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Once you hit the Add button, or right click Root and hit Add, you get a new Journal Quest. This consists of the main information and a comment field:

ItemDescription
NameThis is the name of the quest. It can be a string reference or basic text, and appears in the players journal as the title of the entry. It cannot change later (unless SetTlkOverride is used) so use separate quests for longer or multi-faceted quests, and use RemoveJournalQuestEntry as noted below to remove one before adding the subsequent.
TagThis is a case sensitive tag to use in the script commands and for the variables set for the journal (see further down)
PriorityThe priority of the quest purely affects the ordering in the journal when the client orders by Priority.
XP0 or higher, this is the XP awarded for the quest. If the conversation option is used it's awarded automatically, else if scripted use GetJournalQuestExperience to award it.
CommentsThis is a hand written comment which isn't visible to player but useful for builders to make notes about the quest.

Journal Quest Entry

Hit Add on a quest itself to add a entry. These can be cut and pasted, but not dragged since the order is reflected by the ID.

ItemDescription
IDID of the quest entry. You need to keep track of these yourself (you can't retrieve them from the journal in any way) commonly Bioware used increments of 10 or 5 meaning additional entries or smaller updates are easier to "slot in".
Finish Category

If checked the journal entry will appear in Completed Quests tab instead of Quests tab, and essentially be marked as done.

Completed Quests tab example:

Image Modified

PriorityThe priority of the quest purely affects the ordering in the journal when the client orders by Priority.

Using Journal Quests

There are two ways to interact with journal quests; conversations (under Other Actions) and scripts.

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The example is shown in the screenshots underneath.

Variable PrefixExample with quest M1Q5_ErgusTypeExampleDecoded ExampleNotes
NW_JOURNAL_ENTRYNW_JOURNAL_ENTRYM1Q5_ErgusLocal Integer1010This is the state of the journal, by ID. This is the most useful variable to check a quests current progress.
NW_JOURNAL_DATENW_JOURNAL_DATEM1Q5_ErgusLocal Integer461136

Day 5, Month 6, 1372

Calculation:

Base Day: 1

Year: 1372 * 12 * 28 = 460993

Month: 6 * 28 = 168 (= 461161)

Day: +5 = 461166

This is the calendar day the quest was set.

This is calculated by the amount of days since year 0. There are always 28 days and 12 months in a NWN year.

Calculation: 1 + (Year * 12 * 28) + (Month * 28) + Day of the month.

Pseudocode to convert back:

Code Block
nCalendarDay = 461136;

nDay = (nCalendarDay % 28);
nDay += 1;
nMonth = (nCalendarDay % 12);
nMonth += 1;
nYear = nCalendarDay;


NW_JOURNAL_TIMENW_JOURNAL_TIMEM1Q5_ErgusLocal Integer1670576

13:01

Calculation (based on 2 hours per minute):

Hours: 13 * 2 * 60 * 1000 = 1560000

Minutes: 1 * 60 * 1000 = 60000 (1620000)

Seconds/Milliseconds: Total of 50576 left so must be 50 seconds, 576 milliseconds.

This is the time of the quest on that day.

This is calculated by milliseconds in the day, so depends on the HoursToSeconds value the module has.

NB: Hours are 0 through 23, minutes 0 through 59 and seconds 0 through 59, and milliseconds 0 through 999.

Calculation: (Hour * Hours per minute * 60 * 1000) + (Minutes * 60 * 1000) + (Second * 1000) + Millisecond

Pseudocode:

Code Block
nTimeOfDay = 1670576;

nMillisecond = (nTimeOfDay % 1000);
nTimeOfDay /= 1000;

nSecond = (nTimeOfDay % 60);
nTimeOfDay /= 60;

nMinute = (nTimeOfDay % HoursToMinutes(1))
nTimeOfDay /= HoursToMinutes(1);

nHour = nTimeOfDay;


Script Functions

The main script functions are:

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The date in the journal is automatic based on the in game clock, a nice touch.


Did you know?

  • There is a "Picture" identifier for each quest suggesting Bioware at one point was going to allow a picture to be used against each quest. The picture is not fully coded however and is missing some relevant files, so doesn't work even if the number is changed.
    • It doesn't appear the GUI or MDL files that remain have space for the picture so who knows what it'd have looked like!
  • Bioware was going to code a way for DMs to add and edit journal entries. This was called "World Entries" and in fact the network functionality still remains as does the GUI information in jnl_wld_dm_new.gui but there is no available way to invoke it.