Re: Sharks Lagoon as a game developer forum
Posted: Mon, 09Oct12 06:40
I was mainly talking about text adventures because they're what I'm most familiar with from a design point of view.
Conversation in text adventures is mostly of the 'ask x about y' or 'tell a about b', so you ask (or tell) the NPC something and get a response. The response can be varied according whatever variables you like (and are willing to program), and, for example, you could also increase or decrease a relationship meter.
The problem with that model in my opinion is that it doesn't really resemble real conversation. The player is doing all the talking and the NPC is merely reactive.
The branching model of conversation, which you seem to be advocating, is good but it does have the drawback that it requires a lot of writing unless you don't allow the player to deviate very far from the main thread of the conversation. It gets more complicated too when there are variables that might affect the responses.
There have been a few text adventures that have used menu-based conversations, but they've been of the short variety (ie. about 3-4 levels/branches) which keeps it manageable.
As you've probably guessed, I'm a big booster for text adventures (or interactive fiction). I'm also a bit lukewarm about graphics, at least for storytelling. It seems to me that if you want a good story, you have to focus on the text. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but you can tell more of a story with a thousand words than you can with a single picture.
Conversation in text adventures is mostly of the 'ask x about y' or 'tell a about b', so you ask (or tell) the NPC something and get a response. The response can be varied according whatever variables you like (and are willing to program), and, for example, you could also increase or decrease a relationship meter.
The problem with that model in my opinion is that it doesn't really resemble real conversation. The player is doing all the talking and the NPC is merely reactive.
The branching model of conversation, which you seem to be advocating, is good but it does have the drawback that it requires a lot of writing unless you don't allow the player to deviate very far from the main thread of the conversation. It gets more complicated too when there are variables that might affect the responses.
There have been a few text adventures that have used menu-based conversations, but they've been of the short variety (ie. about 3-4 levels/branches) which keeps it manageable.
As you've probably guessed, I'm a big booster for text adventures (or interactive fiction). I'm also a bit lukewarm about graphics, at least for storytelling. It seems to me that if you want a good story, you have to focus on the text. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but you can tell more of a story with a thousand words than you can with a single picture.