Dialogues

I think dialogues could be done server side so the client only gets the message (what the npc says) and options (what you can say as a reply) for any given dialogue. When they choose one option they get the next.

Could be done like so:

Code :

---

foo = new Dialog("dialog_file.xml");
OnPlayerUse(player,object)
{
    if (object.type == MyOwnGeckObjectTypeThatIsAComputerOrSomething)
        player.dialog = foo;
}

---

Having a dialogue in a file would make scripting more difficult so the dialogs could be hard-coded too which would give you much more control over what happens (dialogue exits with a timer or whatever you want)

I've made a dialogue system like this for my own game that uses xml files and the scripting is done with lua.

Code :

---

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<dialogue name="Some healer guy">
    <segment name="default">
        <script>
        if (player.health < player.maxHealth) then
            dialog.addOption("heal","Heal me please!"))
        end
        </script>
 
        <message>...</message>
        <option goto="exit">Nevermind..</option>
    </segment>
 
    <segment name="heal">
        <script>
        player.health = player.maxHealth
        </script>
        <message>There you go. Good as new!</message>
        <option goto="exit">Thanks!</option>
    </segment>
</dialogue>

---

Edit: Removed cdata from scripts since it derped out and came out like this <=!=C=D=A=T=A=[

There's also a <forward> element that you have in place of options which will append the message to the beginning of what it forwards to.

Code :

---

<segment name="foo">
    <message>Hello </message>
    <forward>bar</forward>
</segment>
<segment name="bar">
    <message>world</message>
    <option goto="exit">Ok</option>
</segment>

---

This would print out "Hello world"

Sounds good. We'll have to deal with more important features like NPC synchronization first though, but I will get back to this!

I think dialogues should be handled like sa-mp handles custom menus, it's very flexible ;-)