Many stations have a place for the player to acquire missions. For example, when the player visits the Main Hall on a Commonwealth station, they sometimes get a mission. If a mission is not available, then the player might get a rumor instead: text or dialog about a related subject.

This article describes how to create rumors in extensions.

Core Concepts

A rumor is a piece of text or dialog with an attribute, a priority, and an optional action.

At various places in the game, such as when the player sits at a bar, we search for an appropriate rumor. The search is based on attribute criteria. For example, the pub at a Commonwealth metropolis looks for rumors with the commonwealthPub attribute.

Any number of rumors may have the same attribute. We pick a random rumor out of all the rumors that match our criteria. Rumors with a higher priority have a higher chance of appearing.

After a rumor is displayed to the user, we can execute an optional action, expressed as a TLisp lambda function.

Defining a Rumor

To search for an appropriate rumor, we do the following:

Call all types at <GetGlobalRumors>.
Call all active stations in the system at <GetRumors>.
Call all existing missions at <GetRumors>.

In all cases we expect the events to return a list of rumor structs. A rumor struct has the following fields:

{
   attributes: 'commonwealthPub
   priority: 10
   textID: 'rumor.lurkingFear
   data: { nameOfHorror: "Cthulhu" }
   onExitRumor: (lambda (theRumor) ...)
   }

attributes: This is a string containing one or more attributes separated by commas.
textID: This is the language ID for the rumor text. It must be defined either by the type or the object that returned the rumor.
data: The data field is used for translating the text. You may include any required replaceable parameters here.
onExitRumor: This is an optional lambda function to evaluate after the rumor is given.

rpgRumorAdd

rpgRumorAdd is a helper function to help you generate the correct rumor struct:

(rpgRumorAdd attrib suffix priority special data)

attrib: The attribute for the rumor, e.g., commonwealthPub.
suffix: An optional suffix for the textID. The may be a list, to create multiple rumors.
priority: The priority for the rumors (defaults to 10).
special: An optional lambda function. Or the identifier 'scan to reveal the rumor source to the player.
data: Data use for translating.

The textID for each rumor is composed from attrib and suffix. For example:

(rpgRumorAdd 'commonwealthPub) ->
   textID: 'rumor.commonwealthPub

(rpgRumorAdd 'commonwealthPub 'lurkingFear) ->
   textID: 'rumor.commonwealthPub.lurkingFear

(rpgRumorAdd 'commonwealthPub '(lostShip badComms evilTinkers)) ->
   textID: 'rumor.commonwealthPub.lostShip
   textID: 'rumor.commonwealthPub.badComms
   textID: 'rumor.commonwealthPub.evilTinkers

Resolve