Dialogue tree limits.

raphaeldisanto · August 2013

Well, I made this thread over in the PTS section of the forums, but it didn't get answered. I figured I'd wait until the patch went live, because maybe... just maybe... it was simply an artifact of the fact that I was on the test server.

The short version is, apparently they have now stealth-introduced a dialogue tree prompt limit. I assume that's the number of prompt nodes in the entire quest.

This is what the error message in the Foundry says:

I'm guessing it means prompts as in "lines spoken by NPCs"

For example, this dialogue has 3 prompts and 6 PC responses.

My quest did not cause this error before the patch, but now it does. Since the patch is now live, I feel justified in posting about this in the main Foundry forum, as opposed to the PTS Foundry forum, where I didn't get an answer

However, there's no figure displayed anywhere in the Foundry for what the limit might be. So if any of the CMs or Cryptic devs would like to chime in here and let us know what these new limits on dialogue are, it would be very appreciated.

(I'm guessing that no one else has found this limit yet. I write a lot of dialogue.)

zahinder · August 2013

Are you f'in kidding me???
Well, that pretty much kills my stuff. And my interest in Foundry.
I had a puzzle with 50 prompts in one dialog tree.

Sigh.

zahinder · August 2013

I just checked, and can't find any indication of which dialog tree is at fault. It's possible it's based on total dialog prompts for a map or the mission? Who knows.

Also, the display of dialog trees is... really hard to navigate. I don't remember if it was like that before.

koboldbard2 · August 2013

Meanwhile... with a proper dialogue editor...

chewdog888 · August 2013

koboldbard2 wrote: »

Meanwhile... with a proper dialogue editor...

WAHHHHh I miss my PW!

Also miss Lilac Script Gen among other things.

zahinder · August 2013

Boy, what new game technology is THAT?

/bitter_sarcasm

koboldbard2 · August 2013

zahinder wrote: »

Boy, what new game technology is THAT?

/bitter_sarcasm

It's still out there and still being used by those that want a proper toolset.

zahinder · August 2013

Alas, my interest in UGC is limited to MMOs. Which... stinks, since my choices are... NW, STO, or EQ2. Hopefully EQNext is even half as exciting as it looks.

raphaeldisanto · August 2013

I think it's total limits, Zah. Are you getting the error too? I know you have that monstrous Tower of Hanoi puzzle.....

And EQ2 and EQNext won't scratch this itch for me, alas - EQ2 only allows you to create dungeon crawls, and EQNext only allows you to create/model art assets. Neither of them allow for any kind of storytelling worthy of the name.

kurre2 · August 2013

A dialogue limit?! Please no...Please. Cant have good RP without choices.

zahinder · August 2013

It'd better be a bug, or it's the final nail.

raphaeldisanto · August 2013

Yes. I find that I am unfortunately forced to say the same thing, which makes me a sadpanda, because I enjoyed creating in the Foundry. But if I can't tell the stories I want to tell in the style I want to tell them, there's not much draw for me anymore.

I don't write short dungeon crawls. I write rich, deep involved stories, with complex NPC interactions, trying to provide a BioWare-style gaming experience rather than your typical run of the mill MMO-style verb-number-noun quests.

They're not for everyone - They're certainly not to the taste of the majority of MMO players who are looking for a quick 15-minute schlomp for their daily ADs - but I was hoping that Cryptic would support the creation of these sorts of adventures.

If it's an intentional change, that saddens me, because variety and diversity is generally a good thing.

zahinder · August 2013

Maybe report it as a bug and see if we can get some attention?

koboldbard2 · August 2013

zahinder wrote: »

Alas, my interest in UGC is limited to MMOs. Which... stinks, since my choices are... NW, STO, or EQ2. Hopefully EQNext is even half as exciting as it looks.

That's too bad, because that toolset lets you run your own mini-mmo with pretty much whatever rules you feel like.

raphaeldisanto · August 2013

Update.

So I started cutting huge swathes of dialogue from Lost Little Lambs to try and discern what the actual budget is. I started with approximately 800 lines, spread over 70 conversations.

It seems to be somewhere around 550.

And it's definitely based on total number of dialogue prompts, not number of conversations.

I still have more conversations than can be displayed in the drop down conversation selector, but when I got down to 530 (ish) prompts, the warning message about having too much dialogue went away.

I don't know that it's exactly 550, because I can't guarantee that my own count of prompts in my spreadsheet is 100% accurate, but it's somewhere around there, certainly.

Each prompt still has its budget of 1000 characters, of course.

somebob · August 2013

You know, it's just text. It can't be seriously taxing on the servers, can it?

How very sad that there's such a limit in this day and age.

zahinder · August 2013

It's really demoralizing because I've been aiming at using dialog trees to make up for the lack of 'game logic' elsewhere in the game.

For example, in my first mission, the final confrontation has dialog trees separated by class skill, so each class has a separate way of resolving matters.

Well, so much for that.

Second quest has a Tower of Hanoi puzzle, with 50+ cells in a dialog tree, plus three separate paths to the end goal.

So much for that.

Cryptic keeps shoving us into making featureless boxes filled with ogres.

ddsauter · August 2013

Role play includes dialog options and storytelling. Limiting the way a player can deliver a story and options to respond seems odd given this is a roleplaying game. While I don't tend to implement dialog to the extent that Raph does, I've played his quest and cannot imagine it parsed down. The richness of the story would suffer.

I'm certain there are many more author's out there who implement role play dialog that could chime in here in support of this issue. Please do.

dee

tseran · August 2013

I've (fortunately) been away for a few days... of all the issues I've seen reported (and to be fair, many with Dev attention), this is the one that has me the most stressed. I've used this week away to draft up quite a bit of dialogue that I hoped to plop into some upcoming quests.
I don't know if I come close to this new limit or not on my existing quest or my planned sequels, but as mentioned above - I've played Lost Little Lambs, and love the options and richness provided by the various dialogue choices.

Please do not limit this. Fix this horrid mistake!

msrebel1972 · August 2013

The foundry quests that I enjoyed the most were the ones that were rich in dialogue. The fifteen minute quests that you run just to earn dailies hold no interest for me as I don't even do the dailies. I cannot be alone in this. If they limit dialogue and don't allow authors to tell their stories in their way then the foundry quest hold little interest for me. Also, I would hate to lose authors like Raph and Zahinder and all the other authors who value story above a quick run to satisfy dailies. Let the authors tell their stories!

antonkyle · August 2013

zahinder wrote: »

Cryptic keeps shoving us into making featureless boxes filled with ogres.

I think this is the Perfect World involvement.

koboldbard2 · August 2013

msrebel1972 wrote: »

The foundry quests that I enjoyed the most were the ones that were rich in dialogue.

Here's the patchnotes for this morning: http://nw.perfectworld.com/news/?p=966991

Control+F Dialog!

raphaeldisanto · August 2013

So, no word yet then....

jfinderdev · August 2013

The limit is actually 600 individual prompts across the whole quest. This limit was added because due to the way the Cryptic Engine handles text resources getting saved, if you had more than about 500 dialog prompts, saving and previewing quests would cause the server to stall about 80% of the time, causing you to disconnect while editing.

If you really want to have that many prompts, have you considered splitting your quest up into multiple quests? The highest rated quests are between 20 and 30 minutes, you'll probably get higher ratings if you split your 90 minute epic into three more bite-sized quests.

raphaeldisanto · August 2013

Thanks for the explanation, jfinderdev

If it's 600, I guess that means I have more dialogue than I thought, haha. I thought I'd chopped 250 from 800, which is where I came up with the 550 figure. I guess I must have closer to 850 lines in total, ha.

Unfortunately, 20 minutes doesn't really even give me enough time to get a good story started, let alone one up and rolling enough for a cliffhanger to have any impact at the end. Could I split it into two or three chunks? Absolutely. Do I want to? Naw. Not really. I'll have to think about it.

Oh and yeah, I don't care about ratings. Ask anyone. I don't even promote my quests.

raphaeldisanto · August 2013

p.s. I've never experienced an 80% disconnect-while-editing rate, even with 800+ dialogue prompts.

msrebel1972 · August 2013

jfinderdev wrote: »

If you really want to have that many prompts, have you considered splitting your quest up into multiple quests? The highest rated quests are between 20 and 30 minutes, you'll probably get higher ratings if you split your 90 minute epic into three more bite-sized quests.

Some authors are more interested in the quality and intergerity of their quest than obtaining higher ratings. The only thing you've accomplished here is to ensure that the more gifted story-tellers stop building quests all together. Thanks for that.

koboldbard2 · August 2013

somebob wrote: »

You know, it's just text. It can't be seriously taxing on the servers, can it?

jfinderdev wrote: »

The limit is actually 600 individual prompts across the whole quest. This limit was added because due to the way the Cryptic Engine handles text resources getting saved, if you had more than about 500 dialog prompts, saving and previewing quests would cause the server to stall about 80% of the time, causing you to disconnect while editing.

Apparently, it is taxing on the servers.

koboldbard2 · August 2013

zahinder wrote: »

It'd better be a bug, or it's the final nail.

Dev post above confirms it's intentional.

jfinderdev · August 2013

raphaeldisanto wrote: »

Thanks for the explanation, jfinderdev

If it's 600, I guess that means I have more dialogue than I thought, haha. I thought I'd chopped 250 from 800, which is where I came up with the 550 figure. I guess I must have closer to 850 lines in total, ha.

You should also look to see if you ran afoul of the bug that caused one dialog tree to get put onto every single object on the map. Out of the quests that got affected by this, 99.9% of the quests were due to this bug creating all these extra dialog prompts that clearly weren't even desired.

raphaeldisanto · August 2013

No, I didn't run afoul of that bug. I have seen it before, and the results are somewhat hilarious

I just have that much dialogue. It's how I roll (or, more accurately write)

I know I had 800 at last count because I went through every dialogue tree and counted every node. However, I'd added some since that count due to reviewer feedback and people who wanted other options for their character's responses.

Oh well.

Dialogue tree limits.

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