[REQUEST] Keyword Dialogue System (ie: Oblivion / FF2)

[Gnarizard]

Keyword Dialogue System
08-14-09

Summary
System is pretty simple in itself, I just haven't a clue how to script it, so see the following:
For those of you who've not played the Elder Scrolls series or Final Fantasy 2,
keywords (or topics in ES) are learned throughout the game, usually through standard dialogue.
Once a keyword is learned, they are available in a list whenever you talk to someone.
When you choose a keyword from your list, the NPC you're talking to will either
talk to you about the keyword's topic, or tell you that they have no idea what you're talking about.
Keywords are typically the names of quest items (eg: Mythril), names of places (eg: Castle Skingrad),
or names of people (eg: Brother Martin), or just about anything relevant to story-progression.

The list of keywords is constantly changing, and can be dozens of items long.
When you learn a keyword, that (clearly) will add to the list, and when a keyword becomes irrelevant
(like if you complete a quest or some such) it will be removed from the list.
The list should also be sorted alphabetically - exception for the following:

Some NPCs will have extra keywords assigned to them that are relevant to that conversation.
For example, you may ask the town guard for directions, or ask about fugitives.
Perhaps there is a reward for bringing in said fugitive?
If so, you could probably ask about that as well.
These keywords should be at the top of the list, and only appear when talking to that NPC.

Anyway, in a nutshell it's basically a list of choices that gets populated by a script call.
Each choice resulting in different text from different NPCs (though a lot of it is likely to be copy pasta).

Features Desired

• Scrolling window that auto-populates and auto-sorts itself available by script call
• Keywords call pre-defined dialogue from script (3 cases: "no information", "give information", "doesn't trust you")
• Above cases would be controlled by conditional branch in event (and cases can just be numbers "0", "1", and "2")
• Some NPCs have built-in keywords that appear only when speaking to that NPC

Mockups
N/A

Games its been in

• The Elder Scrolls series
• Final Fantasy 2 (NES)

Did you search?
Yeah, I checked every script database I could find and also searched their forums.

Where did you search?

• RMRK (duh)
• RRRevolution
• Creation Asylum
• Google

What did you search for?

• Oblivion
• Oblivion Dialogue
• Keyword Script
• Topic Script
• Final Fantasy 2
• FF2 Dialogue Script
• ...and plenty of similar searches
• in the case of google, all search terms started with "RMXP"

[phillip1756]

you mean like on oblivion when you talk to people,stuff like 'RUMORS' pop up in a list?

[Gnarizard]

Yes, exactly that.
It kinda sounds complicated to script, though, so I'm really not expecting anything much.

[phillip1756]

Yes, exactly that.
It kinda sounds complicated to script, though, so I'm really not expecting anything much.

no scripting required,just eventing

[Grafikal]

Just display a lot of choices, or get an AMS that supports a window for more than 4 choices in it. Chances are if you get an AMS like that, you can highlight text (which you already can anyways). Easy to event. You just have to make sure you build a plan of how each choice will work out, like if you choose 1 of 4, what will the next few choices be and so on. Don't say you wouldn't end up having to do this with a script, because you'd have to do the same exact thing. Eventing it would be much easier to keep track anyways.

[phillip1756]

there is one time you will have to use a script,say you want more than 4 choices

[Grafikal]

Yeah, I was just pointing out that he doesn't need to request a new script if some other script already does this.

[phillip1756]

Yeah, I was just pointing out that he doesn't need to request a new script if some other script already does this.

yes i know you were grafikal