Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
interactive elements. They are kept at the screen until a player would communicate
with them (tap), which would move the focus onto the next node.
Thistypeofaconversationtreeworksfineforisolateddialogs,whicharenotaffected
by the current game's situation; also, external variables cannot influence the nodes,
so the conversation is mostly decorative. Therefore, more flexible solutions are
preferable. The tree should include conditions as follows:
In this case, each phrase had an additional section with few conditional operators,
which can check the value of specific variables, changing the direction of the conver-
sation upon them. For example, if a character has no key (
key = false
), an NPC may
offer some help to find it; however, if the character already has this item (
key = true
),
the NPC would tell that a lock is jammed and it knows where to get some grease. As
you see such a dialogue is much more natural. It can be even better if a tree node
has the opportunity to set up values for variables as well. Therefore, some previous
parts of the conversation that are not directly connected with the current node may
have an effect on it.
For example, the NPC is caught in a deception because there is a discrepancy
between his phrases after that special variable is changed (
NPC_liar = true
), so
in other branches of conversation new variants of player's phrases appear who re-
spond to that variable.
By using variables and conditions, you also construct specific types of transitions in-
side the dialogue from an analogy to aUI design—I call them
Tabs-jump
and
Radio-
buttons-jump
. The first one is of the basic type; when the game reaches the prot-
agonist's nodes on the tree, they are put on the screen as interactive elements (but-
tons). Each of them generates an independent branch of conversation, which can
