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Open: "Any News" rumor mill standard rumors

Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2018 2:24 pm
by Nystul
I would need help from one of the reverse engineering pros regarding "Any News" rumor mill standard rumors.
What are the creation rules:
  • how many are created (always a certain amount or variable)
  • which ones are used
  • rulor related rumors seem to produce reasonable npc names for regions (e.g. Isle Of Balfiera rulor rumors return "Medora Direnni" as rulor as far as i remember) - where is this info taken from
    at least the type of rulor (e.g. count, countess) does fit with the info from http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Places for different regions - what would speak for random name generation is that i sometimes get different names for same region in the same chat session - see this funny screenshot:
    Image

Re: Open: "Any News" rumor mill standard rumors

Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 10:19 am
by R.D.
Hey Nystul. There's so many things to work on, I've been sidetracked, but I *think* the "any news?" rumors about new rulers and stuff may come from flags that are set in the "regionDataRecord", which I added to the playerEntity file. These are imported from the SAVEVARS file from classic saves. If you try examining or modifying some of the flag bytes and checking how they interact with the rumors that display in classic, it may shed some light. I think rumors in classic change every week or something like that. I will try to help more if and when I can.

Re: Open: "Any News" rumor mill standard rumors

Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 3:29 pm
by Nystul
ok thanks, this is a starting point ;) will play around with it a bit

Re: Open: "Any News" rumor mill standard rumors

Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 5:26 pm
by Hazelnut
I assume you're aware of the rumor text in quest scripts already?

Re: Open: "Any News" rumor mill standard rumors

Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2018 9:27 am
by R.D.
By the way, the Daggerfall Chronicles has a short section on this, where they call them "Conditions". It has a list of them:

Regional/Local Condition

No Particular Condition
War just begun
War in progress
War just won
War just lost
Plague just begun
Plague spreading
Plague just ended
Famine just begun
Famine spreading
Famine just ended
Witch burnings
Crime wave
New ruler
Bad harvest
Religious persecution
Prices up
Prices down
Happy holiday
Scary holiday
Holy holiday

I wouldn't be surprised if the flags for these in classic follow the same or a similar order.

Re: Open: "Any News" rumor mill standard rumors

Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2018 9:35 am
by Nystul
Hazelnut wrote: Tue Mar 20, 2018 5:26 pm I assume you're aware of the rumor text in quest scripts already?
this should already work - i have implemented this already

Re: Open: "Any News" rumor mill standard rumors

Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2018 9:38 am
by Nystul
R.D. wrote: Wed Mar 21, 2018 9:27 am By the way, the Daggerfall Chronicles has a short section on this, where they call them "Conditions". It has a list of them:

Regional/Local Condition

No Particular Condition
War just begun
War in progress
War just won
War just lost
Plague just begun
Plague spreading
Plague just ended
Famine just begun
Famine spreading
Famine just ended
Witch burnings
Crime wave
New ruler
Bad harvest
Religious persecution
Prices up
Prices down
Happy holiday
Scary holiday
Holy holiday

I wouldn't be surprised if the flags for these in classic follow the same or a similar order.
not sure if the info in the daggerfall chronicles has much to do with reality (how it is implemented in vanilla df). In the original game it seems to be just random messages from text.rsc without much logic behind it, there are many entries (e.g. witch burnings) which I have never seen used ingame. Most of the time a get "New ruler" messages in classic together with the messages coming from quests (especially from the tutorial quest)

Re: Open: "Any News" rumor mill standard rumors

Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2018 10:49 am
by R.D.
Hmm, OK. Well, I think you can also sometimes get messages on the welcome signs for things like certain factions being declared public enemies, which is probably related to this. I assumed the ruler stuff was as well, but maybe not.

Re: Open: "Any News" rumor mill standard rumors

Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2018 12:38 pm
by Nystul
R.D. wrote: Wed Mar 21, 2018 10:49 am Hmm, OK. Well, I think you can also sometimes get messages on the welcome signs for things like certain factions being declared public enemies, which is probably related to this. I assumed the ruler stuff was as well, but maybe not.
would like to see a screenshot of this feature. never saw it on my own in all the years of playing the game

Re: Open: "Any News" rumor mill standard rumors

Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2018 2:53 pm
by R.D.
Managed to get one.
Famine.jpg
Famine.jpg (47.6 KiB) Viewed 3571 times
I got this by hex-editing the SAVEVARS file for the data of the first region (Alik'r Desert). Setting the 7th flag (offset from beginning of the file is 0x3FE) to 1, and passing a lot of time in-game (fast traveling for about 150 days), it showed up on the sign.

I don't understand yet the time interval but it seems to take quite a lot of in-game time for the values to be updated (and to have an effect if you have manually hacked them).

Edit: There may also be some randomness involved, as trying the same thing afterwards I couldn't get it to show up. Will need to keep investigating.