What’s a Dialogue Task?
A Dialogue task is an activity where the player has a conversation with a NPC.
Types of Exchanges
There are three types of exchanges:
Branching: Players will choose a response among the provided options. Different choices can lead to different NPC responses, creating branching dialogues.
Free response: Players will input their own response. Being added, but not yet saved to the database.
Argument: Players will construct answers by connecting previously gathered data, evidence or knowledge. Currently not supported yet. Planned soon.
Branching Dialogue Creator
NPC (Non-Playable Character) Selection
If the NPC you want the conversation to be with already exists in the scene, click on the Select Target button in the left-side panel and then on the target in the scene. The target should have a green outline once successfully selected.
ID of the selected target will automatically show up in the left side panel. To remove the selection, click on the ID.
If the NPC does not exist yet, import and place it first before selecting it as a target. If you do that at the task level, it will only appear during this task then disappear later. If you want it there the entire quest, you’ll want to place the NPC at “Map Setup.”
Also note that you can select animals and other types of objects/characters, although they may not show up properly aligned within the branching dialogue interface.
Entering the Edit Screen
As usual, click the edit screen to go into a fullscreen mode to edit.
Adding Dialogue
Click where you want to start the node, drag to where you’d like to place it (only meaningful visually for your organization), and it will automatically create a new node.
You’ll see there are currently two options for response type (i.e. what the player does):
None – nothing is needed from the player, and it moves to the next node automatically.
Branching – the player is given options of how to respond, which can then move into the next node(s).
On the node, you can enter what you want the NPC to say, and then the response options for the player (if Branching was selected). To do so, simply click and type into the boxes. You can also press tab or enter with each player response to automatically move to the next field and enter another response.
Additionally, similarly to in Picture Click, you can add an image that will appear alongside the NPC dialogue. We tend to use these if we want to illustrate a story, add an explainer graphic, or help add clarity to upcoming instructions.
As you did originally, to make new nodes, you’ll simply drag out from the player options (or the only option with “none”) and release where you want to place the next node. You can link all or some of the options to the same node by dragging the line to connect to the dot at that node title instead of into a blank area.
Organizing the Connection Lines
If you click on a connection line, you should be able to change their shape by dragging on the dots.
If you double-click it, it will automatically zoom in to the connected node.
Ending Dialogue, Quest Accept/Complete, etc.
You will also see a toggle button available to change the type of node from the regular dialogue into additional functions.
These options are:
Dialogue Node – as you saw above, to set dialogue.
Quit Dialogue – an option to leave the dialogue without completing the task. We have used this if you want an option where the player isn’t ready to progress yet, but you do not have to use this.
Complete Dialogue - to complete the dialogue task and move to the next task.
Accept Quest - provides a quest acceptance screen which uses the quest name and description you set, with an Accept / Reject button. We generally use this at the end of an introduction dialogue to set up the quest, to make the acceptance feel more formal and provide a quest description.
Complete Quest - at the very end of the quest, provides a completion screen and a confetti effect to mark successful completion of the quest.