This is the next version of the popular Overland Travel and Random Encounter system (OTRES). It simulates long travels over various customizable terrain connecting your areas of interest, randomly generating encounters on generic maps, similar to the user to Baldur's Gate overland travel. OTRES 2.8 is even easier than OTRES 1 to set up - the conversations handle themselves! All the travel information is contained within the trigger's tag, so you can set up travel between maps with ZERO scripting knowledge. EXTENSIVE documentation included. Thanks for trying OTRES, and if you try it out, please vote! That is my only reward. See text below for more detail. Note: 2.8 fixes some minor problems - see posts below to apply fix without downloading.
I just wanted to mention that the problem I was having was not related to this Random Encounter, Travel System. Apparently there is a Bioware bug that does not allow you to draw a trigger on the 3rd tier of land and have it function correctly in a conversation based Area Transition. I was able to get around my problem by creating the Trigger on the 2nd Tier of land, then copy and pasting it to the 3rd Tier. This made it think it was still on the 2nd Tier and it now functions correctly, though the blue highlighted outline of the trigger cannot be seen, as it thinks it's on the second level still. Heh heh... Great system you have here! If it wasn't for a strange bioware bug, it would have been a snap to implement! :)
Posted by MorganQuickthrust at on03/11/04
Thanks for the response! It's very much appreaciated. I'll take a closer look at the items you mentioned. I did take a look at where you're setting the variables and it did seem like you were looping through the Party. I'll take a closer look though. Perhaps they are not all being set. I did notice in the conversations that you fire a script on the Action Taken sequence where you set some Variables. These only seem to be set on the Speaker. Could this be causing it? When this happened in my testing, the Party member had initiated a conversation during an earlier trip. Just thought I'd mention it. I'm in a bit of a rush today with the Superbowl, but I'll try to investigate that possibility when I'm around again in a couple of days. It's something I just thought of. Heh heh... But I do have another problem that I simply cannot figure out what is wrong and was hoping you might have encountered this behavior before and give me some ideas what might be wrong. Heh heh... I wrote to you about this in an email last night, but thought I'd post about it here in case seomone else has run into this problem and has a solution. ;) When I first wrote you what I had done was link two of my areas using your area transition system in place of the one I was using (standard system). It was easy to setup and worked well. In exactly the manner I had hoped. That was when I made my first post here. Since then I had decided to link the next area. I was exiting the same area I had entered with the original transition I had set up with my first OTRES link and traveling to the next area in the module. Unfortunately I cannot get this link to work. I've tried redrawing the trigger, using a different tag name and being sure they matched the tags set in the OTRES_INC file. What is happening is when I hit the trigger, it fires the conversation, but the conversation immediately shuts down without offering me the opportunity to continue or stay. It just shuts down. It does very rapidly give me the text of the initial conversation, but it disappears immediately. The conversation does list the correct destination area in the conversation, so it appears to be reading the information correctly when the Trigger is fired. But for some reason, it then shuts the conversation down, almost like it's being interrupted for some reason. :-\ What I was wondering is if this ever happened to you and do you have any idea what could cause this? I only have 4 triggers setup right now in 3 areas (2 are on either side of a single area). The include file is setup with 4 areas and a max of 4 in the resmax variable. I believe everything is setup right, but who knows. I should mention that the transition coming back the other way on these two areas works fine, as does my other set of transitions. Here's a look at what I have in my OTRES_INCLUDE file. ********************************************* //OTRESOnModuleLoad stores the jump descriptions and tags //on the module as an "array" void OTRESOnModuleLoad() {//OTRESOnModuleLoad start object oMod=GetModule(); /* Enter the destination description for DD1, DD2, etc. Enter the tag of the waypoint for the area for t1, t2, etc. Example SetLocalString(oMod,"DD1","The first forest Wayhouse"); SetLocalString(oMod,"t1","ForestWaypoint1"); */ SetLocalString(oMod,"DD1","The Benzor Flats"); //Description for players for location 1 used in OTRES dialog SetLocalString(oMod,"t1","BenzFlatArrive"); //Tag of OTRES arrival point for location 1 SetLocalString(oMod,"DD2","The Benzor River Valley"); SetLocalString(oMod,"t2","BenzRivValArriveW"); SetLocalString(oMod,"DD3","The Benzor River Valley"); SetLocalString(oMod,"t3","BenzRivValArriveE"); SetLocalString(oMod,"DD4","The Eastern March"); SetLocalString(oMod,"t4","EasternMarchOTResW"); //add new area descriptions and tags here, increasing the number each time as above SetLocalInt(oMod,"iOTRESMax",4); //Highest number of OTRES locations, should match the highest DD and t above - used for error trapping SetLocalInt(oMod,"bPW",TRUE); //Set this to true for persistant worlds }//OTRESOnModuleLoad finish ***************************************************** The Tag of the Trigger is this... 3_4_7_4_7_Forest_e And the Tag of the Desination Waypoint is this... EasternMarchOTResW ***************************************************** Thanks! Morgan
Posted by MorganQuickthrust at on03/11/04
Thanks for the response! It's very much appreaciated. I'll take a closer look at the items you mentioned. I did take a look at where you're setting the variables and it did seem like you were looping through the Party. I'll take a closer look though. Perhaps they are not all being set. I did notice in the conversations that you fire a script on the Action Taken sequence where you set some Variables. These only seem to be set on the Speaker. Could this be causing it? When this happened in my testing, the Party member had initiated a conversation during an earlier trip. Just thought I'd mention it. I'm in a bit of a rush today with the Superbowl, but I'll try to investigate that possibility when I'm around again in a couple of days. It's something I just thought of. Heh heh... But I do have another problem that I simply cannot figure out what is wrong and was hoping you might have encountered this behavior before and give me some ideas what might be wrong. Heh heh... I wrote to you about this in an email last night, but thought I'd post about it here in case seomone else has run into this problem and has a solution. ;) When I first wrote you what I had done was link two of my areas using your area transition system in place of the one I was using (standard system). It was easy to setup and worked well. In exactly the manner I had hoped. That was when I made my first post here. Since then I had decided to link the next area. I was exiting the same area I had entered with the original transition I had set up with my first OTRES link and traveling to the next area in the module. Unfortunately I cannot get this link to work. I've tried redrawing the trigger, using a different tag name and being sure they matched the tags set in the OTRES_INC file. What is happening is when I hit the trigger, it fires the conversation, but the conversation immediately shuts down without offering me the opportunity to continue or stay. It just shuts down. It does very rapidly give me the text of the initial conversation, but it disappears immediately. The conversation does list the correct destination area in the conversation, so it appears to be reading the information correctly when the Trigger is fired. But for some reason, it then shuts the conversation down, almost like it's being interrupted for some reason. :-\ What I was wondering is if this ever happened to you and do you have any idea what could cause this? I only have 4 triggers setup right now in 3 areas (2 are on either side of a single area). The include file is setup with 4 areas and a max of 4 in the resmax variable. I believe everything is setup right, but who knows. I should mention that the transition coming back the other way on these two areas works fine, as does my other set of transitions. Here's a look at what I have in my OTRES_INCLUDE file. ********************************************* //OTRESOnModuleLoad stores the jump descriptions and tags //on the module as an "array" void OTRESOnModuleLoad() {//OTRESOnModuleLoad start object oMod=GetModule(); /* Enter the destination description for DD1, DD2, etc. Enter the tag of the waypoint for the area for t1, t2, etc. Example SetLocalString(oMod,"DD1","The first forest Wayhouse"); SetLocalString(oMod,"t1","ForestWaypoint1"); */ SetLocalString(oMod,"DD1","The Benzor Flats"); //Description for players for location 1 used in OTRES dialog SetLocalString(oMod,"t1","BenzFlatArrive"); //Tag of OTRES arrival point for location 1 SetLocalString(oMod,"DD2","The Benzor River Valley"); SetLocalString(oMod,"t2","BenzRivValArriveW"); SetLocalString(oMod,"DD3","The Benzor River Valley"); SetLocalString(oMod,"t3","BenzRivValArriveE"); SetLocalString(oMod,"DD4","The Eastern March"); SetLocalString(oMod,"t4","EasternMarchOTResW"); //add new area descriptions and tags here, increasing the number each time as above SetLocalInt(oMod,"iOTRESMax",4); //Highest number of OTRES locations, should match the highest DD and t above - used for error trapping SetLocalInt(oMod,"bPW",TRUE); //Set this to true for persistant worlds }//OTRESOnModuleLoad finish ***************************************************** The Tag of the Trigger is this... 3_4_7_4_7_Forest_e And the Tag of the Desination Waypoint is this... EasternMarchOTResW ***************************************************** Thanks! Morgan
Posted by S. at 2004-01-3121:34:00
The party should all have the same variables stored on them, as I loop through, either with a SetPLocal or while/do. Check my logic in that script, though, since I have to rely on others to test it in a multi-character environment. I haven't heard of anyone else with this problem, but then again, who would tell me. :) It is weird that they would be getting that message, though. If the variables had not been set on them, it should give a dialog with nothing in for the custom tags, so something like, "You are hours from ." Make sure you aren't setting the encounter flag and not clearing it at some point, or using the same variable name for something else. The "Not completed encounter" branch is actually the last dialog branch, so it had to have been set at some point... I guess try a variable state check via the DM console to see what is up? Regarding persistance - if local variables are not stored, then you would load back in the random location with no way out short of DM intervention. It should be easy to make persistant in a database, though, since there are really only a few variables to store for each PC. I can't help you with db's, though, but all the information needed is being stored on the character. The travel info on the trigger is all in the tag. So I think it should be easy to to better persistance. Let me know if I can help further with the other issue. An regarding the oxen, just hold some oats out in front of their noses...
Posted by MorganQuickthrust at on03/11/04
Well, I found the time to play with this a bit and I really like it! I have a couple of issues that are limiting me right now, but only one involves this system. The other problem is related to another system (Festyx's Oxen Trade Routes). The Oxen will not use your triiggers. This is a known problem with that system that I have to give more thought to to see if I can get around it. :( The only problem I've found so far with the Overland Travel System has to do with being in a party. I ran into a problem in some testing where the Party was transported to a random encounter area, but the only player who could initiate a travel dialogue was the person who originally initiated it. While this is not a huge problem, it could be if the person who originally initiates it ends up dying in the encounter or experiences some sort of computer problem. It would be good if the other party members could also initiate the conversation. In my testing the player who could not initiate it was getting the message that they had not comleted the Quest yet (like the Encounter variable was not set on them). I may end up having other issues with this where a PW is concerned. Mostly where persistence is concerned. I was wondering how difficult you felt it would be to make this a more persistent system? Where if there was a server crash while a random encounter was happening, it would allow the players to still have their variables set on the DB so they could exit the random area they were in at the time. My problem is I use persistent locations and after a reset, if the player was last on a random area, he would be transported there on entrance. I'm sure I could get around this with some error checking and not allowing the player to go to any of the random areas on entrance, to go to a default start instead, but I was just curious what you thought about the difficulty of making the variables persistent. I know a lot is being saved on the waypoint, so it might be troublesome, but maybe not. Heh heh... Anyway, great system here! I'm hoping I can work around my problems and be able to use it. :) Thanks!! :)
Posted by Morgan at 2004-01-3013:56:00
Yeah, That's me. I frequent more boards then I can keep track of. lol I'm not using HTF at this moment, but I very well might. I'll keep that in mind if at some point I do implement it. ;) I might have time to try this out this wekend. If not, definitely by next weekend. :)
Posted by S. at 2004-01-2917:11:00
Morgan, I think I have seen you on the HCR boards. If you are using HTF, I can show you the modification to OTRES needed for this - it is pretty nice, since you can end up pretty tired and hungry when you hit an encounter.
Posted by Morgan at 2004-01-2013:00:00
I will definitely let you know. I'm busy with a number of other projects within the module, so it'll probably be a week or so before I'm at a spot where I can begin to implement this. Though I might find some time to play with it in my Base test mod before then. :)
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