This month I’m working on the first half of the main quest line which will be for zones 1 to 15. These quests themselves have three different kinds of objectives in them from location-based, looting an object, and accumulating a certain amount of kills. While the story in its current form is not that amazing this is just the first iteration of the main quest line and I won’t be shocked if I make future major overhauls to it in the years to come.

The remainder of the zone 16 to 25 quests will be worked on once those zones have been created in 2021. I also suspect a major overhaul to be going on during that time as well. Which more than likely will include a bit thicker story plotline than what I have been working on to be weaved throughout the entire thing. After that, I have further plans to expand out the questing system in 2022 with daily quests.

Main Quests

For the most part, these main quests are being planned to be available in the main town since that is the cartelized location for the player before they go off into whatever dungeon they need to for advancing or just feel like running. They will focus around a single zone at a time with everything the player needs to complete that quest being that zone.

For the current stage the game is in and testing purposes each of these quests is on individual NPCs. I’ll be worrying about condensing it down to just a couple of quest givers for the main quest line in the future and having pre-requirements in place by then as well.

In instances where I’ll be having the player going through quite a large bulk of the text, I can use a previously created behavior tree systems and modify it to assist in breaking things up. So far I have not felt the need to do so. It’s at least good to know I already have some work done if needed to go that route.

First Main Quest

The first quest the player will receive by talking with their cellmate(NPC) in the prison they find themselves in. Its design to have the player explore the zone and find a few different rooms, getting certain kills, and even find things as needed to be able to escape to the main town.

As the player runs around completing different objects in a zone the quest will update to indicate when something was completed.

It is doubtful this will be the final layout and way I display such information to the player on the right-hand side of the screen. Some minor adjustments at the very least will need to be made. I’m also playing from the viewport in window mode. Further testing will need to be done later on before I adjust certain UI elements.

Arena Trials Quests

Not all quests will be about having the player explore though a zone that will be new to them either. Every fifth zone is an arena trial where they will have to face off against a challenge that is meant to be more of a gear and player ability level check than anything else.

As a result, all of these kinds of quests will involve having an object where you need to kill a target. These targets themselves are in an arena and have been scaled to quite a large scale. The fights themselves are still under development.

In the future, several zones will also have pre-requirement checks that the player has defeated the appropriate trial to be able to advance. I’m still working out exactly what requirements or even costs to enter these types of trials will be. As that is where some of the best loot in the game will be dropping.

Quest Log

There is also quite a barebones quest log window for now. I have left this a bit basic for the time being until I have several quests to play around with and add in some better UI elements to it. I’m also not sure if I’m going have it break out into further types of questing or just lump everything that is not the main quest under daily quests. As always some details are still being worked out and planned.

Rewards

As far as the rewards themselves go for questing. The main quests will be giving the player experience, skill points on some of them, and the occasional item. Their main objective is to serve as a progression so even without any further rewards players will need to do them anyway if they want to advance in the game.

Further rewards will be planned out later on for other types of daily quests. Since I don’t plan to be working on them till around 2022 it’s not really on my radar.

Issues

So far with the number of quests I have done not everything is running as smoothly as I would like it. I will more than likely be testing and making adjustments and working on fixes for several things for a little while.

I might also add in additional quests when I need a bit of a break from trying to troubleshoot some issues. All quests themselves are child blueprints classes of the parent quest blueprint. As such I can modify the parent be reflected on the child blueprints. So unless I need a major overhaul that will affect the parts I’m working on I can within a certain degree focus on creating the quests for the first 15 zones and perfect it at a later date.

There are some targeting issues with picking up the quests on occasion which I have been attempting to address with how I handle when the player can interact with NPCs and other objects. There seems to be some line of sight issue which might be a conflict with another system I have in place for dealing with another part of the game. Another possible issue could be stemming with some optimization choices I’ve made since UI’s and a zone full of interactive NPCs can be quite a drag on preference if not careful.

There are also some issues I’m having with how I’m referencing certain objectives. Things get a bit more complicated when you for instance get a quest in one map like the main town and then move to another to carry them out. This is in part me not having saves set up in a way to handle the map switching which needs to be further built out regarding quests. Along with needing to find a more elegant way of handling certain operations the quests are performing and making references.

If all else fails I can always go with a rather lame way of just having the player pick up each quest at the start of each zone. Then have them turn it in before they portal out back to town. While that is not exactly how I want to handle things I do suspect with my limited ability and experience to have to make some compromises with what I want vs. reality and what I can achieve given the resources and time I can afford.

Final Thoughts

While things are not perfect I have six maps now with the main quest created. I’m hoping over the weekend to resolve some issues and start implanting the remainder of quests for the 15 zones I already have. Unreal Engine can be quite a beast at times to make a game in and most days things have to be taken in small steps with the expectation of hitting a major setback from time to time.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar. Screenshots are from Unreal Engine 4.

Game Development | Main Quest Line Part 1