10.- DIALOGUES

Dialogues are the Basic foundation of adventure games because the basic idea of adventure games is telling stories.

There are two ways for creating dialogues, the simple way using the talk to command, and the more advanced dialogue that is question/answer driven which takes a bit more time to create.

In this tutorial I will show you both methods, and for that I created an NPC character

Go to the CHARACTERs panel and add a new character and name it NPC. Since this is going to be only an NPC and it WONT move around I just used ONE frame for the WALK and STANDING Animations. (I added the standing frame to the walk animations since I had problems with the NPC not showing the random animations, so add at least a frame to the WALK animation if you are using other animations)

The standing animations can be animated to give a better feel of the scene and not having stiff characters everywhere.

I created a couple of RANDOM animations so the character plays them at random since its going to be idle, the first animation is a drinking sequence, and the second animation is a looking both ways sequence.

Place the animation center in a place you know how to access later on, for this character I placed it on the lower part of his leg (you have to place the center on the Stand, Walk and both random animations to be in the same spot or the animation will jump in the screen when reproduced)

Also you need to make sure all Animation directions to point in the same direction, if one is pointing on a different direction it wont show up.

You can add the TALK ANIMATION (but since I havent created it yet I wont use it)

We must now create the standing point for this character, so lets go to the scene panel and select the MAIN_SCENE, create a new object and name it NPC

Then go into the position placement and add the position of the character. (since I made this character to be behind the counter desk, I placed the cross where the legs should be covered. Remember where I placed the animation center of the character?)

Now we establish the properties of this Character.

We must tell where this character is going to be placed, so in the Character Stands at we select the NPC object from the main scene, since this character was created much smaller then the main character I had to scale it up to 200% (this scale only affects this character), the font can be established to a font created for this character, but for this tutorial I will use the one font we created for everything, but you can assign different fonts to different characters.

You dont need to assign dialog fonts since this character wont be used by the player.

Now we are ready to create interactions with the NPC.

Im going to start with the basic dialogue and some interaction like LOOK.

Although we created an NPC object we wont be creating the actions on the scene object, but to the character itself, so go into the CHARACTERs panel, select the NPC and open the ACTIONS panel.

Lets create an action for the LOOK command and lets add a DISPLAY TEXT with any phrase like This is the shops owner <p2>

If you do a save/run you will notice you will have a problem with the LOOK command, and is because the NPCs position is outside the WAY BORDER.

BUT we can create a virtual position for the character to stand at when the command is executed (this is ideal for speech since both characters should face each other in a conversation)

SO add an action part of SEND CHARACTER TO POSITION, a pop up window will be shown with the scenes of your game, select the MAIN SCENE (since that is the scene the NPC is located in) and select the position you want the character to stand in (Most be inside the way border)

The second command should be to ALIGN CHARACTER so it faces the NPC, choose the compass to a left-back position.

Then the display text action part.

Now we are going to create an action for the TALK command, this works like a cut scene.

What I want to do is have the character ask for coffee and have a full dialog the first time, but when the character asks the NPC a second time it replies with a single straight answer.

For this we are going to create a CONDITION for the character, lets leave it as FALSE and name the condition NPC_condition_1

Now create the action for the TALK command and lets create the interaction.

The first thing we have to do is create the action part to send the character to the NPC SEND CHARACTER TO POSITION (we can copy this action part from the one we created for the LOOK command and paste it in the TAKE action parts.)

Now we add an ALIGN CHARACTER action part so the character faces the NPC (we can copy this action part from the one we created for the LOOK command and paste it in the TAKE action parts.)

Now we create an IF CONDITION for the NPC_CONDITION_1 as FALSE

Im going to initiate the dialog with the CHARACTER asking for some coffee trough a DISPLAY TEXT action part

Then we are going to create a response coming FROM the NPC, for this we create another DISLPAY TEXT action part but we select the NPC in the CHARACTER tab of the display text action part.

We repeat this as many times as we want to

When the dialog ends we are going to change the NPC_CONDITION_1 to TRUE (this will change the initial condition so we wont see the initial dialog again but we will see the second dialog instead (the one after the ELSE))

We split the conditions with an ELSE action part (This means IF CONDITION for the NPC_CONDITION_1 as the opposite in this case is TRUE)

Now we create a display text action part for the character asking for coffee for a second time

And we create a display text for the response of the NPC

We close with an END IF action part.

You are not limited to display texts here, you can ask or give items, open other locations in a map, etc.

Creating DIALOGS Q&A, these are the ones that appear as a list of Question/Answer.

Go into the character you want to have the dialog with and open the DIALOGS panel, create a new dialog and name it, for this tutorial I named it NPC_DIALOG_1, you will get a dialog tree on the right window with this icon (you should change the name for it too) Under this tree we will create our dialog questions. So go ahead and create a new Dialog part

The dialog parts consist of a question (from your character) and an answer (given by the dialog holder, in this case the NPC) you can call actions and execute actions of all kinds when if you stablish them for this action part, a good example would be asking for a place and making that place appear on a map after you asked for it.

If you dont want a Dialog part to appear again you should check the DELETE DIALOG PART check box.

Since there is only one level of dialog (1. 2. and 3.) you should leave the STAY AT SAME DIALOG LEVEL for all parts.

Also note the pauses <p2> in the dialogs

Now we need to have an EXIT DIALOG part or we will get stuck.

For this select EXIT DIALOG AFTERWARDS, and I didnt mark the delete dialog part so we can get this dialog again with only the questions we didnt delete.

You can add more options in your dialog parts, so these can be activated when you select the initial question.

If you create other layers of dialogs (like I did in the image bellow for question 2.) you should create an extra dialog part that will switch to a previous level, this will close the question 2 sub questions and shows the initial questions again. And since we checked the delete dialog part you wont see question 2 appear again.

Now for the fun of experimenting, I want the character to ask for a CAN-O-COKE after the NPC is asked what he sells, since there is only one can over the counter (the one we created in the ITEMS pert of the tutorial) we are going to have two choices in an EXECUTE ACTION.

This action will be performed in two ways trough an IF/ELSE condition, so if you already took the CAN-O-COKE, then the npc will tell you you already have it, but if you havent taken it the npc will give it to you and it will disappear from the counter so you wont be able to take another one

For this we are going to use the CAN-O-COKEs condition

So start with an IF condition CAN-O-COKE is TRUE. (This will happen if you havent taken the CAN-O-COKE yet)

Add an ADD ITME CAN-O-COKE

And add a CHANGE CONDITION for the CAN-O-COKE_CONDITION to FALSE (so this will make the can to disappear from the table)

Split with an ELSE

Add a DISPLAY TEXT for the character NPC telling you you already have the last one

Finish with an END IF

See the actions in the image bellow.

You should have some basic idea about how dialogues, conditions and actions work by now so you can start creating more difficult interactions.

Do a save and run at this point and see what you have done so far.

We can create a Dialog Area so we can have our dialog questions encapsulated somewhere, this Dialog area should be created for the MAIN_CHARACTER, something like this should do.

Add a background image for the dialog area (for this tutorial I made it a solid orange colour)

Create your arrow icons and place them into position (you can create an active and inactive arrow image for each arrow)

Now you should specify the area where dialog options will be displayed in, so select the set dialog area icon and create the area your dialog will occupy.

Dont worry If you have many options these will be accessed by scrolling trough the arrows.

IMPORTANT: create a font that is very small for the dialog selections, this way you can display more dialog options in the dialog area.

You can change the VERTICAL SPACE number if your dialog options show too far apart.

Do a save/run and you should see your dialogs working