I’m currently working on a project for this year’s EctoComp, and I need a way to implement threaded conversation menus in Inform 6, similar to City of Secrets or Pytho’s Mask. If anyone can help me figure this out in time for EctoComp, that would be great.
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I’m looking at conversation systems for I6 as well at the moment. Mostly checking out the various menu and conversation extensions in the if-archive.
However I haven’t played City of Secrets nor Pytho’s Mask, can you give an example what you’re looking for?
Of course. Here is a description of how the conversation system works, stolen from Emily Short’s “Best of Three.”
The chief thing to do in this game is to select from the conversation menu: 1, 2, 3, or (you guessed it) 4. But do not be deceived by the resemblance to a CYOA, for lo, this is not one.
First of all, you can change the subject if you don’t like your menu options of the moment: to change, type >T [new topic]. It is quite often the case that changing the topic to something related will turn up new appropriate comments.
If you go through several iterations of this and decide you don’t like what you’re seeing and would like to go back to the menu of options you had to start with, type >UNTOPIC and the menu will be reset to whatever it was after someone last spoke.
Second, all the normal verbs are still options; and from a conversational point of view, it is sometimes as useful to >WAIT to see what will happen next as it is to say something.
(Best of Three and City of Secrets also had a >THINK ABOUT COMMAND, which wasn’t in Pytho’s Mask.)
I haven’t stumbled on anything exactly like that.
Buut I think gtalk.h (demonstration: gtalk.inf) comes closest in that regard, with numbered menus.
It handles the menu printing and interaction, but it doesn’t handle any verbs by itself, so you’re flexible in that. The demo is an example on how that can be done for TALK TO and a reset verb. I suppose verbs like TOPIC/UNTOPIC and timing-based conversation could be added on top by calling the quip manipulation methods in appropriate places.
Thanks. I suppose this will work better than trying to use phtalkoo.h.