Dialogue'n, part 2 : The return of the ugly brown gui
by Gareth Fouche · 08/25/2006 (4:47 am) · 17 comments
The last 2 weeks or so have sucked a bit. I got bronchitis, just in time to have a raging fever for the weekend. Hooray! It sucks to be sick on your weekend, even more so when its your main chance to game dev.
But, we soldier on.
Specifically, we soldier on to create the Most Awesome Dialogue Editor EVER.
Feast your eyes on this thing of beige beauty :
Its so...so utterly...functional. :P
Jokes aside, its pretty rocking. You have a tree view of your entire dialogue, can open up individual nodes to edit them, add responses, conditions etc. See my last .post if you don't know what I mean by "nodes".It was, just like the dialogue system, quite easy to whip up, and very powerful. I'll say it again, if you're coding an RPG, use the SQLite resource. Databases make your life SO much easier, especially with something like this.
Its 90% done. I'll get it sorted this weekend, assuming my crappy made in Taiwan immune system can fight off any other invading germs. And then...its on to quests/journal.
In other news, the company I work for as The Day Job is sending me to America to demo a system to clients. Specifically, to Oregon. I'll be landing in Eugene in a week or so. Now, I'm not sure I'll get any time to play tourist, and since we're dealing with Forestry I'll be in the wilds a bit, but if I do get time, I may just decide to hunt down a certain Garage, poke around to see where they are hiding Constructor.... ;)
The downside is that I won't be Torquin for most of next month, dammit, grumble grumble.
But, we soldier on.
Specifically, we soldier on to create the Most Awesome Dialogue Editor EVER.
Feast your eyes on this thing of beige beauty :
Its so...so utterly...functional. :P
Jokes aside, its pretty rocking. You have a tree view of your entire dialogue, can open up individual nodes to edit them, add responses, conditions etc. See my last .post if you don't know what I mean by "nodes".It was, just like the dialogue system, quite easy to whip up, and very powerful. I'll say it again, if you're coding an RPG, use the SQLite resource. Databases make your life SO much easier, especially with something like this.
Its 90% done. I'll get it sorted this weekend, assuming my crappy made in Taiwan immune system can fight off any other invading germs. And then...its on to quests/journal.
In other news, the company I work for as The Day Job is sending me to America to demo a system to clients. Specifically, to Oregon. I'll be landing in Eugene in a week or so. Now, I'm not sure I'll get any time to play tourist, and since we're dealing with Forestry I'll be in the wilds a bit, but if I do get time, I may just decide to hunt down a certain Garage, poke around to see where they are hiding Constructor.... ;)
The downside is that I won't be Torquin for most of next month, dammit, grumble grumble.
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#2
Nick
08/25/2006 (6:50 am)
Hey Gareth, this looks impressive, nice work! Can this work without having SQLite implemented or is DB functionality totally hardcoded in?Nick
#3
08/25/2006 (6:51 am)
I love all of your Blog posts, they are so... Informational.
#4
@ Nick : Hmmmm, it is pretty heavily dependant on a DB. You COULD port it, say to some type of text file concept (similar to the existing RPGDialogue resource), but you would need to code up the equivalent of SELECT, UPDATE, DELETE statements, with the corresponding search clauses. Its not a trivial task to write it up yourself, bug test your code, etc. Not impossible, but its nice to just plug in an existing solution.
08/25/2006 (7:05 am)
Thanks guys :)@ Nick : Hmmmm, it is pretty heavily dependant on a DB. You COULD port it, say to some type of text file concept (similar to the existing RPGDialogue resource), but you would need to code up the equivalent of SELECT, UPDATE, DELETE statements, with the corresponding search clauses. Its not a trivial task to write it up yourself, bug test your code, etc. Not impossible, but its nice to just plug in an existing solution.
#5
08/25/2006 (7:43 am)
Thanks, I'll see what I can do with the existing resource. 
#6
08/25/2006 (7:48 am)
If you are coming all the way to America and are going to be that close to GG, you really should come have a cup of coffee. jefft at garagegames do com
#7
08/25/2006 (8:00 am)
That would be great Jeff :) 
#8
I'm working on something along similar lines. I may have to borrow your dialog designs (as in GUI not speech). I'm storing conversations as XML documents for the moment (hand edited) while I work out what I want them to do. I'm still debating if it's worth putting in a DB.
08/25/2006 (9:01 am)
Very nice! You seem to have a good eye for UI. Your tools look better than some game interfaces, even with the brown!I'm working on something along similar lines. I may have to borrow your dialog designs (as in GUI not speech). I'm storing conversations as XML documents for the moment (hand edited) while I work out what I want them to do. I'm still debating if it's worth putting in a DB.
#9
I did something similar a couple months ago but I didn't create a nice gui editor. I just read it all directly from a XML-esque text document.
It reminds me a bit of Neverwinters Conversation Editor, which is very powerful if used right. I love branching dialog, probably one of my biggest gripes about Oblivion was its lack there of real branching dialog.
08/25/2006 (10:56 am)
Awesome Gareth,I did something similar a couple months ago but I didn't create a nice gui editor. I just read it all directly from a XML-esque text document.
It reminds me a bit of Neverwinters Conversation Editor, which is very powerful if used right. I love branching dialog, probably one of my biggest gripes about Oblivion was its lack there of real branching dialog.
#10
What kind of forestry-related day job do you have, anyway? Sounds interesting.
08/25/2006 (12:33 pm)
Heck yeah, man, you can't be a Torquer and have your day job send you all the way to Eugene, Oregon and NOT come down to the Garage and say Hi!! What kind of forestry-related day job do you have, anyway? Sounds interesting.
#11
08/25/2006 (2:11 pm)
Are you going to release this as a resource? I could really use this.
#12
08/25/2006 (5:17 pm)
This looks VERY well done, I can't wait to see a demo or video or something!
#13
Our main product is a fire detection system, Forest Watch, it analyses incoming video from camera towers for smoke signatures and alerts operators. Our main clients are Forestry, but we also have it set up to monitor the city of Cape Town here in South Africa, they've recently had some major fires.We also do things like motion detection, security, etc.
I will definately try to visit the Garage while I'm there, the opportunity is too good to pass up! :)
Matt, I actually had a look at the NWN editor when I was contemplating my dialogue system and editor, as well as the Oblivion one. So there might be some infulences there. ;)
I'm not sure I can easily turn this into a resource Jesse, its tightly tied to how I have my db set up, so it'd be hard to make something that could just be dropped into a project. Will see when I get back ;)
08/28/2006 (12:02 am)
Chris, my company does "vision systems", which is basically applying image processing techniques to video and static images.Our main product is a fire detection system, Forest Watch, it analyses incoming video from camera towers for smoke signatures and alerts operators. Our main clients are Forestry, but we also have it set up to monitor the city of Cape Town here in South Africa, they've recently had some major fires.We also do things like motion detection, security, etc.
I will definately try to visit the Garage while I'm there, the opportunity is too good to pass up! :)
Matt, I actually had a look at the NWN editor when I was contemplating my dialogue system and editor, as well as the Oblivion one. So there might be some infulences there. ;)
I'm not sure I can easily turn this into a resource Jesse, its tightly tied to how I have my db set up, so it'd be hard to make something that could just be dropped into a project. Will see when I get back ;)
#14
08/28/2006 (2:23 am)
Sounds cool. We can use that forest fire detection system here in Greece. Every summer there are lots of forest fires with thousand of acres being burned.
#15
08/28/2006 (2:28 am)
Hehe, we actually already have a small test system set up there in Greece, although I can't remember exactly where at the moment. Hopefully it'll grow in the future ;)
#16
01/17/2007 (1:49 pm)
Are you going to share the code with the community? The MMO-KIT comes with something that is somewhat functional, but it isn't set up as logically as yours is. With how you did it, I can rapidly spew out thousands of lines of interactive dialogue for a vast number of NPCs, before I have to set them on the map anywhere. My game is going to be very dialogue heavy, and hopefully interesting and amusing.
#17
01/30/2007 (5:02 am)
@Wolf Dreamer : I'm afraid to say, at the moment, probably not. The issue being that my editor code is very heavily tied to how I've set up my database, and the table structure. To pull out that entire structure and turn it into a resource would take too much time for me to justify it at the moment, when I still have such a long list of priority things to do.
Torque 3D Owner Adam deGrandis
Adam deGrandis