In-game "Transcript" of what has been said?

Authoring Inform 7
1

Hi all, this is a wonderful forum.

I’m writing an Inform 7 game which involves multiple story-lines that change depending on how you talk to a single NPC. It’s very similar to Galatea that way, but has other things going on that you’ll just have to play to see.

There’s a feature I’d like, really specific to this format, that I can’t find much information on. So if anyone can point me in a working direction, I’d be super grateful.

It would be be nice if the player could type a single command and see everything that has been said between him or herself and the NPC so far, in one long string. I’d like the player to be able to do this using the examine command. For an example, let’s say the player is a journalist interviewing the NPC on an audio transcriber, and there is a perfect automatic print-out of what they are saying to each other on a paper visible to both of them. In other words:

x transcript

NPC: they told me you were coming
You: what about the dead artist
NPC: oh no I’m sad now
You: does this mean we’ve reached an ending
NPC: no.

During earlier play, there would have been player commands between the printed exchanges, like “ask NPC about artist,” but I don’t want those to appear in the transcript. And by the way, the conversation has this format throughout. Ie, earlier it looked like:

ask NPC about artist

You: what about the dead artist
NPC: oh no I’m sad now

Extra credit: As the transcript exceeds a certain number of lines and becomes ungainly for playback, I’d like there to be a cut off, but only if there is some way of viewing more by scrolling within a specified line height, or turning to new page. I think I’ve seen some help menus with similar features.

This isn’t a super high-priority feature, which is to say, there are more fundamental things I’ve yet to implement (and which I can probably figure out from the many resources already available). But if anyone has any ideas, it might help me work backwards. Thank you!

Nate

2

I thought there was an example in the manual that was pretty close to this, but I can’t find it.

I would recommend that you maintain a table of quips (things the PC says, and things the NPCs say) along with brief summaries of them - something like this:

Table of Quips Actor Subject Quip Summary yourself notebook "Where is the notebook?" "You asked where the notebook was." Bob notebook "I haven't seen the notebook." "Bob said he hadn't seen the notebook"

Then, as conversations happen, their details get recorded in another table:

Table of Conversations Actor (object) Subject (object) with 100 blank rows

… which you can then look up when you play back your recording device.

By the way, you’re not Nathaniel Weiss, former CEO of GVOX, are you?

3

OK, thank you! This should be very useful.

I guess I will pass up this rare opportunity to pose as someone more accomplished, but I’m not him. If I’d known, I’d have picked “NWeiss.” But I’m glad I do now, so that makes two helpful tidbits of obscure knowledge you should be proud of.

4

I’m glad you’re not him, is all I can say. He hated being called “Nate” anyway.