Quillfumbler

First off, as some of you may know, I've been restricted to using my laptop of late, one of the disadvantages of which is that I have to remember to press quite firmly on the "B" key, otherwise the headline of this article would have been "Quillfumler". As a result, I must apologise for any errors in my typing. All the more reason I think I should release a beta for any wannabe spell checkers ;)

There are times where I've regretted choosing the handle "Quillmaster" for precisely the above reason. People have high expectations from a "Quillmaster", and having articles with spelling mistakes doesn't really paint a good picture of what to expect. It's not just spelling mistakes. My earliest module was hardly a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination.

So why did I choose "Quillmaster"? Simply because I thought it eluded to my "Dungeon Master" background, and of course it was the name of my play by mail game on which "The Relbonian Chronicles" has been based upon.

Even until recently, my early Neverwinter creations have relied heavily on Lilac Souls Script Generator, as I had no scripting knowledge whatsoever. It's been a real blessing to me, as over the years I've began to recognise how parts of the scripts work, to the point where I occasionally got brave and further tinkered with them. With "The Relbonian Chronicles" I've managed to take things a step further still, by taking the time to visit the Lexicon in my quest to achieve something that the script generator can't create. So, if any of you have sampled a past creation of mine, rest assured that (apologies for blowing own trumpet) this one is soooooo much better!

On the subject of scripts, I had a" Eureka" moment earlier (they can be sooooo satisfying - lol). One of my pet hates in a module is... tell you what... I'll quote the line I saw on the very Lexicon page I found my solution:

"A VERY useful function if you want to add some realism to your modules. Personally, I dislike knowing that "oh, so that's where the bad guy is because that's where the map pin is", even if I don't look at the map pin's caption."

The subject is of course "Map Pins". I like a map to denote points of interest to help you find your way around, but I don't like to see things I shouldn't know about. The command "SetMapPinEnabled" is a useful way of preventing such a situation occuring. Simply place your map note waypoint, right click on it, and under the advanced tab un-check the "Map Note Enabled" box. If you test the module you'll notice the map pin doesn't display on the players map. Back in the toolkit, you can place the below script in a conversation node under "actions taken" to enable the map pin.

So how might you use the above code? In the instance listed above it's simply used when an NPC mentions a location and points out where it is. When the player enters the relevant area (it needn't be the same as where the conversation occured), they find that the map pin is now visible. Cool eh?

I'd like to say to any novice scripters out there don't give up. Let each victory no matter how small inspire you to step that little bit further :) Even if you think you can't script, check out the script generator and get into the habit of searching the Lexicon.

Now you'll have to excuse me, I have some map pins to disable ;)