Remote dungeons type selection with fallbacks #2682
Conversation
Currently, for a dungeon required for a quest, a quest writer can either pick a dungeon type, or just any random dungeon. If a dungeon type is specified but no dungeon of that type can be found, the engine picks a random dungeon instead. That fallback means sometimes the quest writer intentions are not followed, including some very bad cases in my opinion (reward map for a rare dungeon type that can be replaced by a map for a random dungeon). So this PR removes the automatic fallback to "any dungeon". On the other hand, it introduces the possibility to provide more than one target dungeon type, as a list: Place _someplace_ remote dungeonA,dungeonB,..,dungeonC The engine will pick in priority dungeons of type dungeonA, then dungeonB, etc, enlarging the pool of dungeons to select from until it reaches the new setting DungeonsPoolSizeTarget (default 3), or no more fallback types have been specified. Of course, "dungeon" can be specified as a last fallback type to get the equivalent of current Daggerfall Unity for some place. DungeonsPoolSizeTarget=0 will totally disable the fallback mechanism DungeonsPoolSizeTarget=999 (or large values in general) will take all fallback dungeons into consideration no matter what, if player prefers randomization over quests consistency. I also edited existing quests to benefit from this feature, but did not spend a lot of time carefully picking the best set of dungeon types for each one, so there's more likely room for improvement.
petchema
added
enhancement
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I admit I'm not confident in this change. While I appreciate that default quests were adjusted to have more explicit fallbacks, I'm most concerned by mods. While you're right that the "any" fallback can break quest narrative or logic, the alternative is more exceptions thrown from currently "working" mods. |
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Yes, the way the quest engine works, if it cannot instantiate all the randomized resources of a quest (persons, places,...) the quest is aborted with "gave the job to a spellsword"-type message |
Currently, for a dungeon required for a quest, a quest writer can either pick a dungeon type, or just any random dungeon. If a dungeon type is specified but no dungeon of that type can be found in the current region, the engine picks a random dungeon instead.
That fallback means sometimes the quest writer intentions are not followed, including some very bad cases in my opinion (reward map for a rare dungeon type that can be replaced by a map for a random dungeon).
So this PR removes the automatic fallback to "any dungeon". On the other hand, it introduces the possibility to provide more than one target dungeon type, as a list:
The engine will pick in priority dungeons of type dungeonA, then dungeonB, etc, enlarging the pool of dungeons to select from until it reaches the new setting DungeonsPoolSizeTarget (default 3), or no more fallback types have been specified.
Of course, "dungeon" can be specified as a last fallback type to get the equivalent of current Daggerfall Unity behavior for some place.
DungeonsPoolSizeTarget=0 will totally disable the fallback mechanism
DungeonsPoolSizeTarget=999 (or large values in general) will take all fallback dungeons into consideration no matter what, if player prefers randomization over quests consistency.
I also edited existing quests to benefit from this feature, but did not spend a lot of time carefully picking the best set of dungeon types for each one, so there's more likely room for improvement.