Random NPC Dialogue

soroji

Maybe I've missed it somewhere in the forums or on google, but how would I go about having dialogue with random npc's? It wouldn't be anything that would need to be tied to progressing through the story, but something like talking to the a doctor in sick bay.

It's just a though I've had to add a little more life to the missions that I'm working on. I have seen something to the same effect done in other missions, but are those just regular NPC contacts with no progression tasks tied to them?

I realize that may have just answered my own question...but at this point I just want to be sure.

thegreendragoon1

First off, the NPC needs to be an NPC contact. Once you have your contact placed. You'll find a checkbox in the properties for default dialog. Selecting this will add a dialog option.

soroji

Gotcha. Thank you sir!

drogyn1701

Keep in mind that default dialogue is repeatable. It will play any time the player interacts with that NPC. If you don't want the dialogue to be repeatable and just play once, you can put an invisible object on the map at the same spot as that NPC, then drag a map dialogue bubble onto the map and set it to go from invisible to visible when interacting with that object.

soroji

Would that be the pop up dialogue bubble or is there another one I haven't seen?

I could do that with a stationary npc, but if I have a npc contact wandering around a bit I would probably have to go the other route, correct?

drogyn1701

I call it map dialogue, but it's the one where you click and drag the icon out of the right hand menu (where you get respawn points and reach markers).

Yeah if your guy is wandering you're better off selecting default dialogue for him.

thegreendragoon1

There's a little trick you can do with the the dialog tree if you want a conversation to play out only once.

Make the first dialog box generic, something like, "Oh, hello, [Rank]." You then have two dialog choices. The first is the path the conversation takes the first time the player speaks to the NPC. The second is for all subsequent visits. The second option will say something dismissive like, "I'm sorry, but I'm quite busy."

You can set states for each dialog choice individually. Initially, the first dialog choice will be set to be visible while the second will be set to invisible. You set this to flip on a Dialog Prompt Reached on the last dialog in the initial conversation. After that, the player can only see the second option.

soroji

Even better. I'll have to see if i can get that working correctly. Thanks!