Hi,

In 5.3, the "Ask about" feature did not display a verb next to a character when clicking on the character in the objects and places section.

Now, in 5.4, there is an "Ask" button displayed next to the character, although I do not want it to be displayed. I want my "ask about" options to be invisible, and rewards for exploration. Meanwhile, I want conversation topics to be visible, which they still are.

I don't know if this visible button was an intended change in 5.4 beta, but how do I remove this verb from the list, while not entirely deleting the "Ask about" topic in the process?

I'm not seeing this happen when I add topics to the Ask/Tell tab. Did you add "ask" as a verb?

I didn't, but the game did. It added an "ask" verb, that is linked to the "ask about". If I delete the "ask" verb, it deletes all of the "Ask about" topics.

That's the problem for me at this point. It's a little confusing.

To be clear, at this point, you've actually gone back to a point with NOTHING in ask/tell section and no ask verb listed, and the problem happened again?

I still can't get this to happen at all. I tried setting the object as a male unnamed, male named, and inanimate as well putting in specific ask topics and a default ask response and it still has never tried to add "ask" to the verbs list. I've definitely got "auto gen verbs list" turned on. You might want to put up the game file so someone with more expertise can look at it.

there's a lot of documentation on this...

http://quest5.net/wiki/More_things_to_do_with_objects (scroll down to "ask and tell")
http://quest5.net/wiki/Conversations (scroll down to "ask about")
http://quest5.net/wiki/Dynamic_Menus_for_Conversations
http://quest5.net/wiki/Random_default_answers
http://quest5.net/wiki/Hs-addingquestion1
http://quest5.net/wiki/Hs-addingquestion2
http://quest5.net/wiki/Hs-asktell
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3439

Hegemon. Thanks for the research, but I think you are missing what my issue is. Or maybe I'm wrong/missing something. I am not having ANY problem with conversations. I am also not having problems directly with the "Ask/Tell" feature.

The problem is with a verb automatically being added.

To simplify the issue...

In 5.3, adding a "key" to the "Ask About" section DID NOT automatically add a verb to the verb section.

However, In 5.4, it is automatically adding a verb, "ask" at the same time, and I cannot delete this verb without deleting the "Ask about" functionality too.

<object name="Duffy2">
      <inherit name="editor_object" />
      <inherit name="namedmale" />
      <inherit name="talkingchar" />
      <alias>Duffy</alias>
      <displayverbs type="stringlist">
        <value>Look at</value>
        <value>Speak to</value>
      </displayverbs>
      <attr name="Ask_What" type="boolean">false</attr>
      <visible type="boolean">false</visible>
      <look type="script">
        if (Duffy2.Ask_What = False) {
          msg ("Duffy is working on a small bot, I believe. He is near the exit, which I assume leads outside - to the ruins. I'm not excited to see what's happened to Earth since I fell asleep, but I need to; I need to find out what happened. ")
        }
        else if (Duffy2.Ask_What = True) {
          msg ("Duffy told me that he is making final repairs to a medical drone that would assume maintenance responsibilities for the station while we are gone. He is near the exit, which I assume leads outside - to the ruins. I'm not excited to see what's happened to Earth since I fell asleep, but I need to; I need to find out what happened. ")
        }
      </look>
      <speak type="script">
        if (this.alias = null) {
          error ("ERROR: Trying to have conversation with talkingchar with no alias: " + this.name)
        }
        ol = NewObjectList ()
        sl = NewStringList ()
        foreach (obj, GetDirectChildren (this)) {
          if (DoesInherit (obj, "topic") and GetBoolean (obj, "display")) {
            if (obj.alias = null) {
              error ("ERROR: Found topic with no alias: " + obj.name)
            }
            list add (ol, obj)
            list add (sl, obj.alias)
          }

Particularly this...

<displayverbs type="stringlist">
        <value>Look at</value>
        <value>Speak to</value>
      </displayverbs>

There is a "Look At" and "Talk To" verb list. Yet, suddenly, when you play the game, the verbs listed for the character, "Duffy2" also includes an "Ask" verb and brings up an unusual menu with no purpose.

On game->Room descriptions there is an option "Automatically generate object display verbs list". Could you try unchecking it to see if it helps?

levicki, that was it!

Fixed. Thank you. I don't think I turned that on purposely, so maybe it was a new default setting with 5.4? Or maybe I'm coding in my sleep. Haha.

Thanks again!

ah my bad then.

actually, 5.3 introduced the "automatic generate display verbs" feature. This is causing some annoyance, as while it is very useful, we don't want this to apply to every display verb, and there's no feature yet for this toggle ability for individual display verbs that we don't want generated.

Asyranok wrote:levicki, that was it!

Fixed. Thank you. I don't think I turned that on purposely, so maybe it was a new default setting with 5.4? Or maybe I'm coding in my sleep. Haha.

Thanks again!

It is on by default in 5.3 as well as 5.4, and in my games it has never added the ask verb to the display list when using the ask/tell tab. Turning it off will certainly fix your current symptoms, but I strongly believe there is some unusual reason why that happened. Bear in mind that turning it off will mean manually adding verbs to the display lists of every object in your game.

Roger that, Triangle. In fact, I've been doing that since I began. I was a little annoyed that verbs would show up that I didn't want. So that will actually be in line with what I expected/hoped for.

Thanks!