Read-Topics Function for UI

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Meriyal
Posts: 1
Joined: 06 Nov 2018, 16:49

Read-Topics Function for UI

Post by Meriyal »

I already asked this to Caposthropic in OpenMW discord and he gave me a possible green light, but I wanted to make it an official suggestion by submitting it here.

My suggestion is that when you ask an NPC a topic; for example Imperial Legion, it would grey out the topic so you don't have to ask the same thing to another NPC. But if an NPC has an unique dialogue for that specific read-topic, it would highlight it in a different color. Basically I'm suggesting implementing the UI features of NullCascade's UI Expansion.
i30817
Posts: 58
Joined: 07 Nov 2018, 05:56

Re: Read-Topics Function for UI

Post by i30817 »

Pretty useful.

The implementation might be slightly ugly (hashcodes checks on every open dialog and saved on every topic click is my first idea) but it isn't like opening a npc dialog happens often or there are that many topics at a time (for a computer).

However i'd like it if that the 'color' green should reflect not only that it's a 'new' response but maybe that 'new' responses would open if it was clicked. This is harder to design and maybe too confusing? Basically that every dialog click saves a hash of the opened subtree, and to check if every opened subtree is different.

This might not be feasible because of cycles (ie: dialog is not a tree, except if you prune leaves you have already seen) and performance. Oh well, this situation should be obscure enough that there is little point in supporting it.
i30817
Posts: 58
Joined: 07 Nov 2018, 05:56

Re: Read-Topics Function for UI

Post by i30817 »

Yeah on second thought my idea above is pretty useless. Many topics go into a cycle that could 'potentially' open a green topic to the point it'd be irritating. Maybe not so much grey out topics but just leave the 'normal' and 'green' for new to not induce some false sense of security that you've seen 'everything' that 'gray' response would give on this npc.
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