i think it''s a pretty damn good idea if i may say so myself.

as your experience grew in an RPG, it seems to me that your player would get more ''wise'' as to what to talk about with whom, then the icons that are irrelevant would be greyed out.. as his experience grew so would the ''unacceptable'' possibilities to conversations, so the longer you played the game, the better your character would be at figuring out what to say to whom.

groovy idea guys.



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quote: Original post by Nazrix

That''s an interesting idea. You could even go further by letting the player construct sentences w/ different icons. That way the player doesn''t have to guess what words the designers used. All the possibilities would be right there, and the player can use them in different ways.

Discworld Noir had something like this. It was a notebook that you took down clues in. When you talked to an NPC you could select subjects from your notebook instead of going with the set dialogue.

You still end up with the try-everything-on-everyone syndrome. But I suppose if you don''t make things really obscure (i.e. don''t reward people who do exhaustive searches over those that just play with common sense/intuition) then it could work. I reckon thats a big ''if'' though.

ro

quote: Original post by rowbot
Discworld Noir had something like this. It was a notebook that you took down clues in. When you talked to an NPC you could select subjects from your notebook instead of going with the set dialogue.

You still end up with the try-everything-on-everyone syndrome. But I suppose if you don''t make things really obscure (i.e. don''t reward people who do exhaustive searches over those that just play with common sense/intuition) then it could work. I reckon thats a big ''if'' though.

ro

Yeah, I agree w/ that, but I wouldn''t mind rewarding those who use clever thought either. Like, I wouldn''t make it so you''d have to come up w/ clever questions to win the game but I would reward those who do come up w/ clever questions w/ extra easter eggs.


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To fix the problem with some things not being able to be represented by icons, and not wanting to make the player figure out what words the designers chose, just have the icons for those "uniconable" elements have the word on them. So you have your list of icons, one is a picture of a sword, another is a persons face, and another icon is simply the word "love" etc. Most things I think though, can be well represented by icons. If the icons are animated, it makes it even easier.

Also, the icons would have to be organized into several subgroups, one for people, locations, objects, feelings, and so on. I think the brain idea might work, but it might be kind of annoying to have to go in between conversations and reorganize it all the time. I also think the moods could be cool, if they are implemented good which would be difficult. In Kingpin, asking people in different moods made a difference, but it was kind of silly to say something nice and then suddenly say something mean. There needs to be reasons for players to change their mood. Perhaps the player can''t control their mood, but their mood is controlled by what happens in the game. The more nasty stuff that happens to the player, the more their mood goes down. When good things happen, their mood goes up. Players with high dialogue skills can overcome what their mood actually is for dialogue purposes. Hey, this is a little off-topic, but it might be pretty neat. Maybe the players other skills can be affected by their mood rating as well?

Back to the dialogue/brain idea, maybe you start by choosing one icon, say "Billy" then it gives you a list of possible pairings for that icon. For instance, "I like Billy" "I hate Billy" "Where is Billy?" Do you know Billy?" etc. This would prevent wierd combinations that could be possible with so many icons available. It also would make it easier to sort through all the icons, as the computer would do the sorting automatically. To prevent players from trying all the combinations, make the npc''s get bored of the conversation and walk off, like people do in real life.
Player: "Where is the gold?"
NPC: "I haven''t a clue."
Player: "Do you like Billy?"
NPC: "Billy? I don''t have any idea who -you- are or who Billy is, or where the gold is. May I continue on my way please?"
Player: "Do you like monkeys?"
NPC: (Gives the player a weird look and walks away)