Looping Dialogue...

[aidan1982]

I been rattling around in my head about looping conversations. It's damn inconvenient to constantly have to make large conversations in branches where even yourself will forget what the heck was going on, or B make them small and enter as much as you can in a few boxes possible.

 

Well my idea was... how about the self switch? would it work? but does it work with multiple players speaking to the same npc unsure, did not test that lol. But it does work with at least one player speaking to the npc...

 

What I have done as a test is use Set Self Switch for the event NPC.

Page One

Spoiler

Page Two

Spoiler

Page Three

Spoiler

 

Either way it works so far, it allows the player to go back to the beginning of the conversation, or if need be set it so it only goes back to where ever the conversation was previously before the new choice was chosen. But really limited to the 4 self switches... As I said I have not had a chance to test this with other players talking to the same NPC unsure if this would screw up the conversation others are having.

 

Forgot to Note, for Page one and two they are pretty much copies of each other, the only difference was I had to make page two autorun for the looping dialogue, while page one started the conversation. and also ended it. When all switches are set to false.

 

Unless someone has a better way? Maybe using variables? or normal switches to call to.

[Agoraphobic]

Solid tutorial. I personally assign a variable to each NPC, then you a single Switch (NPC Talking) for the loop on every conversation.

 

Each Page checks the variable starting with 0 (Page 1 = 0, Page 2 = 2, Page 3 = 2, NPC Talk On, Page 4 = 3, Page 5 = 3, NPC Talk On).

Each NPC Talk page contains a conditional branch with 4 choices that loop, with the fourth being the exit dialogue, while the pages without NPC Talk just trigger the NPC Talk Page.

 

Variable Numbers

-1 means the NPC is dead or is permanently gone.

0 means have not met yet and uses starter dialogue.

1 Buffer Variable, usually empty unless I need to something extra for the NPC.

2 Uses dialogue based on 2 Reputation.

Then I set it to 3, then 4, etc as you progress in the story/quest or as things changed.

 

Great tutorial though, this is asked for quite a bit.

 

 

[aidan1982]

Yea, when I thought about this idea was just using the self switch. But thought a variable would be better in a sense you could have larger conversations with more choice branches. Since with the self switch your really linted to the four available.

[Kibbelz]

You could do it with switches or even variables. I personally use labels and then jump to the label when you want to to go back up the dialog.

[aidan1982]

Never thought of using labels... So I tried it out and built a beta version of my swordmaster who offers aspiring lv10 players the chance to become a swordsman.. worked out pretty well. Plus able to get everything on a single event page, and finally added the level 60 swordmaster quest that I been wanting to add, without using a different page. Just set it up at the end with label swordtrial and made a conditional branch in the previous conversations checking if the player has reached that level and has also completed specific quests before being offered the quest to challenge their first teacher in mock combat. To unlock the special trait that's needed to do the final class advancement at level 100.

[Meto]

Thanks for the tutorial it can help but i think this is the wrong section.

[Khaikaa]

As @Kibbelz  says, the best way to design looping dialogues is using labels. First of all, you don't fill your game with barely used switches/variables, which lets you have a better organised game structure. Second benefit is that labels give you total control of the event's flow, letting you making easy loops or even jump into different page's sections. The bad part is that devs say "go to label" command is expensive in terms of resources usage, so it's a great tool but you better don't use 324579 go to label commands on every single event of your game.