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I don't know if this problem has been discussed/resolved before, but I haven't found anything about it here.
I'm creating an engine for a full-feature Sierra/LucasArts graphic adventure and one of my problems is how to handle lots of dialogues between the characters, dialogue trees, multiple choices, etc.
My task is to create a complete dialogue system, capable of doing everything - and easy to edit, even with external files.
I'm open to suggestions!
thanks
I know this! Gah! Some extension had an example of EXACTLY what you are looking for! With text baloons and stuff, but I can't remember what extension it is. :crazy: Hopefully somone else will remember.
Thanks Zonacas, I'm gonna try it. LB, is that the extension you were talking about?
I think he was talking about "Text Blitter."
stephen1980
Mmh, you mean Text Blitter can handle a dialogue system with multiple choices? I thought it was only a way to display bitmap fonts, nothing more.
Ok, I've tried both the Speech Bubble Object and the Text Blitter. All they can do is to display a predetermined dialogue between two characters, a fixed dialogue, without any interaction.
They come nowhere near what I need: a dialogue system where characters not only speak lines but where the player has to make choices and, based on them, the dialogue follows other "tree branches": a complex dialogue tree one can write in an external txt file, hopefully.
I'm trying to demonstrate to some friends of mine that Multimedia Fusion is way more powerful than the Adventure Game Studio and is able to do the same things, and much much more, though it's not solely intended for Sierra/LucasArts-style adventure games.
I'm pretty sure MMF2 can do that, but my knowledge is still limited.
You are going to need to code that in yourself, I think. E.G. have multiple string objects display the things you can say and if the user clicks on this one, display this string, if the user clicks on that one, display that string... etc etc.
Good luck!
Uh, listen to TreeHugger
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Your correct in that those objects can only really display whatever you specifically tell them to. I think what the people above where getting at, is that those are things you could use for the display but you would have to code an actual dialogue system yourself to work with them.
A basic way would be by using the INI++ object you could write your questions and answers in groups (maybe with ID's). When a conversation is triggered for example by walking into a NPC, the NPC would provide an ID or Conversation Title which you could use to identify from the INI++ the question to start with. You'd then display these using whatever object you selected. Depending on the answer chosen by the player you could either select and display more dialogue or end the conversation.
I haven't used Lua so I can't say much about that but I think I heard it's good for scripting stuff so maybe good for you.
Another option is to write a system in MMF which can interpret files you write externally. When making a game with / for a friend ages ago, I used a scripting example from this site and modified it. The game would pause and dialogue would display between player and enemy / npc or sounds could be played or the player chucked around. I wrote the actual scripts for the interactions using a seperate MMF program I wrote ( which took hardly any time at all to create ), which saved the scripts as simply text string in the Named Variable Object. The main game simply interpreted those text strings.
Simple basic editor - basic, quick to write, but did the job :)
http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/e...riptEditor.png
(in case image to small to see editor properly click here)
http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/e...nversation.png
You said your knowledge of MMF was limited so that might be overkill but I'll see if I can find the link to the original example and post it here if I can.
I might also, if I have time, see if I can do you a small example using the INI++ object.