Using Pages

Bob is alive, and thanks to Ask/Tell he’ll tell you about his heart attack if you ask him directly. But Ask/Tell only works if the player already knows what to ask about. Sometimes you want to offer the player a menu of things to say, and have Bob’s replies lead on to further choices - a proper branching conversation.

You could build this with a menu (see Talking to characters), but every further set of choices would mean another menu nested inside the last one. Pages turn every choice into a normal, complete turn - the same mechanism gamebooks use for their branching passages (see Creating a gamebook), but usable in a Text Adventure room. The player can save at any point in the conversation, UNDO steps back one choice at a time, and the whole conversation is described as linked page objects rather than nested scripts.

Creating a page

A page is a special kind of object: instead of a room description, it has some text to show the player and a list of options leading to other pages.

Click “+ Add” on the toolbar and choose “Add Page” (or use the “…” menu on an element in the tree). Call it bob_chat. On its “Page” tab, leave “Page type” set to “Text”, and enter a description like Bob rubs his chest gingerly. "What do you want to know?" he asks.

Now add some options. At the bottom of the “Options” list, click + New Page and enter the name bob_defib - this creates the page and links to it in one go - then type “Ask about the defibrillator” into the link text box on its row. Do the same for a page called bob_heart, with the link text “Ask about his heart attack”.

Now fill in the two pages you just created:

• bob_defib: a description like "That thing? No idea how it works, but I'm glad you had it handy," he says. Leave its options list empty.
• bob_heart: a description like "One moment I was enjoying a cheeseburger, the next everything went dark. Then you showed up," he says. Add one option, back to bob_chat, with the link text “Ask something else”.

A page with no options automatically ends the conversation once it’s shown - that’s why bob_defib doesn’t need anything special to close things off. bob_heart instead loops back round to bob_chat, so the player can keep asking things.

Starting the conversation

Pages need something to kick them off. Go to Bob’s Verbs tab and add a “speak” verb (Quest Viva will match TALK TO BOB and SPEAK TO BOB to it - see Talking to characters for more on this). For its script, switch to Code View and enter:

ShowPage (bob_chat, true, false)

The three parameters are: the page to start at; allowCancel, which if true means typing anything other than an option ends the conversation and runs normally (if false, the player is told to pick an option); and runTurnScripts, which controls whether turn scripts fire for each choice made - normally you want this off, so a hunger daemon or similar doesn’t tick on every line of dialogue.

Trying it out

Launch the game and type TALK TO BOB. You’ll see Bob’s greeting, followed by a numbered list of options - you can either type the number or click the link. Follow the “heart attack” branch a couple of times, then ask about the defibrillator to end the conversation. Try saving mid-conversation, then loading again - you’ll find yourself right back in the chat where you left off.

Varying page text

As with the gamebook page type, you can check whether a page has already been shown to the player with HasSeenPage, so a returning visit doesn’t just repeat itself word for word. As an exercise, set bob_heart’s “Page type” to “Script + Text” - this adds a script that runs just before its description is shown - and enter:

if (HasSeenPage (bob_heart)) {
  msg ("Bob sighs, clearly expecting the question this time.")
}

Ask about his heart attack twice in a row, and you’ll see the extra remark appear on the second visit, on top of the usual description underneath.

For more on building larger dialogue trees - including how to add and remove options while the game is running - see Building a conversation with Pages.