Adventure Game Studio

I really enjoyed the conversation simulation in Starship Titanic, which used a text parser to allow the player to type their own dialogue. I have been working on  a module which provides basic functionality for conversation simulation in AGS: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=32129.0

I hope this doesn't seem like cross-posting, but the distinct lack of interest in that thread has led me to wonder if I might be wasting my time. I wanted to post here to ask how people feel about this kind of interface in adventures, whether you would be put off by having to type, and whether you agree that this kind of character-interaction is potentially interesting.

Needless to say, I will be grateful for any feedback!

Thanks,

-Ali

I would love a fully working interactive conversation, but they often frustrate me.

In Facade, I said "Do you still love her?" and the AI didnt really know what I was asking. I also said in another game "I want to kill myself" and other lines of similiar suicidal tendancies. The man just pushed me out of the room and told me they'll be fine, I should just go. I can only imagine my character then jumped out of the building and killed himself, no thanks to his unsupporting friend.

But when hey DO work, like when my brother played Facade and typed "take your pants off" they responded by calling him a flirt. When he said to the man "bend over big boy" they looked shocked and it was hilarious!

I'd definately be interested in this module, Ali. You wouldn't be waisting your time.


--Snake

Sounds interesting! However, it would need to really be fine tuned to work for a lot of interactions. This hasn't been done in very many games, probably for that reason. It may be off-putting to some 12 year olds (and older folks who aren't good spellers), but it would be interesting to put out some test games with the module.

Sound also interesting to me.
I think in Starship Titanic you could type whole sentences, right?
I'm thinking about an advanced dialogue system, but it would be probably keyword based...
Whole sentences need some time to type and there will always be errors and misunderstandings.
Facade, which was all about the dialogue, was still very broken.
But it's definately not time wasting.
I'm not sure if it's the right way. On the other hand, maybe there haven't been given enough thought about this system.

I'd be interested in seeing this kind of interaction in games, if you were willing to put in the huge amount of work it will probably take.  You wouldn't be wasting your time.

Many thanks for the feedback. I'm glad that there would be some interest in this kind of dialogue. I feel I must clarify that the module I'm working on is not designed to parse commands or interactions, as some of you seem to have thought, it's designed solely to simulate converation between the player and characters. I've uploaded compiled DEMO (http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/CrooksCompiled.zip) which demonstrates the basic functions. You can interrogate this fellow Crookshanks to try and discover who committed a crime.


As Ozzie says, the parser accepts whole sentences and searches for keywords. At the moment it's very basic, but it is capable of searching for keywords, and keywords in a particular order. This is a simple demo, so Crookshanks isn't a very rounded character. That said, I'd be interested to know whether the process of trying to get information out of Crookshanks is enjoyable, or simply frustrating.

Well, uh.. I found it annoying and got frustrated and turned it off.

But then I've never liked this sort of gameplay to begin with, because they never understand me.

I asked him how long has he worked in the museum, he responded about the city instead.

But you did ask..  :-\

Awesome. Maybe he is just old. Old people have the habit of answering in a peculiar way. Ask him how long has it been since he entered the AGs forums.