of their declaration. It is like that in most known object oriented languages. I guess using some obscure programming languages are affecting my brain. Haha.
     
    #22
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  3. Myrmidon

    Myrmidon Rear Admiral

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    Understood. Then maybe, there should be some kind of designation on PDA on where the closest GIN is located, so the player may warp to the relevant solar system/orbital POI station, etc, to use one.
     
    #23
  4. Taelyn

    Taelyn Guest

    Afaik GIN is added in all Trading Stations. Believe you can find one nearly in every Playfield.

    As the PDA Waypoint markers only work good inside the current playfield this is currently abit problematic. (This is on the list to still be changed during v1.5 EXP).
     
    #24
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  5. byo13

    byo13 Captain

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    I'm now stuck because I think I hit a limit of options in a dialogue.
    Does anyone know if option numbers go up to "Option_30"?
     
    #25
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  6. ravien_ff

    ravien_ff Rear Admiral

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    I thought they only went up to 12 actually (but I did not test that).
     
    #26
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  7. byo13

    byo13 Captain

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    @ravien_ff Yes, I found out the hard way. By trying out until I noticed that options were not displaying but there was no error message.
    I'm still learning to interpret all those cryptic errors but I'll get to them soon.
    Right now, I'll have to rewrite all of the mission list code because I faced that limit.
    I'll use dialogue state variables even though I would prefer to have all text localized in the CSV.
    Well, like the song always says, you can't always get what you want. :D
     
    #27
    Last edited: May 18, 2021
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  8. byo13

    byo13 Captain

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    Update on 2021-05-18 01:30:00
    I managed to use variables, the options are less crowded this way and new missions only need to be put in two dialogues to work.
    CSV is also working with variables so no user stuff in the ECF file.
    Working on a safer PDA integration next. I wonder if there's a way to prevent a dialogue being closed by pressing ESC. @RexXxuS helped me so much I don't even know how to retribute.
     
    #28
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  9. RexXxuS

    RexXxuS Rear Admiral

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    No need. Just check eWCCT ;)
    upload_2021-5-18_7-43-1.png
     

    Attached Files:

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  10. ravien_ff

    ravien_ff Rear Admiral

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    Probably shouldn't be infinite. Gotta keep long term games in mind and it could turn into a situation where a faction on a server funnels all their resources to one player who does all the mission turn ins and they start getting crazy amounts of money.
     
    #30
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  11. Myrmidon

    Myrmidon Rear Admiral

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    A question to the OP. @byo13, do you think that there can be multiple part quests given by the GIN? For example, imagine an arc mission with 4 parts. Each part per GIN slot. Every next part can be activated after the previous one is finished, automatically. This way mission might not be strictly 4 part, they could be i.e.3 etc.
     
    #31
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  12. byo13

    byo13 Captain

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    Nice! Very cool. I wasn't using that tool but it's going to be my reference from now on. Thanks a lot.
    Interestingly enough I find that the limit has been expanded to something close to 30 by my tests.
    Only after 30 or so checks the options start disappearing or stop being validated.

    You are totally right.
    I agree that rewards/bonus balance is one of those things that will need to be thought about very carefully.
    Especially in multiplayer environments.
    My idea is to reward long term users of the board but certainly mine was not the right approach.

    It should be possible. I hope it is because we all enjoy more complex missions. PDA/Dialogue functionality is having a special attention from what I see in the devs blog posts. Initially I'm planning a mission pack with more basic stuff as an entry point.
    But more are planned.

    One thing I'm trying to work on is to let everyone write a mission pack and append it to the Mission Board without affecting other existing missions or mission packs. Hopefully it'll be just a matter of adding a few dialogues and text with predefined names in the "Dialogues.ecf", "PDA.yaml", "Dialogues.csv", "PDA.csv". Then those missions will get randomized along with the others.
     
    #32
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  13. ravien_ff

    ravien_ff Rear Admiral

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    I would definitely make use of this. Thank you for your work on this!
     
    #33
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  14. byo13

    byo13 Captain

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    Friends, is there a way for me to call a dialogue using an item in the toolbar?
    Like having a communicator or something like this?

    I'm wanting to call the GIN once a mission is completed.
    If it's not possible then I'll enable only one mission at a time or work around it by using tokens.
     
    #34
  15. ravien_ff

    ravien_ff Rear Admiral

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    If you use a PDA mission, yes, it should be possible.
    Make a repeatable PDA mission that is only visible when you have the communicator in your inventory, and then the player activates that mission and it brings up the GIN dialog.
     
    #35
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  16. byo13

    byo13 Captain

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    Hey guys. I made a little video showing some progress.
    Sorry for the lack of audio comments. I have no microfone in this computer.

    Right now the GIN will only be used to give the player a connector device.
    Then he may use this device freely to connect to the Mission Board.
    All he needs to do is place the device in the toolbar and wait for the connection to be established (thanks for the help, @ravien_ff ).
    As you'll see it's possible to have multiple missions. The PDA will not show the requirements for each mission.
    Instead the player can always use the device to connect to the Mission Board and check what's missing, what missions are activated and some other info.

    Please let me know what you think. :)



    The combat missions will prove themselves to be tricky to manage though.
    Unless there is a way to access the "SubjectKilled" amount by dialogue, I'll need to link those missions to the PDA. If someone has a better idea I'd appreciate.
     
    #36
    Last edited: May 18, 2021
  17. Myrmidon

    Myrmidon Rear Admiral

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    Excellent. This way the player does not need a GIN device on CV as I asked previously. One more question. What was the player statistics? We did not see that, yet.
     
    #37
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  18. byo13

    byo13 Captain

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    I stopped having to much dependency on the GIN + PDA because some weird behavior was happening like accepting a mission with the items to fulfill the mission already in the inventory. This would lead to the completed mission dialogue to not display. And some other issues with enabling multiple chapters in the PDA that were hard to track and test.

    It's functional but there are some debug information still there to help me during the development that I need to remove.
    I plan to move the debug info to a hidden option that I can enable whenever I need to fix something.

    [ Player Statistics ] provides the following information (more to come):
    Total Active Missions
    Total Completed Missions
    Total Cancelled Missions
    Remaining Time

    * This data is always per player

    The purpose of this windows is to reward bonuses to long time users of the board based on their completed missions.
    I still need to find the right balance for this but I'm thinking that I could store faction info there as well so a given faction could reward you a bonus if you continually work for them. I appreciate all suggestions.

    [ Help ] shows a basic guide to explain how completing missions can affect your bonuses and how cancelled missions can make you lose some reputation with the contractor's faction. Also some other stuff.


    About adding new missions:
    I'll make an installer with some instructions so anyone can append missions to the board.
    Right now it's not too complex but I still want to make it easier:

    1. Create two dialogues in "Dialogue.ecf" named based on slot# and mission#:
    EMB_Missions_Slot1Mission1
    EMB_Missions_Slot1Mission1done
    2. Add two dialogue text in "Dialogue.csv" named accordingly:
    emb_dialogue_Slot1Mission1
    emb_dialogue_Slot1Mission1Desc
    3. And that's it. The installer will also change some variables and functions so the new dialogue will be used by the board in a randomized way.
     
    #38
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  19. Myrmidon

    Myrmidon Rear Admiral

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    Those are very useful to the player.
     
    #39
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  20. byo13

    byo13 Captain

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    I made a little video to show more about Player Statistics and Help.
    All work in progress. :)

     
    #40
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