Please allow us to Pass Parameters in Conversations

LuckyDay

There is an incredible amount of repetition in conversations scripts.

Currently, the only way to pass anything like a parameter is to use tokens which take a minimum of three scripts and look ugly in the conversation as you must scroll through them one at a time serially instead of showing them in a nice vertical list.

Otherwise, to show it is a list, you end up creating a bunch of scripts often with only one value different in each one. All the scripts are in the root folder so its already a terrible mess.

if Beamdog could write

void main()

to be functionally equivalent of

void main(...)

instead of

void main(void)

that would be incredibly helpful.

We could pass parameters as a tag based system in the conversation in order they occur (all string types could be converted in the script), from a list in the conversation UI, or (and this is my least favourite) a naming system from the object's local variables.

example

Hi
hi <param>foo1</param> want to <param>bar1</param>?

hi foo1 want to bar1?

and the conversation script would read

void main(string param1, string param17) {}

result

param1 = "foo1"
param17 = "bar1"

This would be incredibly helpful.
Thanks,
Lucky Day

FreshLemonBun

NWN2 did it in a much easier way. I think without the need for scripts variables and simple conditionals were built in, if I remember correctly. A lot of people have commented about it but I'm not sure it has ever gotten on Trello let alone acknowledged by Beamdog. Otherwise if you want a framework and don't want to make your own many people recommend z-dialog for passing/checking variables and constructing dialog.

LuckyDay

I'm going to try to see if an NPC listener can hear the conversation and pass parameters in that event.

Do you have a link for Z-Dialog btw? I keep running into integrations or changes on it and they seem clunky or really involved.

squattingmonk

Here's the original Z-Dialog.