Quests and Milestones

We might need a way to keep track of our ongoing quests.

I setup a system like this:

• I have a collection of quests
• each quest has an ID (a unique name) and a name
• each quest has a collection of milestones
• a milestone has an ID (a number but could also be a name) and a description what the player needs to do
• the milestone also has a condition-check that needs to have a custom function assigned; this function will be triggered by the questsystem to check if the milestone is fullfilled and what is the next milestone-ID
• the condition-check will be evaluated whenever the 'tick'-function is called (whenever a passage is entered) thus requiring no manual checking each quest in each passage
• additionally there is the possibility to progress the quest state with a 'forceQuestMilestone' because it can be though to write a good conditional check
• milestone and quest also have a hidden-callback that can be used to hide them from the player
• a questlist-passage can be shown to display the ongoing or finished quests (unless they are hidden)

So we have:

• some simple Quest & Milestone-Object
• a QuestDefinition that needs to be hardcoded in the game, setting up all possible quests, their milestones and condition-check-functions
• a questManager-Object that operates on the QuestDefinition
• because the save system cannot restore objects with dynamic assigned functions, there is a helper-object 'questData' that stores the actual active Ids; only that will be used for persistance instead of the whole questManager
• after initing a new game or reloading a savegame, the questmanager needs to get hold of the questDefiniton as also the questData

With this system we can setup branching quests. But how about milestone that consist of multiple sub-milestones that need to be fullfilled or that are exclusive?
f.e.

• get entrance to the castle
  • defeat the guard
    and
  • pick the doorlock
    or
  • climb above the wall unseen

Actually you can write a condition-check that does and/or evaluation like above. But since the milestone-text is statical defind in questDefinition, the text cannot be modified (you cannot display that the guard was already defeated). You could however split this up into 3 quests (but that is tedious):

• mainQuest: get into the castle somehow; has condition-check if quest1 or quest2 is finished
• quest1.MS1: climb above the wall unseen; condition check if you are inside the castle or mainQuest has already continued to next milestone
• quest2.MS1: defeat the guard;condition check if guard defeated or mainQuest has already continued to next milestone
• quest2.MS2: pick lock;condition check if you are inside the castle or mainQuest has already continued to next milestone