Conversations with party members
| Submitted by iryan on Thu, 2005-07-28 05:27 | ||
Some of you may remember a thread started by me on the old site about changing the conversation screen. Thanks to Frilly Wumpus & Snowfox I was able to include this addition in the beta version of Cat Mansion Adepts. However I was always disappointed in Dungeon Siege that once your party members join you, that's it. No more interaction. They may well be the tanks & robots from Total Annihilation for all the personality they exhibit I was very impressed with the U5:Lazarus demo and how you could talk to your other party members. However the fact that it seemed a closely guarded secret about how they achieved it (I did ask at the old site & got no responses, and the tank is protected) and that the characters always repeated themselves, I searched for another method. After some tinkering I've managed to get party members to initiate conversations with you after they join your party! This has interesting implications, now party members can give you quests, directions, hints, insults, praise and more. These conversations can have conditions attached as well and also multiple actions. So a party member could probably be made to initiate a conversation if certain other party member/s is/are present (for example to insult them). I still have to fine tune the system as it's currently possible for the party to continue moving through the conversation and thus cause the conversation to terminate before the player gets to read everything. I've tried using the party_stop command but after reading Siege University, I've discovered I need a catalyst to make that work, so I'm off to research them. The interesting thing is that this is very easy to do (if you know how triggers work that is) and could have easily be done in the original game. However considering how much extra work would be needed to put in all the extra conversations and the fact it looks quite bizarre & confusing using the old conversation screen, it's quite understandable (that and the fact it's totally untested over multiple regions). However using the new CMA conversation screen it looks quite neat as it's quite obvious who's talking to you.
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. Very much a disappointment after playing a rpg like Knights of the Old Republic or even something like Grandia 2! Hopefully DS2 will be far more rewarding in this regard 
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It looks very good!
To stop the game, you can use those 2 methods:
1) AppModule.UserPause(true);
This one is the same as clicking the pause button
2) worldOptions.SetGameSpeed(.1 , false);
This will change the speed of the game to 1/10th the normal speed
I am not sure how this this will translate in multi-player though.
Multiplayer isn't an issue as you don't have a party in MP and this is set to only apply to party members other than the main character. Though I'm sure with the proper skrit that it would be possible even then, since I remember Monsoon (I think) made a mod which enabled you to change your character's name ingame. The mod (maybe through a dsdll?) hooked out the character's name & made it possible to change it. In this case I'd only need to display the main characters' name & portrait.
Thanks I'll check out your suggestion when I get time (am currently playing the DS2 demo. Am pleased to see that both the character's & npc's name & portrait are displayed in conversation screens in the game).
Edit: I managed to get it working flawlessly using a cmd_stop_party catalyst triggered by the same trigger that initiates the conversation.
No matter how far away you click to move the party, they'll stop when the conversation initiates & it'll be centered over the character who's speaking.
I just used a generic trigger with a condition 'go_within_bounding_box', where the template is the name of the character's template, who you want to speak. This trigger has two actions, one is to the cmd_stop_party and the other is a 'we_req_talk_begin' to a special narrator who has the same portrait & name as the speaking character.
The only small problem with this catalyst is that once the party is stopped, it is possible for the party to start moving while the conversation is going.
Also, monsters can attack the party. It happened to me in DS, and I found it somewhat furstrating that the guy would keep chatting when I was fighting for my life.
You'll be mortified then to find out that occurs in DS2 as well
There's many issues with having ingame party conversations, which is why there weren't any in DS1 & only a few (so far) in DS2. With NIS sequences you can use the party_wrangler to solve getting attacked by monsters, but I don't know if that would work outside of a NIS.
Most properly balanced games only have conversations in areas free of combat (that aren't specifically coded for of course like chats with bosses).
I noticed in the DS2 demo that whenever you're in the inventory or travel log, the game's automatically paused. One issue with pausing the game would be that the conversation would be paused as well, which is perhaps why it isn't used in conversations. Probably in the above case I highlighted, all the beta testers knew to wipe out the monsters first before trying to speak to the spirit.
I am mortified! :hypno:
Maybe putting the game very slow is better then, you cannot have a slower voice, and all the conversation boxes I have seen are simple listboxes that you can read at your leisure, they do not scroll automatically. I don't know if your system is different in that regard. Personnally, I do not like automatic scrolling like this, because I am a slow reader.
Everybody knows you have to shoot first and THEN ask questions.
You can also get ambushed by monsters when talking to the dryad who gives you the Hak'u quest. A simple cure is just to pause the game while re-evaluating things. I'm actually finding out that I have to pause the game a lot as it can be hard to properly click on monsters even with the old DS system activated (as your character will happily ignore all monsters unless they attack him or her). Also the auto-defend mode is bugged as your character ignores magical or ranged attacks.
DS2 incorporates all that I've been attempting so further progress is a bit pointless (though I have learnt a lot). In DS2 Party characters can have conversations both between themselves & you. These can be complex conversations as well with multiple responses & replies. I also like how your main character can be referred to by name in conversations & how important place names, quests & characters are color coded in conversations. Very neat :P .
I know this is an old thread, but it seems like the place to put this one down...
I'd like to see more humour - maybe a point at which a totally meaningless diversion occurs..
- something along the lines of the "Knights Of Ni" sequence in Monty Python and The Holy Grail - a sort of "now for something completely different" moment...
- it could be conversation driven, with multiple choice responses..
- it could also be made to have consequences in an ongoing quest, or some such..
- just a thought... :?
Is snowfox still around, or has he left the community?
I think so he kinda blends in with the snow.
Hehehe. Is that a yes or a no?
He is around, working on stuff. Saw this post on HF today: http://herenaforge.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=105
I'm looking forward to being able to play as Gizmo in DS2. He's fun. ^^