The Long-Awaited Furnok Fix

Next up the the Long-Awaited series . . . (okay, so this one wasn't actually long-awaited, but anyway . . .)

What it does:

• Separates the Know When to Fold Them quest and room-for-pay dialogue chains with Ostler at the Welcome Wench, making each available from the onset but neither dependant upon or associated with the other. This allows players not interested in the quest to avoid hearing about it until they want to, while preserving the direct method to set up the free room with Ostler.
• Adds 6 customized spoken lines to Furnok and Ostler's dialogue, including Ostler easter eggs!

[Old notes, left here for posterity]

The idea here was to eliminate the tedium of playing cards or dice with Furnok and having to listen to him say "Why . . . look at that!" over and over. I for one dreaded having to do that. I acknowledge that detecting Furnok's cheating after only one round would actually be less realistic than the original way, but I can't see how the original method ultimately served any other purpose than to delay the game in irritating fashion. With this fix you either catch on or not. If you don't, you can approach him over and over again to play some more, but I don't think that will be too neccesary as the skill check is really easy to make. I didn't change that, just eliminated what appeared to be a counter that prevented you even checking on the first 3 or 4 hands or rolls. You are sure to lose 10 gold to Furnok now; more if you can't catch him, but not any less. Just remember to use the right type of PC to try to catch him.

As for Ostler, this fix addresses two weaknesses: one was the irritation of having to be bumrushed about his Furnok problems right at the start of the game, which always bugged me because normally I'd just want to memorize spells, etc. at that point and not yet get involved in Hommlet intrigue; the second was what I perceived to be the unlikely chance of him approaching utter strangers to do his bidding. Now at least he knows you're somewhat reliable since you've done honest business with him once already.

Should be compatible with any saves that haven't already gotten to this point in the game. (Not many in this case.) Extract to your ToEE root directory and enjoy!

Long Awaited Furnok Fix v2

 

Damn I am loking forward to playing this stuff

 

Not sure I'm following you Sitra . . . the first time you talk to Ostler you can have a room (at a cost of 2 gold) in the span of 4 quick mouseclicks, as opposed to the 10 or so that you had to go through originally while you listened to his Furnok pitch.

As I've got it now, you play only one round of cards or dice with him at a time. This is because the skill check is rolled on that first round. If you fail it then, you'll fail it forever, so there's no point in that character continuing (other than to screw with players, which I don't really want to do here).

If I'm reading the original code correctly, you never had a chance (percentage or otherwise) to catch him the first 3 or 4 rounds. After this introductory period, you simply did the skill check, and if you made it you got the option to confront him, and if you didn't you just went on as usual. So the only thing I effectively changed is to eliminate the introductory period.

Like I said above, the skill check is really easy (a 2 in Spot), so most of the time you'll just catch the frigging guy, assuming you're not using a PC with a low spot skill. While this fix isn't really adding anything to immersion (something's that's actually quite tough to do with ToEE's limited abilities with dialogue), it is reducing irritation. I hope. :errf:

Hope that all makes sense.

 

Okay, cool. Thanks for the explanation. But my main objective here still stands - that of doing away with the clickfest of card or dice games accompanied by his repeated lines. Being as there's no way to actually make this interesting, I think it's preferable to just have a one round thing if we want to keep the quest around at all. Would the current method ultimately be much different than lowering the 7 to whatever equilvalent number it takes to get it done in one try?

I suppose I could add an initial dialogue option where you could immediately ask to get involved in the Furnok matter. That way you could either choose to get a room or do the Furnok thing, but not have to go through the Furnok routine immediately if you didn't want to.

 

An 'are there any adventureres here?' type line (somewhat more subtly presented ) would be perfect. Usually I want to skip Furnok altogether and would be glad for this mod - other times, I want to get him out of the way immediately.

 

I'm going to be anal and quote the original module:

Or, the player has 40% chance winning (at least at cards) as Blue said.

None of this has anything to do with the chance of catching him, of course.

 

This actually sounds reasonable to me though, as a person without sufficient skill to detect card or dice cheating would never detect it, not just be delayed in detecting it. The only way an 'average Joe' would catch on is if Furnok wasn't really that good at it. But the question might be moot because . . .

Given this, and given Co8's longstanding commitment to module loyalty, it should probably just be restored to it's original state. It sort of begs the question though: does module loyalty (as opposed to ruleset loyalty) trump poor implementation, or more acurately the limitations of the engine itself that prevent effective implementation of certain game elements? In other words, are we obligated to click through 7 (or whatever the figure might amount to) tedious hands of Ferdian Gambit with Furnok because it says we're supposed to in the module? I can't imagine how anyone actually enjoys this. :shrug: More likely we all just tolerate it now because we know the free room carrot is at the end of the ordeal.

It might be different if you actually played the games with him, with a new gambling screen magically appearing when the game starts, but of course that's not the case. Instead we get [click to deal another hand] - "Why . . . look at that!" The very purpose of this mod, and likely any more I might do, was to kill this foolishness when it doesn't work well and streamline the more mundane aspects of the ToEE experience.

I'll have a look here and see what I can do, although as you note Ostler's .dlg file is actually fairly complex compared to some others (at least for 'advanced' modders like me ).

BTW, thanks for all the input again, everybody. :thumbsup: