Chain Events for everyone

[olivier_leroux]

I've just played around a bit with quests and chain events and for me it worked, even if the event chain starts with a Chain event - although I admit it was just one Chain event, not two or three in a row.

Every time something wasn't functioning the way I intended it to, the cause was always that I didn't set the events up properly, e.g. I often forgot to select for which quest the condition should apply. Which doesn't mean the same is true in your case, maybe there IS a bug I wasn't able to reproduce yet.

But is there a reason in your case why you'd want to bother with Chain events at all? Couldn't you just do it like that (using simple even conditions):

Transfer Module (if Quest is complete)
Normal Chain: Transfer Module (if Quest is in progress)
Normal Chain: Guard Talk Statement - Take one step back?

Using Chain events only makes sense if you've got more than one condition that's required to be met (like Quest is complete AND party is facing west).

[olivier_leroux]

Ok, I did some more testing with a chain of two Chain events and I was able to reproduce the bug. But: I think I've also found out what's the problem.

Apparently it's got nothing to do with the position of the Chain event (it's okay to begin a chain with a Chain event), but DC seems to automatically transfer the event conditions you set for one Chain event to the next event in line, which is probably the cause your chain was broken. Check all the conditions on every single event and correct them if they don't make sense, that should do the trick.

I'm not sure if it's a bug or a design choice but I think it's safer to insure "Always" is the default event condition for each and every event, regardless of its predecessors.

Edit:
To make things a little clearer, what's causing problems here is not the event condition per se but the second part of it. If you've got a Chain event that fires when Quest 1 is completed, the chained event will have the same condition "If quest is completed" (and that's ok, even though it's quite futile) but the quest will not be selected (no quest, instead of Quest 1). Therefor the conditions ("If quest is completed" - no quest) will not be met.

[manikus]

Hey, look at that! Chain starting a chain works for me. (It hadn't before, but I suspect it was because of my coupling with a Logic Block event that I must have done something wrong in).

I think that JonnieR may be using Chain because it is easier to keep track visually of what is going on in the event chain.

While JonnieR's and my attempts may contradict, I assure that mine worked. I've tested with the following four chains and conditions:
Starting positions 0,0 facing East
chain #1 at 1,0
-Text Statement
--chain (if facing West)
---normal chain = Text Statement
---chained event = Text statement
chain #2 at 3,0
-Text Statement
--chain (if facing East)
---normal chain = Text Statement
---chained event = Text statement
chain #3 at 5,0
-chain (if facing West)
--normal chain = Text Statement
--chained event = Text statement
chain #4 at 7,0
-chain (if facing East)
--normal chain = Text Statement
--chained event = Text statement

In each of the cases, the Text Statement in each of the chans states what it is, i.e. "This is the normal chain." and "This is the chained event."

Simply start at the starting point and head East.

[Dinonykos]

Thanks Olivier! Maybe the problem you explained concerning quests is one of those which I met when I experimented with chains. However, I couldn't figure out what happened back then...

[JonnieR]

Thanks to Manikus and Oliver, I will try to implement your examples and recommendations this evenin

[JonnieR]

Is this a great forum or what? The response from our dedicated group is great!!!

[Paul Stevens]

Is there some prose we can add to the
Chain Event Dialog that will make things
more nearly clear?

[JonnieR]

Okay, I may testing this differently than Manikus. I start with a chain event and it works, yea! The chained event fires everytime I am facing a certain direction (north) the square with the event, yea. However, I cannot get the normal chain to fire. I expect the normal chain to fire whenever I enter the event square from any other direction other than North. Is this correct?

[manikus]

Originally Posted by JonnieR Okay, I may testing this differently than Manikus. I start with a chain event and it works, yea! The chained event fires everytime I am facing a certain direction (north) the square with the event, yea. However, I cannot get the normal chain to fire. I expect the normal chain to fire whenever I enter the event square from any other direction other than North. Is this correct?

That is correct. In my example, this happens. Please, explain more so we can get this worked out for you. Or you can show me, too. -> You can make a mini-mod (the smallest size level, with the least amount of stuff possible to illustrate the point), then start from beginning. During the opening title, hit CTRL + R and DC will record your session. To play it back, rename the .log file which will appear in your design directory to "Playfile.log", start from the beginning, and this time during the opening title page hit CTRL + P.

[olivier_leroux]

Originally Posted by JonnieR The chained event fires everytime I am facing a certain direction (north) the square with the event, yea. However, I cannot get the normal chain to fire.

Have you checked the event conditions on the normal chain? My guess is you accidentally set them to "facing a certain direction (north)", too, due to the issue I explained above.

New events in the chain will adopt the event conditions you set last if you don't change them.

Originally Posted by Paul Stevens Is there some prose we can add to the Chain Event Dialog that will make things more nearly clear?

So, instead of adding extra instructions, I'd recommend to tune DC so that it always sets the event conditions back to default ("Always") for every new event.