234ab said:
How can I create journal entries? (this is the first)
- for characters
1. Open the "Price of Neutrality" in Djinni, then extract the journal.2da file. Also extract the Characters conversation file. Save both of these somewhere in your Data directory. Do NOT change the names of the files.
2. Exit Djinni, then restart it. (Djinni only sees the files that are in the Data directory when you start it up, so if you add new files to that directory, you need to exit Djinni, then restart it, before they'll be usable.)
3. Add the journal.2da and Character conversation files to your module.
4. Open the journal.2da file in Djinni. Right-click on it and select "unfix." Right-click on it again and select "Add Row."
5. Click on the new row you just added. In the "Category" column, type in the word "Character." In the "EntryID" column, put in the name of the character, a slash, and the journal entry. For example "Shani/gave_quest". In the "Picture" column, put in the file name of the character's picture that will show in the journal when the player reads it. For example, "jp_p_shani". Don't include the file's extension, so even though Shani's journal picture is "jp_p_shani.dds," you don't want to write the ".dds" in there. Leave the other columns blank.
6. Save the journal using the save icon at the top of the page, and Djinni should fill the blank columns with "****" for you. Check your entry and make sure it saved properly -- Djinni sometimes replaces EVERYTHING with ****, even when you've typed an entry properly.
7. Right-click on the journal, select "fix," and save again. Check your new entry again, then close the journal file.
8. Open the "Character" conversation. Right-click at the very top of the tree and select "Create Dialog Node."
9. Go to the new dialog node and enter whatever you want this journal entry to say when the player reads it.
10. Bring up the "Properties" box (Use the menu to View, Utility Windows, then Properties). Go to the "JournalID" line in that box and click on it. You'll get a pop-up with all of the Character journal entries that the game knows about. Scroll until you get the one you just added to the journal and select it. (In this example, it would be "shani/gave_quest.") Save the character conversation file and close it.
11. Go the the menus and select File, New, and Neverwinter Script. You'll get a new window with a blank starting script. It will have
void main() on the top line, a "{" on the second line, and a "}" on the last line.
12. In between the two curly brackets is a blank line. On that line, type,
AddJournalEntry ("Character", "charactername/journal_entry_id");
Of course, you replace "charactername" with the name of the character you entered ("Shani" in this example) and you replace "journal_entry_id" with the journal entry id you entered into that slot in the journal ("gave_quest" in this example). These things ARE case sensitive, so make sure you don't write "Shani" in one place and "shani" in another. And of course the journal entry id must be EXACTLY as you typed it in the journal.2da. Typing "gave_quest" in one place and "gavequest" in another place will make the whole thing not work. So, in this example, the line would look like this:
AddJournalEntry ("Character", "Shani/gave_quest");
13. Save the script you just wrote, using a new script name. You'll probably need to add a LOT of journal entries during the course of making a new adventure, so it's wise to have some sort of custom or pattern for naming these things. I named all of mine "ck_js_entryname." My initials are "CK," the "js" is for "journal set," and then the name of the entry I was setting. You want to make sure that none of your scripts has the same name as one of CDPR's scripts; you don't want your adventure to call that script instead of the one you just wrote. None of CDPR's scripts begin with my initials, which is why I started all of my scripts with those two letters.
14. Call the script when you want the journal entry to be added. If you want it added when the player starts the game, you can put it in the start-up script. You can call it from a conversation, from a quest phase, or from a trigger. Djinni has a lot of choices and versatility, so you can call this script in a lot of different ways. Make sure you DO call it, though, or the player will never get or see your new journal entry.
- for vocabulary...
- for monsters
You do the same thing to make journal entries for these, except that instead of "Character" in the journal category, you put "bestiary" for monsters and "Info" for vocabulary. And of course you add the text of the journal entry not in the Character conversation file but in the bestiary or info conversation files.
And the quests:
I don't understand some things:
- quest beggining condition (The beggining quest of the game, it's need the quest phase is equal quest beggining?)
You can use anything you want to start the quest off. Since you want the player to understand what they're doing and why, you'll probably need to have the player talk to a character or read a sign or watch a cutscene or something, to orient them to what's going on in the world. You can set the quest to begin to a Hidden journal entry, if you don't want to add anything to the journal about characters, places, events, etc., then use that hidden journal entry as the starting condition. The player never sees Hidden journal entries, but they can be used just like normal journal entries for advancing quest phases. (And of course, you don't have to type the text the player sees, the way you do for character, place, bestiary, etc., since there IS no text that the player sees.)
So, if you were making an adventure where the Countess had her jewels stolen and Geralt was supposed to get them back, you could have a conversation between the Countess and Geralt, and at the end of that conversation, Geralt would get the quest to retrieve the jewels. Or you could have the player watch a cutscene where Geralt sees what's happening, then have the cutscene call a script that gives the journal entry that begins the quest. Or you could have the script called by a trigger on the ground, and as soon as Geralt steps forward from his starting place, he gets the journal entry that starts the quest. It's all up to you!
- characters is dead it's need a monster "tag" name or the spawn file name?
You need the tag from the monster character template. For example, if you look at the drowner character template -- the one that's named m0_drown.utc -- you'll see that the tag box contains quite a few strings. It says "of_drown; monster; carrion; drowner1_skin." You don't need to enter all of these in the "character is dead" box; you only need the "of_drown" part.
I'm not mental retardated (I'm a beginner in the Djinni Adventure Editor)
Djinni can be a challenge, it's true. I've found that reading the Djinni Wiki does help a lot. What also helps a lot is to open a working adventure in Djinni and look through it in detail. I'd recommend opening "The Price of Neutrality" in Djinni and looking at all of the files in it. What are those quests doing? What's happening in the conversations? What's happening in the scripts? What triggers do they have on the ground, and what do they do? What's going on in the NPC story files?
Look through all of those files, trace things from one file to another and see how it all fits together, and you should be able to learn anything you need to. I slavishly followed the instructions in the Djinni Wiki when I first started, and that
is one way to start. But I found that going over "The Price of Neutrality" in detail -- and really understanding what was happening and why -- gave me a much better understanding of how to use Djinni.
Good luck!!
