Big brain challenge - non-tree dialogue system?

[howlingFantods]

For now trees with listed dialogue options remain supreme for story heavy games. The advent of more sophisticated neural network ai will obviously herald a revolution for games including for, but not limited to, dialogue innovation.

Until then the only alternative is a good keyword based system. The player should be able to accumulate nouns which they can attach to verbs. The player should be made aware of what verbs they are limited to. The thing that makes keyword better than listed-options-tree is the fact that dialogue can now involve problem solving (not super possible when given an easy multiple choice test via a list of dialogue options).

Example 1: pc: tell me about (insert keyword)
Npc: that is not for common riff raff to know.
Pc: I am [part of a prestigious guild, a donor to a political cause the npc is affiliated with, etc...] example 2: npc: “my daughter has taken very ill”
Pc: “I know [name of healer you happened to meet, your own medicine skill, god of disease]” ; example 3:
Npc: “I want this lord killed”
(Must prove competence to get job)
Pc: “ I slayed [insert name of npc or monster you killed]
(If you’re not careful or if you’re ill informed stuff like this can happen)
Npc: “that’s my brother... guards!”

a keyword based system can still branch like a tree so it still is a tree based system. But at least it’s not multiple choice style

 

[Shadenuat]

IMO Wizardry 8 system was amazing because it allowed actual input from the player and added puzzle solving element to dialogue naturally and not in a forced minigame way.

 

[rohand]

The guy behind the Ultima Ratio Regum roguelike had some interesting ideas behind procedural dialogue with generated NPCs.
Such as

• Most importantly we have three new elements that influence how NPCs respond to conversations: sensitive topics are “tagged” as such, NPCs are more or less inclined to respond to those sensitive topics, and they have three kinds of basic responses when explaining why they don’t want to respond to something you’ve said for personal reasons (as opposed to not knowing the information, which is factored in elsewhere, and isn’t a case of “not wanting to reply”, but rather “being unable to reply”).
• Every possible question now has what I’m loosely calling a “conversation tag”, which denotes whether it might be a sensitive topic on any of seven possible axes – “individual”, “political”, “national”, “religious”, “military”, “cultural”, “geographical”. Some of the questions will be potentially sensitive on more than one count. For example, if you ask about the politics of an NPC’s nation, that will naturally be flagged under both the “political” and “national”. Most questions have no tags, then it looks like around a third have one tag, and then a very small number have two tags or more; the most tags are questions asking people about the ideologies of their nation, which might be “political”, and “national”, and then “religious” or “cultural” or whichever other applies. What this means is that when you ask someone a question, it will check whether this is a sensitive topic, and the answer to that question will influence whether or not they are willing to give you an answer at all.
• Then the next part is inclinations – how inclined are people to tell you about potentially sensitive topics? Each NPC has a rating for religious topics, for political topics, and so forth, which varies hugely across NPC classes. This is on an internal scale of 0-4; at 0, they will rarely talk to you about a sensitive topic (of the sorts listed above), at 4 they will always talk to you (extremely rare: only national and religious leaders, and then one NPC class per category, will always tell you about X). All other classes are spread out along 1-3 (default “humans” are almost always on 0, or if not, they are on 1 instead). If you ask a non-sensitive question, whether or not they answer will be dependent on other factors (how much they like you, etc) – if you ask a sensitive question, it will check which conversation tags are listed for that question, and compare their rating.
• This might seem incredibly complex, so here’s an easy example. You ask someone about their religion. The game checks how inclined that NPC class is to talk about religious matters; a priest is very inclined, your average innkeep doesn’t have much time for religious matters, and so forth. An appropriate die is then rolled for the question; if successful (and other tests are passed, e.g. the NPC likes you enough), you get your answer. So what happens if they say they don’t want to talk about X?
• Well, I’ve split the “I don’t want to talk about X” into three categories, I’m calling “stupid”, “uninteresting” and “suspicious”, which are the reasons NPCs will give you for not wanting to give you a reply. The “stupid” option means that the NPC is baffled why you are asking them about that particular topic: for example, asking a monk about military matters, or a farmer about sculpture, or an officer about plant life, is likely to elicit this response. The “uninteresting” options is the default, and simply means the NPC doesn’t want to talk about it right now, for which they might give a bunch of reasons. The “suspicious” option means that the NPC refuses to talk on the topic, and is puzzled, concerned, worried, anxious, or most obviously suspicious about why you ask – this happens most often when happening about military matters, but can crop up for any conversation topic except the “cultural” ones.
• In some cases NPCs will give you a specific reason for not wanting to continue the conversation. If you asked about a religious topic, and they don’t want to reply, and they are from a particularly zealous nation, they might say something like “That knowledge is only for loyal followers of [god]”; or if you asked about a political topic, and they are from an isolationist nation, they might explain a dislike of talking to strangers about the politics of their homeland.
• So, a “I don’t want to reply” looks like the following. If “Uninteresting”, they say “[Sorry, I don’t want to talk about that]. [Cultural reason why not]”. If “Stupid”, they say “[Am I really the person you want to ask/I dislike that topic/why are you even asking this?]” (without cultural reason). If “Suspicious”, they say “[Cultural reason why I can’t answer. And why are you even asking?]”.
• I noticed very few questions have the “Cultural” tag – I’ll have to add some more in later versions.

http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/

 

[V_K]

The idea of parallel system for combat, dialogue, and skills felt cumbersome, so I ultimately shelved the concept

You could have shelved combat instead, or made it really simple. It's just the matter of what your goals are, core gameplay-wise - whether you want to have an RPG built around diplomacy, or just a traditional RPG with slightly more spicy dialogs.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The guy behind the Ultima Ratio Regum roguelike had some interesting ideas behind procedural dialogue with generated NPCs.
Such as

• Most importantly we have three new elements that influence how NPCs respond to conversations: sensitive topics are “tagged” as such, NPCs are more or less inclined to respond to those sensitive topics, and they have three kinds of basic responses when explaining why they don’t want to respond to something you’ve said for personal reasons (as opposed to not knowing the information, which is factored in elsewhere, and isn’t a case of “not wanting to reply”, but rather “being unable to reply”).
• Every possible question now has what I’m loosely calling a “conversation tag”, which denotes whether it might be a sensitive topic on any of seven possible axes – “individual”, “political”, “national”, “religious”, “military”, “cultural”, “geographical”. Some of the questions will be potentially sensitive on more than one count. For example, if you ask about the politics of an NPC’s nation, that will naturally be flagged under both the “political” and “national”. Most questions have no tags, then it looks like around a third have one tag, and then a very small number have two tags or more; the most tags are questions asking people about the ideologies of their nation, which might be “political”, and “national”, and then “religious” or “cultural” or whichever other applies. What this means is that when you ask someone a question, it will check whether this is a sensitive topic, and the answer to that question will influence whether or not they are willing to give you an answer at all.
• Then the next part is inclinations – how inclined are people to tell you about potentially sensitive topics? Each NPC has a rating for religious topics, for political topics, and so forth, which varies hugely across NPC classes. This is on an internal scale of 0-4; at 0, they will rarely talk to you about a sensitive topic (of the sorts listed above), at 4 they will always talk to you (extremely rare: only national and religious leaders, and then one NPC class per category, will always tell you about X). All other classes are spread out along 1-3 (default “humans” are almost always on 0, or if not, they are on 1 instead). If you ask a non-sensitive question, whether or not they answer will be dependent on other factors (how much they like you, etc) – if you ask a sensitive question, it will check which conversation tags are listed for that question, and compare their rating.
• This might seem incredibly complex, so here’s an easy example. You ask someone about their religion. The game checks how inclined that NPC class is to talk about religious matters; a priest is very inclined, your average innkeep doesn’t have much time for religious matters, and so forth. An appropriate die is then rolled for the question; if successful (and other tests are passed, e.g. the NPC likes you enough), you get your answer. So what happens if they say they don’t want to talk about X?
• Well, I’ve split the “I don’t want to talk about X” into three categories, I’m calling “stupid”, “uninteresting” and “suspicious”, which are the reasons NPCs will give you for not wanting to give you a reply. The “stupid” option means that the NPC is baffled why you are asking them about that particular topic: for example, asking a monk about military matters, or a farmer about sculpture, or an officer about plant life, is likely to elicit this response. The “uninteresting” options is the default, and simply means the NPC doesn’t want to talk about it right now, for which they might give a bunch of reasons. The “suspicious” option means that the NPC refuses to talk on the topic, and is puzzled, concerned, worried, anxious, or most obviously suspicious about why you ask – this happens most often when happening about military matters, but can crop up for any conversation topic except the “cultural” ones.
• In some cases NPCs will give you a specific reason for not wanting to continue the conversation. If you asked about a religious topic, and they don’t want to reply, and they are from a particularly zealous nation, they might say something like “That knowledge is only for loyal followers of [god]”; or if you asked about a political topic, and they are from an isolationist nation, they might explain a dislike of talking to strangers about the politics of their homeland.
• So, a “I don’t want to reply” looks like the following. If “Uninteresting”, they say “[Sorry, I don’t want to talk about that]. [Cultural reason why not]”. If “Stupid”, they say “[Am I really the person you want to ask/I dislike that topic/why are you even asking this?]” (without cultural reason). If “Suspicious”, they say “[Cultural reason why I can’t answer. And why are you even asking?]”.
• I noticed very few questions have the “Cultural” tag – I’ll have to add some more in later versions.

http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/

Was in the audience when the dev of this gave a talk a couple years back, everything about this game is interesting tbh. I'm not sure if I'd even refer to it as a game though, closer to a research project(but a damn good one.)

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Morrowind adapted the traditional keyword-based dialogue system into a hypertext dialogue system:

 

[samuraigaiden]

I don't like Morrowind's dialogue "system". Too much repetitive text. All NPCs say the same stuff 90% of the time.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Duckard]

The waypoint based narrative detailed in this post is worth mentioning. In short, it structures the dialogue as a generic node graph instead of a tree, then allows both the NPC and the player to affect traversal through it. This is in contrast with a tree structure, in which the player controls traversal, and the writing alone has to make it seem like the NPC has their own thoughts and motives without any support from the system. Also, this approach doesn't specify form of user interface, meaning it could work with your pick of dialogue choices, keywords, text parsers, or fart emotes. I think it's p. interesting and could add a sense of tension to the dialogue without resorting to timers.

I don't like Morrowind's dialogue "system". Too much repetitive text. All NPCs say the same stuff 90% of the time.

The repetition is caused by a lack of content. It's not a flaw of the system.

 

[Mastermind]

What's wrong with tree dialogue systems? Do you just want your system to be original?

It's extremely limited. You have to think of every possible option then actually write it out explicitly. When you add some level of abstraction (like Bethesda did in Fallout 3) and don't write everything out explicitly you get made fun of by retards.

 

[anvi]

Wiz8 is fucking stupid. Having to click 500 words and combine them with 500 other words, fuck dat shit. The only solution is to have an AI that can communicate with people. There already are a few good ones that you could never tell are a robot. Get an open source version of that and every game will be less crap.

 

[Grauken]

Wiz8 is fucking stupid. Having to click 500 words and combine them with 500 other words, fuck dat shit.

Thus showing us you're an utterly autistic inbred retard

 

[anvi]

Wait wouldn't an autistic enjoy combining the words? And a retard? And you?

 

[Neanderthal]

1. Fuck this lets fight.
2. Fuck this let me buy and sell shit.
3. Fuck this. (points at crotch)

All you need.

 

[buffalo bill]

The Copper dreams devs seem to be trying to implement a non-standard dialogue system.

rohand Ultima Ratio Regum sounds incredible--do you know if it is in a playable state? Or close?

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Isnt keywords based dialogue is just basically dialogue tree with a lot of branches in which the branches isn't obvious?

Imagine breaking down keywords based dialogue into actual clickable options: you will end up having 100 choices which the NPC will reply with "Dunno what you are talking pal", maybe 10 or so misc trivia about his daily life, and again 4 or 5 "keywords" or choice that actually matter. If anything it is pretty much just a more robust dialogue wheel where instead of 6 choices like in Bioware games you ended up with 100 choices where most of them are meaningless.

True that you should have brain faculty to determine what's worthwhile to ask, but in the end prunning the initial 100 to 6 would ended up with dialogue wheel level of choice of "here are 6 topics you can actually ask the NPC about."

 

[RickOmbo]

What's wrong with tree dialogue systems? Do you just want your system to be original?

It's extremely limited. You have to think of every possible option then actually write it out explicitly. When you add some level of abstraction (like Bethesda did in Fallout 3) and don't write everything out explicitly you get made fun of by retards.

To fix something, you have to know what problem is.

 

[Grauken]

Isnt keywords based dialogue is just basically dialogue tree with a lot of branches in which the branches isn't obvious?

Imagine breaking down keywords based dialogue into actual clickable options: you will end up having 100 choices which the NPC will reply with "Dunno what you are talking pal", maybe 10 or so misc trivia about his daily life, and again 4 or 5 "keywords" or choice that actually matter. If anything it is pretty much just a more robust dialogue wheel where instead of 6 choices like in Bioware games you ended up with 100 choices where most of them are meaningless.

True that you should have brain faculty to determine what's worthwhile to ask, but in the end prunning the initial 100 to 6 would ended up with dialogue wheel level of choice of "here are 6 topics you can actually ask the NPC about."

You're sorta right, but keyword systems basically force you to read with much more focus, as you can miss important keywords. Usually the story-critical path is obvious to follow, but side-quest with neat rewards are easier to miss, so to me it feels like the more rewarding system

 

[aeroaeko]

just took a shit and didnt even have to wipe my ass it was epic :3

 

[V_K]

Isnt keywords based dialogue is just basically dialogue tree with a lot of branches in which the branches isn't obvious?

No because it's a table rather than a tree. You can use any keyword at any point in a conversation, while in a tree you're limited to the options that a specific node gives you.

 

[adrix89]

You could technically make a constrained scripting language,something like a evolution of the keyword system.
You can then use that to generate a procedural responses.
Since the system is constrained you will know exactly how to interpret it, you are just providing some flags and variables to an algorithm that transforms some data.
You can also add spell checking and autocomplete with strict grammar/syntax. You would have a list of topics,verbs and subjects while you are typing similar to how Morrowind keywords work.
You could also make it drag and drop for the mentally challenged, but I imagine typing would be pretty fast and natural once you get used to it.

 

[Davaris]

Invent strong AI. Make it the Dungeon Master. Best RPG evar.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Isnt keywords based dialogue is just basically dialogue tree with a lot of branches in which the branches isn't obvious?

No because it's a table rather than a tree. You can use any keyword at any point in a conversation, while in a tree you're limited to the options that a specific node gives you.

But it is pretty much just a one branch dialogue tree. Sure you can switch topic whenever you like but thats because there is no continuous dialogue.

In case of asking different keywords with different order resulting in different result, it is also a tree which has a pre-programmed flow (ask A than ask B != ask B than ask A) which can easily be done with dialogue tree as well. Dialgue tree is simply visualization and simplification of keywords based dialogue.

Although as Grauken mentioned above, as a tool it might have advantages, including actually asking the player to investigate stuffs to progress.

 

[Grauken]

One of my favorite dialogue systems is actually when you have to convince demons in the Shin Megami games to join you. It's randomized enough that even if you meet the same demon type, you never know exactly how it will respond (although when you do it often enough you learn how they respond and when to push forward or keep back) and the failure states are dangerous enough that can't just blindly click through the options available. One of the major problems of most dialogue systems, both tree and keywords, is that there are really no major failure states, not even simple penalties for asking the same stupid stuff again because you didn't focus on what you were doing. Unlike combat, where you can't just unmake the last round, most dialogue is just trawling through all options. More randomized answers with more serious failure states, from combat to NPCs avoiding you and dialogue would feel vital again.

Wizardry 7's diplomacy with the enemy RPG parties had a similar randomized element, which I loved as well. Sometimes you could make a friend or enemy for life, which really made the game world feel more immersive.

 

[rohand]

The Copper dreams devs seem to be trying to implement a non-standard dialogue system.

rohand Ultima Ratio Regum sounds incredible--do you know if it is in a playable state? Or close?

It is an incredible endeavor as is - you can generate full worlds and history (roughly similar to Dwarf Fortress) and can move around, but it's barebones in several mechanics.

It's fun to boot up once in a while just to see its generators in action.