Pixel Crushers Forum

Tony Li wrote: ↑Wed Nov 21, 2018 6:17 pm Hi,

Procedural quests are a little complicated to get started with. I added an example to the tutorial assets:

QuestMachineTutorialAssets_WithProceduralChestQuest.unitypackage

To play it, you must also import some free assets from the Asset Store:

• A Piece of Nature: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3 ... ture-40538
• Toon RTS Units - Demo: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3 ... demo-69687
• Toon RTS Units - Orcs Demo: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3 ... emo-101359

The files in are Quest Machine Tutorials / 05 Procedural Quest. The scene is Supplemental Chest Example.

The quest giver will generate a quest to bring him the chest of gold from the mysterious circle.

It uses these assets:

• DomainType_Circle: Represents the mysterious circle.
• EntityType_Chest: Represents a chest of gold.
• Faction_Chest: Represents the chest's faction.
• Action_Retrieve: The action to move the chest from its current domain to the player's inventory domain.
• EntityType_QuestGiver: Represents the quest giver.
• Greed: Drive type.

The first step of procedural quest generation is to make a list of the entities that the NPC knows about. In this case, the NPC watches the Mysterious Circle domain, which contains a chest. So the NPC knows about the chest.

The second step is to run urgency functions on all of the entities. The NPC's faction relationship to the chest is -100. The chest has a Threat urgency function. You can think of it like this: The fact that the chest is out there in the world, and not in the NPC's possession, is a "threat" to the NPC's happiness. So the NPC will choose to make a quest about the chest.

The third step is to choose an action. The NPC will choose the Retrieve action, which removes the chest from the world -- that is, it removes the "threat" to his happiness.

Quest Machine doesn't have an inventory system, so the example action is simplified. In your game, you could define a new action to actually give the chest to the NPC. The action could listen for a message like "GaveToNPC"+"Chest".

The quest giver's Greed drive is +100. Action_Retrieve has a Motive whose Greed is +100. The quest giver will choose this motive because it's similar to his Greed drive.

The last step is to make the plan. The Retrieve action has no requirements, so the plan is only one step.

Once you get the basic quest working, you can make it more complicated. For example, maybe the Retrieve action only works if there is an open chest. To change from a closed chest to an open chest, the player must complete a "Cast Spell" action. To cast the spell, the player must first get the spell scroll. To get the spell scroll, the player must defeat a wizard. Then the plan might consist of these actions:

• Defeat: Wizard (Effect: adds scroll to world)
• Get: Scroll (Requirement: scroll is in world. Effect: adds scroll to player)
• Cast: Scroll (Requirement: player has scroll. Effect: remove closed chest; add open chest)
• Retrieve: Chest

Tony Li wrote: ↑Thu Nov 22, 2018 6:15 pm Yes, you're correct. I chose the complicated setup because I thought it might be more familiar, since it's very similar to the procedural "kill orcs" quest.

But you could simplify it by writing a new "drive alignment" urgency function. In fact, I might include this urgency function in version 1.1.0.

This urgency function would simply return a value that indicates how well the chest's drives align with the NPC's drives. I'll use normalized values (-1 to +1). For example, if the NPC is greedy (Greed = 1) and the chest of gold has a drive of Greed = 1, then the urgency function would be 1 * 1 = 1.

If the NPC is somewhat greedy (Greed = 0.5), then the urgency function would return 0.5 * 1 = 0.5.

If the NPC is not greedy at all (Greed = 0), then the urgency function would return 0 * 1 = 0. If an urgency function returns 0, the NPC will not generate a quest about the entity.

Let's say there's a chest of gold (Greed = 1) and a chest of silver (Greed = 0.5).

If the NPC is greedy (Greed = 1), then the gold would return 1 * 1 = 1. But the silver would only return 1 * 0.5 = 0.5. This means the gold's urgency function has a higher value, so the NPC will more likely choose a quest to get the gold instead of the silver.

Using this urgency function, you don't need to use factions or the Threat urgency function.

GorkaGames wrote: ↑Thu Nov 22, 2018 6:55 pmI've set up a very easy "kill" quest where there are 3 entities (enemies) that are into the domain.
Once I kill them I get the reward, everything fine.....
But I come back to the quest giver and she is giving me again the same quest another 3 times (even when there are no more entities on the domain, I have also check this on the component in run time).

GorkaGames wrote: ↑Thu Nov 22, 2018 6:55 pmAnother thing I've seen is that if there are more than 2 quest givers only one is showing the UI Quest Indicator....... I`ve got for instance one for manual quests and another for procedural, and even when both have quests to give to the player when game starts, only one of them shows it.