Quests

Quest structure

The structure of a quest can be viewed as a tree and are comprised of three parts.

• Quest Chain: A chain is only completed when all quests associated with the chain are completed

• Quest: A quest is only completed when all objectives stages it contains are complete. A quest can contain as many stages as it needs.

• Objective Stage: A objective stage is only completed when all objectives it contains are completed.

The name of this example quest chain will be "A Helping Hand"

• First quest Cleaning The Farm

  • Objective Stage 1

    • Collect 5 Apples

    • Collect 3 Carrots

  • Objective Stage 2

    • Return the apples and carrots to Farmer John

• Next quest is called Tractor Maintenance

  • Objective Stage 1

    • Refuel the tractor

  • Objective Stage 2

    • Get in the tractor

  • Objective Stage 3

    • Drive to the farmland

• Next quest is called Plow the Farms

  • Objective Stage 1

    • Plow the carrot farm

    • Plow the apple farm

  • Objective Stage 2

    • Talk to Farmer John for your payment. (Completes the "A Helping Hand" quest chain)

This structure allows you to create similar architecture to quests you can find in many popular RPG's. A quest can have as many stages as you want, allowing you to create lengthy quests that might involve several scenes.

Branching quests

There are no in-built mechanisms for brancing quests, but rather it's put into the hands of designers to dictate how quests branch out. I personally handle this through Task Graph's, and I am responsible for deciding where and how quests are accepted, completed and ultimately locked out from the player.

For example, two dialogue choices are given to the player and each will accept a different quest. You might want to lock out the other quest that wasn't chosen, but there might be other parts of the game where that quest could be accepted, so you wouldn't want to lock it from the player.