Talking System for... Adventure Games???

[steph]

i've been thinking a bit about dialogue choices in adventure games and... shit like that. you know like you either choose from a list of responses or it's like you choose the tone of the response (you know like "annoyed" comes out as WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU and nets you -a million karma points)

anyways i was thinking about a system where instead of choosing from a list you write the question out. i don't mean like "talk joe ask murders" i mean like "joe, what can you tell me about the murders?" and not just walking up to people randomly and asking shit; if it was a murder mystery you would have to say hello may i ask you a few questions about the murder etc and on some suspects maybe talk them into spilling clues.

i think it would require some brains/planning etc and would be fun! the only problem is it would be a bitch to program. i'm thinking it would work kind of like a chatbot. the problem with this is i'm sure all of you have been sitting around talking to like... idk cleverchild? is that its name? cleverbot??? something with clever. anyways you're talking to him and he misunderstands something you said and the whole conversation just becomes a confusing mess. or that happens to me, anyways.

but anyways i was thinking, if this could get programmed correctly, it would be just like having a REAL CONVERSATION!!! and you could even talk about whatever you want, like get into a 2 hour conversation with some suspect about movies.

hope that whole thing made sense. :I the thing is when it comes to dialogue "choices" it's not really choosing, it's picking from a list. what if i want to tell the hooker she's a smelly slut?? why isn't that on the list?

'course like i said before all the results/possibilities etc would probably be impossible to code. :I unless it went something like "hey do you like gerbils?" "i'm not sure what you're talking about." but then that just gets rid of all the believability anyways!!

[Kino]

That reminds me of an indie game called Façade... though instead of trying to solve a mystery, you're trying to save a couple's relashionship. It uses the same mechanic that you described. It also has the same problems you described... but it's worth checking out.
It's somewhat hard to describe beyond that, you should check it out yourself. It's a free download at least...


But yeah, your idea sort of resembles old text-based adventure kind of games. You have to figure out EXACTLY what the game designer wants you to type. Either this game could embrace that nature and become a difficult riddle/puzzle game... either that or it would be like the Scribblenauts of mystery games.
I can imagine that you could set this up like a text-based adventure and program in as many different dialog options as possible. Plus have the game playtested a ton and add more dialog as nessicary. To maintain your sanity you could have a ton of different phrases that the NPC could respond to but they'd all be lumped into different categories. Like, out of all the potential effective things you could say, only 6 possible responses could happen. Response 1 would be Most Positive and the NPC would tell you everything you need to know about the investigation. (Hypothetically you typed something nice/polite to the NPC to get this response... but there were many, many other 'nice' things that would also get the same reaction.) Response 6 would be Worst Response and that's basically if you typed in a bunch of cuss words. Response 3 could be if you bragged or made a snide comment etc. etc. and the NPC would withhold a bit of information out of spite. Hopefully this make sense...
And of course it wouldn't have to be this straightforward. Making an overly polite comment might be the wrong thing to do in a different scenario... and this could be played around with in many different ways.

Eh, I guess it would still be a bitch to program. There must be a better way...
But tl;dr, have a limited amount of NPC reactions and have a lot of leg room for players to type responses. With absolutely no typical good/bad moral code to guide players it could still be quite a challenge.

[steph]

whoooaa really? i need to download that shit then O:

ahhh yeah that does sound like it could work. maybe if you had like a whole team of people to work on dialogue :V

[Mr Snibbles]

>maybe if you had like a whole team of people to work on dialogue :V

Then we shall assemble this team....

[Sweet Bro]

In 2008 a crack coding team was hired by Activision through a resume they didn't submit. These men promptly escaped from Activision headquarters in Santa Monica, California. Today, still wanted by Activision, they survive as coders of fortune. If you have a problem, and no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the C-Team.

[Kino]

Combine this idea with Snake Gas's mystery game idea and we'll create the coding apocalypse that will end the earth.