general dialogue question

[urgrue]

ok this isnt a "technical" question but there doesnt seem to be a more general game development forum, so...
im making game that is set in a zen monastery and thus there are lots of fun/silly riddles and koans (you know like what is the sound of one hand clapping etc)...

so lets say we take a simple riddle like:
q: i am brown and furry, what am i?
a: a bear

in the (old) sierra approach, the player has to think of the answer exactly, which can be a real pain when you cant quite think of the syntax! also its too complex for me, so this option is out.

in lucasarts, the answer is multiple-choice. im using this currently, but this is way too easy, because most of these questions are the kind where if you see the answer, you get it.

i have thought of two alternate approaches to the dilemma while still sticking to the lucasarts approach technically, and would greatly welcome input.

first, and this option i HATE, but it would work, is that the multiple choice answers are not the answers themselves, but "keywords" of some kind. someone who knows the right answer would recognize the correct keyword.
so like, the actual answers:
bear, porcupine, dog
would be "disguised" as for example,
Be..., Po...., Do....
or something like that.
this is awful but maybe if done well enough, in some form other than this ultra-stupid and ultra-simple example i just gave, it might be usable.

the other option, which im going to try to use but is more difficult, is to not have the correct answer even visible until the player has revealed his knowledge of it in some other way.
this works on a more conceptual level and is therefore much harder to implement, but for example i have one scene in mind where a monk asks you a koan (a kind of zen riddle). the player will at this point merely say "i'll have to think about that.". the player will always say that if you try to answer the question, until youve been to a certain area where the riddle is repeated but in a different form (like, if the riddle is "how many bears fit in a volkswagen", you might come to a place where you have to fit books into a bookshelf, or something).
completing this task allows you to now go answer the riddle. but how you complete this task determines whether you even have the correct answer available or not.
so for example, placing all the books on top of the bookshelf activates the correct answer, but putting half the books IN the bookshelf, and the other half on a table, doesnt.

anyway...what do you all think?

[Scummbuddy]

using global ints, you can *unlock* the correct answer in a dialog for the person to be able to select, but only if the if statement comes back and gives the correct return value, and then would add the choice to the list.

[Totoro]

There is even the action "enable dialogue-options" available in the action editor which refer to the dialogues, you might want to check that out. It's pretty simple.

[Ishmael]

Or using parser in dialog...?

[Kweepa]

The problem isn't technical though folks - it's conceptual.

Sounds like the best approach is to have the player type the answer - since there's only one absolutely correct answer, I don't see the problem.

Your second approach sounds very like the swordfighting in Secret of Monkey Island, so it could definitely work, but it would be odd, because the player can presumably answer the riddle without solving the related puzzle. (Whereas in SOMI the quips weren't "solvable").

Another possibility somewhat like your first is to have iconic representation of the solution, that is only obvious once you know the answer. To prevent guessing you'd need a whole lot of wrong icons and a sequence of puzzles that you don't get the answer to - you just find out at the end if you got them all right.

Cheers,
Steve

[urgrue]

i cant really use the "type it in" option because sometimes the answers are very obscure, even if there is only one correct answer. also syntax is a nightmare, cause a lot of these questions deal with concepts that have many "close enough" synonyms. like quietness, silence, nothing, nothingness, emptiness, might all be correct answers to one problem.

the iconic way would work at least in many cases, but it might be difficult in terms of finding an icon that everyone will associate with the correct answer, if they know it. people can be so different in their interpretations (did anyone ever make sense of the dialogue system in captain blood? didnt think so).

well, i figure im gonna put this on the back burner. its only my first game so maybe im biting off more than i can chew

so im implementing each possibility one way or another, and maybe after the game is done, i'll have clearer thoughts on what works and what doesnt. then we can all look forward to those improvements in Zen Quest II: Son of the Enlightened One

my favorite so far is to put the puzzle in playable form. but this is going to be somewhat cryptic to the player, especially as adventure players arent used to their every action counting - we're used to trying to talk to every character we see, picking up every item we find, etc, but here in this one example thats precisely WRONG, and whether or not you talk to the person BEFORE or AFTER interacting with them, or at all, is going to make a big difference in your score.
so im trying to caution the player off that by somehow making it clear his actions count and he better watch his step.
anyway, we'll see how it goes.