Thanks... your quest wizard was rather impressive and looked great, this doesn't look that great, but it works on the features I mentioned above (at least on my computer).

Other features I'm going to include is a popup to tell the user what the internal names of all the items, units, monsters, resources. Right now I just have notepad++ search for everything I need and for what the user might need. But I'm going to let this project sit for about a week.

Murteas do you know how to distribute these programs beyond "here is the .exe file?" some sort of installer, my education in this field is rather limited.

Indeed, I am amazed and I admire all the work you have put in to improve the Elemental series. Hats off to you sir!

It works and I've already designed quests and tested quests on it. What is missing are the error checking features and some help lists for the internal names. The other problem may be the UI is not desirable for other people to look at. Give it a go and tell me what you think. I tried to get rid of all the quest breaking bugs from it, haven't found any really. (Not to mention me learning WiX to distribute)

If I load up the corequests.xml and look at the quests throughout each of the featured places and save the file, it is nearly identical to the original file (like I said no functional difference between the two)

I can only point to this and say: "It is the truth." Although I am not able of C# programming... So I wont be of any help here.

Maybe I'll look into the designer itself one day. Not today though. And probably not tomorrow.

Also please keep us informed parrot! I for one would like to know of the ongoing events in this epic quest of creating an epic quest creator.

I've uploaded pictures of the initial editor for those that don't want to try it out and can look what is going on. The pictures are automatically loaded from the file that is indicated in the file from the LH directory (or the user document directory (as long as people have things installed in the usual place, you shouldn't have to edit the directories), and placed where you would actually see the picture. Clicking all the buttons will run you through the quest, throws a popup indicating battles and how many units in each. I've also updated the original to popup a horrid looking progress bar. But I'm just getting functionality working.

As to present the source here, I'm rather embarrassed by how the code is in the current state, I'd want some time to clean it up before I'd have another read it. The next part I plan on putting in is a temporary file that will contain your current quest you are working on, so if there is a crash you can grab at least a piece of the quest.

So, I've updated the quest editor a bit. I've found a few bugs and fixed them stealthly over the past few days. I've updated the quest test run to include a log file for you to look at after you visually ran through the quest. It will report items that are given goodie huts that are spawned. Conditions that need to be met. It will aslo provide warnings in special cases where an internal name is located and  warn you  if it is not there.

Out of curiousity has anybody tried the editor? (By the way although I programmed this with LH in mind, it will work with FE (I've tested that out myself), you have to set the directories for your FE install and location.

Plus, I would like to know what people would want with this editor as I'm still in the stage of adding new functionality. It already can duplicate ANY quest that is already in LH (including the Random events)... I will add functionality to include movies (so you don't have to edit this with an outside editor). At this point I looking for suggestions.

All that I'm doing currently is making the code readable for somebody else to use (I've looked at a WiX installer) and I think I can create one for this, but it really just needs the .exe and one of the two text files I've included in the zip file above.

I'm curious if Brad or Derek or anyone at stardock have any suggestions for this editor.

Parrotmath I HAVE tried the editor, and I absolutely LOVE it!!! It will be a great tool to those of us who wish to generate more quests for the finished game, and will definately help add variety to the quests so we don't have to encounter two same ones in a single game...

Of course, your end goal of 80 new quests will also be much appreciated by everyone as well

Many thanks for your tireless efforts to make the game the classic that it deserves to be, and to give the rest of us a great playing experience!

I checked it out quickly but haven't had the chance to have a detailed go with it yet.  

But, I thought the "quest tester" looked really nifty, nice work.

Thanks for the positive comments. Just a few more tweaks then I'll feel confident to throw this into a beta. Just really need to optimize some of the code so everything runs quicker...

Movie support is in the game itself, so we are talking about bink. Although, I will not have my editor play the movie, it will just be editable to have within the game. Think the blood curse event... it pops up a full screen movie. Or any of the wildland movies.

You can definitely set up your field to force adventurers with you on a quest... take a modified version of a escort noblewoman quest. Just change the unit and BAM you've got your escort the adventurers to fit for you quest.

Say a quest you talk with a vampire... it moves you over to a choice dialogue, but if you have a particular item on you the quest can lead to failure immediatly. Or lead to a choice dialog that opens up a new choice. Setting it up for particular classes that will take some cleverness on your part that adds phantom resources to the champion when they choose that class or attribute. But it may be done and lead to different things. In fact, all the encounters on the quest do not have to have a 100 percent liklihood of happening. In fact you can (not via the editor at the moment) set up two seperate encounters, with different likelihoods of occuring (at least I think, haven't tested this completely yet). Also, the rewards at the end could have differnet likelihoods, though modifications to the editor will need to happen. I look at this as being able to quickly create a skeleton quest and then you break out notepad++ to satisfy the more intricate details of the quest.

I will retry the one-click install process again. My other tests haven't been as successful as I would have liked. I'll give it another go and test it on my other computer at home to see if I can get that to work out. Otherwise I'll use some WiX installer to do exactly what you are suggesting.

If you would like to write up some documentation with it that would be great. Currently, I haven't added any real tooltips for all the functionality or even a help file.  If you would like to try out the program and see what kinds of details are needed for a manual that would be great.

I tend to write all my documentation in TeX and then compile this into a pdf. I've not really thought through what people would need to know in a manual.

Basically a manual would turn almost into a tutorial on how to create a quest for LH. But I would appreciate the documentation help. I'm still adding and modifying the presentation of the stuff, but the overall structure isn't going to change very much. Try it out tell me whatcha think and where improvements should be made and I'll see if it is reasonable to do it. For the most part that big edit box on the left where all the quest is shown to you as you would see it in the XML file... that is going to stay because that is one of my favorite features. Allows me to look at the code without saving what I've done and edit it within the program (future advanced feature).

I should probably write out some of the limitations of the program in reading quests. For example, there can only be read in 1 encounter per choice. There can only be 1 game modifier per treasure at this point. Some of these limitations might be removed however. Just going to figure out some different UI in certain cases.

Updated: Minor bug fixes and a few more features as I learn more of C#...

parrot, I will dl the editor this weekend and take a good look (as a user - I have little programming skills, just enough to be dangerous!)  Smile.  Hope to have well thought out feedback for you by mon... and a first draft of a tutorial/user guide for "the rest of us."  is OK?