Karl Giesing closed issue #47: Survivor Stories at Karl Giesing / 7D2D A21 Modlets

Karl Giesing
2024-06-23T03:30:31Z

New flavor dialogs

The basic idea is this.

"Advanced" NPCs will have an additional buff applied to them when they spawn in. This buff will automatically generate random values for cvars - provided they don't already have those cvars set.

The cvars will represent their relationships to different types of people, and how the relationships ended (since the NPCs are alone now).

These are the cvars that are used:

relationshipParents: parents (or possibly, extended family)

relationshipSibling: siblings

relationshipSpouse: spouse

relationshipChildren: children

relationshipGroup: the group that they used to belong to, post-apocalypse

The cvar values will correspond to different ways that their relationships ended:

Don't show (cvar not set)

Did not have this relationship (or they died before the apocalypse, if everyone has this kind of relationship)

Killed by zombies

Killed by the player

Abandoned the player

Abandoned by the player

Dialog responses can be shown or hidden according to combinations of these cvar values.

For example, let's say relationshipChildren is 2. That means some children were eaten by zombies, but whose children?

If _relationshipSibling is > 1, then they're their own children.

Else if _relationshipSibling is > 1, then they're nieces or nephews.

Else if _relationshipGroup is > 1, then they're children that were rescued by the NPC from the group.

Setting these cvars could also take into account "authored" NPC features, such as:

Age (especially if they are young)

Male/female (this should really be man/woman, but that's what it's called in code)

A tricky situation is how to determine the gender of their spouse. Ideally this should not be determined solely by whether they are a man or woman.

Note: This will require new dialog requirements, since the SCore requirement checks for cvars on the player. Also, there is no dialog requirement (or existing cvar) that deals with gender.

Lootable human remains

Human remains (gore piles) could be given loot lists, and the loot could contain new personal items, such as:

Family photographs

Photograph of two people, torn in half so one person is missing

Pictures drawn by their children

Alcoholics anonymous card ("God grant me...")

Organ donor card

Military ration card - modeled after WWII ration books

Valentine's day (or birthday?) card that reads "If there was a zombie apocalypse, I'd kill you last!" (smiley face)

Quests to find family members (this would require a new SCore class so you could only turn them in to NPCs with the above cvars set)

Vanilla buried treasure quests

Some of these could also be added to the loot list for purses.