Interrupting conversations

[grayman]

Is there a way to get AI to ignore events around them while in the middle of a conversation?

 

I have an important conversation that has to finish, but if one of the actors senses movement, he says so and the conversation aborts. I don't see a flag in the conversation definition for making a conversation non-interruptible.

 

I was thinking of using a script to temporarily shut down his hearing and sight during the conversation, but I read somewhere that spawnflags in general can't be changed after spawn time.

 

The most natural thing would be for the actors to allow the interruption, then continue on with the conversation. I suspect that would require a code change, though.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Thanks.

[Fidcal]

I think you've stated it correctly. You could add your idea to bugtracker at http://bugs.angua.at as a suggested feature. But you have to consider also will it make sense if the player can dance around them in bright light and they ignore him?

 

Meanwhile, is the current problem that the AI might alert to the player? If so then a workaround might be to change their teams temporarily to neutral 5 so they ignore the player. That can be done (see http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/11198-sothas-mapping-thread/page__view__findpost__p__219224 which can be activated from a conversation.) Problem is that if the player attacks them they won't fight back. I'm not even certain they will flee because they have no enemy they recognize to flee from. If you use this idea then either start them neutral and change them after the critical part of the conversation or else you need two of these team changers; one to change them to neutral and another to change them back.

 

It is difficult to think of an ideal situation if the information in a conversation is critical. If you use the team change I would try to limit it to the critical part of the conversation to keep it as short as possible.

 

In Thief 2 I had an immensely long series of critical conversations for one friendly AI including a conversation in which the AI opened a locked door for the player. This was one of several mission breakers if it failed. What I did was get the conversation to repeat the section it had reached if my accomplice AI broke off to fight enemies. So, if he saw enemy guards he ran after them, killed them (he was magically shielded,) eventually came back and repeated the conversation section he had reached.

 

I think repeating the conversation would be the best solution. The AI alert, the player either gets killed or escapes and sneaks back later to trigger it again (but it might not makes sense depending on the story situation.)

 

However, there is a bug at present where it seems conversations are not repeating (see http://bugs.angua.at/view.php?id=2229)

[aidakeeley]

Is there no way to "pause" the game "insert" a cinematic sequence and then resume? Maybe?

[Fidcal]

Probably ways of doing things like that. Hide the player and make him watch through a camera. The player should just feel frozen, ie, can't move around or turn.

[bambini]

Probably ways of doing things like that. Hide the player and make him watch through a camera. The player should just feel frozen, ie, can't move around or turn.

 

 

That'd be the way I'd do it. Edit the map so that at this point there are only a limited number fo places the player can enter from, all of which are well in shadow, and then some sort of script is triggered that temporarily freezes the player's movement (not necessarily turning) for a few secs while the conversation finishes. It may be a bit of an immersion killer, but seems to work for other games.

 

Now, as for the script, I wouldn't know how to go about that.

Edited June 8, 2010 by bambini

[grayman]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll take another look at the situation and see if I can come up with a solution. Maybe a backup conversation if the first one falls apart.

 

Nothing's guaranteed, I guess. I had thought about Fidcal's comment about the player dancing around in front of the actors and being ignored, but I figured a Thief player probably wouldn't consider doing that.

 

I hadn't thought of a cutscene. I might investigate how to do that.

[grayman]

You could add your idea to bugtracker at http://bugs.angua.at as a suggested feature.

 

Done.

 

http://bugs.angua.at/view.php?id=2246