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How do I set up a nested dialog tree or a dialog with multiple "buttons"?
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I seem to remember a remark from Darren that it was possible to have some NPCs for "color" that do not tie into advancing the mission itself and are not an objective. How do I do that? I t seems the Pop-Up Dialog and Talk to Contact options only offer simple one NPC reply / PC question/respone dialogs, but nothing where I could provide multiple buttons leading to different texts.
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Looking forward a dev or closed beta tester response to this.
You can't have branching, multi-choice dialog yet.
However, you can fake it by adding default text to characters (including those non-mission essential NPCs). To do this:
Check out my mission "Bull-dog Days". This is the mission I showed off in part three of my video tutorial series.
3 out of 4 NPCs on the ground aren't required for completing the mission but they'll still have something to say. They range from helpful stuff to the mission to easter eggs.
Cryptic's Official walkthrough:
http://www.startrekonline.com/foundrywalkthrough
My unofficial thread with Video Tutorials:
If you're facing two or more contacts and want multiple "talk to" buttons, you can stack contact tasks horizontally. By that, I mean, you can grab a contact box in the story editor and drag it so that it's beside another contact box. Hope that's clear.
The only downside of this is that you'll need to talk to both contacts before you can proceed with the story.
:-(
There has to be a way to make an actual conversation take place, and give the player the option to say this or that, with it branching into other dialogs and sentences for him to choose at, and with the possibility to make that produce an event.
The flowchart feel of the mission tool suggests there will be ways to make "either/or" conversations in the future, and I could easily see complex missions branching into up to 4 directions from a single dialog without redesigning the display (and another 4 off each if you really want to be annoyingly complex, lol).
When this is being laid out by the team, I hope they consider multiple outcomes as well, with completely separate possible endings.
Still, at this point I don't believe it is possible to build missions comparable to any of the newer Breen or Devidian dailies, for example. (Only one of the Kelvani belt missions, where you just kill the 6 groups.)
If you look at the mission to rescue the captives, for example:
Again, not to knock what's there, just to highlight some of the features I'd like to see.
EDIT: If I'm wrong about any of those points I'm happy to be corrected!
Not in the current iteration of the Foundry that's on Tribble atm. You can have Dialog boxes pop up with thext from various craracters one after the other if you like (it progresses to the next Diaolg popup after the player character hits the response you write for him - so you can have characters 'conversing that way if you like); but you can't give the player character multiple response options to select from at the moment.
When you are at a mission door and have a starting dialog pop up window; the 'Not now' choice is auto generated by the Engine for you and you have no way to edit/change that currently.) I hope they do allow player character dialog branching soon too, but right now, it's not availabl;e for the Foundry.
I was saddened to read that you can't send the Player back into sector space to have them travel to another in game star system door to continue the same mission; and be able to test that it works prior to publishing.
IMO if you've done any real coding or scriptiong before the Editor is pretty intuitive; and I've discovered a lot just by fooling around, testing, tweaking, and so on; but I do hope dialog branching and the ability to send a player back out into Sector Space and to another door (with the ability to test and make certain it works PRIOR to having to publish to get said door functionality) comes soon.
That said, it is pretty robust with a little ingenuity and can do decent stuff right now (the 'iunable to load map - nternal server error" issues not withstanding.)
Thanks,
Stormshade
Your "unofficial thread" link makes it start a reply in stead of going to the thread...
We have been told since UGC was confirmed as a feature that the initial build of the tools would be extremely basic. Why is it so hard for some of us to accept that?
I think a lesson worth learning comes from the old classic DOOM editing community. There was no scripting. No adding in new elements without replacing something. All you could do was make new maps and populate them with the same monsters and weapons as the official content had. And yet some pretty amazing stuff was developed by the community.
Those who truly learn the foundry and how to effectively work within the limits will find that people will enjoy their work. Sometimes, guys, the glass really is half full...
It doesn't relate to the OP but it is something that people requested.