Episode 48: Tell Me About Yourself! (PC Backgrounds.)

Predestinated Days is intending to offer more conversation options to the player subject to the various backgrounds that they allocate to their PC and companions or other created PCs. Furthermore, as I wanted to support exported PCs from other games, as much as my own first module, allowing the player to add a PC background retrospectively was important to me, so that's what I did. Read on for more details and other news ...

PC Backgrounds

One of the big areas I have been dealing with over the last week or so is building a GUI to allow players to quickly and easily work with a PC's background. Normally, this is a "feat" option that is only allowed for Created PCs from the start of play. I believe a builder could also pre-allocate a background "feat" personality for potential companions, but unless this has been done, then this "free" feat, which generally comes with pros and cons for taking it, is often not used. However, with the new GUI, a player need only right-click on their character sheet portrait and an option to add any missing background can be achieved. (See this week's screenshot below.)

In this case, I believe having a PC background to be a very useful aspect of play that both players and builders can put to good use, especially when role-playing a particular PC within conversations. For while we all generally like to play our PCs certain ways, having some background guidance can go a long way to help steer this gameplay. Take for example a PC who is a bit of a "flirt" compared to one who is more of a "bully"; they would tend to approach a conversation rather differently to one another. Therefore, while it is important for the builder to be able to provide a useful selection of options, having some stereo-typical background types can also help us to add "colour" the conversations too.

There is an argument that this may make our PCs appear rather two-dimensional, and I do understand that. However, compared to every conversation otherwise speaking with "one voice", then having a few core background types options thrown into the mix cannot help but make the conversations a little more interesting. To this end, I looked at the backgrounds and decided to set aside five core groups, of which the fourteen character types we have available to us fit within. Look at the following table ...

PC Background Types

A table showing how the fourteen background options split across the five core groups.

NB: There is an ERROR in this table. COMPITENT (sic) should be CONFIDANT.

How The Backgrounds Fit Into A Specific Group

When a player comes to play Predestinated Days, I am hoping they might select a PC background for each of the PCs they play, with at least one coming from each major group. If they do this, then when it comes to actual conversation gameplay, the player should end up with one or two different options that better reflect their PC background choice. Furthermore, and to encourage such play, I give an additional XP award every time a potential role-play option is opened, irrespective of which conversation line the player ends up taking. And now, with the new GUI, even adding a PC background that previously had not one added for one reason or another, can simply add one.

Writing the conversations and taking extra care to ensure I can include some better background type choices certainly takes more time, but I hope the end result will add some more gaming depth and personal role-play for the player. So while not every conversation will have these extra lines, I hope to include them in many, especially the more important story related ones.

PC Portrait GUI

On the back of adding a new Background GUI, I also looked into the existing portrait XML, from which the new Background GUI is associated. I found a really odd unintuitive setup for selecting a new portrait, and it was clumsy to use, and so I edited that to make the whole portrait selection much more user friendly for those that like to change their portraits for their PCs.

I was also able to write a new XML that allows builders to force update a portrait on a PC for any reason. I did this after andgalf (of the NWN forums) requested such, and as I was in that area of coding and it was something I also was looking into doing, I just went ahead and did it. The end result worked for andgalf's purposes, but it did not yet do what I was after due to requiring an XML file for every portrait. At the least, it may come in useful at a later time.

World Map Travel

I also spent some more time finishing off some world map code, especially the area of code that calculated map travel speed and related times. I wanted to give the player a "real time" feedback of passing time as they travelled the overland map. This is done now and works well enough for my liking. Furthermore, as Predestinated Days intends to use all three world map systems, arranging all the various waypoint types (WP) depending on the system the player wanted to use was a task. For example, in some places a player may choose to use a MAP and jump to a location on the map, or choose to travel overland instead. Two jump types for two different scenarios. Add to this a potential portal jump option and keeping track of WPs becomes tricky, as much to ensure overland map GUIs are on or off as much as anything else.

The First Day Updates

Updates to the first module of The Scroll campaign will now be referred to as updates to The First Day, which is the proper working title for the first module. To clarify, I may still refer to my modules as The Scroll in general, as that is the campaign name, but each of the three module of which it comprises each have their own name.

Anyway, module one, The First Day, continues to benefit from general campaign improvements, including updates to the weather system (clouds are randomly scattered now subject to weather condition); a couple of open door conversations have been made more "secure" to avoid overzealous clicking by players. All these updates, as well as others mentioned in previous posts will become available in the next v1.41E release, so be sure to download it. There will also be a new module release, as mentioned in previous posts, but will also benefit from other updates of late, including some waypoint colour changes for ease of locating. E.g Exits in cyan; important point in yellow.

Once my wife has finished her latest play through, I will likely upload v1.41E then, unless there are any other alterations I want testing prior to another release.

Missing PC Backgrounds Can Now Be Added During Play!