[Black Wolf]

OK, so I've been thinking about that open universe freespace concept that refuses to go away, trying to think about ways to hack in all of the features that we would need, but currently don't have  (don't worry, I'm not going to ask any of you to code all of them ). One of the things that I think would be most useful would be the ability to use the Communications menu to initiate pre-programmed conversations with other ships/installations/etc. But, thinking about it, there are also tonnes of examples in the traditional, non-open FS setting where this could be massively useful. The ability to have conversations - even limited though they may be by their preprogrammed nature - is what could really allow campaign makers to replace the silent protagonist with one who not only talks, but says what the player wants to say, not the mission designer.

Now, those of you who've played WiH will know that this is already possible - Laporte has a conversation with Simms when she transfers squadrons. But those of you who've talked to Battuta about that mission (or tried anything similar yourselves) will also know that doing it within the traditional FRED architecture was (and still would be) a complete nightmare. Moreover, these kinds of conversations have to be tightly integrated into the mission, and the UI has to be made manually each time the mission designer wants it to take place. The idea of jumping into the mission and having the option to talk to (or choose not to talk to) half a dozen ships would require a phenomenal amount of sexping - a lot of which would be defining things like the UI, checking and resetting key-pressed, sending messages, checking the status of ships (alive, dead, departed, still present), checking the messages already sent etc. etc. - all of which could be made phenomenally simpler by integrating these repetitive tasks into existing engine capabilities.

So, here's how I see it working:

From the player's PoV, it would be simple, and basically follow the classic system set up by countless adventure games over the years. Say you've been sent to scan a convoy for weapons that Command suspects are being shipped to NTF rebels. When you press "C", you're given the usual six choices, plus a seventh - "Conversations" or "Communicate" or something like that. You press 7, and a list of ships comes up. You select the ship you want to talk to by pressing the number next to it (exactly how the menu currently works), and another submenu comes up, this time with a list of potential messages you can send to that ship, things like "Ask about weapons" "Ask about Vasudans" "Ask for their Cargo Manifest". You select your message, say, asking about their cargo manifest, and the other ship responds, perhaps telling you they're carrying foodstuffs. If you're satisfied with this, you keep playing, or you open up the "Conversations" menu again, where you have your two remaining messages still to be sent, plus maybe a new one - "Ask what kinds of Food" or something. You keep going until you've asked everything you want to ask, or your questioning triggers some kind of event - maybe they realize you're suspicious when you want more detail about the food and decide their lives would be easier without you - suddenly, their IFF changes and they open fire! Mission moves on, with your new objectives being o disable the freighter before it can escape rather than simply scanning it.

From the FREDders PoV it would obviously be somewhat more complicated. The most straightforward way I see of integrating a system like this into FRED would be to put a sub-editor into the Ship editor. This "Conversations editor" would probably be very similar to the events editor or the mission goals editor and would define the name, display name, displayed message and optional sound of each possible message the player can send to that particular ship, as well as the points in the mission at which each message will be available.

As long as these Message events are then accessible as triggers in the events editor (much the same way mission goals currently are), everything else could be handled in there - responses to questions, non verbal results (like the IFF change I talked about above, or the changing of variables for more subtle changes later on (including possibly feeding back into the Conversations editor)) - could all be handled by tradition events.

I can see a lot of advantages to this system:
    It simplifies the creation of conversation trees, and makes a use of a consistent, pre-existing UI that all mods can easily access.
    It eliminates the need to check the survival status of ships before sending messages (in the same way that you can't order dead wingmen to form on your wing - they simply don't appear as menu options).
    It allows for more than 4 options at a time (since the best way to do it currently is to use buttons 1 through 4, but we have no access through FRED to buttons 5 through 9).

IMO, this could potentially be one of the biggest changes to the way FS works as a game from a players perspective since... I dunno, Fury AI? It'll open up a whole range of possibilities that - while they're technically possible now - are so immensely hard and frustrating to FRED that they're almost never used. But I also recognise that I have very little idea about the complexity or difficulty of what I'm asking for here - my last suggestion (wiki style linking in the tech room) seemed like it should be easy-peasy to me, but according to The E would have meant a huge rewrite of big chunks of the UI code. So this is very much an "Idea" thread - if I'm asking for something that's way harder than I think it is, tell me and I'll forget about it. But if it's at all possible I really think that there are a lot of FREDders out there who could make really great use of a feature like this.

[AndrewofDoom]

This really could be useful. Quanto kept talking about having dialogue choices for SAFSO, so this would be something I would easily welcome.

[JGZinv]

We could make use of it. Been thinking about something akin to that for a while for immersion.
It's just that this compared to our other needs is like... 130th on the list.

[Goober5000]

I have thought about this myself... in fact I have a pretty good design for it that's just sitting around not being coded.  But as people say, the issue is finding a coder with the time and skill to do it.

[jr2]

* jr2 eyes the HLP-XCOM cloning tanks

Hey Valathil... 

[z64555]

* jr2 eyes the HLP-XCOM cloning tanks

Hey Valathil... 

I thought those where mothballed since the '70's?

[Spoon]

I'd like to order 3 extra Axem's and Swifty's along side the Valathil's please

[Dragon]

I thought those where mothballed since the '70's?

You're right. They were.

[Nuke]

make it script interfaceable pls.

[z64555]

I thought those where mothballed since the '70's?

You're right. They were.

Doh, grammar check failure.

[Goober5000]

Hey, nobody wants to clone me?

Nevertheless, this may be implemented by someone soon.  Stay tuned.

[mjn.mixael]

Can't we get 3.6.14 done before assigning coders to big new features?

EDIT: as a further addendum... There are bunch of requests on the HPC board getting ignored under the guise of a feature freeze. Why are we talking about doing this big thing soon when 3.6.14 is still not out after 8 months?

[Goober5000]

In my defense, I've had the design in my head for the past several years, so this is really more like an overdue 3.5.5 feature...

But point taken.   I should say though, that the coder who is working on this feature a) has already fixed a number of bugs for 3.6.14, and b) is unlikely to be able to fix the remaining two.

[Black Wolf]

Nevertheless, this may be implemented by someone soon.  Stay tuned.

Fantastic. . I  guess I can't really comment on the merits of this vs. whatever might have been requested in HPC - all I can say is that if we get this into the engine it will have a big, immediate and positive impact  on how missions are made - I'm 100% certain of that.

[mjn.mixael]

Not if we don't have nightlies....

[Goober5000]

True...

Well, look.  Most of the five open bugs just need testing or housecleaning to be closed out.  Bug 2417 is the only one that still needs serious effort thrown at it.  Who do we know around here that could be cajoled into looking at the head ani problem?

Upon closer examination of the bug, it looks like Valathil is attempting to track down the cause.  So we just need a few people who are experiencing the issue to report their test results to him.

[Nuke]

Hey, nobody wants to clone me?

Nevertheless, this may be implemented by someone soon.  Stay tuned.

id settle for the evil goober from the other universe.

[jr2]

Hey, nobody wants to clone me?

Nevertheless, this may be implemented by someone soon.  Stay tuned.

Right but then who would be in charge?  We would have a bunch of confused Goobers running around.  Wait, maybe if we assigned them all different names and told them all that 5000 was potentate...

Hey, nobody wants to clone me?

Nevertheless, this may be implemented by someone soon.  Stay tuned.

id settle for the evil goober from the other universe.

But then he would try to take over! 

[Nuke]

well there is the possibility that our univers's goober is the evil goober and the other goober is plyable and easy to control.

[Droid803]

Bug 2417 is the only one that still needs serious effort thrown at it.  Who do we know around here that could be cajoled into looking at the head ani problem?

Well you know, that goddamn HeadAni stuttering bug is a good time to fix the goddamn headani code so it isn't retarded and tries to play files straight off of the HD without loading it into memory... 
(and in the process get me my workin EFF headanis -something like an additional 50MBs? - which are already sitting in the DE folder and I've already forced everyone to download it so that when it is implemented it will work)