Version .201 is up.  Come try it out and let me know what you think?  

Also, I'd love to see some quests start getting posted.  I have a few that I've made now that are probably good enough to share. 

Version 0.204 is up.  A few bug fixes.

An nice improvement, but perhaps I should wait to assist until the layout is final.  It will be easier to deem the ease of use of the application and design the UI accordingly if you keep it a bit cleaner during development.

1. Be able to add objectives in any order and have them go to any other objective?

2. Add a game modifier to each quest objective (i.e. give money, units, items, health, damage, etc to units before a fight)

3. Add graphics to each quest choice (backgrounds, response medallions, etc)

1)When adding monsters I was able to click the add button without selecting anything, adding an empty line to the row of monsters (but no faulty xml).

2) I chose a picture for the first and only objective, but when I arrived at the objective location the picture for the quest screen was black. My chosen picture was "bandits.png"

3) I added several different types of monsters to the battle, but they all appeared as the last type I selected. Ie, I added Bandit Archer, Bandit Captain, Bandit, Bandit, Bandit. They all appeared as Bandit. This was from faulty XML. Possibly caused by issue nr 1) above?

4)After finishing the quest I received no reward. This is faulty XML again: I selected "Common" as in get a Common item. You printed xml

what it should be is this when handing out random items:

It looks really good so far. One suggestion: In addition to being able to add objectives at different places in the list, I would also like a way to edit past objectives I have put in. That would have to take into account that I may want to alter which one is the finisher for the quest.

One more suggestion - the ability to choose which tactical battle map will be used for the encounters.

This quest wizard is amazing, it takes me 10 minutes to do a fully formed quest. Thank you for your efforts so far and I hope you continue to work on it!

You can put all data in an XML tag not used by the game to do this (serialize!). That would move it from a "very hard thing" to a "very small thing".

Thanks for the bug reports.  I will look at fixing the problems.  I didn't realize the random items went in a different field.  I've been so busy working on the program, that I haven't had a chance to play much with the quests that are produced, so I really appreciate the testing.   

Interesting thought about adding the wizard "metadata" to a separate field that is not used by the game.   That could work.  It could get pretty big however.  

Thanks for the encouragement.

I'm currently looking at this.  My quandary is how to do this and still have it be simple enough for the beginner.   It may be that "editing" is an advanced function and you have to "know what you are doing".  Currently I hide the objective ids from the user, but maybe I just expose them and let people edit them, but I won't guarantee that your quest works if you change them.  

I'd like to have a good way to do this and help people not mess up their quest.   Definitely on my To Do list.  

I found and fixed the bugs you posted.   Thanks again.  I will get a new version up when I can.  I am off to my neice's wedding today, so I don't know if I'll have time until later. 

Version .206 is up.   See the changelog for details.   Ability to add items on objectives and monster grouping in encounters are the biggest changes.

Nice to see the quest mod getting more advanced. It's a good idea I guess to make the quest maker with light modders in mind. I will mostly be using it to simplify making encounters and choosing choosy things like the tile I want to use and the pictures for each frame. Beyond that I can do the objective complications and complex functions like a choice requiring an item. 

The trick is to lure people in to make their simple mods. Once they start getting aspirations, send them over to me and I'll show them how to really make their quests unnecessarily long and complex. 

So do you have suggestions on what to add next?  I want to keep it simple enough to make it approachable (I hope it is now, it may still be too complicated right now), but useful enough that experience modders will still use it.

Can you have an advanced interface for me? Maybe something you add after the basic is completely finished? 

I don't have time to test it out extensively right now, but I will give some feedback when I do some more quests. Still trying to finish up the Path Mod and update to .98.

When selecting rewards do you think it would be possible to display what the items are? Like a small tooltip showing what unitstats they provide? And/or description for items you don't wear.

Core quests have this, would be nice to have as well

<RewardImage>WarHorseEquipIcon.png</RewardImage>

(it is the icon next to the reward text)

I don't quite understand how to make multiple choice quests yet, is it possible?

In the tactical maps list you are including Triggerdata files, those are not map files.

The third text field when adding an objective needs to be more clear, I had no idea what it was. The "choice text". It is the story presented to the player as he arrives at a location or whatever.

I would forward a guess it has to do with the size of its visual display but it's a total shot in the dark. Could be how far it's allowed to wander on the map.

-1 meaning not allowed to chase.

It does look like there are a few trigger data filenames in the tactical map list, but most of the list should work I am getting it from the data\Maps\TacticalMaps directory from Fallen Enchantress.   I'll have to figure out where I should get the list if that is not correct.

Yeah, the choice text is a left over from the xml.   I'll have to modify it with something more understandable.  YOu should have a hint from reading the tooltip though.  Hopefully it is more clear.

Just exclude files in the folder that end in _Triggerdata.xml

Going from Frogboy's suggestion, I don't know if that is something that I'll have in the basic quest wizard.  Is that something you think most people would like, it maybe too complicated to explain?   Mostly I have to figure out how to assign what objective to go to next in an easy to understand way before I give more than accept or reject type of choices.     

The objective window is getting a little too crowded at the moment and I need to split it apart if I add anything more.

What I may do is add a list (like the objective or reward list) where you can add choices to your objectives, that way you can have more than 1.  

I'll see what I can do to get the stats of the items in the tooltip, or at least a description.  

So if you have a choice that goes to an objective that hasn't been created yet, how would you suggest showing that to the user.   I.e. choice 1 goes to end quest, choice 2 goes to Quest Objective 3, choice 3 goes to Quest Objective 4   (both 3 & 4 haven't been defined).

I guess it is something that should go in after being able to edit objectives. I dunno.

And if I can piggyback on top of that request, make it toggleable.  So that users can easily move between the two, in order to see which better suits their needs and immediate capabilities.

My plan is to release the source code so that others can come up with more advanced interfaces for specific types of quests, because I know I won't have time to accomodate everything that everyone wants.   I am trying to come up with something that can be used by the new user so we have a ton of quests to choose from. 

I'd like to make something that will handle every type of quest, but I'm not sure if that is possible, the quest system can become quite complicated if you have too many objectives pointing all over.  I have to figure out a way to display that and make it easily editable.  If people have ideas on how to present that, I am ready to listen.

Things I want to add in the near future:

Ability to edit quests (i.e. load them in and change them)

Ability to delete objectives, reward items, monsters etc. from the lists

Ability to choose what objective you should go to after a choice

Ability to rearrange the objective order.

Add more pre-defined objective types

Add all the image choices to the screens (objective background, choice medallion, reward image).

0.3 version is coming soon!

couple of notes:  

• I've decided that I am probably already doing the "advanced" version even if I wanted to do the basic version. What I have now is probably already too complex for the beginning user.
• Add multiple choices per objective 
• Add reordering of objectives (i.e. choices lead to what objective)
• Added more places to add "rewards" i.e. game modifiers (before objectives, after choices)
• Added reward images, choice images

Next after that will be editing past objectives as well as deleting objectives, monsters, choices, etc. from lists.

Looking forward to it!

Wonderful! I have just a little more mod work to do and then I will be jumping in for some questing fun.