Quest Markers

[jhooks1]

The quest directions in MW were downright awful, I would have to cheat many times to find where I was supposed to go. I would really like to see openmw have the option of marking the next location for a quest on the world map. Kinda like how when you visit a city it is marked with a square. Is there a way to do this already? I haven't played in so long.

[Ace (SWE)]

The problem as I see it is that in Morrowind, positioned quest stages don't really exist, instead you have pieces of writing in your journal that are used as stages in a specific quest. And journal writings can't be linked to a location or an item, so in order to add quest markers for the existing quests; someone would have to dig through all of the questlines that exist, find which part of the game that triggers the upcoming quest stage, and create some kind of marker in that position. Which is a big undertaking, even considering the UESP wiki.
If someone were to do that to every single quest stage in Morrowind then possibly OpenMW could be made to show those quest markers on your map.
It's still a huge amount of work to be done, for a feature that has lots of controversy around it. I've heard that many players like the quest markers, can't say that I'm one of them, and from what I've seen many mod developers don't feel that strongly for quest markers either.

But I imagine it's very much inside the realms of possibility, it'll probably just be hard setting up the groundwork needed for the feature, and even then it'll be as a mod for OpenMW and not a core feature because of the modifications to the game world.

Perhaps in the future we'll see a "Questmarkers.omwaddon" or whatever fileextension the project decides upon.

[jhooks1]

That's true, it would take a good bit of work on our end (post 1.0). I am sure modders would be willing to mark them though.

Personally I want an option to get some sort of hint (world map marker) if I can't find the quest. I am not sure if I would want things to show on the local map though and definitely not the full blown oblivion/skyrim compass.

[Chris]

I imagine we could add fields to the quest stage (journal entry) that specifies either object references or cells. The "current stage" for a quest (determined by the highest journal entry ever "set" for a given quest) is used to specify what a marker should be pointing to. If no object or cell is set for the current stage, no marker is shown for the quest.

That way you only need to handle quests and quest stages that need a marker, and even then can do them iteratively (do some quest markers now, some later, some after that, etc). You don't have to redo everything either, just go through the existing stages and set objects or cells for the stages.

[Rhys]

If the quest/journal know's what object/npc/activator is required before moving forward why can't we determine it's location? (assuming the required item/NPC topic is unique).

[Ace (SWE)]

In Morrowind, quest stages (journal entries) don't have the slightest clue what might activate them, instead scripts can call a function to set the quest stage whenever the script is executed. Maybe as part of a conversational topic or an activator.

[Chris]

In Morrowind, quest stages (journal entries) don't have the slightest clue what might activate them, instead scripts can call a function to set the quest stage whenever the script is executed. Maybe as part of a conversational topic or an activator.

Oblivion's the same way (SetStage command, callable from scripts, topic responses, etc). For this idea, the journal entries wouldn't have to care about what "activated" it, the game would just worry about the highest stage/entry ever set for a given quest, and display markers for whatever objects/cells are listed for that particular stage/entry.

[sirherrbatka]

a little offtopic but personally i found the information given in game a very precise, with small exceptions like quest for the skull.

[Ace (SWE)]

the game would just worry about the highest stage/entry ever set for a given quest, and display markers for whatever objects/cells are listed for that particular stage/entry.

The problem being that the quest stages don't list objects or cells, instead they most often give you a detailed description for how you find your way to where you need to go. Some modder will have to dig through every quest stage for every quest, giving them some kind of property stating a position or object that can add the stage in question.

Which, again, is a lot of work for a feature many people don't even want.

[Glorfdev]

At all, that's not good moment to talk about it, it could be really very-very-post-1.0 feature.