I haven’t gotten a new build ready to put up, and it might be a few days before I can, so I thought I’d post an update.
This one is being delayed because I was sick two days, and it’s just a bit difficult.
I had to keep thinking of what I want in a dialogue system, write some code, realize there are problems, and either start over or half start over. I needed something like:
- They’re going to be called “events”, at least in the code. This is because I realized I could use these for more than just character dialogue. They can be a terminal with options, or it can be an event that pops up on your screen because it was time triggered.
- Events need to be able to be aware of how player characters have used them and other factors. For example, the story of an event needs to be able to change because of the time, how many players have encountered the event, or even how often a certain choice has been picked over another. ie: An NPC can get tired of getting buttfucked and deny such a request as a result without other options being affected.
- Events need an open ended set of scenes that can go in any order based on choices.
- Events need to be modified per player
I’m now on the right track though. I have a draft of how to solve all the problems I came across, and I don’t see any foreseeable ones. The goal is to make sure this does everything I’ll need it to in the future.
I also decided I wanted a chat wheel to select options. I thought the best way to select them would be to cycle up down, then confirm a selection with a third key. Using number keys might be faster, but it’s also easy to hit the wrong number that way. (Though maybe I could include that too, with one tap highlighting and another tap of the same key confirming)
Having the wheel condenses the height of the list in half, basically, so more story can be kept above it.
I’m not crazy about how it looks at the moment, but it works. It allows for 7 options, though I might actually drop it to 5 to make it smaller. I’m not sure more than 5 options is ever needed. It doesn’t give me quiet the space needed, but maybe I can make sure the short things are on the left side, and I could have the wheel a third of the way over instead of the center.
I wanted to reuse the same up and down buttons, but it’d probably be a lot better to shape those 3 buttons into a circle and to fit the options wheel around it to make it more compact. That’ll need to come later, though.
