Important Notice: Situations

Important Notice: Situations

Postby TigerStripes » Tue Dec 17, 2013 7:04 pm

MSG 1 - ORIGINALLY POSTED: Oct 8/2012
IMPORTANT NOTE TO ALL DEVS:
For future reference, we do not need more general events (situations) currently, and this applies especially so to Outside events. Including those which start as resolved and the potential scavevents which could be encountered, there's now about 100 events in the Outside area alone and over 400 in total. This makes it difficult to find anything even if you persistently explore there. This means players don't have a chance to find new content simply by exploring. If you need to make one to go with an NPC, quest, etc... then go ahead, but try to avoid doing so for other reasons.

As well, given how exploring/hunting is done, all new events increase the amount which must be scanned through each time those commands are used, regardless of their area. This really slows down the game's hunting and exploring for events, as a huge list of events must be scanned through each time. Having NPC/quest events currently not in use be closed does provide a minor improvement, but each must still be checked to see if they're resolved/unresolved. Nuku's going to try to optimize the explore/hunting a little, but that may only be a small improvement.

So again, unless you're creating events for a specific purpose (such as NPCs, quests, etc...) or to make some events for an area that's really low on events, please refrain from adding new ones for now.

To help deal with this (and other situation-related issues), I've created the bfandi3 debug command, which lists all events for an area along with several important details (resolution status, level and if it's a scavevent). It also provides totals on the spread of events. It will list the events in the order it finds them. This will also be the order they'll be found while hunting if two or more contain the string being searched for, which may also be helpful while debugging certain issues. I may later add flags to this at a later point. Nuku should have this addition live soon.

As of now, this is the current spread it gives for the various areas:
Outside: 99
Park: 40
HRD: 31
Beach: 29
RLD: 28
Zoo: 27
Museum: 22
Hospital: 21
Mall (Sewer): 19
College Campus: 17
Stables: 17
Dry Plains: 16
State Fair: 15
Junkyard: 11
Warehouse: 9
Capitol Bldg: 2 (awaiting update)
Total: 403 (BFandI says there's 411 in all, so I'm not sure which 8 I'm missing.)
<REPOST NOTE: Values are from Oct 8/2012 and not accurate to current counts. They are shown to give relevant context to the discussion of the time.>

Given the overpopulation in the Outside area, I'm going to look into moving a few to other areas with lower numbers, but there's only a few which can be reasonably moved. We want to avoid excising events entirely, which is why Nuku's looking into optimizing the code and I'll shuffle a few around.

MSG 2 - ORIGINALLY POSTED: Oct 9/2013
<contained updated numbers that have since changed>
I'll be sending along a new bfandi command (bfandi4) some time tomorrow. It will list all events and show their sarea zone as well as the other data which bfandi3 shows. You'll have the option to view this list sorted by sarea or level if you'd like, or receive in the normal order.

MSG 3 - ORIGINALLY POSTED: Jan 28/2013
To help deal with the issue of event overpopulation in the Outside area, I have created two centralized events, which together encompass 15 background and minor events. They are called Consolidated Events Outside CEO1 and Consolidated Events Outside CEO2. While the number of events in the area is still too high to count on finding specific content through exploration, this will significantly improve the odds of finding something of actual consequence while exploring. There are still several other background and fluff events which were not included in these for various reasons, so you can still get background flavour as well.

I have done the same with the Park, putting 11 events into two centralized ones (Consolidated Events Park CEP1 and Consolidated Events Park CEP2. This brings the number of events in the park down to a somewhat more reasonable value, improving one's chances of success at finding the content they need, or at least something of potential interest.

Here's the updated totals on the number of events by area as of Jan 28/13:
<trimmed numbers that have since changed and discussion of areas in need of events at that time>
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Re: Important Notice: Situations

Postby TigerStripes » Tue Dec 17, 2013 8:40 pm

Below are the current numbers, but you can use the debugging commands (bfandi3 and bfandi4) to check these at any time on your local version. Just a reminder that the status result will vary depending on any activity you've done in the game and any flags which may have been banned. I've sorted them in order of density and separated the Allzones-scavevents from the regular tally. Technically, they count as outside events for the case of random exploration, but can be scavenged anywhere that command is available.
bfandi3 will list all situations for an area with their current status (un/resolved) and level.
bfandi4 will list all situations in the game, sorted by area, level or listing order.

AREA: TOTAL (open/closed). scav: ##
Allzones (scav): 11
Outside: 66 (53/13). scav: 4
HRD: 33 (26/7)
Beach: 30 (27/3)
Park: 30 (24/6)
RLD: 30 (26/4)
Zoo: 29 (29/0)
College Campus: 29 (25/4). scav: 1
Museum: 23 (19/4)
Dry Plains: 22 (21/1). scav: 1
Hospital: 22 (19/3). scav: 1
Warehouse: 22 (19/3). scav: 1
Mall (Sewer): 19 (18/1)
State Fair: 19 (18/1). scav: 2
Stables: 17 (15/2)
Junkyard: 12 (12/0)
Capitol Bldg: 9 (8/1)
Trevor Labs (Sealed): 8 (5/3)
Reservoir: 8 (1/7) - special
Urban Forest: 3 (3/0)
TOTAL: 442 (379/63). scav: 21

The main areas which need events are: Urban Forest, Sealed, Capitol Bldg and Junkyard. The Urban Forest is clearly in the most need, having just been created. It will need a mix of background and active events. Those with around 20 events are at a good level, as incidental additions will bring them up over time.
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Re: Important Notice: Situations

Postby Wahn » Wed Dec 18, 2013 4:30 am

Hm, does Inform have to run through all the code of every event when checking which comes up, so that larger events slow things down even more, or is it just the sheer number of event headers it has to go through. If it's the latter, I'd say that if someone really wants to write events, they can just continue one with an existing one and make it a multi-stage event....
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Re: Important Notice: Situations

Postby nukuv » Wed Dec 18, 2013 9:36 am

I thought it was just that it was so many that you can't randomly run into new stuff on any given playthrough. You'll never find it all! We have TOO MUCH CONTENT!

Still, I can think of worse sins for a game to commit.
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Re: Important Notice: Situations

Postby TigerStripes » Wed Dec 18, 2013 1:35 pm

Wahn wrote:Hm, does Inform have to run through all the code of every event when checking which comes up, so that larger events slow things down even more, or is it just the sheer number of event headers it has to go through. If it's the latter, I'd say that if someone really wants to write events, they can just continue one with an existing one and make it a multi-stage event....

The number of events does affect hunting/exploring, though the impact of an additional event is quite low. It is only noteworthy because we've got over 400 events. Multi-stage events are indeed one way of cutting down on this, as is monitoring the number of events within a given area. This is one of the reasons why stuff like the post-quest Park content for Leonard is contained within a single event that controls its many variations and scenes, both sequential and random. Similarly, the Consolidated Events made earlier compress several events into a subset of their own under a single event.
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Re: Important Notice: Situations

Postby soul4hdwn » Wed Dec 18, 2013 7:20 pm

What about events generated on the creature side of the code?

Will quest chains funtion between areas?
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Re: Important Notice: Situations

Postby TigerStripes » Wed Dec 18, 2013 9:22 pm

soul4hdwn wrote:What about events generated on the creature side of the code?

Will quest chains funtion between areas?

I'm not sure I quite follow your question. In this case, we're specifically discussing situations (often referred to as events). Scenes within a creatures win/loss scenario do not apply to this discussion, if that's what you're wondering about.

Quest chains can be made to involve numerous areas when built with events, though you either need different situations to open/close as needed for each location with each step of the quest or move the situation from one area to another by changing its 'sarea' value (its location). A single situation cannot exist in multiple locations at once.
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Re: Important Notice: Situations

Postby soul4hdwn » Wed Dec 18, 2013 11:18 pm

i apologize, yes it didn't make sense but for an extra reason you didn't mention. putting an event in a creature would be redundant as it'll be more like a different intro (for simplest method) or cause the current game's system to get confused if handled wrong. the closest example to what i was thinking is, how fang is handled in making the npc. its an event that is dependent on and (i'm likely mistaken) is in the creature file.
currently the only thing i can think of is a segment extra that happens randomly to abort the battle... which is extremely undesired from both a producer view and player view. so again i do not know what i was thinking when i asked it that way. it doesn't make sense or work out.
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Re: Important Notice: Situations

Postby TigerStripes » Thu Dec 19, 2013 3:51 am

Obtaining Fang is a special outcome of player victory against a Feral Wolf. It is set to appear at approximately the 4th time you beat one. There is no situation involved in this; it's just a one-time variation within player victory for that creature.
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