Topic order

[seularts]

OK so I have a headache with making a proper complex dialog between the player and an NPC. This is a bit hard to explain but bear with me. I tried to make a quest dialog where I start with the Greetings. In the greetings I have 2 lines of dialog. The first one where the NPC calls the player (play once), and the second where I display the normal hello. All the other lines of dialog from various topics are placed in the Add Topic section in order to display them in the same dialog box. The problem is that if I go and play a line of code from a different topic like what does he want from me, when I Finnish the topic I get the line with the hello embedded with the other topic. So solution would be simple, to put all my other topics in the Choice box, but here if I go in a line of dialog it goes back and forth to the main tree and in the next topic if I choose to select another line. Put in simple words, here is the tree:

 

Hello1 (play once) (the topic are set here in the Add Topic Box) - has no prompt

Topic1

Topic2 (the subtopics are set in the choice menu)

SubTopic1 (End topic)

SubTopic2 (End topic)

Goodbye (End topic)

 

Hello2 (the topic are set here in the Add Topic Box) - has no prompt

Topic1

Topic2 (the subtopics are set in the choice menu)

SubTopic1 (End topic)

SubTopic2 (End topic)

Goodbye (End topic)

 

In other words if I say goodbye to the first Hello1 (custom call hello), it will not show anymore, kinking in the second Hello2 (standard hello). Mainly when I greet him the second time, the Hello1 does not display in the dialog box and only topic1, topic2 (subtopic 1 & subtopic2) and goodbye show up. But if I run Topic1 then when I come back to the main conversation tree, the Hello2 topic appears as well. How do I get around this!? This also happens if i run topic1 in the first Hello1, at first there is no hello2 topic but after I process the first topic1 it gets in there. And NO, it's not the topic1 fault, I can have as many as 7 topics like Topic1 it has the same effect. Also you might ask how it shows up if it has no prompt in the dialog tree, well it parents the topic text. And if there is no custom text written it just shows up GREETINGS. Hope I made my issue understandable.

[davidlallen]

To make sure I understand, what you want is to allow the exact same conversation twice or more, but the first time (only) the initial greeting (only) is different. For example, the first time the player meets the NPC, they should say like "Hello stranger", and any later time they should say like "Hello again". Right?

 

The way to do this is to have a single hello topic, with two different possible responses. That is, in the quest dialog box where you enter the topics and text, put two different responses. Each response can have its own text (obviously) but also you can set the checkboxes underneath it, and you can set the conditions and scripts to different things. When the game finds a response for the NPC, it evaluates the responses in the order they appear, and takes the first one that matches. So put "Hello stranger" as the first response, and (this is the key!) check the checkbox underneath which says "Say Once". Then put "Hello again" as the second response. The game will automatically select "Hello again" every time after the first.

[seularts]

You got it half right, I did do what you said. The idea is that the greetings do not have a prompt question so theoretically they should not appear in the dialog box with all the other topics. The NPC should only say hey or hello or whatever and then the rest of the topics should display except the ones in the GREETINGS section. But the show up with a forced prompt from the game itself right after I go through one of the topics from the dialog box. It is kind of hard to explain w/o visual examples.

 

In other words if I go and select an NPC, he will automatically say one of the lines from the GREETINGS section Hello and then display the other topics w/o the Greetings topic and that's the way I would like it to remain, but I don't understand why it show up right after I talk to him with one of the topics from the dialog box. The pro,pt of that topic shows up as a custom text of the topic if any, or just the word GREETINGS if nothing is imputed in the topic text field.

[davidlallen]

Are you using the "Choices" field in your topics? This is the best way to control which followup topics appear after any NPC statement.

 

As with many ideas on geck, it can be confusing but you can learn a lot by studying the existing material in the base game. For example, look at Cass' dialog in the base game: VDialogueCass. Click on the greetings topic on the left. This brings up her various greetings, and you can see the dialog and conditions for each. The first two have "goodbye" checked so there are no followup topics available on purpose. Click on the third info, "{Found 1st Caravan, a little sickened, looking at destroyed caravan}God, there's almost nothing left..." In the choices box on the right side center, you can see the three responses which are listed. For each of those, only, the game checks their conditions and may display them.

 

It sounds like you are making all the topics permanently available instead of limiting the choices with this field.

Edited December 9, 2011 by davidlallen

[Quetzlsacatanango]

Anything you tick 'top level' on will show up after greeting, unless you specify choices in the greeting topic, in which case it will display the choices you specify, and not show 'top level' topics until you exhaust the choices. If all of your choice paths end in a goodbye topic, you will never see top level topics.

 

Pretty sure that's right :)

[seularts]

Quetzlsacatanango thanks a lot, that did the trick. davidlallen I'm working on a dialog that influences the way of the game with my custom made factions, and it would have been bothersome to see the greeting dialog within the topics (it's redundant), but thanks for your help as well.