I installed this template a few days ago and decided to have a play with it for the first time tonight. Not surprisingly I have questions, but let me just set the scene first.

I set a test room called 'conroom' and in that room placed an object called 'tom'. I changed tom from an 'inanimate object' to 'male character' then went to the 'Conversation' tab for 'tom'

And this is where I got lost.

1. The first drop down lets you choose one of three 'types'; Character, Conversation Topic, and Starting Conversation Topic. What do these different types do, and how am I supposed to know which to pick?

2. There is then a tick box allowing you to choose to 'Automatically hide after showing'. Hide what after showing?

3. This is followed by an 'Add' box with the heading 'Show these after showing for the first time (must be the name, not the alias)'. What am I supposed to add to this box?

4. We then move on to the normal script options, which don't offer any special script actions, making me wonder how the Conversation tab aids conversation in your game.

open up the ConvLib.xml (using notepad, wordpad, notepad++, to look at it's code), as Pixie's notes~guide~comments is given within it... I can try to work on understanding it with you... lol.

(or, just wait for Pixie to help with it, laughs)

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1. 'character' is to select your choice of what npc object you're giving the conversation topics~choices to be attached to, what npc object that the 'conversation' coding will be created for (added to). 'starting conversion' are the topics that are immediately (at game start) available to you. 'conversation' are topics that will be revealed later on in your game progress.

2. list topic choices: dragon, sword, wizard, princess. You choose 'dragon', after you read the message, it removes this choice from the list: sword, wizard, princess.

if (hideafter = false), this (the above) doesn't happen.

3. ???? new~later topics to be added~revealed to your list of topic chocies ????

4. ??? ~ no idea myself, lol

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you've no idea how long I've studied some of these libraries, and still don't get a lot of them, laughs. HK is still such a code noob, sighs.
(the coding is great; it looks so simple and short and clear; yet it's a lot of advanced code stuff that I'm a long ways off from understanding, sighs)

OurJud wrote:1. The first drop down lets you choose one of three 'types'; Character, Conversation Topic, and Starting Conversation Topic. What do these different types do, and how am I supposed to know which to pick?

Tom is a character, i.e., someone the player can talk to.

A topic is a subject the player can talk about. A starting topic is a topic that is available from the start of the game.

2. There is then a tick box allowing you to choose to 'Automatically hide after showing'. Hide what after showing?

When the player talks to Tom, she will see a list of topics to talk about - initially that will be the starting topics. Generally once a player has talked to Tom on a particular subject, you do not want that topic to appear again, so by default a topic is hidden after it has been done. Untick the box to have it appear in the list even after the player has seen it once.

3. This is followed by an 'Add' box with the heading 'Show these after showing for the first time (must be the name, not the alias)'. What am I supposed to add to this box?

If you want a new topic to appear in the list of subjects after this one, add the name of that topic.

Say Tom has a topic "tom_treasure", in which he casually mentions he has a treasure map. You want a new topic, "tom_treasure_map" to appear in the list of subjects after the player has talked about treasure to Tom, so the player can now click on that to learn more.

4. We then move on to the normal script options, which don't offer any special script actions, making me wonder how the Conversation tab aids conversation in your game.

At its simplest, ConvLib allows you to set up topics the player can discuss with the character. It will make each topic disappear from the list once used, and it makes it easy for new ones to appear as the conversation progresses. You can do all that just using the Print message script.

That is the framework, but as it is a script that is run, you can have the character give something to the player, unlock doors, hide other topics and do anything else you can imagine at this point.

Okay, thank you for those explanations. Would I be correct in saying that these options are really only for those who display hyperlinks - in as much as "What do you want to talk to Tom about? [list topics]" ?