Email Insanity (spoilers)

Anaximander · Post by **Anaximander** » Mon Apr 03, 2006 6:05 am

Looking in the Vampire\vdata\hackterminals\haven_pc.txt file I found the following:

Email
{
"subject" "Open Immediately, Kitten!"
"sender" "jeanette@theasylum.vtm"
"body" "Dear, dear Duckling,
HI! Guess who! No, guess! Because it's more fun that way, that's why! Oh, kitten, have you already forgot? It's me, Jeanette! I was just sitting here in my big, boring bedroom, all by my lonely self when I noticed I was missing something - you. Amuse me. Pretty please?
Wading for you, Duckling,
Jeanette "

"dependency" "G.Story_State >= 30 and G.Therese_Dead == 1 and G.Jeanette_Seduce >= 4 and G.Jeanette_Boink == 0"
}

An email from Jeanette. Notice the dependencies. What all those mean is that if you have successfully seduced Jeanette but have not yet slept with her by the time you're ready to go to Hollywood, she should send you this email inviting you to come visit. I'd never seen it before myself, so I started a new game and set out to meet all the requirements to get this letter. I have met the requirements. All variables match the necessary values. And yet... No email from Jeanette.

I've started looking through dialogues and scripts to see if I find something that would disable this letter, but so far nothing. This is such a minor thing, but it's driving me insane!!

Has anyone ever recieved this email?

Little update: In Jeanette's dialogue file I've found a dialogue option that only becomes available after reading this email. "I got your email. So, you're lonely, huh?" Or, for Malkavians, "This duckling has come wadling back. Lonely, still?"

shana · Post by **shana** » Mon Apr 03, 2006 4:45 pm

I've never gotten this email, but am interested in whether you eventually do or not. Keep us posted.

Anaximander · Post by **Anaximander** » Mon Apr 03, 2006 10:27 pm

Excellent!

Here's what I've discovered: The game seemed to be incorrectly evaluating the last two boolean expressions of the dependency for Jeanette's email. If I used any combination of two of those boolean expressions, the email was recieved. This is incorrect, however. This letter should only be recieved when all 4 conditions are met, otherwise it just doesn't make sense.

So, I played around with the expressions for the denpendency line a bit and came up with the following alternative dependency:

G.Story_State >= 30 and G.Jeanette_Seduce >= 4 and not G.Jeanette_Boink == 1 and not G.Therese_Dead == 0

This worked. I got the email. Now, in order to unlock the dialogue option for having read the letter, we need the variable G.Jeanette_Mail to be set to 1. Looking at how some of the other game emails work, we see that this can be done rather easily by adding the following line to Jeanette's email segment:

"runscript" "G.Jeanette_Mail = 1"

I added this line in and viola! I got the email, and the subsequent dialogue option for reading it.

So in order to get everything working correctly, Jeanette's email segment of the haven_pc.txt file now looks like this:

Email
{
"subject" "Open Immediately, Kitten!"
"sender" "jeanette@theasylum.vtm"
"body" "Dear, dear Duckling,
HI! Guess who! No, guess! Because it's more fun that way, that's why! Oh, kitten, have you already forgot? It's me, Jeanette! I was just sitting here in my big, boring bedroom, all by my lonely self when I noticed I was missing something - you. Amuse me. Pretty please?
Wading for you, Duckling,
Jeanette "

"dependency" "G.Story_State >= 30 and G.Jeanette_Seduce >=4 and not G.Jeanette_Boink == 1 and not G.Therese_Dead == 0"
"runscript" "G.Jeanette_Mail = 1"
}

Everything appears to be working correctly, but I need to do some more testing to make sure I haven't introduced a new bug. For instance, some who sideded with Therese or someone who reconciled the sisters still getting the email. I believe the boolean logic of my new dependency line will handle this corrrectly, but there's only one way to know for sure.

There is one more thing of particular interest: Notice that the requirement for G.Jeanette_Seduce is only 4. Usually, this variable must be at least 8 in order to sleep with Jeanette. You can only get it this high if you were able to use seduction lines on her. You can get it up to 4 by merely choosing ordinary dialogue options that please her. With this email and it's subsequent dialogue options restored, any character - even a Nosferatu - who has made Jeanette happy can go back to the Asylum and sleep with her after getting this letter. This is probably why the letter was disabled in the first place.

Whew! I feel better now. That was like having a single grain of sand in your bedsheets that itches like crazy and you just can't sleep until you find it. Or maybe I've just been spending too much time with Jeanette.....

Anaximander · Post by **Anaximander** » Mon Apr 03, 2006 10:31 pm

In the course of all this, I also found a some discrepencies with VV's emails. According to the dependency lines for her letter, we should not recieve the first email from VV until after we've completed Hollywood and moved on to Chinatown.

However, I'm content with the way VV's letters work now so I won't be messing around with them.

pennypincher · Post by **pennypincher** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 12:07 am

To be honest with you, I've only ever gone the "Bonk the vampire" route once... And that was just to see what happened, after which I saved the game with a laugh and never did it again, so I've never been in any circumstance where I've seduced her, failed the ghost quest, killed her "friend" and then just left her.

Time to experiment.

Anaximander · Post by **Anaximander** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 6:55 am

*sigh* Still not completely correct. Back to testing....

Update: .....which reveals a distinct pattern. After extensively (though not exhaustively) testing the dependency line for Jeanette's email, I found one thing that is invariable true. The first two boolean expressions are always evaulated correctly. The second two are not. Doesn't matter what order you put the expressions in, the 3rd and 4th don't work the way they should.

Enter the entire dependency line into the command console, however, and it does work correctly every time. I am now convinced that the problem lies in the source code for the function that parses this line. But, seeing as how I have no access to the source, I can neither verify this nor correct it.

So, to fully restoring Jeanette's email I had to do a little scripting, and then attach that script to the haven maps so it runs automatically whenever your haven is entered.

Did all that today and so far everything's working pefectly. I am still very curious to see if anyone has ever recieved this email from Jeanette without tampering with the game as I have. And if so, what version of the game this was in.....

ellipsis jones · Post by **ellipsis jones** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 7:09 pm

[QUOTE=Anaximander]In the course of all this, I also found a some discrepencies with VV's emails. According to the dependency lines for her letter, we should not recieve the first email from VV until after we've completed Hollywood and moved on to Chinatown.

However, I'm content with the way VV's letters work now so I won't be messing around with them.[/QUOTE]

It'd be great if you could fix VV's letters too. I always thought it was strange to immediately get three emails from her that a) looked like they should've been spaced out over several nights and b) shouldn't have been sent the moment you left vesuvius, in any case.

Kudos on your success with Jeanette's mail - any chance this will make its way into the next unofficial patch?

Anaximander · Post by **Anaximander** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 12:52 am

[QUOTE=ellipsis jones]It'd be great if you could fix VV's letters too. I always thought it was strange to immediately get three emails from her that a) looked like they should've been spaced out over several nights and b) shouldn't have been sent the moment you left vesuvius, in any case.

Kudos on your success with Jeanette's mail - any chance this will make its way into the next unofficial patch?[/QUOTE]

If I knew how to contact the guy who works on the unofficial patches, I'd bring it to his attention.

Each of VV's e-mails also has a dependency line containing multiple boolean expressions. In each one, the last expression has to do with the G.Story_State variable. According to the dependencies, we should get the first letter from VV after we've spoken to Gary for the first time in the Warrens. The second and third show up at Story_State 60 and 70 respectively, but I haven't looked to see when exactly the variable reaches those values yet.

In each case,the game correctly evaluates all of the boolean expressions except the last one regarding G.Story_State. Based on what I've learned from Jeanette's letter, it would probably take some scripting to get these letters to work the way they should as well. I really wish I could see the source code that handles these emails. I suspect, though I have no way of knowing, that the developers may have disabled Jeanette's letter intentionally in order to make it more difficult to successfully seduce her. Makes it a bit more of an easter egg if Jeanette doesn't invite you back to the Asylum to "amuse" her. I don't understand the reasoning for making VV's come all at once immediately after her hunter quest, though.

ellipsis jones · Post by **ellipsis jones** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 6:47 am

If I'm understanding correctly, it sounds like the developers really meant for VV's emails to arrive in a more spaced-out fashion. I'd guess there was no reasoning behind the disabling of Jeanette's emails or the suddenness of VV's, it was just one more bug they didn't catch.

Anyhow, the patch guy's name is Werner Spahl. His email address is spahl at cup.uni-muenchen.de. Best of luck with your efforts.

Anaximander · Post by **Anaximander** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 3:07 pm

ellipsis jones]If I'm understanding correctly wrote:
I think you're right. VV's emails, like Jeanettes, each have 4 conditions that must be met before we get them. Also, like Jeanette's, only the first 2 are being evaulated correctly. I'm beginning to think that this may be a pervasive bug affecting all emails we recieve in the game, but since most of them only have one or two conditions to meet, it's very easy not to notice it.

I now have VV's letters rescripted and working as they should. I'll start looking at some of the others as well.

Anyhow, the patch guy's name is Werner Spahl. His email address is spahl at cup.uni-muenchen.de. Best of luck with your efforts

Cool, thanks. I'll shoot him an email and see if he'd be interested in including this.