Hi there! It's been a while, but I promised a gameplay video for this update and I wanted to deliver so I had to get rid of some placeholder art to make it presentable. Took longer than I expected, but here it is. Keep in mind this is not the most exciting part of the game, it's basically part of the initial 'tutorial' quest before you even hook up the first pump.
Negotiation works as follows:
The reason most RPG’s have similar tree-based dialogue is underlying data systems. What I mean is, whether it’s Torment’s dialogue or Fallout 4’s retard wheel, it’s basically the same thing with a different level of writing quality: A state machine of responses that you click through until they’re resolved. They can vary in complexity and depth, they can vary in amounts of skill checks involved and they can vary in quality, but they’re always tree-based state machines. The don’t vary in structure.
Someone compared this game to No Truce With the Furies. I checked it out and read a few development blog posts. What they’re doing with dialogue seems really interesting but deep down it’s still a (really cool) dialogue tree abstraction.
What I’m doing is new. I thought about how human beings have conversations and how you decide what to say in a P&P game. Usually, you have something you want out of a conversation, a goal. You also have a few things to say to get there, but what and how you say them depends on the other person’s actions and cues. So I ditched the tree structure in favour of a parallel interrupt system for negotiations.
You can interject with leverage, you can change the goal of your conversation, you can select pushy responses or backpedal and you can influence the dialogue in other ways. You can finally cover the flanks in a battle of words instead of always taking it head on with a couple of options. There is a lot more player agency involved. This is much harder to program, which is why I think most developers don’t bother. Getting every writer to a programming level where they could set up a conversation like this is not viable for most studios.
The downside? It’s a lot of work. So a lot of dialogue in the game is still a traditional tree system. For flavour, exposition and story progression, the tree system works fine. Whenever negotiation or trade is involved, though, I switch to the interrupt system. Let me walk you through it. At the 3:50 mark in the video, the negotiation begins.
In the negotiation screen, in the top left you can set your goals. This negotiation only has one goal, to convince Karen to do your work for you without mentioning it in her report. This goal is not binary, there are multiple levels of success or failure. If you are convincing enough, your goal will be met. If you barely convince her, she will do as you ask, but mention it in her report, hurting your reputation. If you fail to convince her, she will refuse. There is another, more complicated outcome but that is beyond the scope of this update.
After setting a goal, the negotiation difficulty is set. This determines how your negotiation skill stacks up against the potential danger or reward of each line you utter. To the right you can see the character portrait. Below the portrait is the disposition tracker. This player character has average awareness, so it can roughly estimate how the other person feels. With higher awareness, you can see the actually numbers involved here. A higher disposition will make it easier to convince this person. You can increase or hurt disposition throughout the game, by being nice or helping someone. High charisma helps here. Below the disposition is the stat box. Here you can see the relevant stats, in this case your negotiation skill and the other person's skill, which you can't see because you need really high awareness for that. Below that is the 'sway' indicator. This determines how convincing you've been so far. If it's green, you're usually fine.
In the middle are lines you can use to convince the other person. They have a risk value and a reward value. Risk determines how much of a disposition hit the character will take towards this person if the line fails, reward determines how much the person is swayed by this argument. Failure or success is determined by the negotiation stat and current state of the negotiation in progress.
To the left is the 'charm' button, which you can use once per negotiation if your charisma is high enough. If it's not high enough or the disposition is simply too low, though, this charm line will backfire. This character has Charisma 10 and high negotiation skill so it's a breeze.
Below that is the leverage area. Right now, the player has no leverage in this conversation, but leverage is a trump card you can use to increase sway without risk. You can gain leverage by finding some dirt on the character, for example.
That's it for this update. I wanted to narrate the video, but my microphones are all packed up for studio work this weekend. I'll be abroad next week and didn't want to delay this update any further.
I hope you like it. If there's anything in the video you want to know more about, feel free to ask.
PS That glitch at the tower is because I was using bloaty capture software to record the video and my PC couldn't handle the strain.
Negotiation works as follows:
The reason most RPG’s have similar tree-based dialogue is underlying data systems. What I mean is, whether it’s Torment’s dialogue or Fallout 4’s retard wheel, it’s basically the same thing with a different level of writing quality: A state machine of responses that you click through until they’re resolved. They can vary in complexity and depth, they can vary in amounts of skill checks involved and they can vary in quality, but they’re always tree-based state machines. The don’t vary in structure.
Someone compared this game to No Truce With the Furies. I checked it out and read a few development blog posts. What they’re doing with dialogue seems really interesting but deep down it’s still a (really cool) dialogue tree abstraction.
What I’m doing is new. I thought about how human beings have conversations and how you decide what to say in a P&P game. Usually, you have something you want out of a conversation, a goal. You also have a few things to say to get there, but what and how you say them depends on the other person’s actions and cues. So I ditched the tree structure in favour of a parallel interrupt system for negotiations.
You can interject with leverage, you can change the goal of your conversation, you can select pushy responses or backpedal and you can influence the dialogue in other ways. You can finally cover the flanks in a battle of words instead of always taking it head on with a couple of options. There is a lot more player agency involved. This is much harder to program, which is why I think most developers don’t bother. Getting every writer to a programming level where they could set up a conversation like this is not viable for most studios.
The downside? It’s a lot of work. So a lot of dialogue in the game is still a traditional tree system. For flavour, exposition and story progression, the tree system works fine. Whenever negotiation or trade is involved, though, I switch to the interrupt system. Let me walk you through it. At the 3:50 mark in the video, the negotiation begins.
In the negotiation screen, in the top left you can set your goals. This negotiation only has one goal, to convince Karen to do your work for you without mentioning it in her report. This goal is not binary, there are multiple levels of success or failure. If you are convincing enough, your goal will be met. If you barely convince her, she will do as you ask, but mention it in her report, hurting your reputation. If you fail to convince her, she will refuse. There is another, more complicated outcome but that is beyond the scope of this update.
After setting a goal, the negotiation difficulty is set. This determines how your negotiation skill stacks up against the potential danger or reward of each line you utter. To the right you can see the character portrait. Below the portrait is the disposition tracker. This player character has average awareness, so it can roughly estimate how the other person feels. With higher awareness, you can see the actually numbers involved here. A higher disposition will make it easier to convince this person. You can increase or hurt disposition throughout the game, by being nice or helping someone. High charisma helps here. Below the disposition is the stat box. Here you can see the relevant stats, in this case your negotiation skill and the other person's skill, which you can't see because you need really high awareness for that. Below that is the 'sway' indicator. This determines how convincing you've been so far. If it's green, you're usually fine.
In the middle are lines you can use to convince the other person. They have a risk value and a reward value. Risk determines how much of a disposition hit the character will take towards this person if the line fails, reward determines how much the person is swayed by this argument. Failure or success is determined by the negotiation stat and current state of the negotiation in progress.
To the left is the 'charm' button, which you can use once per negotiation if your charisma is high enough. If it's not high enough or the disposition is simply too low, though, this charm line will backfire. This character has Charisma 10 and high negotiation skill so it's a breeze.
Below that is the leverage area. Right now, the player has no leverage in this conversation, but leverage is a trump card you can use to increase sway without risk. You can gain leverage by finding some dirt on the character, for example.
That's it for this update. I wanted to narrate the video, but my microphones are all packed up for studio work this weekend. I'll be abroad next week and didn't want to delay this update any further.
I hope you like it. If there's anything in the video you want to know more about, feel free to ask.
PS That glitch at the tower is because I was using bloaty capture software to record the video and my PC couldn't handle the strain.
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