Hiya All,

I'm interested in creating more of a interactive story than a classic text adventure as per say. I have a few questions and thoughts so excuse the length of my first post.

I'm just starting out with making a random story to try a learn the basics.

I've tried searching the forums for advice on certain topics but it can be abit if hit and miss finding the answers. So i thought why not ask instead since i know what i want to achieve.

Also I have found the Pdf tutorial for Quest a little vague in some areas.
Not always showing various examples of given features in how they can be used.


I'm wanting to have a yes and no response to a question given to the player, which plays in with the dialogue flow. The answer was to be yay or nay, so i setup yay and nay each as custom command words (in command tree above room tree in editor) and a reply flag to on for yay and off for nay.

Which ever response given the dialogue will THEN continue. Trouble is the flag natural state is off until its turned on, right. So my conditional IF settings in the script for character whom player has conversation with doesn't wait for input from player but sees flag is off so it continues on displaying text i had set for nay/no.
How do i get script to wait for that before moving onto checking flags/conditions? or an alternative means of doing the same thing?

I could use menu popups for this sort of thing and I have used successfully the Menu system for multiply choices for choosing 1 object.
I want to learn how to do something as simple as my dialogue example above within game window itself.

Correct me if im wrong, i cant remember where i read about libraries, but is it for people to customise and add scripts in menu form to use within editor? If that is the case, i would of thought with some of the programming whizzes on here that a pile of them would of been made for everyone to use adding extra flexiability to Quest for newbies and intermediate users. But what do i know hehe im a newbie. Maybe it isn't as easy as that.

Has anyone created a library for interactive conversation? by any chance?

I want to use a system of dialogue like in bioware's Kotor games, where you pick your response out of several possible ones given. After reading some posts on here about that sort of system it seems complicated. With variables for what npc knows and whether they trust you or you offended them/ random elements etc. It might be out of my league to try and create it within the visual QDk. But its the core of what i want to do. As stories are about characters. So if i can learn the basics and go from there.


It would be nice to have a full tutorial (screen shots steps would be nice) from making a game from scratch covering the main basics of all its features. I've checked out the wiki page for this forum, and it hasnt got much info to learn from sadly. Searching the forums for info can be time consuming just finding an answer.

If there was a tutorial on that as mentioned above, any keywords user doesn't understand can open up the wiki page pertaining to say String variables- what they are and how to use them etc. Then the person can jump back to their tutorial and read on. Putting time and effort for such a tutorial will pay off perhaps with more quality games made. Creativity is easily killed off when bogged down with frustration of being unable to do what you want to create.

Excuse me for the length of my first post, i better end it here before this turns into a novel hehe.

So in closing to recap, need some help with y/n answers for dialogue flow, whats the best way to go about it? and creating dialogue trees. Thanks.

Cheers

Daz

Hey, welcome.

Right a much easier way of doing a responce is to to use 'enter next command into a string' script, this means that the next thing the player types doesn't run like normal but instead is stored as a string, you can then do an IF (conditional) to see if it's equal to say 'yes' OR 'yay' OR 'yeh' (etc) THEN run the the scripts you want if they said yes, in the else put the 'no' answer stuff. Just repeat that process for whenever you want the player to reply, and keep going.

If you want to do it differently, put the specific yes/no 'if' stuff into a procedure (tools/procudures), have 'enter into script' , and then the IF, the 'yes' responce should turn flag 'yes' on. and 'no' should nothing. This is the clever bit, just above where you have the 'enter into string' script (you can re-order the lines using the up and down arrows at the top), put a 'turn flag 'yes' off'.

In the speak section of the person (which is where I'm assuming you're running the conversation from), have them say their thing, and when you want a responce, run the procedure (run script/run procedure), after have an IF seeing if the flag is on... THEN will be what they say to 'yes', ELSE to 'no'.

Expanding upon this:
You could put a number before different responses which are more than just 'yes' or 'no', then IF to see which number they typed, so what they said.

Another way of doing talking:
Have an 'ask (person) about (topic)' command. This is a little tricker to do though, and can be done a few ways. First way is it runs a procedure, which firstly turns a flag off, then has several IF's after each other (not inside eeach other) to see what 'topic' it is, then it can IF's to see what people say to that or the 'default' reply is (if they don't use one of the others). There is a slightly different way of doing that bit but with properties (which i'm using in my game).

In each topic script (the bit for responses), you also put a line in to turn the flag on. After all that topic stuff, you have one final IF to see if the flag is still off (topic not valid), and say 'I don't know what you're talking about' kind of response.


Hope you understand this and it was helpful, if not just ask and I'll try to help some more.

I've only read as far as the 'yay/nay' bit so far.

I'm thinking that a little function in the form:

$valid_entry(yay;nay)$

Would be quite nice.

Now time to read the rest.
[EDIT]

OK, read it.

Elex, I think your post is over his head (and the stuff I wrote above is WAY over it at the mo).

To try and re-word what Elex is saying; you are taking an odd route to your goal. Instead of making commands and flags, you should be - as Elex says - using player input.
That will need to be in a loop.

http://www.compwhizz.freeserve.co.uk/asldemos/password.asl
That file gives an example of player input. It's for a password - but try it out, open it in QDK, and see the room commands for how it works which might be nicer for you.

Sorry - I don't have an example for loops.

Sorry, I tried to explain it simple, just the stuff I deal with is so complicated it's hard for me... Thanks Tron...

Thanks for your advice guys!

Yeah i figured i was doing it the hard way re: flags. I'm kind of bumbling in the dark, learning my way around. hehe.

I will give it another go soon. Would like to get these basics sorted before
spending time developing a story. I think the dynamic conversation thing as i described might be waaay out of my league, but still one can be ambitious Well Rome wasn't built in a day. But i might use a basic conversation setup, as a means to flesh out NPC and story. Maybe in the future try and make it a little more interesting.

I will let you know how i get on when i have another go.

Cheers

Daz