Duck and Cover

I had been mulling over the way Endocore has his dialogue set up in his missions. I always thought it was kind of clunky with the clones and thought there must be a better way. Right now this is just conceptual and hasn't been tried but here is what I was thinking.

Instead of using clones to give you dialogue options, how about using a new sprite/entity? The first possibility I was thinking is to make a sprite of the actual dialogue. These options would appear when required and when you click on them, a simple speech (i.e. "1", "OK") would occur to trigger the condition. It would be great if you could stack the different dialogue entities on top of each other but I am not sure if that will be possible. Maybe if you placed them at different elevations off the map and brought them in at the same waypoint?

The second possibility would be to make a special graphic sprite/entity that would signify different dialogues. You could move them onto the map when needed and they would take up less space initially. Then use the same method as outlined above to make the conversation go.

Not bad idea, probably a difficult to do though... I'm thinking you could create a sprite that looks like the answer(e.g. for a "finding the librarian's glasses" quest you make to floating sprites, one being the glasses for yes, one glasses with a red X on to pick no with)

I take it that you're really only looking for a rudimentary, binary speech tree, right? This definitely has possibilities. It could get clunky in its own right, though, especially if you're looking at going beyond a binary speech tree.

Play around w/it and let us know how it goes, please.

Personally, right now I'm leaning more toward using multiple entities who are on the map at the same time. For instance, you could have a group of slaves that are liberated and three NCR Rangers are waiting in the background until it's done. You could have the chief of the three tell the player that if they want to have the slaves rise up in rebellion they should talk to Ranger B and if they just want the slaves to get the fuck out of Dodge, they should talk to Ranger C.

This approach has weaknesses too, though. For instance, what would happen if one of the Rangers were somehow killed before the slaves had been told to move out/rebel? If just one were killed, you could always have the leader take the role of the dead Ranger, instructing the player to talk to him instead of the dead Ranger. But if two were killed...

Murphy's Law can and will bite us in the ass again and again...and again...and again...

OTB

It's an intriguing idea, Jimmyjay86. Were you going more for what Flamescreen said, or were you wanting more to have some kind of actual "text" sprite appear?

Another way to approach the method I've been using if you find the appearance/disappearance of all those bodies "hokey" would be to instead use a very tiny sprite (a ring-pull tab, for example) for the actor entities that represent the conversation nodes. Moving your mouse around the main "speaker" would then show only the conversation node entities' descriptions, although this has the disadvantage that the player might not see some of the tiny entities and miss some of the conversation paths.


Endocore

Well you can still have non-living entities use either random or click speech nodes. So you could make a special symbol appear that would represent a different speech option.

The NPC says:

"Do you want to help me kill the raiders? [Click option box #1 for yes, option box #2 for no, or option box #3 for I'll get back to you a little later]"

If you click on the "1" symbol, it will have a click speech that says "1" which triggers the NPC to say:

"Alright let's go kick some ass!!"

Etc.

One thing I was trying was multiple nodes, by moving a specific set of dialogue options to a specific four or five locations near the NPC. My only real irritation is the need to interact with the nodes in some way. (ie shoot them, walk your character over to them, etc.) Now for the crazy stuff.

It's entirely possible to mod one of the damage types to represent "speech rolls", one of the weapon skills to represent speech as a skill, and then mod your character's base racial weapons from punch, kick or whatever to instead be a "Speak with" entity that uses the weapon skill you've replaced. I'd replace unarmed, and roll punching weapons into melee class.

Now where, this is going. If I set up nodes as Actor->Unique Other and provide them with an inbuilt resistance/threshold for all damage types except your new "speech" damage type, and you "attack" with your Speak With entity to speak. (Actors seem to get an "Unhurt" under their name though, so if anyone else has found a better entity to use, let me know)

You could (in theory) to skill checks that move different nodes to the same waypoints for higher IN or CH, you can check experience, sex and basically anything you want, but it's scripting intensive, and before you tried anything with it, it would be best to nail down a concise naming convention for your speech nodes, but also for your triggers, because there's going to be a lot of them.

Additionally, you could just display all the speech options, and rig up some kind of skill system using the Damage Resistance/Threshold of the speech damage type, and possibly even AC, to give meaningful percentage chances related to the speech skill.

The problems. Unarmed is derived from the wrong base stats (ie ST instead of IN) and usually starts fairly high. The player needs to be told that they can talk if they put their weapon away, otherwise they may never know. Criticals can bypass armour. Animations would be kind of funny (using a punch to talk) and there's plenty of other things to go wrong along the way.

Overall, I think the way Endocore does the speech works pretty well, and is much simpler to script than the monstrosity I ranted about above.

Section8 wrote:Overall, I think the way Endocore does the speech works pretty well, and is much simpler to script than the monstrosity I ranted about above.

I concur.

But, that is a pretty nifty way to go about adding speech trees in FOT, albeit a load of work.

I think I'll stick with Endocore's method. I'm already used to using it, and it's pretty handy.

And, as an added bonus, I don't have to punch people in order to talk to 'em

Section8 wrote: Actors [of the "Unique Other" type) seem to get an "Unhurt" under their name though, so if anyone else has found a better entity to use, let me know.

I don't think that there's a way around this. I've tried things like using this type as well as "Object" and adding Traits like "Humanoid Robot" to them and you always end up w/two problems:

1. Their status is listed as "Unhurt".
2. They bleed rather than gout oil or ichor when damaged.

I, too would like to know of any work-arounds for this since I don't think that these two problems are very appropriate for Vending Machines or Juke Boxes. Several of us on the Paleo-DaC forums wracked our brains and tinkered around w/this issue quite a bit, but to no avail.

Section8 wrote: ...IN or CH, you can check experience, sex and basically anything you want...

One caveat here is that you have to use small zones in conjunction with these type of triggers. Otherwise you're looking at totals for the entire squad/squadmembers in a zone.

One question I had regarding checking sex is: How exactly do you check for it?

I ran an experiment this morning using a small zone and a trigger with the condition "BoS has exactly X Trait Sex at Y Zone" - the action was to kill several test subjects with a fiery death :twisted: - and the result was that I could only get the trigger to respond to a number of entities rather than their actual sex. That is, when "Trait Sex" was set to "1" the Raiders were killed when one person regardless of sex was in that zone. When set to "0" it would kill the Raiders once no one was in the zone. I tried entering non-numeric characters, but the editor doesn't accept them.

<edit> I was experimenting around a bit more with the Quantity Team/Trait Sex trigger and I discovered that when the number is set to "exactly 2" it's a radical feminist's dream: the males don't count.

Strange...<edit>

Any help is (of course) greatly appreciated,

OTB

I'd have to ask about the sex checking. I've tried it myself just then and couldn't get any good result :/ I'll dig around a bit more, but I can't remember anywhere it was used in the game, it might just be slightly broken

If that's the case, then sex checks can join the "Repair Bot" AI type along with a host of other things that don't work in FOT the way they should 8O

Section8 wrote:I'd have to ask about the sex checking...it might just be slightly broken

Please do. *hehe* I wonder if there's some special character I'm unaware of that will work.

While this is neither here nor there, I really wish that you guys had managed to implement everything that you were trying to. FoT would have been one kick-arse game if you had. Mortars, Smoke and Tangle Grenades, Repair Bot AI, etc., etc.

OTB

To that, I'll add:

For a complete listing of stuff that don't work, visit the "Known FoT Bugs" thread in the FOT forum

OTB and Section8 had mentioned that Unique Other actors get a Unhurt tag after their name. Well, not necessarily. If you don't give them a name, there will be no such information that shows up and you can still get the random or click speech. Try it - it works sweetly.