Quest records are used as event driven state machines that drive many features other than quests. There are no state transitions though and states are activated and deactivated through settings, conditions, and scripting functions. Besides quests, the most common use of the QUST record is to activate groups of dialogue and barks.
For example, the "Generic" quest activates dialogue for a wide variety of unnamed NPC's such as "FemaleGenericGhoul" and "MaleGroupRaider". The "Generic" quest also implements PERK effects with scripts attached to a stage for each PERK. For example,
; Triggered by the Animal Friend perk, rank 1
; make the player friends with everybody in the AnimalFriendFaction
SetAlly AnimalFriendFaction PlayerFaction 1 1
Quest activation condition are reevaluated after in-game events as specified by the "Run On" field. Options are:
- Subject (Player selected use on object or NPC)
- Target (?)
- Reference (?)
- Combat Target (?)
- Linked Reference (?)
Some states have stages, or sub-states, that can be activated in any order. These are used to track quest events and many other things such as holding PERK effect scripts. When all stages are complete, a script event in the parent quest is triggered (need to verify). Quest (states) can also be set as completed (inactive) by script functions.
In quests used as dialogue activators, stages are used add dialogue options for PERK's, stats, and activations of other quests(?). For example, in the "Generic" quest, "FemaleGenericGhoul" condi
Fallout 3 uses the Marrowind quest (QUST), topic (DIAL), and response (INFO) records to generate branching dialog. When the player interacts with an NPC in Marrowind, a list of topics is displayed in a dialog box. A response for the NPC is displayed when the player clicks on a topic. The list of topics is controlled by the currently active quests. Not all active quests are visible to the player in their journal though, such as the WELCOME quest that controls greeting topics. Topics and responses are further filtered by conditions (CTDA) and a display priority. In Fallout 3, only the highest priority active topic is used and the highest 4(?) responses.
In Marrowind, choices can be displayed to the player by the NPC response (INFO) by using the Choice() function in a script attached to the INFO record. The results of the player selecting a choice are implemented by the script, which might activate a quest or set some variables. The Choice() function is not used in Fallout 3.
There are several ways quest records are activated:
- Automatical activated on game start (set by a flag in the QUST record)
- When a set of conditions (CTDA) is true
- By scripts
- Next quest field (NAM0) of a quest > stage > log entry record (not sure about this)
In Fallout 3, quest records are used for several purposes:
- In game quests ()
- Activator for sets of dialog such as WELCOME, ...
- General purpose event driven actions such as PERK effects
Quests have an optional list of quest stages and objectives that are displayed in the HUD compass. Stages are used for multipart player quests, but they are also used to activate effects such as tag skills.
All topics (DIAL) are assocated with a quest record. For active quests, topics are optionally filtered by a set of conditions (CTDA) and an NPC ID.