Spoiler List of story helpers

[fjx]

I have found some story helpers in various storylines but still not in all. If you know more storyhelpers, write them here.
Tales of a sea hawk -
Tales of a chevalier -
Master and commander - I bet there isn't any
Assassin - sailor that approaches you in the Kralendijk port
Bartolomeu o Portugues - Pierre Delacroix that approaches you in Hopital town
Woodes Rogers - but startstoryline.c file is very helpful
Hoist the colours - random drunk in Tortuga tavern
Chronicles of Horatio Hornblower - Cecil Scott Forester in Saint John's town
Devlin opera/Blaze Devlin -
Please post the story helpers that I don't know.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

You got them all.

Tales of a Sea Hawk is the original game's storyline and never had any jump-starts for test purposes.
Master & Commander doesn't have any story to jump-start to.
Devlin stories are so short you don't really need to skip anywhere.

I wonder if we could convince Jack Rackham to adapt his StartStoryline.c cases into a talkable character instead like we added for the other stories.
Of course all these characters were added mainly for testing purposes, but it tends to help also when you get stuck and can't continue or just don't like the beginning.
They all only work if the Cheatmode is enabled.

Did you notice the "Random Drunk" looks like an old and fat Jack Sparrow?

 

[Jack Rackham]

Some thoughts about it:
My startstoryline cases were made most for myself when testing and testing again some hundred times.
A character hmm, there's a quite a lot to do in this storyline - would it be like using the complete walkthrough as dialog or should the helping characer just teleport you to a given situation?.
Cheatmode has made some strange conflicts already with this storyline so maybe I have to do it in another way.
(Base on difficult lever maybe?)
If a story helping character it could be Claire Voyant (as she knows all), or JRH?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

 

[Pieter Boelen]

My startstoryline cases were made most for myself when testing and testing again some hundred times.

That's exactly what the other ones were made for. They were just made into characters for easier use.
That's also why we've always placed them in or near the opening scene of the storyline so you can go straight to them to skip to wherever you need to.

A character hmm, there's a quite a lot to do in this storyline - would it be like using the complete walkthrough as dialog or should the helping characer just teleport you to a given situation?.

I'd figure just putting your exact StartStoryline cases into a dialog so that without editing any code files, it is possible to skip to any case you've set up.

Cheatmode has made some strange conflicts already with this storyline so maybe I have to do it in another way.

You already disabled the actual cheats of the cheatmode, so that should no longer be doing anything.
Using it to make a test character or test dialog appear should make no difference to the remainder of your story.

 

[Jack Rackham]

You already disabled the actual cheats of the cheatmode

Hrmpff.. yes
Ok I'll think about it.

 

[fjx]

A standard storyline helper would do very good.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Who is going to make one though? The way they came into being is that the storyline writers needed a way to quickly test their work.
But the Standard storyline was already there. It's not easy to do that for a storyline you haven't written, because a LOT of stuff has to be set up correctly for things to continue without breaking.
And the original storyline must be the most complicated one there is because it is NOT linear.

 

[fjx]

Why it's not? IMHO, it is.There's only one ending.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

One ending doesn't make it linear. There is a LOT of story and different ways of doing things.
You need to make sure you set up not just the current quest case, but also:
- Officers you should have you + their correct dialog cases
- Correct dialog cases for ALL other quest characters
- Location of ALL relevant quest characters
- Quest case code might need to be disabled from start game or added

It's easy enough to jump-start to a certain point in the story, but you'd run into wrong stuff sooner or later if it isn't done correctly.

 

[fjx]

I'm not English and didn't quite get the "linear" meaning. Now I understand.