Dialogue Trees

[kalosj]

Hey all, I'm currently throwing some ideas round for a mod, but I want to work out the dialgoue trees for several scenes that I'm thinking about and well, it hit me, I wonder how people plan out their dialogues trees??

 

I'm currently working out things with a pen and pad very roughly, but I'm thinking of using some sort of flow chart system to make it easier to see at a glance. Any insights into dialogue tree planning?

 

Cheers

 

Kal

[Vagrant0]

Just do it one branch at a time. You know what needs to be said. There's no sense in making some sort of chart just to explain it to yourself. All topics should be linked to a quest, so even if you aren't making a quest mod, you can still setup quest stages and journal entries to help keep things on track, if you need some help organizing, you don't necessarily have to keep those stages and journal entries after the dialogue is setup and is found working. Start with a topic. Make a few responses to that topic. Make a few more topics which would come from those responses. Rinse and repeat. While making the dialogue, start out just coying the conditions which link the dialogue to the NPC, don't think too heavily on what other conditions you need yet. After you have all the dialogues for a quest done, go back and make those additional changes to the conditions, adjust what topics are seen when, and link them all together.