I'd like to have a quest that allows repeated stages. And I want to have some stage-specific dialogue. So we'd get some initialisation in stage 10, some exposition for the player in 20, and then in 30 the player gets a choice. He or she can then go to stage 50 or 70 which eventually set stage back to 30 and the player can do it again.

All basic stuff, I thought.

Only the wiki page for http://www.creationkit.com/GetStage says


So once I've been to stage 50, can I never thereafter detect when the stage is 30?

GetStageDone is no help either, since that is true for 30 when 70 is running.

Is there really no way to get the current stage of a quest?

(Incidentally, I know I could do this with a sub quest, but I'd still like a solution. I have some plans to use state machines later on, and a quest would make a perfect engine - if I can tell what the damn state actually is!)

I don't think there is. Obviously you could just use a quest variable and set it in each stage.

Hm. I wrote that assuming the wiki is right. But, thinking about it, I am sure I've written code with repeated stages and used GetStage, and it has returned the current stage?

mmm ... I wondered about that too. Busy testing that now. I'll report back.

OK, I made a test mod. This adds a tavern wench to Sleeping Giant Inn. Talk to her and she'll advance the quest forward or back between stage 10 and stage 30.

Stage 10: auto advances when you talk to her
Stage 20: She gives you the choice of advancing to 30 or going back to 10
Stage 30: She gives you the choice of staying at 30 or going back to 10

The interesting thing is that the code to go back to stage 10 executes and the notification message that comes up shows that the stage 10 fragment is actually executing.

Nevertheless, when I talk to the wench again, she's still at stage 30

Even more interestingly, sqv also thinks the quest is at stage 30.

Here's a http://www.mediafire.com/?79eea1dpcy12415 if anyone wants to check my logic.

The worrying thing here is that without a way to test the current stage, it's hard to see a circumstance where going back to an earlier stage is useful. I mean we do get to execute the stage fragment, but we can do that easier with a function, surely?

DocClox - I haven't tested this at all, so I apologize if this is not helpful. I could see why GetStage returns the last completed stage if the quest itself doesn't maintain it's own "current stage" but instead iterates through all the stages and returns the highest complete. My thought would be to unset the stage when you want to go back. So in your example above, unset stage 30 and 20, so stage 10 will be the highest complete. Unfortunately, I don't see a function for setting a stage as done. I see the IsStageDone function, but no way to actually set if a stage is done?

That's it though, the quest doesn't automatically iterate through the stages. It automatically goes from zero to 10, which seems to be good practice, and talking to the test wench will bump it from 10 to 20 automatically. From 20 though the player needs to make a choice from dialogue.

But the stage seems to end up back at 30 anyway.

IS there a way to unset a stage? I can't see one on the http://www.creationkit.com/Quest_Script page

Really, it's no big deal, it just changes the way I design some quests. It does leave me wondering what the repeated stage checkbox is for though.

Ah well, at least I know

About the repeated stages, I think that's when for example a stage is set when the player takes an item, then set back a stage if they drop it. Then back again when collected etc.

Yes. And GetCurrentStageID is so badly named, too. It is disappointing