Open I-am-Erk opened 5 years ago
Hello
There was a proffesional writter voulnteering a week ago in reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/bmm71a/professional_writer_looking_to_help/
I hope I'll be able to contribute myself to the game some day, but I have no programming knowloedge and english is not my first languaje.
I've contacted them. With any luck they'll get back... so far I'm zero for four on writer volunteers actually following through on offers to contribute.
I've taken a little on at the moment but if you're still not getting anyone following through in a couple of weeks time feel free to message me on the forums, @I-am-Erk
@I-am-Erk I'm game. Just give me direction.
@I-am-Erk I'm game. Just give me direction.
Easiest thing is to contact me by DM on discord, but otherwise a good starting point would be to pick someone in the refugee center that you find interesting and start writing dialogue for them in a PR. Just let me know so we don't conflict. Draco Dune already exists in game, and would be a pretty good starting one: I planned to give him a quest to help him get a guitar to play music for the other refugees. In my notes he's a pleasant, laid back guy who is doing his best to take this all in stride. He might also trade you some Merch (free merchant money) for marijuana once per week.
Not sure if this is the right thread for it, but I did have several problems with the beggars plot (0.E2 stable), and think there are some adjustments that can be made to make it clearer what you're supposed to do.
I hadn't set up a camp when I talked to them (I'd intended to recruit at least a second NPC before I did), and apparently having one is a prerequisite for finishing the quest line, but nowhere is that indicated. I'd suggest having the hairy one indicate the need for a camp (something along the line of "I can live on the road, but my friends need a stable camp to live in" if you don't have one, and have the PC say "come with me" if he doesn't have one, prompting the above, or "I've got a camp where we can be based if you come with me" if he does).
A "mushroom sample" is totally unclear to a new player, for the mushroom lady action. At that point in the game I'd seen fungi and turned tail. It should be more clear that it's the matter of regular butchery rather than some special item drop. It can also be mentioned that this action did not enter into the quest log (on par with "trade offers").
It's fairly unpleasant to offer food to one of the beggars only to find that the whole stack was taken, resulting in a potentially both hungry and thirsty trip home to the base (camp or otherwise).
In the same vein, it's not intiutive that you'd have to offer food again after sorting out Dino Dave AND have a camp to further the dialog with the other beggars if you started without and have tried to give them food again on earlier cardboard delivery visits.
I don't believe the "help Dino Dave first" requirement was ever given to me from one of the others, presumably because I didn't have a camp.
Recruiting the beggars to a fresh camp seems to be a rather painful experience (I backed out and reverted to an earlier save point after succeeding), as they use up a large number of calories daily, while half of what they can forage (and much that you can get) has to be processed through cooking to actually be dumped into camp calories, and they can't cook (and have next to no skills, so most of them can't even assist in batch cooking). I haven't got any idea of how to ensure the PC has a sizeable calorie buffer when recruiting them, though.
The quest to get an electrical motor for the resident (Jenny Forcette(?)) was rather misleading about where to find those motors. Every electrical two wheel vehicle I've seen so far have had the small version (while I've found the medium one in the automatic street sweepers).
If the mole quest is implemented, I'd recommend not requiring the beggars as mandatory participants, as they may be gone from the center when the quest is given. If it's present in 0.E2 stable it seems to be "blocked" behind one of the two quests that are for locations further away than my character has moved (kill bandits and investigate lost caravan), while I'm capable of recruiting the beggars.
Draco Drune's quest worked out OK, although I was puzzled that his grass retrieval activity wasn't noted as a quest. I've since realized the latter was because it's more of a trade option (like flour for bread, and sell stuff in demand to the merchants). It wouldn't hurt to have trade offers noted as a separate trade offers tab on the mission screen, though.
Edit:
Edit 2:
The mole quest was indeed beyond one of the kill quests. The description talks about sweet talking to get the job done, but even when I managed to get the mole to reveal himself I was unable to report back and had to aggravate and kill him, which goes contrary to the description. The quest was possible to perform without getting anything useful out of any of the residents (the beggars, except Dino Dave, were recruited a season before daring to take on the kill missions).
Boris Borishenko seems to be bugged. Every time I try to talk to him I have to point out that the center needs a carpenter and he tells me to return "later". Returning weeks later still results in the same dialog. For whatever reason, I didn't manage to get him through this dialog the first time until after the back room had been cleared out, so it might be that a trigger never gets triggered because of the order in which the events happened.
The Tacoma farm (which is an extension of the refugee center) has a quest for knife spears (if I remember correctly). However, the description is obsolete as the desired item is actually the primitive version (which, according to forumites, used to be the only one).
My issue report got shot down and closed https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/issues/46092 but I still believe that the dialogue for the Free Merchants Broker in the Refugee Center is unintuitive and that something (not necessarily my first suggestion) should be done to make things clearer regarding his bulk buy needs.
That's not really part of this sub-project, it's a fairly minor tweak to an already written NPC. Feel free to clarify his dialogue to help show which option is about what he wants.
I have two small bug reports for this dialog. First is that Boris doesn't actually explain what he wants in the "Ash's Laptop" quest (note the dialog history):
The second is that Jenny Forcette has an inescapable dialog bug when you have more of the skill she teaches than she can teach (going to guess either fabrication or electronics). It will only present options for "Ok, teach me!" and "I can't learn anything from you" (paraphrased), with no option to leave the tree and leaving a force-quit as the only way out.
Not sure if I should continue this thread or open a new issue, but here are some issues as of 0.F stable:
Edit: (Minor editing of the above for clarification).
Edit 2:
Edit 3:
I am creating this as an Issue for the purposes of organizing what I need to do and adding it to the 0.E project, with the hopes of getting my bum in gear and finishing most of this off for 0.E
In the process, I am dearly hoping to recruit some other people to work on refugee center dialogue.
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
The refugee center is one of the first and therefore most important NPC contact points for the game, and for the forseeable future is likely to be the start point of much of the factional interactions. I have been working hard on it for a while but there is still a ton to do.
Describe the solution you'd like
There are several major groups of characters in the refugee center.
The beggars: these are a collection of friends stuck in the lobby of the center. They are too frightened to leave, but not doing well there.
The surface refugees: these are a sort of second class citizen among the free merchants, suitable to be taken into the center but not able to fit downstairs. They live a terrified life on the surface.
Free Merchant representatives
Old Guard representative
Guards
Additional context
I am not married to any of the Refugee plots, but I would like to finish the beggars myself. If anyone wants to help me with the Refugees, drop me a comment and we can discuss what to do.
I do not expect to complete this entire project for 0.E but I would like to get the beggars done and all the refugees in at least.