Conversations inside long narration text (similar to IF games)

UmutD

Hello everyone!

I'm considering using AC for my next game, which will be a narration heavy rpg (like Sunless Sea).

One thing that's different in AC examples/tutorials compared to what I have in my mind, is how conversations are handled and I wanted to ask what would be the best way to do this within AC.

My goal isn't something new: I'm planning to represent all narration & npc speech mixed in a long text area and then present dialogue options on the same page, under that long text: Just like a text adventure. When we choose an option, long text on the page will refresh instantly (without our choice repeating on the screen), and so on..

Here's a link to an example image, from the game Geneforge:

Now, if I understand right, I can use documents (in inventory) for this (perhaps by attaching conversations below?), but I'm not sure I completely understand the implications of that from what I read in the manual, I don't quite understand what parts are customizable. Though not necessary, I would love these texts to be recorded in somewhere in case players wants to go back and read, but I wouldn't want them to appear in my inventory, obviously. Also, I might use documents for their original purpose too, for notes spread around that we can collect (in our inventory), also perhaps another type of document, for a quest journal, where player can check all the active quests. In that case, is there a way I can separate these from usual document prefab that I'll prepare? Also, these texts will probably be really high in numbers (perhaps in hundreds), is this suitable for what documents are intended for?

Another way might be I can simple use a normal gameobject with a text in it, and just toggle them on-off whenever dialogue changes, but this way those texts would be separate from AC engine, so I won't be able to use AC functionalities like gather text etc. I believe. It might not be a deal-breaker but I'm not sure if this would be the best way.

Sorry if I'm asking something explained already, AC is really deep and I'm a bit overwhelmed.

Thanks!

ChrisIceBox

Welcome to the community, @UmutD.

At least going by the screenshot, you're probably best off leaving Documents for their intended purpose, and continue to rely on AC's speech / conversation systems for the display of such text and giving the player options.

It's true that, built-in, AC's subtitles and dialogue options are presented in separate menus. However, this functionality can be overridden through custom scripts that display AC speech / dialogue options in your intended way.

Some scripting will be necessary, but by hooking into the OnStartSpeech and OnStartConversation events, it's possible to extract the necessary data that can be used to build your own narrative display.

Custom events are a way of running your own script functions whenever AC performs a common task. An example that uses this to extract speech text can be found in this tutorial.

Another way might be I can simple use a normal gameobject with a text in it, and just toggle them on-off whenever dialogue changes, but this way those texts would be separate from AC engine, so I won't be able to use AC functionalities like gather text etc. I believe

Relying on a totally separate system is also an option. AC allows you to add non-AC text to the speech manager if your script implements ITranslatable. For details, see the Manual's "Custom translatables" chapter.

UmutD

Great, thanks for the pointers!