Stacked Conversation extension [beta]

[prevtenet]

I wrote this hefty (19,000+ words) conversation extension for my WIP, because nothing else did quite what I wanted, and I like writing my own tools. It’s kind of the two-ton sledgehammer of ASK/TELL systems; it implements a ton of tools for dealing with character interactions at different levels of granularity, plus a large-scale flow-tracking system that’s basically a more mechanistic, flexible implementation of some of the theory behind Chris Conley and Emily Short’s Threaded Conversation.

The WIP is still in progress, but the extension is pretty complete, so I thought I’d post a beta version for anyone interested in this sort of thing.

Comments? Bugs? Feature suggestions?

EDIT: Newest version in this post.
Stacked Conversation.i7x (124 KB)

[Peter_Piers]

If I may take this liberty, I’ll quote here what you say yourself, in the documentation, that your extension does, because it’s most interesting and the sort of specific information people will want to see first.

Traditional ASK/TELL-based conversation systems often feel like looking up entries in a book: the player queries a character about a topic, and they cough up a single canned response and fall silent again. This works, at least from a gameplay standpoint, but it doesn’t feel natural. It lacks context and flow – there’s no clear sense of where a conversation came from and where it’s going, and the whole thing generally feels one-sided.

Stacked Conversation solves these problems in two ways: first, it provides a set of tools for tracking the context of a conversation and varying behavior accordingly; and second, it provides a way to create chains of responses, so characters can continue conversations without being prodded by the player. In addition, it lets us guide conversation towards specific topics, to ensure that the player hears all the information they need before proceeding.

Some examples of things we can do:

- Have characters interpret queries differently in different contexts.
- Have characters acknowledge interruptions and changes of subject.
- Have characters continue talking about a subject without prompting.
- Have characters bring up new topics when they run out of things to say.
- Have characters draw conclusions from facts that come up.
- Have characters discuss topics in group settings.
- Force the player to answer a question before moving on.
- Force the player to hear specific information before a conversation ends.
- Give the player suggestions on what to discuss next.
- Give characters a distinct personality and conversational style.

It seems a very interesting piece of work.

[busterwrites]

I’m definitely interested in this! No time at the moment, but wanted to let you know it’s in queue.

[HanonO (Hanon Ondricek)]

Ooh shiny.

[RedOrZed]

This could be very interesting.

Hmmm, can I now get the Grand Vizier to explain why the player needs to journey across the sea, without having one long speech…

And, what was the reason again? I’ve got lost of in mechanics, should’ve written it down. Doh.

[HanonO (Hanon Ondricek)]

I like this extension a lot, even though I’m still a bit bewildered about using it.

Some spelling issues in the example “disdain” and “grimaces”.

[prevtenet]

Good catch. That’s embarrassing…

[HanonO (Hanon Ondricek)]

Question/clarification: if Bob’s legal topic list is empty, he can discuss any topic?

Is there a global legal topic list, or does one run through all the characters to truncate?

Would there be use for individual or global “illegal topic” lists? (Nobody can discuss the murder or peripheral quips about the knife having blood on it till the murder happens) or does this overlap with knowing facts?

[prevtenet]

@HanonO

Question/clarification: if Bob’s legal topic list is empty, he can discuss any topic?

Yes, that’s correct.

@HanonO

Is there a global legal topic list, or does one run through all the characters to truncate?

Would there be use for individual or global “illegal topic” lists? (Nobody can discuss the murder or peripheral quips about the knife having blood on it till the murder happens) or does this overlap with knowing facts?

Generally speaking, the “legal topics” mechanism is intended for situations where you need to temporarily restrict conversation (you’re in a business meeting where other topics would be out of place, etc.). For the murder example, you’d use deliverability restrictions instead, e.g.: Definition: quip-knife is deliverable if flag-murdered is true. So presently there’s no “illegal topics” list because illegal quips are handled by deliverability; and there’s no “global legal topics” list because personal lists are more flexible, and (IMHO) having both could make usage messy and bug-prone. (Fortunately, emulating it just requires adding an extra line to loop through all the NPCs.)

Deliverability restrictions are annoying to type, though. I’m experimenting with a relations-based shorthand syntax that lets you say things like:quip-body is a quip. It requires the scene murder. quip-wound is a quip. It requires the quip quip-body. quip-diary is a quip. It requires the fact fact-diary.

[prevtenet]

OK, got that working. I was a little concerned about performance, but the resulting I6 seems pretty well optimized. (I’d like to allow “It requires the flag (whatever)” for truth states, too, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to relate “an object” to “a truth state that varies”.)

Also new: the “Use verbless parsing.” option. When you’re in a conversation, this takes any unhandled commands and retries them as > ASK ABOUT (command). Combined with keyword matching, this allows some remarkable interactions - from the example: Test extreme with "nice weather we're having / how is your health? / don't worry about the draft / how about i marry your son / spill drink / passionately implore louis to make me his wife / yes". …although, to be fair, the example would also guess that > DID YOUR FATHER LITERALLY MARRY A VAMPIRE? was a proposal of marriage, so maybe it’s a good thing that verbless parsing is optional.
Stacked Conversation.i7x (129 KB)