The basis of almost all quests is the Talk Quest. In this article, I talk about how I added and tested a few Talk Quests to see how they could work in my game.
Testing Talk Quests
The very basic of all quests is the Talk Quest, and for good reason. Talk Quests are the foundational building block of most other quest types.
Although there are many different types and categories for quests in an adventure game, they all share one thing in common: the player interacts with them using dialog boxes.
This makes almost all quest variations of the Talk Quest.
I want to make sure the QSM (Quest Status Manager) is working properly and that my plans for changing the Quest Status Variable will work as expected.
I will set up a few tests to try the following:
- Talking to people in the zone without an explicit quest (collecting rumors, lore, and info)
- Talking to somebody on the same map
- Talking to somebody on a different map
If these tests work, I will look at other common quest types and how I might implement them in my game.
Talking Without A Quest
I'd like the player to be able to talk with most, if not all, of the NPCs in the game, even NPCs that don't give quests could have info for the player in the form of rumors and lore.
Players should be rewarded not only with meaningful information (and the occasional red herring), but should get some experience points for talking to people, maybe even a bonus for their Diplomacy, Streetwise, or other appropriate social skill for talking to everybody in the Zone for instance.
Talking without a quest is one of the easiest Quests to set up.
For this test quest, there will be no prerequisites - players can just walk up and talk to the NPC.
All the player has to do is talk to the NPC, and receive the info/lore/rumor and a small amount of XP at which point the NPC sets their self switch to ON and Quest Status Variable to 4 (Quest completed and turned in).
Since we don't need to keep track of quest progress for one-time Talk Quests, we can just use Switch to track if the user has talked to the NPC or not. The QSM just needs to control if an icon needs to be turned on or off based on the corresponding Switch.
Let's give that a test!
Talking without a quest.
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Looks like it's working!
We are now able to talk to NPCs and gather info from them. We are using people to interact with, but you could also "talk" to an animal, a bookshelf, or a signpost.
Next, let's test the Talk On Same Map quest.
Quest: Talking On The Same Map
The next quest type to test is to talk to somebody on the same map. In this quest, the player is tasked by a quest-giving NPC to go talk to another NPC and return.
For this test, the QSM is set to check for level requirements, and if the player qualifies, the Quest State is set to 1 (Qualified for the quest, but not accepted).
The game will change Quest State when the player talks to the quest giver and the Quest Target.
Quest: Talk On Same Map
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First, we see Jonas has a Quest for us - we qualify, so we see the Question Mark icon, Quest State 1 (quest available).
We accept the quest and the Quest State is changed to 2 (accepted, but not completed).
Next, we talk to Nixie (the Quest Target). This changes or Quest State to 3 (completed but not cashed in) and we see Jonas with an Exclamation Mark icon, signaling we have a quest to turn in.
After talking to Jonas and receiving our reward, the Quest State is set to 4, and the chat bubble is cleared.
It works!
Quest: Talk On Different Map
This quest is the same as Talk On Same Map, except the quest target is on another map.
The QSM on the target map can be changed to update the Chat Bubble icon on that map if I want to indicate who to talk to, but in this case, I just copied the Actor from the first map and placed her on the second map and it all worked.
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Your Turn. What Do You Do?
Do you agree that Talk Quests are a building block for other quests?
Share with us in the Comments section below. I'd love to hear your opinion about which quest type is the most important.
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