Rat or Bat quest did not seem to properly clear itself

For all talk about quest development - creation, testing, and quest system.
Post Reply
Narf the Mouse
Posts: 833
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2015 6:32 pm

Rat or Bat quest did not seem to properly clear itself

Post by Narf the Mouse »

What I did:

1) Got a "kill rat or bat in house" quest.
2) Went into house.
3) Killed bats until "The fighter's guild probably won't care about the rest" message.
4) Killed bats until they stopped coming (proven by resting for two hours).
5) Exited house.
6) Re-entered house.
7) More bats.
8) Exited house.
9) Went back to fighter's Guild.
10) Turned in quest.
11) Took reward.
12) Clicked on "Exit" button in "Quest Menu".
13) Quest Menu exited, and re-opened.
14) Go to 12 about 3-4 times.
15) Clicked on Get Quest.
16) Turned down quest (did not check which one it was).
17) Clicked on "Exit" button in "Quest Menu".
18) Quest menu closed properly.
19) Quest action text on the left of the screen still visible; quest noted as "finished"; quest text removed from log.

Additional notes:

When turning in the quest and getting the reward, the quest menu "flickered" at every click; for example, when I clicked on "Get Quest" to turn in the quest, the reward screen opened, then seemed to immediately close, showing the quest menu and player viewpoint, only for the reward screen to re-appear. This happened with pretty much every click between the click on "Get Quest" to turn in the quest, and the final exit that finally exited the quest menu.
Previous experience tells me it's very easy to misunderstand the tone, intent, or meaning of what I've posted. If you have questions, ask.

User avatar
Interkarma
Posts: 7236
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Re: Rat or Bat quest did not seem to properly clear itself

Post by Interkarma »

Narf the Mouse wrote: 19) Quest action text on the left of the screen still visible; quest noted as "finished"; quest text removed from log.
This is intentional. The quest debugger continues to show the quest state so quest developer can inspect what state it was in when quest ended. It will move to a new quest when you accept another one, and you can use keys [ and ] to cycle through all quests loaded on the quest machine.

Daggerfall also keeps quests active but tombstoned for a while after finishing to enable post-completion items to show up in "talk" interface - such as rumours being spread about the player's exploits. After a while these tombstoned quests are removed completely and will no longer show up in "talk".

Narf the Mouse wrote: When turning in the quest and getting the reward, the quest menu "flickered" at every click
The flickering is just a small UI bug, it happens every time you first activate that UI. I have that in my list to fix.

Thanks for letting me know about the other issues. It doesn't sound like that quest actually completed quite right. A copy of your output log from that session would be helpful if you could email one over. Cheers. :)

Narf the Mouse
Posts: 833
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2015 6:32 pm

Re: Rat or Bat quest did not seem to properly clear itself

Post by Narf the Mouse »

Is the log per-session? Because I re-opened DFU to check which saves would be relevant, so if it's per-session, then that log is gone. :(
Previous experience tells me it's very easy to misunderstand the tone, intent, or meaning of what I've posted. If you have questions, ask.

User avatar
Interkarma
Posts: 7236
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Re: Rat or Bat quest did not seem to properly clear itself

Post by Interkarma »

Edit: Oh you mean the output log haha. :) Sorry it's recreated on every play session.

Not to worry - if you manage to recreate a problem like that, just send me the log and I'll take a look. There might be nothing in there, but something could be bugging out and I should see that in the log.

It's weird, because multi-spawn enemies like in the rat/bat quest are usually quite good at ending once their max spawn count is reached. It should only be SiteLink-styled individual placements that respawn on re-entry at this time.

Narf the Mouse
Posts: 833
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2015 6:32 pm

Re: Rat or Bat quest did not seem to properly clear itself

Post by Narf the Mouse »

Interkarma wrote:Edit: Oh you mean the output log haha. :) Sorry it's recreated on every play session.

Not to worry - if you manage to recreate a problem like that, just send me the log and I'll take a look. There might be nothing in there, but something could be bugging out and I should see that in the log.

It's weird, because multi-spawn enemies like in the rat/bat quest are usually quite good at ending once their max spawn count is reached. It should only be SiteLink-styled individual placements that respawn on re-entry at this time.
Given that rats or bats could spawn, and you can quit the quest half-way, and given the number of tasks it was running, it might just not be well-scripted. :)
Previous experience tells me it's very easy to misunderstand the tone, intent, or meaning of what I've posted. If you have questions, ask.

User avatar
Interkarma
Posts: 7236
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Re: Rat or Bat quest did not seem to properly clear itself

Post by Interkarma »

That's always a possibility too. :) Thanks for documenting your process. I'll see if I can reproduce later.

User avatar
Interkarma
Posts: 7236
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Re: Rat or Bat quest did not seem to properly clear itself

Post by Interkarma »

Just some more information on this one. I think what's happening is the quest script is simply written to spawn more rats/bats than player actually needs to kill. For example, M0B00Y15 script will spawn 7 rats/bats as per this bit of code:

Code: Select all

_S.04_ task:
	create foe _rats_ every 3 minutes 7 times with 60% success 
But you will receive the success condition after only 4 kills:

Code: Select all

_S.01_ task:
	killed 4 _rats_ 
	killed 4 _monster_ 
	say 1020 
So if you get the success condition and stick around the target site, the rats/bats will continue to spawn up to a total of 7. I've tested this several times in classic and DFUnity, and behaviour seems to be identical in both. So when using "create foe", the script decides how many and how often the foe will spawn. It only stops when the quest says so. Some scripts have no logic to limit where enemies can spawn around player (they can arrive anywhere, anytime). I've built my handling of "create foe" to support this as well.

For the other type of enemy injection using SiteLinks and "place foe" action - as of builds 75/75/72 the enemy will no longer be injected once kill count equals spawn count. This will prevent instances where player exits and re-enters building/dungeon only to find the thing they just killed has respawned.

Narf the Mouse
Posts: 833
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2015 6:32 pm

Re: Rat or Bat quest did not seem to properly clear itself

Post by Narf the Mouse »

Yeah, I did account for that. :) From what I remember from classic, after a while, the rats/bats stop spawning. And I spent some time to make sure they had done so (noted in my first post).

The problem there seemed to be that if the house was re-entered, the rats/bats started spawning again. :)
Previous experience tells me it's very easy to misunderstand the tone, intent, or meaning of what I've posted. If you have questions, ask.

User avatar
Interkarma
Posts: 7236
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Re: Rat or Bat quest did not seem to properly clear itself

Post by Interkarma »

Thanks. It could be a case of the reset/rearm not being appropriately emulated for that action. The "create foe" action can potentially rearm itself depending on quest.

I'll check down that path next. If you do manage to repro, send me another save game at that point. It will be very handy for testing now that quest saving works. :)

Post Reply