Which to use: (1) AddJournalEntry(,Quest); or (2) UNSOLVED_JOURNAL ?

[The_Baffled_King]

The question is as per the title, albeit that it applies more widely to any type of journal entry rather than just unsolved quest entries.

Journal entries can take place during transitions either as part of an action list (the stateActionString) or by having a flag set for the type of entry (as a different transfeature).

(1) Which method is better, and why?

(2) If a transition has both a stateActionString and a journal entry added by another transfeature, which is done first?

(3) Are there circumstances where one method of making a journal entry should be preferred over the other method?

(4) What about in cases where uninterruptible actions are included in the action list (I'm aware of EscapeArea(), although perhaps there are others?)?

(5) What about in cases where multiple journal entries are made and/or erased in the same transition?

Thanks in advance for any answers.

 

[jastey]

8 hours ago, The_Baffled_King said:

Are there circumstances where one method of making a journal entry should be preferred over the other method?

UNSOLVED_JOURNAL works in a dialogue state (I put it usually at the end before the EXIT but it can also be used in different order with the other actions I think). It does not work in  a CHAIN as a local NPC specific transaction, i.e. if you put a

DO ~transactions~

behind the line of the one NPC talking, so here you'd need to use AddJournalEntry().

8 hours ago, The_Baffled_King said:

What about in cases where multiple journal entries are made and/or erased in the same transition?

UNSOLVED_JOURNAL only adds one/works only for one. If you have mutliple, you need to use AddJournalEntry().

[The_Baffled_King]

Thanks for the reply; it's appreciated.

16 hours ago, jastey said:

UNSOLVED_JOURNAL works in a dialogue state (I put it usually at the end before the EXIT but it can also be used in different order with the other actions I think).

That first bit I knew, which kinda shows how posting questions seems like a catch-22: questions with any ambiguity can be misunderstood, but removing any ambiguity adds to the word count and makes posts less likely to be read.

It seems that D files for existing dialog always put UNSOLVED_JOURNAL etc at the end, but it gets executed before the transActionString regardless. So that is my answer to (2), which in turn makes (4) irrelevant. I may as well follow convention and also stick it at the end before the EXIT : )

16 hours ago, jastey said:

It does not work in  a CHAIN as a local NPC specific transaction, i.e. if you put a

DO ~transactions~

behind the line of the one NPC talking, so here you'd need to use AddJournalEntry().

Thank you for this; it's precisely the kind of exception that I was wanting to make sure I was aware of.

16 hours ago, jastey said:

UNSOLVED_JOURNAL only adds one/works only for one. If you have mutliple, you need to use AddJournalEntry().

Yup. It was more the case that because AddJournalEntry() works, and works for multiples and in BCS too, that I was wondering what the point was of having journal entries as separate transfeatures at all? Like, the game designers must have had a reason for creating that method of adding journal entries!

I did find a situation in which UNSOLVED_JOURNAL etc can be better - when the transition with a journal entry doesn't end the dialog. If AddJournalEntry() is used, the info entry or quest title appears underneath the SAY text in the state to which the transition was pointing to, which can clutter things up quite a bit.

If there are any other edge cases like that, and like what you mentioned about CHAIN, I would love to hear about them!