To speed up the Hommlet quests I added teleport commands from within dialogue to some of them. The big quest chain (Filliken, mathilde, carpenter, etc.) takes about a minute or two now, maybe less if you're very agile Example - talk to Percy's wife about their problem with the barn. She'll ask you for help. If you agree, then you get an option to go straight to the carpenter's house. Then talking to the carpenter (with his brother butting in) you get a similar option to go to Jaroo. Then Jaroo tells you he needs Terjon's consent, so you get a "go to Terjon" option, etc. It goes on all the way till Filliken gets Jaroo's approval to remarry. The church debt collection quest also got the same treatment, and also I added a sense motive check after the intimidate option - your character senses that Cavanaugh will get himself into trouble if you force him to pay, so you can back down if you wish. I'll probably add more later. I generally tried to preserve the unaltered 'ok' reply (with no teleport), but sometimes the dialogue was too cramped or potentially passed the 5 replies limit (neccesitating a cumbersome [More] option), so I didn't always preserve it. Still, there's always a way out of dialogue without getting the teleport as far as I can recall. I've tested it for both normal and dumb characters. The teleports might get you some 'monster in wall' problems if you have huge sized monsters in your party or something like that - haven't tested for that yet. But it should work alright even with 8 normal sized party members. Also, I'm still using the updated 5.0.0 (not 5.0.2) so maybe it needs to be tested with the dllfix as well. Files modified: 00005calmert.dlg 00007carpenter brother.dlg 00008carpenter.dlg 00011farmer wife.dlg 00012jaroo.dlg 00013miller servant.dlg 00014miller.dlg 00016prosperous farmer.dlg 00023terjon.dlg 00024widow.dlg 00053leatherworker.dlg 00064brau apprentice.dlg [cavanaugh] View attachment hommlet shortcuts.zip updated file: Updated Hommlet Shortcuts
Absolutely! I've long wondered why nobody has done this before. Spending an hour or more wearily trudging back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth... ... gets rather annoying. Here'e to hoping you can "teleport" all of the intro Hommlett quests! :thumbsup:
This could be a great mod if it proves bug-free, Sitra Achara. :clap: Lots of potential here too - I'd think all fedex related questing from Hommlet to Nulb could be reduced to this sort of approach. Question: with regard to your modified .dlg files, did any of the voiced lines change, or are there any additions? If so, and if this mod were to make it into the modpack one day, I'd like to see about fixing the audio files to square them with your changes. To hold forth on this topic a bit further . . . I suppose there has to be a line somewhere where running around doing stuff goes from being tedious to fun, but where is it, I wonder? For example, it's probably thought of as fun by most to perilously make your way down to temple level 4 to get to Hedrack over time, but not at all fun to march over the river and down the lane to check with the church serving lady about her flour. If we could figure out where that change occurs we could go a long way toward streamlining the ToEE experience without turning it into a click-by-numbers to complete the game routine. Something to think about anyway. :mrhappy:
I think I'd vote against Teleporting around in the temple, save by use of the actual Teleport and Dimension Door spells and Ted's Sandlewood box. Teleporting around Hommlet, on the other hand, absolutely. Not sure about Nulb. There should be a chance of running into Mickey or speaking to Bertram, Preston or Serena out of sequence.
Thanks for the positive comments If you encounter any bugs please let me know. Gaear: To be honest I usually play with sound off. But as far as I can recall I only changed the player's responses. I think the rules should be: 1) Apply only when next destination is obvious and trivial (e.g. mentioned directly in the quest giver's lines, central figures where relevant, linear quest chains...) 2) Apply only to quests in safe areas, meaning both the teleportation destination is safe as well as the route. For that matter, things like the serving wench's pickpocket attempt are considered not safe. Oldbook: I also generally object to using dialogue teleports in the Temple - it contradicts the above rules. However I've been toying with the idea of using Wonnilon or some other freed prisoner as a guide, say, once the first level is completely cleared. At the very least I'd have the guide show me to the secret staircase, in case one gets the secret door bug. Another possibility is to script an option to actually conquer the Temple levels one by one - i.e. once you've killed Romag, all his human troops, and all the other major critter concentrations, you'd have the option to send a force from Verbobonc to occupy those areas, and so on, up to the third level. As for Nulb - you are right, it's less linear than Hommlet. Currently I'm planning to put a signpost or something similar next to the bridge at the entrance, as opposed to directing the party straight from one NPC to another. That takes care of running all the way to Grud after the Imeryds Run encounter, lets you store things in your house more conveniently, and now Ah Fong won't go bankrupt so easily These I reckon are the major 'back and forth' annoyances in Nulb.
The key factor, Gaear, is risk. Does something happen or CAN something happen while going from A to B? If so, then run the encounter. If not, then it should be glossed over. In PNP a DM might say, "after a week of travelling you reach the town of Varole." That travel is ignored because nothing happened. You shouldn't teleport around the Temple because you might run into some monsters or something else might happen. There's DANGER there. NOTHING can happen while travelling around Hommlett and so it's just a boring waste of time. If your game is buggy or laggy, it can even be annoying trying to go from A to B: "I just told you to go north, why the !@#$@#$ are you guys running west! Stupid pathing!" Having to spend several hours trudging around Hommlett to complete some stupid quests for the umpteenth time is not fun. You know what you have to do, you know where you have to go, all that's left is to do it. If I weren't such a purist, I would just use the console to "levelup" and save myself countless hours of irritation and annoyance. Fedex quests in games are fine, and can be fun. While you're running around you get to see new scenery, possibly have some other encounters, and maybe come across something you wouldn't have otherwise. It's all exciting and new, full of sparkly possibility, so you're blood is pumping to see what's around the next corner. With ToEE, I've started counting the tiles in rooftops or seeing who has more fruit on their porch, just 'cause I've seen it all. EDIT: Sitra, if you have the skill, I think changing the entry point in Nulb to right in front of the house would be awesome. I rarely use my house becase it's such a pain to reach it from where you enter now. I usually stay at the inn because I can arrive right at the front door.
I've never found the House in Nulb a pain to get to. Scroll up and over from the entrance to town, click in front of your house, wait 15 seconds for your party to make the run and then go inside. While I'm definitely all for something to help navigate through Homlett more quickly, I do think putting instant teleports in the dialogue to the next location is a bit much. While experienced players already know where to go, it's kind of silly for a new player to play through the entire quest just by clicking on the person to talk, then click on the link to instantly go to the next person in the quest without having to put any (even if it is minimal) thought to it. That's why I really liked the signpost idea. It helps you get where you need to go when you know where you're going, but it doesn't hand-hold you through the quests. Maybe the answer to the camera problems is that instead of transporting you to the outside of the location in question, it puts you inside. Would that fix the problem?
Certainly looks like nice work Sitra. While I appreciate the effort involved in what you've done, I agree with Kalshane. The dialogue transport is fine for seasoned modders playing through for the upteenth time, but IMO it would actualy detract from a first time play through. If you did get the camera issue sorted out I think the signpost option is excellent. Cuchulainn.
Chuchulainn & Kalshane: I agree completely, this is definitely not meant for the first playthrough. But most of us have already gone through every possible path over and over again, and just want the safe early level up without outright console cheating. That's what this mod is meant for (although I've tried my best to preserve the non-teleport dialogue options whenever possible in case a first timer might be playing with it). I suppose I might add a teleports_enabled flag that would be set or unset in the shop map in the beginning to accomodate newbies. As for the signpost camera issue: I've managed a workaround using 2 teleports - one to a black area of another map (some level of Burne's tower), where I planted an invisible critter with a first_heartbeat script that teleports you again according to a global variable set by the signpost dialogue. It takes longer that way, due to the double map change, but it pans the camera at least. I prefer that to teleporting directly inside buildings because I want the destinations to be more 'multipurpose'. Edit: It just hit me that the solution to the camera problem might lie in the dimension door script! D'oh!
Update: The teleports are now disabled by default. To enable the responses with the teleport script, you have to set flags 400 and 401 (400 for the big quest chain, 401 for the others; I separated them in case someone wants the teleports for the big quest chain only.) Also, grain for the church quest is now also supported. View attachment Hommlet shortcuts.zip
