Questions, Questions. Are you all horns?

drakesigar

Here's my first question so far fellas (expect to hear them intermittently) - I want an NPC (let's call him Jones) to be able to have two different conversations with the player, depending on the conversational options the player took with an entirely different NPC. How does one go about doing that?

I figure my best bet is to create two separate versions of Jones who'll be inactive, and then depending on the player's choice, one of these versions will become active. But I'm not sure that's possible. Do I need to do something on the story board like putting dialogue objectives side by side? Not sure what that does either.

darkanind

You could have 2 different versions of the NPC, and only one of them appears after the dialog choice previously.

notaurious

Agree with Dark. For the complexity of this task, it is probably best to have two populated NPCs created, and then make them spawn according to the choice that takes the conversation the way you desire.

crok2

His problem is that they can't both be in the storyboard and he can't just have 1 in the storyboard or the other option wouldn't work at all. You could keep them both out of the storyboard in some clever way that would force people to talk to him anyway.

notaurious

crok2 wrote: »

His problem is that they can't both be in the storyboard and he can't just have 1 in the storyboard or the other option wouldn't work at all. You could keep them both out of the storyboard in some clever way that would force people to talk to him anyway.

Have either NPC NOT be in the storyboard, have BOTH give you an item. Use item to unlock part for remainder of quest. Should quest go different paths according to choice, then set up the doors accordingly. Should the conversation spawn different mobs and so on, link those things BACK to the NPC's dialogue they belong to.

There are several ways around this issue.

notaurious

Further:

Third NPC is your dummy NPC. He just sits there to take up the space either will occupy. He will disappear depending upon an event. Said event also determines which of the two actual NPCs are to be summoned.

drakesigar

notaurious wrote: »

Have either NPC NOT be in the storyboard, have BOTH give you an item. Use item to unlock part for remainder of quest.

I was afraid you were gonna' say that. It'll have to do I suppose, I'll give it a try. Thanks guys.

drakesigar

Nope, can't figure out how to do that either. Completely stuck. I can have an NPC drop an item but can't withhold that item or drop a different item depending on dialogue options, which means Jones will react the same.

Oh and the Foundry Tutorial, might as well be in Japanese.

raphaeldisanto

You can't have a dialogue with an NPC that isn't a quest objective give you an item.

However, you -can- have a dialogue with an NPC spawn an box that will give you an item. I've done this. This, as far as I know, is probably your best bet.

Spawn whichever copy of the NPC you're supposed to see. The conversation with that NPC spawns whichever copy of the chest. That chest gives the player the correct item.

It's clunky and it's nasty, but it's the only way to do divergent stuff in the Foundry right now -- which is actually why I don't do divergent stuff in the Foundry right now, heh. I spent a lot of time at launch trying to figure out how to work around the Foundry's limitations before deciding that it wasn't worth it. More power to you if you stick with it, but for me, I'd rather do a linear quest well than a divergent quest poorly.

I just wrote a different story, abandoned my original idea. Stories are a dime-a-dozen. I got 'em comin' out my ears.

syyn

If you need the NPC to drop a specific item based on a specific dialog choice, you could have the dialog choice spawn an object and have that object give the player the proper item. You'd need to have your NPC tell the players that they need to interact with whatever the object is that is spawned so that they don't miss it. Not the neatest option, but it could work for what I think you are trying to do.

syyn

LOL - Raph and I must have been typing our replies at the same time. Great minds and all that. ;-)

raphaeldisanto

It was one of the first things I did when I started playing with the foundry, actually, to see if I could get around the divergent path limitations with items.

Discovered I could. Decided it was too clunky and that I didn't want to fill my player's inventory up with a bunch of tracking items. Went back to writing linear quest. Haha

nokturnel

The way I created my optional path choice was have one dialogue option remove a detail that was blocking a teleporter from being able to be used by the player. The optional path has to be on the same map, due to linear foundry story limitations the story objective must lead to the same place but either path can get you there.

I didn't even have to use items at all, but I did have to create a cave from scratch (walls, ceilings and all) using only details lol.

Hope that helps.

drakesigar

Ok then. So that's a linear story, must be over 15 minutes of playtime... anything else you'd like to impose on me, Cryptic? *Sigh*

Please tell me it's at least easy to stop the NPCs repeating themselves. After the initial conversation I want each NPC to say something else if the player tries to talk to them again. Just a line really, 'get out of her kid, you bother me' or some such. And if I can't do that, can I prevent giving the player the option to speak to them again? Without having them vanish into thin air.

nokturnel

drakesigar wrote: »

Ok then. So that's a linear story, must be over 15 minutes of playtime... anything else you'd like to impose on me, Cryptic? *Sigh*

Please tell me it's at least easy to stop the NPCs repeating themselves. After the initial conversation I want each NPC to say something else if the player tries to talk to them again. Just a line really, 'get out of her kid, you bother me' or some such. And if I can't do that, can I prevent giving the player the option to speak to them again? Without having them vanish into thin air.

Well you could have them vanish into thin air and replaced with a new npc not tied to storyline lol.

Vanishing NPCs is pretty much how we have to operate due to how linear, simplistic and restricting the Foundry is. All we can do is try to find the best work-a-rounds we can to actually create a Foundry quest that basically "cheats" in order to do advanced design functions. (Though, I wouldn't really call an optional path advanced... that's should be a basic function in any quest, but Cryptic shoves linear down our throats.)

They really should have some sort of system of trusting authors to place Tradeskill nodes and random loot chests too. Like any authors that get Featured are given the ability to place those and will be banned and have all their quests removed if they abuse it.