Qwinn´s Ultimate DAO Fixpack v3 (no longer beta!)

[Qwinn]

So anyway, I've been looking at the Absent Mistress (Crime Wave first sneak quest), and while I would *love* - seriously - to reimplement Sophie's Guard confronting you in Sophie's room, it's going to be problematic. Easy enough to make her always confront you in the room (ignoring the need for the door to be busted down), and that all works great, and I could probably even get it where she doesn't confront you if you're sneaking. The problem is that, say, you try to do it properly by sending one person (say, Leliana) alone, keeping everyone else back in the bar area. And let's say you forgot to stealth when you hit the trigger, or didn't think it was necessary. Boom! Sophie runs into the second room from the first room and interrupts Leliana - and the Warden and the rest of the party are teleported into the room next to Leliana for the cutscene. I'm not sure it would even be possible to prevent that, of having Sophie confront *just* the single person in the room - or for that matter, even being able to properly detect that Leliana was alone in there. If I could do that, maybe I could have the rest of the party follow closely behind Sophie in the case that they weren't in the room - but I can't think of any way to pull that off. Has any other modder here experimented with anything like that - of not having the entire party present for a conversation?

 

Anyway, I'm brainstorming trying to think of a way to make this work, and I'm going to assume that Leliana-alone dialogue isn't possible. The whole point of the door-broken thing was that the player being loud would alert Sophie's guard... so maybe have the guard only summoned if *everyone* in the party enters the back room (the way most people who have played the vanilla game probably would, since there's no harm in doing so in the vanilla game). The plausibility-justification is, as long as anyone hangs back and doesn't enter the room, you don't make enough noise to alert the guard, but with a whole troop in there, you do. And I could maybe also make her not come if any of the party are stealthed - that would cover a stealthed warden who is playing the game solo, and is similarly justified as lowering the amount of noise made by the party so Sophie's guard doesn't hear you, and allows actual sneaking to play a role in this sneak quest.

 

What do you guys think? Anyone have any ideas to improve on that? Remember, can't add new dialogue. If you want to see what her dialogue is when confronting you and you have the toolset, check out den220_sophie_guard.dlg.

 

EDIT: Actually, I think I *can* detect if whoever first hits the trigger in the back room is alone, using the GetDistanceBetween function. First person hits the trigger, compare that person's position to everyone else in the party. So I definitely should be able to do what I propose above. Again, if there were a way to not have the party teleport up to the room with whoever was alone in there when dialogue started, then I could really do this sweet, but still not sure. Is it the staging that does that, and if you remove henchmen from the stage, they don't teleport? I suspect it happens regardless of the staging, but I'll experiment and see what happens.

Edited March 23, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Well, turns out it *is* the staging that makes the characters move around - so if I remove the stage, I can get it working where only the thief gets to talk to Sophie's guard.

 

Problems:

 

1) The thief, if not the PC, would have the player's Persuade and Intimidate skills. Not a big deal IMO.

 

2) No staging at all. If the player goes in with the whole party, someone could be standing right on top of Sophie when she appears. Big, big problem. Unsurmountable, I'm thinking.

 

So - I think I'm back to - if the entire party enters Sophie's room (I can make it the whole room, not just the back room where the trigger is), when someone steps onto the back room trigger, and none of them are stealthed, it makes enough noise to attract Sophie's guard, and you'll get her fully staged dialogue with short interjections from Alistaira and Zevran, and lots of follower approval/disapproval for the whole shady enterprise, Yes, I realize this means a player playing solo and who doesn't have stealth capability will always get Sophie's guard, but it's not a big deal - you can persuade her easily, intimidate her easily, or just kill her easily (My Zevran whose ability points I haven't even spent yet beyond getting his cunning to 20 easily solo'd her). There's no repercussions I can see to killing her either. It's just flavor, IMO, and to make an almost completely unimplemented quest not quite so unimplemented. Whatcha all think?

Edited March 23, 2017 by Qwinn

[LadyHonor]

As always, I say do it! I would love to see that part in the game!

[Qwinn]

Ok, cool, I will continue to work on it. This is what it'll look like in the readme when it's done:

 

10. (v3.0) "Crime Wave", subquest "The Absent Mistress": Restored the possibility of Sophie's guard confronting you while ransacking Sophie's room. She's still rather unobservant and it only takes a minimal amount of care to get in and out without her hearing you, but if you take no precautions whatsoever, she will catch you in the act.

 

And this one's already done:

 

11. (v3.0) Due to a scripting bug in the area file, the Blackstone Irregular contact in the Gnawed Noble Tavern would never get a plot marker on him when he had a reward available for you.

 

G'nite! 2am again, sigh.

Edited March 23, 2017 by Qwinn

[aeroldoth]

Qwinn

 

A) If it's supposed to be a stealthy quest, then implement whatever you can where stealth helps.

 

It's a big annoyance to me how the game forces your entire party to show up for every talkscene in the game... completely prevents you from ambushing anyone, using tactics, getting into position.... and it really irks me that if PC is a mage, then your mage is constantly being put front and center for every combat that follows. Since the game does this everywhere, I'd be surprised if you were able to somehow break that in this instance... I'd assume Sophie initiating a talkscene will poof your whole party next to her like everywhere else in the game.

 

If it's possible, I would go with the only-if-anyone's-stealthed-you-succeed, else you-fail-and-she-confronts-you angle. That lets stealth make a difference regardless of party size.

 

B) Have you looked at the traps in Jarvia's room (Orzammar)? They seem unnaturally hard to detect. This is made weirder by the fact they only give the smallest amount of xp... 5, suggesting they should be super easy. Further. when approaching the back of the room (which is elevated) I can't seem to detect them, but once I go through a trap and am actually in the back, it seems much easier to somehow detect the traps "from behind". It makes me wonder if perhaps elevation is somehow interfering with detection.

 

There are five traps in the room I believe. One faces the party in front of where Jarvia makes her stand. This trap I detect. Then there are two on the side of her so you'll hit a trap no matter how you approach. These I never detect until I'm up in the back. Lastly there are two blocking access to the back, and I can only seem to detect one after passing through the other and approaching the first "from behind".

 

The trap in front of Jarvia is level with you. The two on the side have one peg on the ground and the other peg higher up on a step. The last two are both higher up on the top step. I can't detect these from below but can when higher up, which is why I think elevation is the issue. Something needs to be done about their detectability and setting the xp award to match their difficulty.

 

I'm not alone in having troubles here:

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A discussion in our forums points out the strange behaviour of what appear to be low level traps in Jarvia's room in Carta dungeon of Orzammar. It appears that no matter how high your cunning and Mechanical Expertise (Level 4) those traps are hard to detect, and yet disarming them is easy and only yield 5xp each.

http://dragonage.neoseeker.com/wiki/Trap_Detection_and_Disarm

___________________

Aforementioned forum discussion

http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/40067/t1467748-how-does-trap-detection-work/

___________________

 

C) Could you explain, briefly, how you find bugs? Do you open up a file and can easily spot something's wrong, like seeing an IF with no THEN function, or opening a book and seeing a page is half blank? Or do you have to sit there, scouring code and looking for missing semicolons and typos?

[Qwinn]

Sigh - yeah, I'm aware of those Jarvia trap problems, mentioned in the Wiki too I believe. I'm just dreading doing that fix, because the trap's location is set when you first enter the area, you can't just move them and reload the game while near Jarvia's room and have it take effect, you have to go back to before you ever entered the area and get all the way to the end again. Which is a pain in the ass even if you avoid all the side room fights. And you'd be surprised how hard this can be to get right - just moving ONE trap in the Korkari Wilds so that it was detectable/disarmable AND not looking like it's floating above the ground can take *hours* if you have to start over from the beginning of the area every time - which I did, dozens and dozens of times to get it right (and a poster named didymos way back in the day had done this work for me and given me new coordinates for it, but I can't find them now, so I had to redo it, dangnabbit). I'll probably be a lot better off creating a debug script that will let me just teleport to the room from the beginning of the area and disable the fight so I can work the traps easier, but not looking forward to that either (I hate littering my export with a bunch of files that won't actually need to be changed in the final version of the fixpack).

 

Anyways. The restoration of Sophie's Guard confronting you in The Absent Mistress is done! I'm quite happy with it, hope you guys like it too. It's official now:

 

10. (v3.0) "Crime Wave", subquest "The Absent Mistress": Restored the possibility of Sophie's guard confronting you while ransacking Sophie's room. She's still rather unobservant and it only takes a minimal amount of care to get in and out without her hearing you, but if you take no precautions whatsoever, she will catch you in the act.

 

 

 

"Since the game does this everywhere, I'd be surprised if you were able to somehow break that in this instance...I'd assume Sophie initiating a talkscene will poof your whole party next to her like everywhere else in the game."

 

I did manage to disable that, but the problem is that the dialogue that ensues looks crappy (an unstaged conversation turns into an unmoving extreme closeup of the speaker's face) and it's possible that someone from your party is standing on the spot she appears in so that they overlap one another, which is sadly a completely unacceptable possibility. You might be able to get away with unstaged conversations where the person you're talking to is coming up from ahead of you, and the first party member to make it that far triggers it so that there's no possible way the speaker could get *behind* you and overlap a party member, but in this case she always comes up from behind your party in a small area, and it's LIKELY she'll overlap a party member. There's simply no way to make that conversation foolproof against party members overlapping the guard without staging and forced positioning. That's why stages and forced positioning are used so universally in the game. Good reason for it.

 

Anyway, that's why I've implemented it such that she won't appear unless the entire party is in the room. They'll still teleport when she shows, but it can't be so far as to be implausible or immersion breaking.

 

"If it's possible, I would go with the only-if-anyone's-stealthed-you-succeed, else you-fail-and-she-confronts-you angle. That lets stealth make a difference regardless of party size."

 

You can evade her attention without stealth as long as you don't bring everyone in your party into the room. I've just explained why that's necessary. Thankfully there's a plausible enough justification for that - it takes the whole party being in the room to make enough noise to get her attention. Stealth does remain useful, in that you *can* have everyone in the room without getting her attention if someone in the party is stealthed (reducing the noise they make enough to keep her from hearing all of you - at least, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it).

Edited March 23, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

^{Woohoo! I finally found those coordinates by didymos! I'm an idiot - they're in the discussion page attached to my project on the Bioware forums, which are thankfully still readable. I knew I'd seen 'em somewhere, but couldn't find 'em. Lots of bug reports there too, going through it now to see if I missed a good report.}

[Qwinn]

Tonight's assortment. All but the last two are already done and tested. Will work on that and much more over the weekend, as I should get a good 12-16 hours or so to work on the project.

 

Oh, also, I did test the subquest to steal Ser Nancine's sword. Far as I can tell, I got all the bugs in that one in earlier versions of the Fixpack. EDIT: I was wrong! Added it to the beginning of this list.

 

 

12. (v3.0) "Steal Ser Nancine's Sword": If you used the stealing skill on Nancine and failed, she would respond with her normal opening dialogue. She will now respond as she was intended to.

 

13. (v3.0) "Steal Master Tilver's Key": You can no longer hire the messenger boy to create a distraction if you don't have 10 silver to give him, and if you do have it and choose to pay it, it will now actually be deducted from you.

 

14. (v3.0) "Steal Master Tilver's Key": You can no longer steal the key twice, once via dialogue and the second time via the stealing skill.

 

15. (v3.0) "Steal Master Tilver's Key": In dialogue with Master Tilver, an option to "Put arm around him" to attempt to steal the key was bugged and could not appear.

 

16. (v3.0) "Steal Master Tilver's Key": The staging for the conversation with Tilver and the guards wasn't implemented, resulting in odd graphic glitches such as the participants facing away from you or with their heads turned away while talking to you. They will now always face the camera when talking to you.

 

17. (v3.0) "Steal Master Tilver's Key": Fixed some scripting errors when the Restless Guard moves up to talk to the Alert Guard resulting in the wrong dialogue being triggered and the Restless Guard never returning to his original position.

 

18. (v3.0) "Steal Master Tilver's Key": Quite frequently the Restless Guard would fail to block you from reaching Tilver even when he's in position. This shouldn't occur as often now.

 

 

 

I'm really dreading having to recreate everything I did 6 years ago for "Steal the Teyrn's Crown" (there were supposed to be 5 different ways to accomplish the theft, but only 2 of them - the boring ones - worked. I got all 5 working.). It's actually the bit I'm proudest of in previous versions of the Fixpack, but it took a LOT of work, including sound work (have to split off the seneschal's dialogue from that of his guards so he can be talked to independently of them) and a LOT of the work was in the dialogue files which I can't see anymore. At least I can see what I did in the scripting. Still, probably take a couple of full days at least to recreate it all.

Edited March 24, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

So this is pretty funny. In "Steal Master Tilver's Key", the scripts that alert the guards to stop you only check whether the PC is stealthed. The PC could be stealthed on the other side of the market district, and Alistair could then walk right up and steal the key from Tilver without the guards ever seeing him. Conversely, the guards can see right through level 4 stealth on both Zevran and Leliana, because their stealth doesn't matter whatsoever.

 

The sheer silliness of that goes a long way toward overriding my normal hesitation toward changing what might have been intentional. I get that they might've wanted the quick and easy run in stealthed and just steal the key limited to rogue PC's - but:

 

They could've restricted the entire sneak quest line to rogues, and in fact there *are* defined flags in the scripts related to the Crime Wave quest that basically return "eligible for the sneak quests" only if the PC has the stealth skill, they're just not used. I suspect *that* was an intentional change - they originally meant to restrict the sneak quests to rogues only but decided to open up the quest chain to everybody, I suspect because that's a whole lot of quest love to restrict to only one class, and why couldn't Zevran or Leliana do them anyway, the way Morrigan and Wynne can fight the Fade demon for you in Redcliffe? That would explain why these scripts check only if the PC is stealthed, since at one point it was probably assumed that only rogue PC's *could* do this quest, and when they opened it up, they didn't bother to go back and make it work properly for Zevran and Leliana. So I'ma gonna go ahead and do that.

Edited March 25, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Another bit of irony given the probable original intent to restrict Crime Wave to rogues: Slim Couldry doesn't appear until the PC has points in either stealing (which any class can have) or stealth (which only rogues can have). If a non-rogue has a point in Stealing, they can then talk to Slim and, by selecting the right dialogue choice, can always get access to both the sneak and steal quest lines. But if a rogue that never put a point into stealing talks to Slim, he is then restricted to only the sneak line, and adding a point of stealing after that doesn't fix it. So in reality, *only* rogues *can* be permanently denied any of the quests in Crime Wave - lol. I'll fix that too.

 

I intend to do this by simply removing the "must have stealing skill" restriction in Couldry's dialogue for the steal quest line. A non-rogue couldn't have gotten Slim to spawn without putting a point into stealing, so no effective change for them as they would always pass that check anyway, and if a non-rogue can get access to the stealth line without even the possibility of having the stealth skill, I don't see why a rogue should be denied access to the steal line just because they haven't put a point into stealing yet.

Edited March 25, 2017 by Qwinn