I have updated ConvLib. The biggest change is each topic has a text area where you can just type the conversation.

ETA: Updated the files, as of 13/Oct/15; thanks to Encrtia for for finding the bugs. And I have now got the library and demo the right way round!

ETA2: Updated the library to include an "active conversation" option for characters. If selected, the conversation automatically continues, if there are still options available. There is also a "force conversation" option, if selected the player will have to select a conversation option before moving on (by default the player can choose to ignore the list of options and do something else). Note that if both options are selected, and you have topics that do not disappear after they are used, the player could get stuck in a loop, so be careful!

ETA3: Another update (09/Dec/15), for version 5.

You can replace any existing version with this version, and your game should still work fine (but might be a good idea to rename the old version rather than over-writing or deleting it, just in case).

Library:


Demo:


The instructions here are still useful:
http://docs.textadventures.co.uk/quest/ ... tions.html

As of this version, version 5:

Version 5 has a text box for the greeting, like thgere is for each topic.
It also has an option to add a terminator to an active conversation
(i.e., a topic that allows the player to leave the conversation).

As of this version, version 4:

You now get a text area for conversation topics, and you can just type the exchange in there, rather than as a script (the script option is still there, and will be run after the text is displayed; both are optional).

As of version 3:

You can also move all your topics for a person into its own room. The room must be named after the person, with "_topics" appended. This is useful if you want the person to be carrying stuff; it separates the stuff from the conversation topics. If there is no topics room, the system will get the topics from the person object as before, so this is entirely optional.

You can flag a person as an animal (checkbox on the conversation tab). The player can only talk to this person if there is a "talktoanimals" attribute on the player set to true.

ConvLib uses ShowMenu to display in-line menus. An important consequence is that you must not use apostrophes in topic aliases. For some reason Quest messes up if an in-line menu has an apostrophe in one of the choices. The system will replace any apostrophes with a message, so your game will continue, but you will know there is an issue (the demo has an example topic like this).

Thank you for updating this! Can't wait to check it out.

UPDATE

So I tried out the new ConvLib, and came across this error...when greeting a character for the first time the "Character"

Error running script: Error evaluating expression 'DynamicTemplate("TalkToAbout", this)': No template named 'TalkToAbout'

Hope this helps!

Oh and to further clarify, I did not use the "Predefined Conversation Box" just scripts.

I'm not sure if this problem can be solved, but I have discovered a dilemma with ConvLib (I'm working with the previous version, not the newest).

So basically I basically discovered that if you have...

Type: Character

Run this Greeting Script:

msg ("")

//It's easily fixable by just moving the text to the "starting conversation topic" but in case that isn't an option for people, I wanted to bring up that you can't use a "get input" for responses without the 'starting conversation topic' text to overrun it before a response can be given. You can still respond to the "get input" but the text will be all wonky/out of order afterward. Just thought I'd bring this to whomever's attention! ((probably Pixie!))

What you propose is probably the best way to handle it.

Thank you for the update - the new text area is definitely useful! The 'active conversation' option is good too, as it saves the player having to type 'talk to...' each time they want to progress a conversation, and it feels more immersive.

When using active conversations (especially ones where topics don't disappear), I was wondering if there is a way to have a conversation topic that effectively stops the conversation, making the menu disappear even if there are still options to choose from? For example, most conversations in RPGs I've played have a 'goodbye' option that allows players to leave before exhausting all the available topics.

It would be especially useful to be able to do this in 'forced' conversations, too, i.e. the player would have to progress a certain way through the dialogue (but not necessarily all of it) before they can stop the conversation.

Updated as per ChristRT's suggestion.