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Looks cool, but this still requires you to click on the topics to know if you've read it or not. I guess I would prefer a simple grey out topic thing, but maybe that's just me.

lysol wrote: ↑03 Mar 2019, 19:13Looks cool, but

A bird in the hand is worth more than two in the bush. As I understood, all dialogue topics run through the script interpreter before the game knows what text they will emit, so the engine would need to either inspect the code that's about to run, or run it speculatively (and throw away the result) to predict what text it will emit.

Right, yes I forgot about that. Nevermind then!

Relatedly, how does it deal with response scripts with branching results, or text replacements that alter the dialog, but is still technically the same dialog record? Or dialog text that is the same, but is from a different record with a different response script? It doesn't make sense to me to say something is seen, if it causes something different to happen. Or for a response to be labelled seen if a character happens to say the same thing as another because they had the same text replacements.

It is probably possible to endlessly conjecture hypothetical arguments in favor of the pedantic form of correctness.

Would any of these make any effective difference at any point in the game?

CyberShadow wrote: ↑04 Mar 2019, 07:05 It is probably possible to endlessly conjecture hypothetical arguments in favor of the pedantic form of correctness.

It's not really hypothetical. Two different NPCs saying the same thing because their text replacements happen to match is a thing that happens. And I don't doubt there being cases where dialog response scripts can generate different outcomes despite giving the same dialog (if not in the vanilla game, then certainly mods).

Would any of these make any effective difference at any point in the game?

A good principle to follow is "do it right the first time". It doesn't have to be perfect or complete right away, but the system should be designed so it can do the right thing with work. If what's there knowingly needs to be thrown out and redone before it can work correctly, it's wasted effort and unnecessary maintenance (which could negatively influence other work in the same area in the mean time).

Honestly, the after-click New/Seen implementation looks inelegant - maybe not codewise, but in how it appears in-game. Not only does it require clicking on a topic anyway, it is obtrusive and distracting in a way greying out a previously viewed topic isn't. Maybe OpenMW can't replicate UI Expansion's dialogue topic functionality, but this way doesn't seem worth it.

I agree with LI's post above. Whether or not one method is more elegant than the other would be irrelevant.

The greyed out option would be the only way to achieve at first glance, what has been read already. Showing a tip once it's already clicked is absolutely worthless in all forms, it completely defeats the purpose of the greyed out idea... Besides, once I've clicked a topic, a quick scan of the conversation will already let me know if I've read it or not. Maybe it's just me, maybe others have bad memory. I don't know, but if they've read it but don't remember, they'll read it again. If they haven't read it already, they'll read it, anyway, so the tool-tip is useless in both cases.

If there's really no good way to implement the greyed out option, I'd rather see effort put into other post-1.0 things than functionally useless features.

drakovyrn wrote: ↑04 Mar 2019, 14:18 Showing a tip once it's already clicked is absolutely worthless in all forms, it completely defeats the purpose of the greyed out idea... Besides, once I've clicked a topic, a quick scan of the conversation will already let me know if I've read it or not. Maybe it's just me, maybe others have bad memory. I don't know, but if they've read it but don't remember, they'll read it again. If they haven't read it already, they'll read it, anyway, so the tool-tip is useless in both cases.

My experience has been the complete opposite with this patch. If it makes any difference, this is my first time playing Morrowind in a very long time. I would suggest trying the patch before rendering judgement - you can click away on any relevant topics, and the red will catch your eye when something new is said.

i noticed that there often are responses that differ slightly but will sometimes contain additional important information, depending on who exactly you ask about the topic, or your current disposition with them. These would be otherwise easy to miss, as they look like already-read topics at a glance. As such, I don't think your analysis is fair.

I should clarify that I did not post the patch with the intention for inclusion as-is. It is a proof-of-concept. At the very least, the markers should be replaced with changing the text color of the response.

CyberShadow wrote: ↑04 Mar 2019, 14:30 My experience has been the complete opposite with this patch. If it makes any difference, this is my first time playing Morrowind in a very long time. I would suggest trying the patch before rendering judgement - you can click away on any relevant topics, and the red will catch your eye when something new is said.

i noticed that there often are responses that differ slightly but will sometimes contain additional important information, depending on who exactly you ask about the topic, or your current disposition with them. These would be otherwise easy to miss, as they look like already-read topics at a glance. As such, I don't think your analysis is fair.

Maybe that does help you. I didn't play MW a long time ago, I was like... 7 when it came out. I have been playing it for the last 3 years though, and being an avid reader, just in general... I don't usually have an issue missing details, even with quick scans. Besides, as I said, the greyed out option in particular would be the optimal choice for me, as I particularly don't want to click away and pollute the chat box more than absolutely necessary.

Regarding chat variance, in the event that greyed chat would be an option, I assume some sort of database would keep track of the variances within chat. If I've already spoken to someone on the topic of 'my trade', but they say that's not something they care to share with you, it should be marked read. But, when you increase disposition with them, and the 'my trade' option yields a different result of text, then the grey mod would not mark it as grey, as there is different information to be had, anyway. Some sort of parsing would be necessary, and the information should only be updated once the chat has been initiated. I don't know how slow it would be to process, but I imagine the database would keep track of information that can be stated per NPC, so it doesn't need to scan through the entire in-game chat database.