Video Game Dialogue: Suggestions and Radical New Ideas

Sounds good!

 

I was thinking about the "acknowledgement gameplay" and got back to example you brought up with mass effect, alpha protocol, and it made me think of undertale "interaction mode" that is rolled up with the combat. When you speak to character instead of fighting, it's an entire scene with branching option and potentially multiple ending, it also unlock additional scene depending on the outcome.

The main difference with typical gamification of dialogue is that it's about the outcomes responsibility, in the "manipulation mindset" the player is clearly presented as being in charge of the consequence, in the acknowledgement mindset it's the writer who is in charge of creating surprise and follow up from interaction, ie it's written driven, not logic (anticipated consequence) driven.

But that got me thinking, all these example have in common that they are entire self contain scene in themselves. Traditionally dialogue is a special "gameplay mode" you shift to another presentation with specific control that highlight and focus on the function of the mode, exposition. These example are a bit more than exposition, they try to insert interaction at the core of the "dialogue". They have "internal stakes" even if that stakes is just flavor like in undertale (pet the dog) where even the dialogue interact with the "battle part" or stuff happen based on previous interaction (like annoying dog stealing a bone from the battle of another character, which is not about anticipated consequence).

SO the logical end conclusion why no do away with the idea of " generic dialogue mode" for full "scene sequence", with moment to moment custom interaction? We will always need traditional dialogue as a "composition brick", but when there is stakes beyond exposition of information we might shift to the idea of "scene".

 

So I'll be honest, I find myself struggling to follow your presentation of theoretical concepts. I blame myself for this, but do you think you could provide an example?

It seems like you're suggesting either applying this outside of the context of dialogue itself, or removing that separate dialogue mode to make dialogue seamless with the rest of the game, or something else entirely I'm totally missing.

 

I apologize for being too much into my own thought lol. I use this thread also as a way to expend my perspective on the matter.

The theorical idea here is that game are a composition of "mode", basically like movie have different "shot" to tell a story by emphasizing certain visual (close shot, panoramix view, etc ...), game use mode as basic unit of composition, switching in and out of each mode to convey different thing. Dialogue is one of these mode. It has a traditional form, that is character is locked out of navigation, you have close up to the character involve into the discussion and control is push to text, with selecting answer instead of moving in the decor.

The idea is that to deconstruct the mode and evolve it to our own need, because the traditional format might be too constrain. Which in some way some game do, the wheel of mass effect was to bring consistency to dialogue choice for example (direction are meaningful, up is paragon, down is renegade, left is exposition, right is decision) and "interupt" allow to have reactive behavior. But in general game have a one size fits all format of dialogue, it's like a movie where all scene has the same wide shot (basically early movie like those of Méliès, stuck in the presentation that mimicked theater).

The idea is simply to move forward and ditch the format to something the work for each scene and their own need instead of applying the same format. It's not about seamless, or removing dialogue mode, it's about to expend it for each type of interaction you would need in a specific scene. Ie to consider dialogue mode as full performative interactive scene of their own. I mean a love scene isn't shot the same way as an intimidation scene (which are different stakes), why would the same work in the same dialogue format?

 

No need to apologize.

I think that's an excellent point. However, I don't have a lot of film experience, so I probably couldn't identify the key differences between the types of scenes.

One thing that immediately comes to mind, however, is QTEs. They seem to be within the realm of a dialogue system, but they change the way the input works - it becomes time-sensitive for the user - to highlight the difference in the scene. Is that an example of what you're describing?

 

In related news, I've got what I'd consider the first "working" prototype of the system I want to use. You can see/download it here. I'll look at a full build/WebGL/all that after I get everything in.

I need to add a teensy bit more on the backend to get it where it needs to be. After that, though, it's just a matter of adding and integrating content.

The second of those clauses, integrating content, is going to be a huge, huge task I realize. With a dynamic conversation where a user can at any time jump on to a side branch by picking a response, there needs to be a way to get them back on track.

The way it's working now is that I basically have these groups of areas as seen in the image below (made in XMind):



I did not show player responses here. However, imagine there's a response that shows up immediately upon beginning the "Middle-class district" section. That response remains available all the way until we move from the "Middle" to "Upper." And here's the thing: after the player picks it and gets their side content, we need to return them to the same place in the conversation they were at.

At present, the only clear way I see to do this is to have bools in each section saying "yes, we've talked about this." The end of the side content needs to link to every possible place the user could be at, with each linking checking whether the current activity has been talked about.

And this is still a pretty linear, straightforward conversation. It could double in complexity if you start having actual divergence.

I actually only just made that XMind "map." I'm glad I did. It seems like a really useful way to map a conversation, though one has to make sure one isn't limited by the approach (only using a tree structure when another would work, for example).

Anyone who bothers to look at the project, what do you think so far? As mentioned I intend to address a couple of remaining concerns for the interface, then add the content in. That may take a while, but I'd love to see any opinions of what's currently here.

I personally think it's super cool to have some dynamicism (is that a word?) in how dialogue works. Plus, I mentioned this briefly before, but my goal is to have dialogue going while the player is moving through the world, so they aren't stuck in a static scene. They're multi-tasking to a degree, which will hopefully make it more interesting.

 

I had one great idea for a VR game. Recently I visited LA room escape with friends and I was thinking to create something like scary room but a virtual game. I think there are many horror fans and this idea can be really interesting.

 

I saw something like that on steam and I actually put it on my wishlist, which is rare. I think games like that could be so much fun!

Some of the games similar were all about killing everything you can to escape. I would love to see some based more on puzzles, mysteries, intrigue and horror. I would play those games.

 

The Puzzle Room VR?

Not to be confused with The Room of course, which is also supposed to be a very good game.

 

No, I cannot play VR, but maybe I did see that one too. VR makes me sick seconds after I put on the mask. lol

But...I could see a VR escape room being very cool...even if sadly, I cannot play it.

 

If I recall correctly you and your family like board games, and I want to recommend to you the "Exit" series, by Kosmos:
https://www.amazon.com/Thames-Kosmo...qid=1515185491&sr=8-1&keywords=exit+boardgame

Those games can only be played once, as you'll physically destroy the material in the box while solving the puzzles, but it's still great value for money if you compare it to something like going to the cinema with 3-4 people.

 

Neat! Thanks.

 

Okay.

https://eternalambiguity.itch.io/dialogue-test?secret=KfUDRHEgFE1xKKffQ6CcKKQ6pUA

I've got a working prototype. Something I want to point out:

This is limited. The ultimate goal of this work is to try to incorporate a more engaging dialogue system into a game. While what's currently here does indeed do that compared to a great deal of games, my end goal would be to allow the player to navigate an environment while having the conversation. This can be done with what I have, but it necessitates the creation of such an environment. I plan to work on this in the future; I have a couple different ideas for that, but just know this current version is not the culmination of the idea.

In the interest of full disclosure I'll point out that soon after I finished things on this I discovered that the game Oxenfree has a similar mechanic. However, to my understanding (I haven't played it; I only saw a video by Mark Brown where he showed it) it's used in a very limited fashion. Less dialogue trees and more a group of disparate topics with two or three responses on each topic.

I would love any and all feedback on my implementation.​

 

The flow works very well. I like being able to interject questions and comments as the NPC speaks. I was skeptical earlier about how much of a difference it would make, but it really feels much more like a living conversation.

I think there needs to be a longer pause between lines, unless the lines are voiced. It you have a copy of RT-Voice or RT-Voice Pro, that would be a quick way to test the flow with text-to-speech voices. (Just add an RT Voice Actor component to the conversation GameObject.) As it is right now, the NPC's lines pass by too fast.

I wonder if it would be worth tracking how frequently the player interrupts the NPC. If the player repeatedly interrupts during important NPC lines, maybe the NPC would get upset.

 

I definitely agree about waiting. It bothered me too when a line would finish and you'd immediately move to the next. And like you imply, a voice would really solve things there, both to give more time in general and to give more time while the player has read the subtitle, so they know what their potential responses are referring to (of course they might also turn off subtitles, and to account for such a case we might simply give the voice over a couple extra seconds at the end of the line).

And thanks for the asset mention--I had an idea about a month ago to incorporate a voice over into this system (using a different thematic setting than this conversation, which is why this one is currently unvoiced), and I was thinking about using just the regular "Microsoft Sam" or whoever it is now. You think I should get some text-to-speech audio for this one and try it out?

That's a great idea about the NPC noticing interruptions. In this specific case it makes less sense given the nature of the conversation (the NPC is a guide) and the player's class (if you compare a "high-class" conversation versus either of the others, the NPC is more cagey and less dissenting), but in more natural conversations I can definitely see its use.

This is basically the dialogue system setup for that puzzle game I talked about a while back, so I want to go that direction eventually. However, I see some potential here to create little VR-esque "experiences," where you have a small setting with a detailed, realistic conversation. Actually the first little thing I thought of was like a barber shop experience. You sit there, and a couple of barbers and maybe another waiting customer are chatting, and you can join the conversation.

Another I just thought of was a formal dinner type of thing where you're engaging with a couple of people around you (this one might be a bit more challenging because realistically you might expect a couple of different conversations at once, meaning you need to show those to the player and have them able to maneuver between them). This one might have more of a "game" nature to it where you have to manage approval from other guests (maybe I could put Love/Hate to use!).

 

I think it's definitely worthwhile to try out text-to-speech.

In the meantime, you can add an extra delay of, say, 2 seconds by changing the Dialogue Manager's Camera Settings > Default Sequence to:

Delay(2)@{{end}}​

I think these games were mentioned earlier in the thread, but the playthrough reminded me a bit of Subsurface Circular, and your formal dinner idea definitely reminded me of Emily Short and Richard Evans' Versu system. Short's game, Blood & Laurels, is no longer available, but you might be able to find playthroughs on YouTube. Richard Evans' YouTube channel has some playthroughs of his GOGAR system, which I think you may find very interesting.

 

I'm a slow reader on top of not being a native English speaker, and for me it would be unplayable. I can read the top dialog line, but don't even get to have a glance at the possible answers in the time window before the next line is being said that I need to read. If I were supposed to make decisions about them on top of reading them, that'd be quite a few extra seconds that I'd need because I like to think a good deal about what I say and pick my replies carefully. Any sort of time-critical element in dialogs (like in telltale games) is rather stressful for me, but not in a good way. I would avoid a game like that.

That doesn't neccessarily mean it doesn't offer worthwhile rewards for people who read and decide 3 times as fast as I can, it just means it would make the game unenjoyable or even inaccessible for people like me. Which is fine, but you should be aware of it. Maybe you want to make "the Dark Souls of dialog games" where perfect timing and practice will lead you to victory?

 

Yeah, as being not a native speaker, I can relate to that. I can read fairly well, in general, but when it comes to meaningful dialogues, I need a little bit of time to process the subtle differences between certain expressions and indicators regarding mood, cultural references and so on.
Now, as Martin said it's not necessarily a problem, but if you're aiming for the largest "market", you will have to keep in mind that many-many people aren't native.

On the technical side, I think the traditional structured dialogue may not be the best fit for this kind of gameplay.
I'm playing with the idea to implement Valve's dialogue system from the Left4Dead series.
If you want to learn about it and you don't know yet, here is a GDC presentation about the basics: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1015528/AI-driven-Dynamic-Dialog-through

It's a better fit IMHO because it's data driven as oppose to design-driven. You can add any number of dialogue lines for each situations with the proper indicators and you can write a query system which cares about your data.
It also handles the "answer in the middle of the other's sentence or after it" situations with ease.

 

I'll try adding voice over lines and you guys can see if that's better. Not only will it be slower, but you'll theoretically be able to ignore the subtitle and just read the responses.

The goal with this isn't really to make dialogue more "difficult," but to make it more engaging. Of course just like how some action RPGs can be inaccessible to people who traditionally play turn-based RPGs and thus are unable to respond in time, it's possible for this system to be simply too active for some people to properly engage with it. However I really feel that if done right that number should be fairly small, and wouldn't necessarily include non-native speakers unless their understanding of the language was fairly limited.

@Martin_H and @LurkingNinjaDev would you guys mind giving a couple of examples of English voiced lines (link a video or two) that you feel are just right--not too fast--for understanding what's being said line-by-line? Doesn't matter where from, I just want to get an idea of what kind of speed would be appropriate.

 

What about a slider for the extra delay at the end? Players who'd like a little more time (such as non-native speakers) could increase the delay. To do this in the Dialogue System, you could add a variable to your dialogue database; let's say it's named "delayAmt". Then instead of:

Delay(2)@{{end}}​

you could do:

Delay([var=delayAmt])@{{end}}​

 

Brilliant. I'll look at adding a pause menu where one can adjust that.

 

You mean listen to the dialog while reading the (different) responses? That wouldn't work for me because I'm one of the reader types who can't just "absorb" words straight into my mind like a fast reader, I basically speak the lines in my head while reading. Many do that, it's a big limiting factor on reading speed, but I never managed to get rid of it. It also makes it hard to read one thing while listening to another. Normally in games I turn subtitles on so that I can understand everything even if other ingame noises are louder at times than dialog or if the accents of characters are hard to understand. Podcasts like the one linked below I can follow very easily, but I don't know if I could read and evaluate other lines of text while listening to it. I think this whole kind of mechanic just really isn't my cup of tea.
When I play Dark Souls games I often listen to podcasts and when I have to talk to someone in the game I just read the subtitles as quick as I can and click through the dialog, but during that time I barely can follow what they're saying on the podcast.

By the way, in the first half they talk about the Southpark documentary which I found very interesting in its own right.

The upper limit of dialog speed that I can still understand is this:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/vid...1-Zero-Punctuation-The-Inpatient-and-Doom-VFR

But that is after a lot of practice, and leaves me no capacity to take any other kind of information in while listening. When I started listening to those many years ago, I was getting less than ~50% information out of them on the first listen. This got better over time, though I can not say whether that's more about getting used to Yahtzee's style specifically or how well it would transfer to other people talking fast.

That's the thing though, I'm not sure I want dialog to be more engaging. For me dialog in a game is usually the time to lean back and relax a bit from the action, maybe also drink some water or eat some snacks. In Deus Ex there where some quicktime events (iirc you need the social enhancer upgrade for them to appear) in dialogs that I failed, because I didn't even hold the controller in my hands at the time.
The only time I remember getting more into a dialog than usual was in "Event[0]" where you talk to an AI via a freeform text-parser interface, and with a combination of them having accounted for a lot of different inputs and me trying not to break their system I got a fairly good flow going. Also I can type fairly fast compared to my reading speed. That probably helped too. But I wouldn't want that kind of interface to be used in every game. It was nice once in a very specific kind of game, but on the bottom line I probably prefer Dark Souls' system of "press A for loredump" where I don't need to do anything other than listen/read and confirm an occasional yes/no prompt.

If you want to go for something new, then I think customizable delays, like they have been suggested, are a very good idea.

 

And there's certainly nothing wrong with this. After all games already use a number of different systems for dialogue, and there are lots of different types of combat (action RPG versus turn based as I mentioned).

Hate to think this idea would exclude people but I suppose most do to varying extent. Though I will add the "delay slider" and see how that works.

 

Shorter sentences is also key, mass effect had to learn how to distill idea in a few words for dialog selection, they didn't really succeed until mass effect 2 though.

 

I've thought for a while that a dialogue system that asks the player "how does that make you feel?" rather than asking them "what's your reply?" would be interesting. I think it'd help immersion by avoiding having to read potential replies that don't match the current emotional state. Woe betide the player who ends a conversation terrified though, their next 'random' encounter is going to be a jump scare

It'd also add value to replays as the other reply texts could only be discovered by another play through.

 

Just want to point out that bioware is doing something similar to this. They do show an abbreviated reply, but each reply is typically tied to a tone--stoic, sarcastic, aggressive, sad, etc. They did it for DA ][ and for Inquisition, as well as Mass Effect Andromeda.

But it sounds a bit like you're suggesting multiple replies per emotional state. Which is not bad necessarily, but would have writing content requirements a magnitude greater (at least for replies) than they are right now for multiple choice dialogues, which are already higher than normal.

 

Nope. Maybe a "?" appears if you can interrupt with a question, other emojis appearing as appropriate (maybe a selection limited by current emotional state). So the player only gets to know the actual dialog for their choice, and has to play again and choose differently to get the others. It's not something that would work for every game, it'd most suit an emotional journey story which could be told with different flavours. I didn't fancy making a dating sim though which seemed the best application for it

 

I don't really see how is it different from what for example the Bethesda games do (Oblivion, Skyrim, etc?)...
Although I think they under-use it, but sometimes you have the options to answer/continue the talk with certain emotion/intention:
- neutral answer
- persuasive answer
- aggressive answer
- etc...

The only thing is, it needs an entire branch on the dialogue tree, so a lot of extra work.
Also you would stop the flow of the conversation with not really needed questions. I think the
- answer1 [aggressive]
- answer2 [persuade]
- answer3 [sad]

is much better. Seems more streamlined and seamless but it supports the replay because players want to know what happens if they answer differently. (IMHO)

 

I really wish I hadn't wrote that. My subconscious is now interrogating me - "You know the thing you don't want to do is often the thing you should do.."

 

I saw it! And I'll be waiting. I haven't really played any dating sims, but I've played plenty of VNs.

Unrelated: an updated version of the dialogue system is up, with a slider allowing you to delay the next line by 0-10 seconds.

https://eternalambiguity.itch.io/dialogue-test?secret=KfUDRHEgFE1xKKffQ6CcKKQ6pUA

@Martin_H and @LurkingNinjaDev (along with anyone else who felt the same way), you mentioned that the movement between lines was too fast for you. I get that the very premise (more engaging dialogue) might not be something you personally are looking for, but if you could take a look and see if the delay is long enough for you to read the NPC line and your available responses (along with being able to mentally consider if you want to speak) that would be cool.

I set the max at 10 seconds because that seemed plenty long, but I really have no problem with extending it further if someone thinks that's necessary.

 

I've played neither, my only impressions of them are from how they are shown in anime. I don't really have the budget to pursue a dialog rich game at the moment, but I suppose I could mock one up as a test scene when I get back to working on toon shaders. I just thought it was an amusing bug in my self programming

 

I mis-read this initially and thought you were talking about something else. Anyway...

Mass Effect is an interesting example, because it used paraphrases, and a number of people weren't a fan of that. I'm somewhat against them myself: I feel that I don't have enough information to know what my character will say, and that he may say something I didn't intend him to. There were times, less so in the trilogy (though perhaps it's been so long since I've played it that I've forgotten) but definitely in Andromeda, and also with DA Inquisition, where I would pick a line because it seemed most appropriate and have my character say that bit, but also say something else that didn't fit.

I suppose I could go for the Deus Ex Human Revolution compromise: Use a paraphrase, but also show the currently selected option's full line somewhere else. This would definitely be useful (probably critical) for when this system is fully matured and is in use while the player is walking about in the game world--limiting screen space as much as possible will be necessary.

I'll hit up TonyLi about it.

 

That's why I mentioned dating sims, it doubles down on not knowing how the NPC will respond and intensifies the only gameplay VN style games have..

 

Okay, I think I wasn't precise enough, because I joined in because I was referring to the Alpha Protocol's video showing off their dialogue system. That was too fast for me.

I gave it a try to your application, here's what I felt:
- The lines were too long to read in general (for me)
- The fact that you have put the NPC's line on the top of the screen made it very difficult to read everything in one go.
- It was confusing that the answer I clicked and what you shown in the middle of the screen as the player's line were different, I felt I misclicked, multiple times.
- I think the waiting period (the 10s you were referring to) would be better if it were depend on the amount of text, because the longer period for the three word answer is way too much but it is too little for the One paragraph-worth two sentences.
- The typewriter effect certainly isn't helping either
- the six option to choose from is a lot under time pressure, especially because there're only subtle differences
- when I chose an answer, it is not needed to wait, since I know what I have chosen
- I personally didn't feel more engaged, I felt pressured, but this may come from the fact that I'm not native (although I don't think I would enjoy such a thing in my native language either -> I enjoy more when I'm in control, I hate, for example the quick-time events as well, so it's probably a personal preference)

Hope this helps as a single data point.

 

Some dev (I'm afraid I've forgotten which studio and which game) changes the player's portrait image when you mouse over each response in the player response menu. It helps clarify how the paraphrase is going to expand into its full text, so you're less likely to choose a sarcastic-sounding paraphrase only to discover that the PC delivers it sincerely. If I recall correctly, their request is the reason for the hover example on the Dialogue System Extras page. I think they eventually requested a tooltip (included in that hover example) that shows the full text, too.

Someone else was toying with a bunch of mood sliders that would influence the responses that came up in the response menu. While it started as sliders, the player eventually ended up moving their mood marker on a 2D plane, something like upset<-->happy X mellow<-->agitated.

@EternalAmbiguity - Maybe speed up the typewriter to like 200 characters per second? This still gives it some life and forward motion, but it appears fast enough that fast readers aren't left waiting for words to appear.

@EternalAmbiguity - Instead of setting a delayAmount variable, you could change DialogueManager.DisplaySettings.subtitleSettings.subtitleCharsPerSecond. This will scale the slider based on the text length rather than just tacking on an absolute number of seconds.

 

@EternalAmbiguity also I'm not sure that my experience would be the same with voice-over, it may help a lot (personally I'm more of an audio-visual guy despite the fact that I love to read static things like books and stuff)

 

Thanks for the feedback. I'll get to work on these things being mentioned. It's great to have someone giving suggestions, and a way to implement them.

I do still intend to add the audio. It'll take a little while to create voiced lines for all of the NPC lines though, so it may be some time before that update (at absolute latest I intend to have it for the next Feedback Friday).

So I've been talking about tone with regards to Bioware, but as far as this is concerned, I've basically ignored tone, having the player's lines be essentially emotionless (or emotionally neutral, let's say). I do feel you can still have the player give opinions with this, but there's very little "personality" to it.

 

It's now slow enough, but at times (very short sentences) way too slow. Many good points have been made already. The only thing I have to add is, what good reason would a player ever have not to want to listen to the maximum amount of dialog for a given topic? And if that reason is something like "impatience", then wouldn't a system where you can skip ahead through dialog be much better for that? Also what if you need to step away from the computer for a second? Without a pause button that could be a pretty big problem for some people.

 

Please, take everything I say with a grain of salt. Probably I'm not the best audience for these kind of things, for the reasons I explained.
Although I like to share my thoughts on things, you can decide if you accept it or drop it.

One more thing about the interface you are playing with. The player's choice in relation to the lines the player character would say, I would implement it this way:

Q: Which districts you want to see?
- lower-class
- upper class
- middle-class

And then when you choose, you can write out the whole sentence: "I'd like to see the upper-class district".
This helps to make a choice, because you aren't dump entire sentences on the player, only the meaningful parts.

 

Okay, just want to point out that I made the "typewriter" speed much faster. I also changed the slow-down per TonyLi's suggestion. Now it's dependent on the length of the sentence. New link:

https://eternalambiguity.itch.io/dialogue-test?secret=KfUDRHEgFE1xKKffQ6CcKKQ6pUA

I personally always want a player to have the freedom to choose what they want to hear within reason. Mission-critical stuff should always be shown, but extraneous stuff should be the player's choice. I don't always explore every single topic in a Bioware game's dialogue, because occasionally the topic itself doesn't interest me.

You make a good point about skipping lines and pausing. I talked to TonyLi about pausing yesterday, but I'll check with him about skipping them too.

And I've taken care of the strange length of things--see above.

It sounds like you're talking about the paraphrase thing, yes? Yeah, that's something I can work on next.

 

If that's your goal, then you should somehow communicate to the player that they won't miss important stuff if they follow a certain type of skipping behaviour. Otherwise they might think they need to listen to everything "just in case". But if you tell them "this and that is not important", then some may ask "why did you bother putting it in then?"

Regarding reading speed, I watched some anime yesterday and noticed that every now and then I will stop and rewind a bit because I wasn't able to read every subtitle in time because either their display length is inconsistent, or two subtitles for overlapping fast dialog are displayed at the same time, or written on-screen text is being subtitled on top of dialog subtitle. And in some scenes the japanese writing on screen is shown for such a short time that I seriously doubt that native speakers would be able to read it all in that time either.

 

Well, nobody says that about Bioware games. Or most games with dialogue. We accept that there are some elements required for moving forward with a conversation, and that some are purely optional.

You could level that statement at pretty much all optional content in games as a matter of fact. Why did CDPR bother putting sidequests into The Witcher 3 if they don't require you to go through them?

That aside, I understand your point about missing important stuff. That's something that should be addressed on a case-by-case basis, determined by the design of the game. That's the nice short answer, and you can ignore the rest of this post if it seems too long.


I have multiple game design ideas I'm working with. I have different designs for two games, and I'm not sure which one this specific conversation is for. And amusingly, I have no intention of using this system for either of them. I'll address the type of game I'd use this for at the end.

Of the two, one of them is a visual novel. In this VN the player grows up in a small isolated village, so they aren't familiar with most places they travel to. As such, it makes perfect sense for them to receive a tour of the city.

As far as design is concerned, this is a VN. It will mostly be reading, and there won't be an extensive conversation system (certainly not what I'm showcasing here). The main choice elements will be several people you can choose to kill or spare, with consequences on the success of your main goal. If you spare them, they become companions, and you get broad choices to shape their personality as well--but there would never be a case where you're choosing whether or not to ask if the NPC knows about X or Y.

I'm currently writing the prologue to this.

The second game is...I'm not completely sure, but I'm thinking a "third person adventure" game, probably DA:O-esque top-down. The player is quite familiar with the world around them, but I imagined them visiting this city, staying at the inn mentioned in the conversation, and having the option to take a tour.

As far as gameplay design is concerned, this is planned to be something of a "mystery" game, where the player has to solve a series of problems. I state them in this conversation--disappearances (turns out to be human trafficking), scientific experiments, and a plot to start a war. The goal is to have dialogue play a huge part: the player will have to talk to people to figure out what's going on. Things like reputation will play a big part here, and this is actually where I got the idea to have NPCs respond differently to you based on your clothing. The gameplay here would essentially be you talking to NPCs, going places and seeing what's there and trying to figure out what to do next.

(Edit: both of these games are set in this same world by the way, and both involve the two PCs visiting this city. That's why I'm mentioning them both if that wasn't clear)

So for the first game, this isn't a problem. There will be almost no conversation choices. For the second game, the conversation choices are a part of the gameplay, so it's vital that the player NOT know what's important or not.

Now, the game I originally planned this for is one where the player engages with a single NPC very extensively on a broad number of topics. And in this case, you aren't using that information for any other purpose but to get to know the NPC. So all of it's important, in a sense, but none of it's blocking or hindering progress in the main gameplay (puzzles).

 

I think the big difference for backlash-risk is mainly whether or not you tell a player that some part of your game isn't important and can be skipped, not whether or not it actually is optional. You know what I mean? So much about player satisfaction seems to be based on subjective feelings or expectations and not on hard data.

For that usecase it makes a lot more sense to me to use such a system and I think there's also no need for a disclaimer about how you can safely skip parts.

 

Gotcha. I was never thinking of a straight up, "this isn't important" popup or something, but in such a case where there are important and unimportant things, basically railroad a player through the important bits so they have to experience them (again, like Bioware does).

 

instead of not important how about "flavor", a lot of player who enjoy story like to delve into the world, by communicating the intent of the writing instead of marking it as fluff, you make these part desirable and a goal onto themselves. For example you could have some form of feedback for "delve into the character backstory", "piece of word exposition", etc ... and let the player decide, that's one thing I yearn for in game, I never know what a piece of information will be in advance some time, it's a reward onto itself.

 

Just reporting here that I've added a number of things. Was going to wait until I added "Microsoft Sam" voicing, but that may take a while so I'm just putting this up now. It now has pausing, as well as skipping forward in dialogue. Also has a main menu so one could restart the conversation without having to refresh the page.

https://eternalambiguity.itch.io/dialogue-test?secret=KfUDRHEgFE1xKKffQ6CcKKQ6pUA​

 

https://eternalambiguity.itch.io/dialogue-test

Just want to report that I have a version out with audio. It's all "Microsoft Sam" machine voices, but it is something that imitates a situation where one would be hearing a voice and making decisions while doing so.

I'll repeat that this still is not the end state of how I envision this system. As I've mentioned before I envision the player moving around while they're conversing. It'll be a while before I have the chance to build something that can utilize that. My current thinking is an immersive sim-type experience where you're interacting in real time with some kind of AI as you move around the space station and do stuff (I'd like it to be realistic stuff, not McGuffin-ny). I know Event[0] exists but I haven't played it yet and kind of don't want to because I don't want to unconsciously copy it. My initial goal there is to build a single room you have to escape from, hopefully with systemic stuff like rerouting power or something (just an example), while you interact with the AI

Anyway, yeah. This is here. Feel free to give further feedback, and thanks for all given thus far. I plan to put it up in the next Feedback Friday as well.

 

The audio makes a huge difference. It slows it down to the speed of a more natural conversation. (Side note: One of the dialogue entry nodes has a malformed [HideResponse 43] tag that showed up in the subtitle.)

 

Oop! Found and fixed. Many thanks!

And yeah, it really does change it. Hopefully makes it easier to engage with the responses without feeling rushed.

 

How you can't have a question about haven Inn before he mention haven by voice first
I have myself waiting for him saying everything he has to say before making a choice (interrupting is rude), but when I move to click, all choice just disappear, that's rude lol. I think it need a bit more pause to feel natural, aka the talker assess you have nothing to add by waiting a bit, before saying something to ease your indetermination. Since it's a guide, that would make him a bit more considerate. Even without tone in the voice, you can have some tone on non verbal cues like pauses.

I like how I spoke about the treatment of lower class in the upper class district the game just boot me up to the starting screen, oops that some taboo topic I put myself into LMAO.