Forum:FO3 quest stages

I've started with getting the quest stages/journal entries added to our FO3 quest pages. Not surprisingly, I've run into a little issue which warrants further discussion before proceeding.

A little explanation for those who aren't familiar with the concept: When we pinned down the quest article layout as part of the then new policies and guidelines, we decided that FO3 quests should have journal entry tables similar to the ones found at UESP (see e.g. this UESP quest article). These list a quest's stages with their associated quest journal entries. Among other things, the stage numbers can be used to manipulate a quest's status via console in order to e.g. fix a bugged quest.

The issue I've run into is that quests and journal entries in FO3 do not work the same as in Oblivion. In Oblivion, journal entries are directly tied to quest stages - in FO3, quest stages and journal entries are "independent", with quest stages using a command to call up a certain journal entry when needed. Basically you only have one "table" of info in Oblivion with each row consisting of stage ID, journal entry and resulting script, whereas in FO3 you have two tables (one with stage ID and resulting script as well as another with the journal entry ID and journal entry text).

While this may not seem like much of a problem at first glance (just a little more work), for a couple of quests it is. One effect of having the journal entries separate is that you can call them independently from quest stages (directly from scripts), and some quests make heavy use of this. For example, Who Dares Wins has a whopping total of 2 quest stages but 8 displayed objectives (only one of which, the first, is associated with a quest stage).

Long story short, the format used by UESP for Oblivion quest stages and journal entries cannot be directly applied to FO3 quests if we want to display all quest stages and all quest journal entries. Suggestions for an alternate format welcome. -- Porter21 (talk) 12:14, March 2, 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm going to let this be the purview of the new Quests project. Everything you bring up is true, Porter, but we must let the new guys do some of the work!--Gothemasticator 03:03, March 21, 2010 (UTC)

We could use the quest stage as a level three heading, and list each displayed objective under it in a level four heading.

Eg,

===Destroy the Mobile Platform with an orbital strike===

blah blah blah quest stage

====Get to the Satellite Tower====

blah blah blah indepth quest nonsense.

The game itself tacks (Optional) onto some of them, so we could always do that too. Maybe some sort of flowchart wouldn't be half bad either. We could use the same sort of multi-column thing like on Fallout 2 quests for a table like the one on Baby Steps. Nitty Tok. 20:42, March 21, 2010 (UTC)


 * I quite like Nitty's ideas. I've ported a Wikipedia template for creating charts (Chart) to The Vault yesterday and created two mockups of what quest flowcharts could like here. The template is somewhat complicated to understand at first, but at least I got the hang of it rather quickly. Personally, I'd replace the "Quick walkthrough" layout section with the flowchart. Let me know what you think about the template itself and the layout change.
 * Regarding the structure of the walkthrough section, the issue with using the quest stages is that they have no real name; they are only identified with a number. I'd leave the h3 headings up to editor disgression so we can group objectives etc as we see fit; of course the displayed objectives can serve as an orientation point for the text of the headings. I agree with listing the objectives at the top of each h3 walkthrough section although I think it'd probably be better to use a template for that rather than cluttering the TOC by using h4 headings.
 * Which leads us to what was originally the main point of this thread: the quest stages. I'd propose to rename the "Journal entries" section to "Quest stages" and simply list the quest stages along with their results (i.e. what happens when this quest stage is called); if we use my other suggestions, the journal entries would be listed in the flowchart and the individual walkthrough sections already and there's not much need to list them separately from my point of view.
 * Feedback welcome :) -- Porter21 (talk) 10:29, April 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not an expert on FO3 stuff, but sounds good. Ausir(talk) 23:42, April 13, 2010 (UTC)