Request: some randomness

[Fingers]

Sorry, there's no random number generator accessible to the quests. It could be useful, but would require a lot of internal changes; any command that currently uses numbers would need to be parsed in some new way that'd allow you to insert a random statement instead of a number.

[Psientist]

I had suggested earlier, a "random number generator" kludge. Set up a number of events with the same flag (so only one gets chosen). Set the same variables in each event, but with different numbers. For example

EVENT 1: VAR1=1, VAR2=1, VAR3=1
EVENT 2: VAR1=2, VAR2=2, VAR3=9, etc.

Randomly, only one of those events will be chosen, which can then establish "random" preset values for all your global variables.

Inconvenient, but possible.

Sorry for not using actual mod-compliant language.

[Phlagm]

Oh, not a bad idea at all, I'll have to try experiment with that.

Thanks

-Jeremy

[sgqwonkian]

Psientist and Phlagm,

Any luck with the "random number generator" kludge you'd discussed? Does it work?

I tried something similar to make random items generate at the start of the game for you to trade for at Glory. The ITMS command doesn't seem to work at Glory - just the more specific ITEM command does. So I made a bunch of quests with a "havenstuff" key.

If I set the quests with an "always" flag, it would generate the first quest on the list alphabetically every time you played.

If I set the quests with an "event" flag, it'd only generate items at all about 50% of the time, and when it did there'd be one less place/esmeralda/nova/jumboshrimp etc in the universe that game. It kinda worked, but it made the universe less interesting when it did.

So now I'm left considering a third option... I could take every existing ally and event quest, and add a section near the beginning with
STAR #
FLAG existing
PLNT hope
ITEM itemname
END STAR

Pros: A different random selection of equipment would be available every game.

Cons: After playing the mod enough times a person could come to figure out "If Haven has a proton matrix, that means I'm going to be sabotaged. If Haven has a gatling laser, that means a star is going to go nova." etc.

That Con kinda bugged me, so I chose to use method #2 (events that do nothing but generate starting stuff) for my Teeming With Life mod.

But the reason I mention this is that if you're using it to generate hidden variables, this third method would work great for you.
You could have the haven quest (or brass or pirate quests) initialize the variables, and then have each (or some portion) of ally and event quests increment them by various numbers.
It'd all be invisible to those playing the mod - unlike my starting equip idea, there'd be nothing for them to reference at the start of a game and deduce what events were destined.

[mantari]

I realize that significant patches for this game are probably dead, but I'd handle the problem by (the developers) creating a few new variables. I dunno. Say...

rand5
rand10
rand50
rand100

These would be converted into a constant that would remain the same random number throughout the game.

Not the greatest for modders, but it would be likely be a whole lot easier for the devs to plug into the game engine.