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Input Request, Multi-Romances Script - Spoilers

I'll try to minimise the amount of spoilers in this post, so that I can get inputs from as many people as possible. However some are necessary so that I can get the kind of feed back I want. So please avoid posting spoilers as much as you can when replying, if it is necessary to discuss some of the things posted in further details, then please let me know so I can edit the title of the thread accordingly.


Ok, I'm currently thinking about redoing how my scripts handle the ToB romances. For those of you who have played through at least one of the romances, you would have found that a few of the dialogues are based on events that took place during the game. The problem here is that, when there are more than one romance running at the same time problems appear - for example, only certain dialogues would take place and the other romances are frozen because of this (at least I believe that this is a possibility).


Most of the dialogues are still based on real time - just like in SoA - and since the expansion if a lot shorter than SoA, I was thinking about reducing the time between romance dialogues, your opinions? It's currently set at about 40 or so minutes - not too sure what the values in the script is compared to real time.


Now to the event triggered dialogues, there are two ways that these can be handled. Firstly, there is the Ignore Previous method as I call it; which means that when the event is triggered, the romance dialogue that is required for this event will be next - skipping over any dialogues that you have not yet heard. The second method is named Wait In Line; obviously this would mean that the dialogue linked to the event will simply wait until all dialogues infront of it have been played. Which do you think is better?

Of course this would also mean that if the Ignore Previous is used, then there would need to be a timer put in place to spread out the dialogues from different romances - I'll work on this is this is the preferred method for the dialogues. If the Wait In Line method is used, then the dialogues will obviously be a bit out of place - or not happen at all - depending on how fast the person play through the game. So there are good and bad effects from both methods.


One of the places - where there is a trigger event - uses a cutscene, this in turn set a variable which correspond with the romance that the cutscene was made for. Again, there are two ways of handling this - at least I believe that it is possible to have two ways, not too sure about the second method. The first is to simply skip the dialogue for the romances that the cutscene was not made for, this means that only one of the romance will play the dialogues which correspond with that event. The second method would be to change the required scripts so that all of the cutscenes for the active romances will run, one after the other; then the corresponding dialogues from the romances will run in a set order - this can be done by using another variable as a control, at least I believe that it is possible. Which do you prefer?


That's as vague as I can put the things needed, thank you for reading and any inputs you have on the matter are greatly appreciated.

Ok, I'm currently thinking about redoing how my scripts handle the ToB romances. For those of you who have played through at least one of the romances, you would have found that a few of the dialogues are based on events that took place during the game. The problem here is that, when there are more than one romance running at the same time problems appear - for example, only certain dialogues would take place and the other romances are frozen because of this (at least I believe that this is a possibility).

Sabre, I have the multi-romance patch on, as far as I can tell, the timers for Viccy and Jaheira seem to take a wee bit too long to play out in ToB. Especially for Viccy, romance breaks without the patches. No problems with Aerie.

Most of the dialogues are still based on real time - just like in SoA - and since the expansion if a lot shorter than SoA, I was thinking about reducing the time between romance dialogues, your opinions? It's currently set at about 40 or so minutes - not too sure what the values in the script is compared to real time.

I am all for reducing the time between dialogues. 40 minutes is way too long, as J Compton had pointed out in his Kelsey mod thread. Heck, my party can go to sleep several times in succession and still no dialogue! In fact, I did complete the expansion without completing the Kelsey romance. I am still playing out the Tashia quests; will let you know when I get there!

The romances take an obscene amount of time in SoA as is. If its still on a "real time" timer in ToB and ToB is shorter =/

I havent played ToB yet, just on watchers keep in chapter 6 of SoA, but if you could shorten the interval time between romance dialogues I would be MOST appreciative. Id like to complete the romance, but im not going to sit around doing nothing waiting on it you know?

Thanks

I've never looked at the scripting for this engine so I dont know how hard this would be to manage, but in cases where there are dialogs that should preceed a triggered dialog it might be good to initiate those dialogs at the time of the event followed by dialog corresponding to the trigger. It would be slightly annoying to have a bunch of stuff happen at once like that, but much better than missing stuff altogether or having to wait til way after the fact to get triggered dialogs.

I would definitely favor getting all the dialogs and scenes from all branches even if it means that at trigger times you get one from each back to back.

The time and resting delays on the dialogs are pretty annoying in SoA especially. My first time through I missed a ton of stuff ( I chose Jaheira and she got taken away to go to the hold the first time seconds before I entered chapter 7), and my second I wound up just resting like a week interlaced with forcing xxxROMANCE=1 with CLUA before moving to chapter 7 so I could get all the dialogs done.

Baldursgate Fan: Viconia's normal script, skip dialogues when a trigger event occurs, so you miss out on the ones you haven't heard. This is mostly due to the natures of some of those dialogues.

Glod: I agree about the time delay; but I won't be changing other delays, such as sleep and locations and so on.

So everyone so far agree on reducing the dialogue times. This would mean that it might not be necessary to skip any dialogues at all - if I can time them correctly, so that they'll all happen before the triggering event.

Thanks for your replies.

Sorry for bumping this thread, but I want to ask for some help.

If you have been to my site lately, you'd have noticed that I said I won't be updating for a while - there are a number of reasons, but I'm only going to say it's because of school.

Anyway, this is what I need:
- Real time length of playing through ToB - this will save me from playing through the game to work out how I'm going to change the timer

Highlight the gap to read other request, I don't want to spoil this for the people who are reading this post.
- Real time between trigger events, they are:
1. Forest of Mir (where you meet the Master Wraith) - from beginning of ToB
2. After you have defeated Yaga Shura - from previous trigger
3. After you have completed the final challenge - from previous trigger

That's all, thanks for your time; and for your help. And if any one else have anything to add/suggest feel free to post.

Took me roughly 15 game days my first time through ToB not including Watchers Keep which I did in SoA.

Thanks for that, but I'm more interests in the real time taken to complete the game - since this is what the timers are set to.

Another way to handle the dialogues would be to make them all event trigger, this would mean that each romance would need to be individually set - since they have different number of dialogues. Not sure, what do people think about this?

@Sabre - I've been through TOB serveral times, and the average amount of time it's taken for me so far seems to be around 16-20 hours real time. Shortest run througt the game was under 6 hours (1 super-PC, 1 romance NPC, basic quests only) to a maximum of about 30 hrs (6 characters, all quests).

Using triggers for the romance events would certainly ensure the romance script runs through completely, but it will take out some of the random aspects of the game. In a few instances where the player can choose the order in which to do things, will this have any affect ont he progression of the romance? It seems it could be easy to disrupt the sequence if it's not done in a correct order.

Thanks for the time.

About the disruption thing, I don't think it would happen, since there are a lot of places that you have to play in a set order - true that there are certain places that you can do things in different ways, but there aren't that many. If there are any such problems, it should be fixable with a few more alteration to the scripts.

I agree about the random thing, although this would be cancel as well if I limit the timing between dialogues - to a certain extent. I'll see what happens when I actually get around to doing this.

As previously posted, any further inputs/suggestions are always welcome.

Umm I cant remember real time unfourtantly. I went through SoA and ToB all in one week, but I played a lot. Sorry just cant think of it off the top of my head.

But I say event trigger it. That seems to be the surest way to allow everyone to complete the romances before they end the game without missing any dialogue.

Yeah, that seems to be the safest way to ensure that all dialogues happen in a set order. Although - now that I think about it - might be difficult to handle, as there are about 7 romances that will be running at the same time (this is the maximum number possible, with currently known Mods).

It's a bit hard to see what will happen at this moment, so I'm not really sure which is the best method to handle the dialogues.

I also agree with the event trigger but if that isn't possible whatever gives you the best possible chance of hearing all the dialogs and not having them skiped. For me this is the highest priority. Just out of curisoity what is the current ones using?
Keep up the great work!

Originally posted by Telthos
Just out of curisoity what is the current ones using?

The script in the game uses a combination of timer and triggers for the dialogues. I think that for Aerie, Jaheira and Anomen - the Wait in Line method is used (see first post for method detail); while for Viconia the Ignore Previous method is used. Can't really remember, I had to uninstall the game to free up some space on the hard drive so I can't check the scripts at the moment. The Happy Script is built on top of this, so it's exactly the same - at the moment.