What is the function that you use to add text to the rumors tab in a PCs journal? Example: After story state X by talking to the pirates in Nulb (Gather Information >10) you pick up a rumor about the Hextorites looking to purchase swords or by talking to the innkeeper in Hommlet he tell you about a rumor of Hextorites attacking priests of St. Cuthbert in Verbonc. These are not quests, just rumors.
Hi there Edwin. From memory, there is a file called rumors.mes or something like that in data/mes that lists all the rumors. I think the game seems to handle their dissemination internally based on story state, so what you have to do is add any new ones into sequence so that they occur when you want them to. e.g., if you want a rumor to become available when you're in Nulb, add it within the range of where the existing Nulb rumors are. I'll look at it later and tell you if I was wrong about any of that or not. Generally I think the game takes a never-look-back approach to rumors: once you get to Nulb, you won't hear anymore rumors about Hommlet, et al. I would assume this is to avoid any non-pertinent rumor scenarios. (Party in the Temple discovers that zOMG!, Rufus is having an affair with Pishella!) I don't think you can really pinpoint who gives out rumors. NPCs either have the R: rumor dialog function - which links them to the rumor function in general - or they don't. Thus they will each blab about the same stuff. You could however circumvent the rumor process altogether and just do it via regular dialog. e.g. Gundigoot has a dialog option open up if story state >= 4 and random flag == x and whatever else you want where he tells you about the Hextorites.
Thanks for the background on rumors. It really helps my understanding of how this functions. I checked the scripts for Welcome Wrench (as Glora; the innkeepers wife, gives out a rumor) but could not see the call for it. I will experiment with it - and may just include this in dialogs with conversations options triggered by Gather Information Checks.
Okay, here's the deal specifcally: The pertinent files are - game_rd_npc_f2f.mes game_rd_npc_f2m.mes game_rd_npc_m2f.mes game_rd_npc_m2m.mes They are all located in data/mes, but you'll have to go to TOEE4.DAT for them because Co8 has never modded them. The four files are essentially all the same, they just control different sex combinations (that sounds dirty but it isn't ) ... f2f is female speaking to female, and so on. As you can see from looking at the files, the rumor groups are indeed separated by story state. Each rumor comes in a sequence of 10 line numbers, for some reason. Line numbers 0 - 190 are story state 0 (start of game) Line numbers 200 - 390 are story state 1 (exploring the Moathouse) Line numbers 400 - 590 are story state 2 (cleared the Moathouse) Line numbers 600 - 790 are story state 3 (exploring Nulb) Line numbers 800 - 990 are story state 4 (exploring the Temple) Line numbers 1000 - 1190 are story state 5 (found out about Temple factions) Line numbers 1200 - 1390 are story state 6 (found out about Zuggtmoy) This means that there are 20 possible rumors per story state, and another glance shows that 18 are already taken up per story state, so you'd only be able to add 2 per, unless 6 goes to infinity. As I said above, I'm pretty sure you never go back on story states. Looking at Glora Gundigoot's dialog file, look for any instances you can find of the code 'R:'. This is a call to the rumor function, which will result in that typical "Anything interesting in town, my good woman?" talk, even though it doesn't appear in her file itself. For example, we see it in line 18 like so: Code: {18}{R:}{}{1}{}{80}{} The R: part (2nd set of brackets) means the rumor function is called in the speaking part, the 1 part (4th set of brackets) means it will fire for anyone of intelligence over 1, and the 80 part (6th set of brackets) means that when the rumor routine is complete, you will proceed to line 80 in Glora's dialog file - "Anything else I can help you with?" It sort of sounds like regular dialog would be preferable for what you're after anyway, but this is how rumors work in ToEE.
