Unanswered question: making friendly races un?

[lexicat]

Hi There,

I have a quest in which I would like to make a formerly friendly race, let's use the Zorg as an example, turn hostile.

The line:
ENMY Zorg

appears in my quest (along with various other good and awful things).

Everything works except that the Zorg do not actually become hostile after the quest has been triggered. Any advice on how I am supposed to accomplish this? Is preenc supposed to be employed somehow?

Thanks much,
Lexicat

[Phlagm]

I don't think the preenc has to be used necessarily, only when you're trying to make them enemies right before you encounter them. I have encountered many problems with getting races to change friend and enemy status, and I haven't quite worked out why.

But you say that other things in that quest block are being evaluated?

Here's what problem I once had: preenc flat wouldn't work on the corrupted tan ru quest, so I had to make it an encounter. So you'd end up fighting the tan ru and THEN they'd become friendly. It's quite annoying.

[lexicat]

Phlagm,

Yup, all the other aspects of my quest seem to work: i just can't seem to make (all) members of a friendly race, turn hostile.

Lexicat

[sgqwonkian]

Are you just changing the status of one race, or more? I ask because I recently discovered that certain commands only work once per PAGE. It's not documented anywhere in the ModMaker's Guide, so it took a lot of frustrating debugging to figure out what the problem was in one of my mods. Not sure if ENMY is one of the codes this applies to, but it's a possibility. If it is, spreading the commands to multiple pages with GOTO's will solve that issue.

Also, certain PAGE codes seem to work in Quests but not in Devices, and vice-versa.

[Phlagm]

Oh yeah, I actually figured that out too. Like it'll only take the last one.

[sgqwonkian]

We should compare notes sometime. I bet we've been banging our heads against a lot the same walls.

[Phlagm]

It's funny. Other than this and one other minor problem about the order certain things display, I just wrote an in-depth quest very very carefully, and miraculously it pretty much worked.

I tried that with my Tan Ru quest, and then I went back and tried again doing it one PAGE at-a-time, and testing it thoroughly, but still I ran into insurmountable problems in both instances.

I'm going to try that one again, though. I'm just sick of wrestling with it...and I'm also disheartened because there was so much I wanted to do with it, but so much of it can't be done, so the quest I'm ending up with is a weak blending of the Kawangi and Ravian quests. I am going back to formula.

[lexicat]

sgqwonkian said:
Are you just changing the status of one race, or more?

Just trying to make a single race become hostile. ENMY does not seem to do it.

[Fingers]

How are you triggering the page that should make them hostile? I think the "encounter" is never triggered with known friendlies, as that's part of the sequence with the radar screen... And the radar doesn't come up when you go to a star occupied by known friendlies. "preenc" should always get triggered however.

[lexicat]

Hi there,

Oh, I am not trying to make a friendly race unfriendly during an encounter, I am trying (and failing) to make that race (wherever encountered), hostile afterward in future encounters. To make up an example, a quest involves the player straying unto and accidentally defiling the sacred Zorg burial planet. Thereafter, the Zorg are hostile to the player. (until and unless they are made friendly through some other quest or item, like an encounter while accompanied by a Zorg escort, or using the Mantle of Babulon)

So:
Player visits planet and triggers quest
Arbitrary race's stance is set to hostile (i.e. future encounters will be hostile)
Profit! (ha ha)

Except that "ENMY zorg" doesn't seem to do this. How do I do this?

Thanks for checking in, Fingers!

Lexicat