[Starsector Mods][0.95.1a] Persean Chronicles, a quest mod (updated 2021-10-07)

  • Post category:Mods
  • Post comments:0 Comments

v2.0.3
A small collection of one-off text-only quests.

Download

requires


All updates are save-compatible unless the first number changes (1.1.x to 1.2.x is ok, but 1.x.x to 2.x.x is not).

Source Code • Previous Versions

To get started, simply check around at bars.

Features
– Over 7,000 words
– Various degrees of branching stories (nothing too wild, but some quests can end differently or even base your rewards on your decisions)
– Custom ambient music for one quest by MesoTroniK
– No anime
2022 edit: – or catgirls

Known Issue
When doing the 2nd Karengo quest, save before landing at the destination planet.
There is a low chance of a crash due to an issue in vanilla, which Alex has fixed for the next update.
More info here:


This should be fixed with Starsector 0.95.1a.

Samples

Spoiler: click to expand
Spoiler
A cheer goes up from the men, especially the drunk ones. Karengo starts to hand out death and accident waivers and collect money for the expedition. Suddenly, his expression darkens as he cocks his head, listening to an earpiece. “Listen up!” he yells, “Seems my regular pilot got in the way of some less reputable folk, and my replacement pilot misplaced his balls this evening and can’t find ’em! We need ourselves a ship and a captain to bring this lot to Jangala! Who’s brave enough? Who else wants to make history?”

> “Captain Wisp, at your service. We leave at dawn!”

You wake up significantly after dawn with empty bottles and unconscious men strewn all over the ship’s mess hall. Karengo peels himself off the floor and gives you a crooked smile, shielding his eyes from the light. “Alright, Wisp,” he says, “let’s do this.”

Spoiler: click to expand
Spoiler
She tells you stories of her past, mostly of time shared with her father.
As a young teen, she says, they spent summers riding the latest horse mechs through the forest, looking for beehives to steal honey from;
At age 19, she broke her ankle hoverboarding a restricted mountain peak. Her father rescued her, avoiding the police to hike up with a medical kit;
She talks about his wild birthday gifts to her each year, always a different piece of clothing with embedded AI that was just shy of what was allowed by law.
As you watch, she shows how her shirt warms and constricts if it detects stress, mimicking a hug.

She doesn’t mention it, but it’s clear she is concerned that she’ll arrive too late to say goodbye.

Spoiler: click to expand
Spoiler
“Are you Captain Wisp, captain of the Kestrel?” asks one of the men, and when you nod in confirmation they all grin. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m David Rengel, and these are my associates, Fiona Jeffrey and Mike Robbins. We are members of a scientific team in the employ of the Nirvana Stellar Engineering company, perhaps you have heard of it?”

Quests & Starting Conditions (minor spoilers)

Spoiler: click to expand
Spoiler
– Riley: Starts from a planet with pop 6 or greater.
– Dragons: Starts from a planet with pop 4 or greater.
– Depths: Starts from a planet with pop 5 or greater and 30 days after successfully completing Dragons.
– Nirvana: Starts from an Independent planet with pop 4 or greater.
– Laborer: Starts from a planet with pop 3 or greater and the Mining industry.

Bugs? Suggestions? Questions? Want me to talk about why you should be coding in Kotlin instead of Java until you can’t take it any more? Ping me on

Changelog

Spoiler: click to expand
Spoiler
2.0.3 (2021-10-07)
Modified
    – Made Nirvana slightly more conclusive-feeling.
    – No relation to the Nirvana-class ship.

Fixed
    – Nirvana never firing.

2.0.2 (2021-04-04)
Fixed
    – Broken dialog if Nexerelin has the Freeport in hyperspace.
    – Added quests to the Accepted intel tag.

2.0.1 (2021-03-28)
Fixed
    – Crash in the bar when the Nirvana quest was offered (`sys.star must not be null`).

2.0.0 (2021-03-24)
Changed
    – 0.95a compatibility.
    – No other changes from 1.0.4

1.0.4 (2020-13-18)
Fixed
– Don’t kick player out of Depths if the music fails to play.

1.0.3 (2020-03-08)
Added
    – Config file to disable quests from being offered (located at ./perseanChroniclesSettings.json).
Changed
    – Clarified rewards for Depths and minor wording cleanup.
    – Nirvana is now only offered at level 10 and above (due to the danger involved and time for player to grow some reputation).
Fixed
    – Crash on some computers when playing the music for Depths.

1.0.2
    – Yanked due to issues and rolled into 1.0.3

1.0.1 (2020-02-26)
Added
    – More robust blacklisting and whitelisting. (see https://starsector.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Modding#Persean_Chronicles)
Changed
    – Slightly different text for Dragons if ending planet is hostile.
Fixed
    – Quests should no longer be offered from blacklisted locations.

1.0.0 (2021-02-20)

– Initial Release

Other Known Issues
– If other mods add systems with hostile patrolling fleets, those systems may still be chosen as quest targets

Other Modder Authors
Supports modSettings.json for blacklisting systems.

Credits
Avanitia: For proof-reading literally _everything_ and providing an incredible amount of feedback.
MesoTroniK: For the deeply suspenseful music.
Tartiflette: For market condition code in Unknown Skies.
Vayra: For taking a vanilla illustration and making it magical.
LazyWizard: For LazyLib, Console Commands
NTNU (https://www.ntnu.edu/oceans/deep-sea-mining) for art.
Many others on Discord for help, support, reports, and being a motivating community
And of course Fractal Softworks for this incredible game

Hints for the SPOILERs in the SPOILER quest.
Only read on if you are stuck.

Spoiler: click to expand
Spoiler
Note that answering riddles incorrectly will not result in quest failure.

Riddle 1

Spoiler: click to expand
Spoiler
No other path may you take
Oiled skins flash and flicker
Razer spikes grow from the deep
Titanic walls crush and smash
Heed the beginnings to live

Focus on the last line and the words of the riddle itself, rather than trying to figure out any meaning from the riddle.

Riddle 2

Spoiler: click to expand
Spoiler
There are stingers in the deep
A certain death, a dreamless sleep.
Go to beast that has no bee
No danger there, just open sea.

“Bee” and the letter “b” are homophones, meaning that they sound the same. Try reading that line again but swapping those words.

Riddle 3

Spoiler: click to expand
Spoiler
To the north and to the east
Track my movements like a beast.
A quick turn right and forward on,
Come toward me where danger’s gone

Try to follow the path described in your head, or draw it if that helps.

[/su_spoiler]
Oh, story mod! Fantastic!

Does this use the library you were working on for a backend?

Oh, story mod! Fantastic!

Does this use the library you were working on for a backend?

It does! That can be found here: https://github.com/davidwhitman/questgiver although the readme is probably a little out of date.
Here’s what the beginning of the Nirvana quest looks like, in code:

Code: kotlin
class Nirvana_Stage1_BarEvent : AutoBarEventDefinition(
    questFacilitator = NirvanaQuest,
    createInteractionPrompt = {
        para { game.text["nirv_stg1_prompt"] }
    },
    onInteractionStarted = { },
    textToStartInteraction = { game.text["nirv_stg1_startBarEvent"] },
    pages = listOf(
        Page(
            id = 1,
            onPageShown = {
                para { game.text["nirv_stg1_pg1_para1"] }
                para { game.text["nirv_stg1_pg1_para2"] }
                para { game.text["nirv_stg1_pg1_para3"] }
            },
            options = listOf(
                Option(
                    // accept
                    text = { game.text["nirv_stg1_pg1_opt1"] },
                    onOptionSelected = {
                        it.goToPage(2)
                    }
                ),
                Option(
                    // decline
                    text = { game.text["nirv_stg1_pg1_opt2"] },
                    onOptionSelected = { navigator ->
                        navigator.close(doNotOfferAgain = false)
                    }
                )
            )
        ),

I had a lot of unique bugs caused by how complex I made this, hehe.

Just wanted to post a thank you for pointing me toward your mod in my story content question. I’ve really enjoyed the story so far but I do have one question. Are the quests faction related? I am currently playing a faction that is friendly with the Hegemony so I was able to do the passenger quest but will I get the quest or if so turn it in if I am playing a faction hostile to them?

Just wanted to post a thank you for pointing me toward your mod in my story content question. I’ve really enjoyed the story so far but I do have one question. Are the quests faction related? I am currently playing a faction that is friendly with the Hegemony so I was able to do the passenger quest but will I get the quest or if so turn it in if I am playing a faction hostile to them?

Glad to hear it!
They are not faction-related. You can always turn them in, no matter your relations with the faction controlling the world.

1.0.1 (2020-02-26)

Added
    – More robust blacklisting and whitelisting. (see https://starsector.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Modding#Persean_Chronicles)
Changed
    – Slightly different text for Dragons if ending planet is hostile.
Fixed
    – Quests should no longer be offered from blacklisted locations.

Always excited for new quest mods, much rarer than ship/weapon mods. Will this expand with more quests later?

Always excited for new quest mods, much rarer than ship/weapon mods. Will this expand with more quests later?

Yes, that’s the plan. I’d like to add more interesting rewards and campaign-level interactions, things beyond text, in the future. Hopefully build on from some of the current quests based on the decisions you made. Add some interesting stuff to find scattered around that’s nothing lengthy, just “huh, that’s interesting” moments. Lots of ideas. It took me a year to finish this much, though, so we’ll see how long this takes me, plus Story Points are coming.

edit: Also, I agree; the lack of story-based mods was what led me to create this. I recycled some content I’d written for an unreleased Endless Sky mod (Dragons and Depths), finished it up, adapted it for Starsector, and wrote a few other quests. Figured this was a good time to release it and get feedback before getting too far with more quests.

Good job, quest mods is a rare thing in this game. Honestly i always wished for Space Rangers-type text quest in Starsector, hope will see this in some day.
VNSector, the possibilities are endless.
Hey i know that this question doesnt regard you mod, but how did you do that github download counter widget thing?

Hey i know that this question doesnt regard you mod, but how did you do that github download counter widget thing?

https://shields.io/category/downloads



Code:

Code
[url=https://github.com/davidwhitman/stories][img]https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/davidwhitman/stories/1.0.1/total?color=blue&logo=github[/img][/url]
[url=https://github.com/davidwhitman/stories][img]https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/davidwhitman/stories/total?color=blue&logo=github&label=downloads%40total[/img][/url]

You can also hit “Reply” to a post and it’ll show you the “code” used to write the post :)

Neat mod! Definitely worthwhile to have more quests around.

The only serious quibble I’ve got is that the quests could probably use some sort of lockout or reduced frequency – after installing the mod, I happened to stop at a large independent planet with mining and instantly got four quests; it’d feel better if they were spaced out a bit more.

Though, along the lines of changing text for the Dragons quest if the planet is hostile, I’ll note that I usually run with Nexerelin random mode enabled, and in that context, both Dragons and Depths quests will frequently end up heading for uninhabited or decivilized planets.

The quest icons are nice, too; I’m not sure if the image resolutions work out, but if they do, would it be possible to get a few extra faction flags along similar lines?

> and instantly got four quests; it’d feel better if they were spaced out a bit more.
Thanks, good feedback. I’ll look into a way to spread out the quest offerings a bit more. Maybe simply player level.

> Dragons and Depths quests will frequently end up heading for uninhabited or decivilized planets
Oops, I should add a case for uninhabited planets for Depths.
Dragons, though, should already have a different result if the planet is uncolonized, though (it won’t mention anything about tourist areas or law enforcement). Let me know if that’s not working for you.

> The quest icons are nice, too; I’m not sure if the image resolutions work out, but if they do, would it be possible to get a few extra faction flags along similar lines?
Can you expand on what you mean by this?

Leave a Reply