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Forums > Home› The Foundry for Star Trek Online› The Foundry for Star Trek Online - Discussion & Feedback

A Question About Conversations With NPC's

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
edited December 2010 in The Foundry for Star Trek Online - Discussion & Feedback
If you are going to have extended conversations with an NPC, should you have the first encounter with the NPC be an NPC contact (where the NPC has an "i" over its head and the conversation listed as a mission goal), and then the rest just pop-ups?

It seems that is the most realistic looking, in that you are asked to speak to the NPC just once, and the rest of the conversation occurs automatically. If you make each part of the conversation an interaction with an NPC, then you are asked to speak to the NPC repeatedly, plus each part of the conversation requires a mission goal statement.

I would appreciate any comments / opinions. THanks very much!
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    Rosvik wrote:
    If you are going to have extended conversations with an NPC, should you have the first encounter with the NPC be an NPC contact (where the NPC has an "i" over its head and the conversation listed as a mission goal), and then the rest just pop-ups?

    It seems that is the most realistic looking, in that you are asked to speak to the NPC just once, and the rest of the conversation occurs automatically. If you make each part of the conversation an interaction with an NPC, then you are asked to speak to the NPC repeatedly, plus each part of the conversation requires a mission goal statement.

    I would appreciate any comments / opinions. THanks very much!

    What I do in my missions is basically what you have listed first. It is crude, i know, and I would like to see the pop- ups like we saw in the Halloween Featured episode, but at the moment- it is not possible because we do not have those tools provided to us.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    I believe you have the right idea... talk to contact first then pop-ups... keep in mind that contacts just stand there and a stray plasma grenade will kill them and stop the progression of the mission... I've had this problem and found a few ways to work around it...

    First way is let the character fight and move by making them a friendly group and changing costume and enabling wandering... this also gives you an idle animation. The second way is just have a pop-up dialogue after combat so even if they are dead and disappeared the story will continue. You can also just use a reach marker to start a dialogue.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    Napoleon_BlownApart wrote:
    I believe you have the right idea... talk to contact first then pop-ups... keep in mind that contacts just stand there and a stray plasma grenade will kill them and stop the progression of the mission... I've had this problem and found a few ways to work around it...

    First way is let the character fight and move by making them a friendly group and changing costume and enabling wandering... this also gives you an idle animation. The second way is just have a pop-up dialogue after combat so even if they are dead and disappeared the story will continue. You can also just use a reach marker to start a dialogue.

    I just tend to hide mine in corners that they are not so easily shot down
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    having just one "talk to contact" objective followed by continuous pop ups would be the way I would do it. I believe its also the way Cryptic does it, however they often have multiple dialogue choices to choose from whereas the Foundry does not.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    I read that they will introduce multiple options in dialogue.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    It is possible to "fake" multiple dialogues and a running conversation using hidden objects. You still don't have much of a choice, but it seems natural for conversations, because you can "Ask about Y" which triggers a specific popup or "Ask about Z."

    I made a tutorial for this here: http://starbaseugc.com/index.php/sto-ugc-tutorial/video-tutorial-multiple-dialogues-the-cheat/

    There are also benefits to not using contacts, but instead using a single npc from a friendly npc groups, and using hidden objects to act as conversations. Their default text still gives them a talk-to-me-symbol, but then you can add idle animations, chat animations, chat bubbles, and even animations to your own toon while interacting with the hidden objects.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    Rosvik wrote: »
    If you are going to have extended conversations with an NPC, should you have the first encounter with the NPC be an NPC contact (where the NPC has an "i" over its head and the conversation listed as a mission goal), and then the rest just pop-ups?
    I did something like that in my story-mission "Project Revava", when you get to talk to a partially assimilated Borg drone, Commander Va'Lesh. At first, you have "Talk to the Borg" as a goal, then when you talk to her, she gives a bunch of binary output. Then you get to use a modified tricorder on her so you'd understand her and she you. After this, you get to converse with her using the multiple dialog entries trick that Kirkfat shows in his video.

    The initial version of the sequence looked something like the two images here. :)

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