[Adonthell-general] dialog design

[Andrew Phillips]

Mein freunden,

While out on the road today, I tried to spend a fair amount of time
thinking about the dialog writing process - who talks to who, etc. I
was talking into a voice recorder at the time, so I will summarize
here.

I think I made some progress on that front, though I still need to
make some kind of relationship map of the characters, so we will know
which characters are likely to have information or strongly held
opinions about other characters. I think I will try to use the same
software you used to create that node mapping of the plot.

I think it might help to make three such maps - one for each of the
conversation intensive areas of the game map - Waste's Edge and
Uz'dunkal - as well as a third summary map that takes in the other
less populous areas of the game map.

As we design, document, and build the dialog tree, I suggest keeping
track of quests impacted by a given node, as well as other characters.
Some of this might easily be accomplished by adding information to the
plot document.

Something else I thought about was the matter of displaying names over
the npc sprites. Most games seem to just give the names of npcs away.
It's a good clue to players when they are trying to determine which
npcs to talk to - particularly in crowded areas (the Hive in
Planescape: Torment) - but at the same time, they leave open the
question of -how- the player characters know npcs they've never seen
before. Does it seem better to have the player "learn" npcs as he or
she hears about them, or just give that information away?

Andrew

On 4/25/05, Kai Sterker <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 4/24/05, Kai Sterker <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> > Okay, lets try it today, 20:00 GMT (22:00 MEST), irc.freenode.net,
> > #adonthell . Everybody welcome :-)
> 
> First of all, thanks to all who could make it. For those who couldn't
> come, here's a brief summary:
> 
> me talking on the phone from 20:00 to 21:00 GMT - so no discussion due
> to the lack of other developers. Apologies again, folks!
> 
> In the remaining hour or so we talked a little about Wikis, with the
> result that the best way to set one up would be to register a project
> at berlios [1]. It would be possible to run a Wiki on sf.net too, but
> I doubt that any of us is eager to reactivate our account [2] there.
> Unfortunately, running a Wiki on Savannah seems to be out of question.
> It might be possible to do so at linuxgames.com, but there we have the
> problem with advertising so I thing berlios is the best alternative we
> have.
> 
> Chances are good that I will be available for another meeting next
> friday and sunday, so maybe we can continue discussion then. Please
> let when know when it suits you best!
> 
> I will try to setup the Wiki until then, so perhaps we can then
> collectively populate it with current documentation or the propsed NPC
> dialogue list. Anyone interested in writing some code for Adonthell
> (or doing artwork, etc.) is welcome as are any fans. Would be cool if
> there would be once again more fans than developers (although I also
> hope that next time there will be some developers other than me!).
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Kai
> 
> [1] http://developer.berlios.de/
> [2] http://sf.net/projects/adonthell/
> 
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