[FIXED][01573][R#198]Blank Jones/Mission NPC/Dod/Terminal Dialogue Mega Thread

part two of mission where you have to go to Biological Research Laboratory to give 3 different shots to Dr. Flemming's pets.
One dog there is a "workaround" wich gives you a bloodsample / analysis from the doctor.
Mr. Jones will of course take the mission item, but mission will not end.

Problem: In NC all mission goals, no matter of their order, have to be fulfilled. With having no chance to fulfill the goal of conversation with Dr. Fleming this goal still remains open. Even after correct conversation with Mr. Jones.

Result: Mission can not be achieved / ended

With certain NPC's. for example, the decryption terminals in the DNS servers, with the panels in the reactor room, and with certain npc's in the world, they either show a blank screen if I spoke to no NPC, or, they show the last dialogue that came through my screen. It usually never has any text options when that happens, and I have to push escape to get out of the conversation so I can keep playing

Okay, anyone having the same problem, there is a work around. Apparently, if you switch your client to german, and do the same quest, everything works as intended. I find it curious how so many npc's have this same bug. According to THN, this has been a problem since 168. I don't know if it would help the development team, but perhaps consider comparing the dialogue scripts from 167, to the current version, and see if perhaps something is showing up differently? Just a thought!

EDIT: Thinking on the problem, considering it is so broad, I bet checking the scripts from just him wouldn't do much. There's some greater function at work here that is failing for an entire class of certain kinds of NPC's, something in the english version wasn't terminated with a semicolon or whatever syntax the scripting language takes. Without the termination it can't break out of the function and it loops back whatever was in the buffer last, but only on certain types of quest NPC's. I think that's very important. NPC's like the decryption terminals, the control pannels in the reactor room, and the man standing by the sewer entrance in Via2, all of them exhibit the same kind of behavior, which leads me to believe they are a certain class of npc. I noticed that I'm not able to kill them, and they behave differently than other npc's which speak fine.

Thanks for this. As the NPCs you're finding the problem with work using the German language setting, this should be part of the English scripts rather than any wider AI issue (annoyingly, the more annoying issue to fix! ;)). Unless perhaps you have managed to reproduce this on god-mode NPCs when they're speaking German?

Are the NPCs you refer to an exhaustive list of the ones you've encountered the problem with? If you can provide as many NPC names as possible (as they appear in game) that will go a long way in helping us resolve this one faster, by narrowing down where we need to look. :)

Cheers,

workaround: after talking to jones, abort the mission

after talking to jones again, you will get the next mission

I have a hypothesis trivaldi, I think these type of god-mode quest npc's (There's a man under the ramp by Via-2, outside my apartment, beside the sewer entrance, who does this as well) and any of the data decryption terminals (in each of the Faction DNSes in Neocron mainframe) as well as other god-quest npc's. They all exhibit the same behavior. I shot an email in-game to [GM] Baldur who I reported it on that I believe what we're seeing is that in the english scripting, there's a function these npc's call on for getting their dialogue, and it pulls from the conversation buffer. For some reason, the buffer isn't cleared and giving their dialogue for a given situation, which tells me the check for the situation in which determines the text output is not terminating, without that termination, the script continues past that without going into the check on what dialogue the npc should show. Mentally, reverse engineering the system suggests to me that there's case logic which is being addressed, which checks to see if there's a certain quest condition, and if that's the case. Something on or before this check isn't terminated right, I don't know if this scripting language uses semicolons or some other character, but the line isn't ending and the check isn't going by. Likely, after this check, before dialogue is shown, there's likely some buffer clearing command which goes through, the buffer isn't cleaned because the logic doesn't go through, and we get the last output seen in the npc conversation window.

The NPC's I've listed are the only ones I know of that exhibit this problem, but I would happily follow around a GM and test multiple others to experiment with this theory!

So my brother, and nephew are both new players who are trying to do their Mr Jones missions. They made their characters pre patch, and are now trying to do the missions... but Jones won't talk to them, my brothers rank is 13/10, and my nephew is ranked 11/9. There should be nothing stopping them from doing their missions... but that is pretty crappy. We are going to continue playing... Why is this, is there a way to correct it? I can message their character names to whoever wants to look into this.

Has anyone else had this problem? Logging out, and back in doesn't fix it either.

have them write an ingame ticket/help request, so game mods will care for that problem.

Had the same issue,

rerolled char and did it again, that seconds time it worked out.

But once the char has exceeded a chertain level i can see that rerolling is not an option anymore.

I think I've already seen this reported somewhere when randomly browsing the forum but can't find it now - basically, the mission is broken because of that bug that happens when you talk to two npcs, and npc no.2 will just repeat whatever npc no.1 said last instead of its own proper dialogue. can't give the shots to the animals properly because of this.

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Originally Posted by voodoo47

I think I've already seen this reported somewhere when randomly browsing the forum but can't find it now - basically, the mission is broken because of that bug that happens when you talk to two npcs, and npc no.2 will just repeat whatever npc no.1 said last instead of its own proper dialogue. can't give the shots to the animals properly because of this.

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That sounds like the generic Mr Jones mission bug where the NPC isn't being flagged as a mission target (no indicator on the hud) and just displays the last conversation you had.

I've had this across several Jones missions and had several GMs look at it and the only way I've been able to get around it is abort and go and run other missions for a while and try later (abort/retake doesn't work, logout/in doesn't work, respawn NPC doesn't work), or just delete and recreate the character if you haven't done anything else.

The real bug with Field Medic is you can't give the shot to the dog. The workaround for this was to abort the mission and speak to jones again who then gave you mission 3 (there was also an NPC stood next to the dog at some point you needed to speak to as well)

will try the workaround, but the main point is that this is a bug that should be fixed asap - if I were a new player, this would probably drive me off, there is nothing more annoying than not being able to complete a quest because of a bug, and it definitely shouldn't be the first thing a player bumps into.

Hi,

Just started to play and encountered this issue: the construction machine (at Construction Facility) used in the Jones Driver quest chain does not react properly, it just shows either a blank display or the last conversation in the quest chain. No options to choose and no chance to continue the quest. Restarting the quest did not help.

I have tested it with three characters, with the following results:

Spy: Construction machine broken right in the first Jones Driver quest. I have the required item from the first step. Guy sends me to the construction machine. Construction machine shows blank screen. Restarted quest: same result

Tank: Construction machine worked in the first quest, a dialog shows up with the option to fix machine. However in the third mission, where the machine is needed again, it was now broken. Result: broken mission, no car.

PE: similar to the experience with the Spy the construction machine refuses to work right in the first mission. This time it showed the dialog I had with the guy handing me the machine part, but no options to select from. Only thing you can do is hit Escape.

So this construction machine seems to be buggy like hell, although there was one out of 5 times where it worked.

On a side note: if you use the NavRay to get from the guy who gives you the machine part to the construction facility you end up in a shop in plaza 4. I had to go to ViaRosso2 to make the NavRay switch to a correct path.

Hope this can be fixed soon, otherwise I have to delete 3 chars (and likely quit right away).

Thanks!

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Originally Posted by stosto78

Spy: Construction machine broken right in the first Jones Driver quest. I have the required item from the first step. Guy sends me to the construction machine. Construction machine shows blank screen. Restarted quest: same result

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Tested it a few mins ago - works well for me (german client).

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Originally Posted by LeoPump

Tested it a few mins ago - works well for me (german client).

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Thanks for testing!

This seems to be a weird bug. As I mentioned before it worked for me as well 1 out of 5 times. After reading your post I tested it again twice. No luck, still the same unresponsive quest dialog window at the construction machine.

So either I am too dumb to realise what I did different the one time it worked, or this is a complex issue only happening in a specific constellation. There might be some action I perform that triggers it, but I don't know what. Or Neocron simply hates my IP address.

I have the English client, downloaded from this site here. No clue where I could get the German client from.

Getting tired of testing and hope someone can help.

Thanks!