I tried searching but I wasn’t able to find any real info about the “Find a Book” mission. It seems there is no dialogue coded for this mission. My question though, is can it still be completed? My knowledge of coding is very limited so I’m not positive I’m looking in the correct place, but I did some poking around and I see that in mission_start.cpp the section for place_book is blank. If that means that no book is even generated when this mission is given, would it be better to disable the mission totally until such time as it can be coded in?
There are several “Find a Book” missions, it would really help if you described which one - Ranch Foreman, Nurse, misc NPC. And the symptoms better - is there no text from the NPC when you ask for the mission? What exactly happens?
For the Ranch Foreman and Nurse, they are asking for a copy of books that are generally generated - not exactly common, but by this point in the game likely to have been found. “Homebrewer’s Bible” for the foreman, “Guide to Advanced Emergency Care” for the nurse. Try going back to them with that specific book and see if it advances?
Sorry for not providing more information in my original post. The mission I was referring to is the one given by misc. NPCs (like the one generated near you at the start of a game). When the NPC gives the mission the text says “Someone forgot to code this message id is 78, topic is TALK_MISSION_OFFER!”. When you accept is says, “Someone forgot to code this message id is 78, topic is TALK_MISSION_ACCEPTED!” When you talk to them again it says, “Someone forgot to code this message id is 78, topic is TALK_MISSION_INQUIRE!” In the in-game mission list it simply says “Find a Book”.
As I said, my understanding of the code is limited so I may be completely wrong but it doesn’t appear like it is actually setting a book as a target when the quest is given.
In missiondef.cpp it shows:
MISSION(_("Find a Book"), MGOAL_FIND_ANY_ITEM, 2, 800, false,
&mission_place::always, &mission_start::place_book,
&mission_end::standard, &mission_fail::standard);
ORIGINS(ORIGIN_ANY_NPC);
There is no item listed in there. Where for the nurse mission you mentioned, it’s got:
MISSION(_("Find Advanced Emergency Care"), MGOAL_FIND_ITEM, 5, 50000, false,
&mission_place::always, &mission_start::ranch_nurse_8,
&mission_end::standard, &mission_fail::standard);
ORIGINS(ORIGIN_SECONDARY);
ITEM("emergency_book");
FOLLOWUP(MISSION_RANCH_NURSE_10);
I hope this helps narrow things down.
It kind’ve looks like maybe the mission just isn’t doable at all… which would make me rather sad, because so many of my damn misc. NPCs keep giving it to me and I’d really like to be able to tell this whiny bastard to stay home and mind the armory while I’m off looting. But everyone asking about this mission seems to get the same answer: radio silence.
I converted this mission from “Find a Book” to “Find the Zombie Guide”, which makes it solvable on current save games by having a copy of the Zombie Survival Guide in your inventory. I submitted a pull request:
(hopefully, I did that correctly - I don’t use github much)
and I’m hoping the devs will pull it in shortly.