I must be Dumb

General discussion of the House Party CSC, or get help making your own story.
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JohnnyTK
Posts: 8
Joined: Sat Sep 21, 2019 2:54 pm

I must be Dumb

So, after around thirty hours of playing with conversations and moving the characters, I still can't get very far. The conversation mechanics seem a nightmare to me. Even after following patterns that work on several characters I get so many issues. I still don't know how to make options go away after they have been spoken, or get everyone to accept they even have a dialogue.

I'm pretty late to this game I know but I can't find any definitive help on this.
After the initial novelty of the game wears off the fun can only come from making stories and yet there is so little help with this for the likes of me.

It's probably obvious but I don't see it. If anyone can point me to some help files that would be great, oh and I have tried looking at other stories but that just makes it more confusing and most of them have little or no story at all.

Thanks in anticipation.
peter980
Posts: 1601
Joined: Thu Feb 15, 2018 1:50 am

Re: I must be Dumb

While I am veteran CSC user, I have done very little on dialogue side.

Still some pointers:
1) You have an action that starts dialogue tree. See examples in original story, on Talk action
2) Alternatively, you can use dialogue action to force specific dialogue line
3) Starting dialog tree will select dialog line 0. Here you can put conditions in which you would get redirected to different dialogue line (using action from step 2). Check original story for how it could look
4) Every dialogue line can have it's own responses, start/end actions, conditions for responses and what happens in condition is taken (including next redirect line). Dialog can even have alternate text, if specific conditions are met
5) There are also global responses you can have appear always
6) There are also flags that can mark response to only appear once or be repeatbale
7) Also there is global goodbye line
JohnnyTK
Posts: 8
Joined: Sat Sep 21, 2019 2:54 pm

Re: I must be Dumb

Hello, thanks for the reply.
Yes, I even have the dialogue started, points 2 and three I sort of worked out but I wasn't aware that Dialogue 0 was started that way.
On point 4, I had some of these working but after inserting another character, the previous replies seemed to be missing. I'm still not sure why.
Global responses seem to give some unexpected results but I haven't played around with that too much yet.
I think your point 5 is where I am running into problems. It isn't clear what some of the flags do and experimenting seems to break the dialogue.
On point 7, I really haven't needed to use that as checking the do not respond works at the moment.

It really is the dialogue side I would like to expand on as few people seem to go down that route. (maybe this is why).

I'll have another go with it at some stage, but thanks for your input.
eekdon
Posts: 1546
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2018 4:29 pm

Re: I must be Dumb

You aren't dumb. The tool is still being fleshed out and Bobby and I have only had time to make a few decent tutorial videos. Even those are currently woefully insufficient when it comes to guiding someone brand new to the CSC or any sort of modding through the entire story engine. There is a lot more to learn than most folks suspect, and the CSC lacks any sort of tooltips or built-in help functionality for now. If you haven't seen the tutorial videos, you can find them at the look below, although they might not help much with your current dilemma:

https://vimeo.com/channels/1464221

If you're comfortable, please attach your custom story. Feel free to remove any meaningful dialogue text if you don't want me/others seeing the content; just leave placeholder text in place. Let me know where exactly your current pain points are cropping up in the story. If you aren't comfortable with that or don't have a story you're currently working on, can you identify some dialogue or conversations in the Original Story that you'd like to replicate, at least stylistically?
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JohnnyTK
Posts: 8
Joined: Sat Sep 21, 2019 2:54 pm

Re: I must be Dumb

Thanks for the reply.

Most of the running of the characters I seem to have working. My main problem is how the text is delivered. I am working with just a single character at the moment and trying to create a procedural storyline with this one character. The problem is, I can't get the text to deliver in the correct order or get rid of responses after they have been spoken. I also revert back to the initial dialogue rather than new text.

I was thinking of making a more 'fleshed out' story, (forgive the pun) and I would have to master the dialogue first to make it work
eekdon
Posts: 1546
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2018 4:29 pm

Re: I must be Dumb

JohnnyTK wrote: Tue Oct 01, 2019 12:22 pm Thanks for the reply.

Most of the running of the characters I seem to have working. My main problem is how the text is delivered. I am working with just a single character at the moment and trying to create a procedural storyline with this one character. The problem is, I can't get the text to deliver in the correct order or get rid of responses after they have been spoken. I also revert back to the initial dialogue rather than new text.

I was thinking of making a more 'fleshed out' story, (forgive the pun) and I would have to master the dialogue first to make it work
So you could have Dialogue 0 handle your core dialogue direction. Dialogue 0 will be accessed by a Talk action on that character in the Story object. BUT, Dialogue 0 will never actually display its own text. Instead, it will use On Dialogue Start Events to display the context sensitive dialogue you actually want. This will cover any and all times that you intend for the player to click on the Character in question to move the story/dialogue forward. So you'd have a TriggerStartDialogue on the Talk action for Patrick, which would open Dialogue 0. In Dialogue 0 could have an On Dialogue Start event, of type Dialogue, and it would open Dialogue 1. Criteria would be "Met By Player -> Patrick -> False" (because a "Met" flag is not registered until after On Dialogue Start events are processed). That makes Dialogue 1's text show instead of Dialogue 0. Then you can set up another On Start Dialogue event in Dialogue 0 that is similar, but it is a Dialogue-type event that opens Dialogue 2, and its Criteria would be "Dialogue -> Patrick -> 1 -> Was Shown", AND "Dialogue -> Patrick -> 2 -> Was Not Shown". In this way (plus other logic controls like WHEN you can Talk to Patrick, moving him, etc.) you can restrict Dialogues to only show in certain orders. Don't forget to pay attention to which responses are Always Available (if your story will pause, for instance, with the same dialogue option being available until the player completes a task) and which are not.

If you're trying to get rid of responses, you can also use Criteria similar to the ones I gave above to restrict when responses are available. You can also make them not Always Available to ensure that once they are clicked, they are never shown again.
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JohnnyTK
Posts: 8
Joined: Sat Sep 21, 2019 2:54 pm

Re: I must be Dumb

Right. That's starting to make sense. I can see why the things I'm trying to do are going wrong.
Okay, I'll have another go at that and see what happens.

Thanks for the help.
eekdon
Posts: 1546
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2018 4:29 pm

Re: I must be Dumb

Cool, no problem!
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