Recently I have been lost in the main quest when the prince in Sentinel told me about Direnni Tower but then I forgot about it and there is no mention about it anywhere.
I think it would be very helpful to have a messages log where all messages will be stored with the time and who gave it.
scrolling through my completed quest log to see which main quests ive done sucks. plus i dont even know the next step and cant look back through what was said to figure it out.
Convenient Quest Log is a great step forward. but the quest and note log in general is in need of an update.
Re: Message log
Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:07 am
by Ralzar
Yeah, the first time I managed to actually get through the Main Quest I actually took screenshots of all the text whenever something Main Quest related happened. So I had my own quest log.
This should be possible to mod in some way. Haveing a mod detect when one or more of the Main Quest triggers change status and inject a piece of text into the quest log at that time. The Dirennit Tower thing stands out as by far the worst culprit, but I feel it is also a general problem with the Main Quest that the story is alsmost impossible to follow because you have no backlog of the information you were given.
Re: Message log
Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2021 1:42 pm
by Macadaynu
I could potentially take a stab at this by extending the Convenient Quest Log functionality.
So we could do something like: whenever you receive story related dialogue from NPCs, record that dialogue as a note in your note log? Would that solve the problem?
I've not looked at the code yet, but I imagine there will be restrictions as to how much text you can put in one note.
I'm not really keen on amending/adding to the Quest Log messages, the Convenient Quest Log merely just organises the quest messages into a readable format, as soon as you start amending that it could lead to issues that could be hard to uncover.
Re: Message log
Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2021 7:55 pm
by Hazelnut
There's no length restrictions, and this may be a nice way to handle it for main quest. Not sure it's needed for random quests though.
Re: Message log
Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2021 9:43 pm
by Ralzar
Hazelnut wrote: ↑Tue Jul 13, 2021 7:55 pm
There's no length restrictions, and this may be a nice way to handle it for main quest. Not sure it's needed for random quests though.
Generally I agree, but that depends on how well the quests log has been written. I can remember a couple of times I have actually dug into the savegame questdata to re-read what was said by the npc.
Re: Message log
Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2021 10:46 pm
by Jay_H
If you want a summary of everything said at the end of the quest, one way would be to scan the task that included the "end quest" command. If it contains any messages (including "give pc _reward_"), that message/those messages could be copied into the conclusion tab of the journal.
For Morgiah, it would copy this down:
"It's done! I'll be queen of Firsthold! Although I'm sure the engagement will be quite lengthy. Now, I promised you information about the Emperor's letter.
The letter you seek is in the hands of Gortwog, the Warlord of the Orcs. He bought it from the thieves guild of Daggerfall after one of their number stole it from Queen Aubk-i.
I confess I don't know why the Emperor sent it to Aubk-i. The girl is innocent to a fault, and everyone knows that Gothryd is not the loyal empire toady that Lysandus was. Of course my own family...well enough of this boring court gossip.
If you really want to find this letter, you should get in good with Mynisera, the former Queen of Daggerfall, and Queen Mother to Gothryd. I wouldn't directly approach her. Start with someone of lower station."
For Lhotun, it would copy this:
"This what I most feared. Poor (prince's name). As I promised, here's what I've heard about Lysandus. I don't know how much of this is secret, but I trust you. Lysandus was in love with his court sorceress, a noblewoman named Medora Direnni, and during the war with us, his queen found out. They say that while her husband was gone, Queen Mynisera banished Medora from the court. My sister Aubk-i is queen now, part of the treaty to insure peace, but Mynisera still resides at Castle Daggerfall as the dowager Queen mother.
I don't know where Medora went, but I know she has an enormous castle somewhere on the Isle of Balfiera. But I also heard there is some kind of curse on her, and she can never leave. I don't know if that helps you, but that's all I know. Again, thank you for (prince's name)'s letter. Just knowing what happened will ease my heart somewhat. Please take this (magic item) as a token of my appreciation."
Re: Message log
Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2021 12:01 pm
by Macadaynu
Thanks guys, that's enough for me to go off for now, I'll take a look at implementing this
Re: Message log
Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2021 11:10 am
by Macadaynu
Got this working (with some limitations)
As you can see in the note for Morgiah, the exclamation at the start of the dialogue doesn't match the note. This seems to be randomly generated so in this case you get 'By the Black Isle' instead of 'By the Mad Queen'. Whilst this doesn't seem important to me it may be seen as a bug, and I'm not sure how to get this to match without making core code changes.
Also this will only be at the point of the quest offer, no dialogue will be recorded mid-quest, although I could look at getting the dialogue recorded at the end of the quest, and adding to the finished quests list perhaps.
Would this kind of solution be helpful?
Re: Message log
Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2021 10:14 pm
by Regnier
Id say so, but the main use case would be for those times in the main quest where you get a dialogue box detailing your next moves, but this is not recorded anywhere. You would have needed to save the info yourself as the game gives you no way to recall it.