Just Adventure: Developers' Zone - Any plan for building dialogues?

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Topic: Any plan for building dialogues?

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All Forums : [Adventure Games Forum] : Developers' Zone > Any plan for building dialogues?

#1 6 MAY 2006 at 3:20pm
John_QuestDome Intergalactic Janitor Posts : 78 Joined: 21 JAN 2005 Status : Online	Is there any effective plan that a game-design team could follow in order to build dialogues for a complex adventure game? There are a lot of variables .... Is there any way it can be done following an existing public plan? :-? John&&project-manager & game-designer&&QuestDome Interactive
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#2 6 MAY 2006 at 5:32pm
Steve Ince Private Detective Posts : 571 Joined: 7 NOV 2002 Status : Offline	Not quite sure what you mean. o you mean the structure of the logic that drives the dialogue? o you mean keeping track of what's already been spoken about? Or are you asking about how to construct quality dialogue? Steve Steve Ince - Writer and Designer
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#3 8 MAY 2006 at 7:49pm
John_QuestDome Intergalactic Janitor Posts : 78 Joined: 21 JAN 2005 Status : Online	A structure that can be used to know what has been spoken already, or how what has been spoken will affect other dialogues John&&project-manager & game-designer&&QuestDome Interactive
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#4 9 MAY 2006 at 6:27am
Ivinia Guild Master Posts : 4459 Joined: 7 JUN 2003 Location: US Status : Offline	I would assume (and Steve would know better than me) that you give each piece of dialog an ID number. Then set up a table with conditions (other IDs) that need to be met before this particular piece of dialog can be used. The table would also contain a field for which NPC that belongs to. You could also set up fields for blocking certain dialogs from being spoken. For example, if the player chooses a hostile response then flag certain NPC dialogs as unavailable. You could probably also make that a value (0 - 100) instead of a flag (true/false) - ala Oblivion - and depending of how the player responds, or what actions they have taken, that number can go up or down. So you'd need 2 fields for that dialog, one for the minimum number required for usage and the other for the players current rating with that character. If the players current rating with that character is greater than the minimal number required, then it becomes available (assuming the other conditions have been met as well). This is fine for an RPG with many different quests, but in an AG you could potentially create dead ends if the player keeps choosing dialog options that have a negative impact.
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#5 9 MAY 2006 at 7:05am
Steve Ince Private Detective Posts : 571 Joined: 7 NOV 2002 Status : Offline	I don't think it's possible to lay out a single structure as each game will have its own needs, particularly as every scene in a game is specifically written. It's better to develop good working practices and principles when developing the logic that surrounds the conversations. The way that I lay out my scripts is the way that I keep track of what's being said and when. Have a separate script for each character the player character talks to and put a lot of comments in so that you can follow the logic. Sometimes, rather than a table, it's useful to build a flow chart for the structure of how the conversational logic hangs together. Alongside this you should have a written logic "walkthrough" with any variations or conditions that apply to the dialogue. For instance, you may have two characters where their conversations play out differently depending on which one you talk to first. The best way to do this is to have both their scripts open at the same time, switch back and forth between them and have the conversations' conditionals reference each others variables. In a game like Oblivion, where they have huge budgets, they can afford large teams of writers, but for most of us making a variable range from 0-100 is wasteful - you're never going to have 100 variations of all of your lines to reflect this. In my experience, keeping track of variables is much easier when those variables are boolean. It means that you have a lot of variables but you always know that they are either true or false. You may have to set a separate variable for each "mood" (and set all the others to false when it's set to true) but there can be no ambiguity. Steve Steve Ince - Writer and Designer
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#6 9 MAY 2006 at 8:33am
Ivinia Guild Master Posts : 4459 Joined: 7 JUN 2003 Location: US Status : Offline	Steve, let me clarify. I wasn't saying you should have 0-100 variations for dialog. I was assigning a value for making a dialog available. For example, you have two values - one that is the characters current feelings towards you, and the other being the minimal value before a dialog is triggered. Lets say their current feelings towards you is 20 and their are three potential dialogs that character might give (for the same question asked). The first has a minimal value of 0, he second a 50, the third an 80. Being that the current value is a 20, the first dialog is in play. uring the game, the player may complete a task for the character for +25 making their rating now a 45. Still only the first dialog (for a given question) is in play. If the player does something else, that might have a value of +10, making their rating a 55 and opening the second dialog (for a given question). Again all of this is if you want to have your game dependent on character actions. Questions asked in a hostile manner could drop the rating. Granted, I still think all of this is much more evident in an RPG than an AG. Not saying it would not work for an AG, but generally you are dealing with one story so doing this could be quite a challenge. In the case of AGs that have become the norm, the booleans would work because the stories are linear enough. As it stands, right now dialogs are all just trees and the player has no decisions to make that could affect the outcome. Its basically clicking all the options and exhausting all speech. With that in mind, the dialog trees become nothing more than a to-do for players with no thinking involved. Their only purpose is to slow down gameplay. If the player has no control over affecting the outcome, you could just save the player time by running through all the dialogs while the player sits back and listens. LOL, personally I don't like a lot of dialog in the games I play because of this. I thought Oblivion did this quite well because they were short, sweet, and to the point. I loaded up Moment of Silence yesterday and while it seems interesting, I dread running into people because I know I'll have to sit through lots of dialogs making it feel like less of a game and more of a movie. :-/
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#7 9 MAY 2006 at 9:06am
Steve Ince Private Detective Posts : 571 Joined: 7 NOV 2002 Status : Offline	Thanks for the clarification. I'm trying to think purely in terms of AGs as I'm sure the original question was asked in those terms and this coloured the way I saw what you were trying to do. One problem with RPGs is that there seems to be an over-use of big numbers and making these numbers visible at all times. It's easy to see characters as a collection of statistics instead of people. In an adventure, where we tend to keep these things invisible, the 0-100 is probably irrelevent. For most characters you could probably have a relationship which switches between Friendly, Neutral and Unfriendly and the subtlety comes in the writing that's created for each of those states. Just because we have dialogue trees it doesn't mean that we can't close off branches depending on the choices the player makes. If the player is talking to a character that asks a question back, the way the conversation then unfolds will depend on the player's choice. If you are given the option to go back and give the opposite answer you suddenly break the suspension of disbelief. I don't mind a lot of dialogue, but it must be handled well and serve a purpose and the player must feel that they are in control. My biggest niggle with MOS was the way old subjects never went away, so you could have the same conversation over again, which again breaks the immersion for me. Steve Steve Ince - Writer and Designer
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#8 12 MAY 2006 at 10:29am
John_QuestDome Intergalactic Janitor Posts : 78 Joined: 21 JAN 2005 Status : Online	Thanks for the pieces of advice. John&&project-manager & game-designer&&QuestDome Interactive
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