Quest Implementation: Generators/Event Controllers
Original Link (now dead) - http://acdm.turbinegames.com/featuredarticles/?action=view&article_id=137
Quest Implementation: Generators/Event Controllers
By Alicia Brown
A large portion of the work done in the Gaerlan quest started with either a generator or an event controller. Many players of Asheron's Call: Dark Majesty have heard tell of these, but interacting with these entities as players doesn't allow you to see the full range of what they can do.Generators are used to activate and create non-player characters (NPCs), items and monsters. Event controllers, control events so as to start or end a quest. Today's article is about this aspect of implementation, as part of the series of articles that focus on the creation of the Gaerlan Quest.
In this quest alone, 180 event-controlled generators were used, all of which needed to match the designs stated in the spec. Speed was given the responsibility of creating the necessary generators, controllers, creatures, rewards and other objects: a total of 61 non-player characters (NPCs), including controllers and visible NPCs were created, as well as 8 normal items, 11 weapons, 7 pieces of armor, 6 magic items, 27 new creatures, 8 traps and 33 portals.
This was a really complex event system Orion had designed - and since these generators are prone to err, it involved a huge amount of work. Creating, activating, testing and then (where needed) fixing each of these kept both Speed and Orion busy day and night for the entire month.
"There are three things that stand out for me in the work I did," Speed said,."and primary among them was creating these generators. *shudder* It was a TON of work. I was pretty burned out after creating all of them. It was a lot of work. Orion did a lot too - fixing errors, changing events around, making them do what they were supposed to do. Did I mention that it was a lot of work?"
A single event controller NPC was to kick the event off on the Saturday after the patch went live, so that the majority of our players could experience the event. It was scheduled to start things in motion mid-morning so European players could get involved too. On a niggling hunch, Orion checked the location of the NPC and the other controllers in the live worlds, which are invisible to the players. To his dismay these NPCs - which he refers to as the "Naked People of Hebian-to" - were nowhere to be found! Between that and other problems with the event structure, Orion had to manually trigger the events for the entire month.