Friday, February 10, 2012

Too Much?

Finished off the HC dialogue this morning.

Contained in its own quest for the sake of my sanity, it was easy to check the counter and see how many lines of dialogue were involved in this rather basic endeavor.

The answer? 201. For three personalities.

I had figured on six for NCCS general; plus seven new personalities; plus four or five extras here and there. Assuming the number of lines needed track into NCCS, that will make for 1206 lines of dialogue.

...I may not have thought this project through well enough.

On the up side, I further modified the code so that when you give a companion a Sunset Sarsaparilla, there's a 10% chance of them getting a Star cap instead of a standard bottlecap. Either way, they also keep the empty bottle, as well.

Edit: remembered to add Nuka Cola, as well (and have them keep cap and empty bottle).

After updating the companion scripts to make use of the new hunger and thirst code, the plugin now weighs in at 485kb; up from 352kb. Assuming the same ~38% increase in size, this alone will put NCCS up over the megabyte milestone.

12 comments:

  1. Wowzers... a megabyte of script! I'm not being facetious here... that's a lot of typing!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am in agreement with Herculine: that is quite a lot of typing! I am also happy to know that you thought about the companions use of Nuka Cola and Sunset Sarsaparilla. I think this would be the first time a companion would keep a bottle and cap after drinking the supply you asked them to hold on to for you. Err, I mean you gave them to drink ;)

    I don't know about anyone else, but sometimes it is the little details like that that can make a mod enjoyable for me :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. @Herculine:

    Blessedly, I usually only have to type out the complete code once; from there it can be copied and pasted with only slight alterations needed. It's the sheer number of times it has to be done that ends up taking forever. Well, that and the lag in the dialogue editor when I'm trying to get from one response to the next to enter the scripting.


    @Druuler:

    Little things like that bug me, too. I mean, if I go buy a bottle of Coke, open it, and drink it; the bottle doesn't go poof and vanish. My beloved cans of Rockstar don't vanish once empty (and there's a substantial pile of them behind my seat in the car to prove that theory -- all in the name of my dedication to FNV modding, I assure you).

    I'm a little worried it will annoy some players, since I don't recall Nuka bottles being used for anything in the game (other than brewing more Nuka if you have the perk for it); but in my own game, I definitely want the bottles left over.

    I did have to cop out, and have the star caps the companions get added directly to the player's inventory -- because they're flagged as quest items, the star caps wouldn't show up in a living NPC's inventory correctly I don't think. May have to expand that one to include a new piece of dialogue: "Oh hey, I found a star cap! Want it?"

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sometimes I hate my brain.

    Was just drying off after a shower; pondering the issue of the massive dialogue I really don't want to do -- and I'm pretty sure I've figured out how to have script determine the companion's 'skill tier' on its own, and reduce their hunger and/or thirst appropriately.

    So... since one response only will be required per topic per personality, that will knock 66% off the number of lines I have to write. 410 lines is much more palatable.

    ...Of course, I would think of this after spending three days writing the archetype the other way...

    ReplyDelete
  5. I've had times when I finally came up with a brilliant and easier way to do something a day or two after completing the project the hard way. It always seems like a "D'oh!" moment to me.

    For those of us that like our immersion and the little touches in a mod, the inclusion of dialogue from an NPC when you get a Star cap from them is a nice idea. An alternative line might be "Hey, I found one of those caps you're collecting! You can have it, since its so dangerous keeping them." Just a thought.

    ReplyDelete
  6. ...

    "I-it's not like I want you to have it or anything, idiot, I just don't want to be the target of the cap collectors..."

    Oh yeah, I've watched too much anime.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I hate those "D'oh!" moments too. Spending hours writing a sorting script for crafting materials item by item and finally getting it working in game to suddenly realize I should have just created a list and told the script to remove all items from the list. :facepalm:

    I don't know about anyone else, but sometimes it is the little details like that that can make a mod enjoyable for me :)

    Little things like that really do make me appreciate the work that goes into a mod that much more. I like being able to loose a couple of hours in my games before a CTD brings me back to reality and it's those little things like that, that make it possible.

    "I-it's not like I want you to have it or anything, idiot, I just don't want to be the target of the cap collectors..."

    Love it. I've been writing my main companion as smart ass and that's just awesomness. I just wish I wasn't so incompetent when it comes to scripting I might be able to make her the truly smart ass bad ass I want her to be.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I've been fighting the urge to include a tsundere since I first hit on the idea of drag 'n drop personalities for the companion system, but with the inclusion of HARDCORE, BITCHES! mode, it's getting too hard to resist.

    Imagine the possibilities!

    L-look, it's really hot out today, and my supplies are running a little thin; so I've decided I'm going to let you treat me to something to drink. You should be grateful I'm associating with you!

    Even greetings...

    Where do you think you're staring, pervert?!

    I shall name her: Tsundere-chan!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Got the revised code written this evening/morning. Down to 78 lines; which will make for ~468 for NCCS -- and this is after I set up the star caps dialogue.

    Now just to the craptasticalest part of modding: in-game code testing. Takes forever.

    ReplyDelete
  10. "I-it's not like I want you to have it or anything, idiot, I just don't want to be the target of the cap collectors..."

    Lol! That also works!

    ReplyDelete
  11. but with the inclusion of HARDCORE, BITCHES! mode, it's getting too hard to resist.

    Why resist? To hell with what they think.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.