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 ShowMenu (see Handling SPEAK TO), but a menu-based conversation has a drawback: while the menu is open, the game is waiting on that one callback, so the player can’t save or undo until they’ve picked an option. Pages solve this by turning 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. Nothing is “pending” between choices, so save, load and undo all work mid-conversation.

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.

Right-click the tree (or use “+ Add”) and choose “Add Page”. 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. In the “Options” list, click “Add”, and when prompted for the page name enter bob_defib - this creates a new page for you - and for the link text enter “Ask about the defibrillator”. Add a second option pointing to a new 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 will match TALK TO BOB and SPEAK TO BOB to it - see Handling SPEAK TO 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.