Dialogue editing (Topic, Journal, Topic Info, Journal Info)

Involved development of the OpenMW construction set.
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unelsson
Posts: 227
Joined: 17 Mar 2018, 14:57

Dialogue editing (Topic, Journal, Topic Info, Journal Info)

Post by unelsson »

Topics and Journals are related to their respective Info records, this would benefit from some design ideas:
https://gitlab.com/OpenMW/openmw/-/merge_requests/512 (edit: Note, this MR became obsolete)

The idea is to connect the records in a sensible way, thinking like Topics and Journals are the "main items" and Infos have more detailed information on them. Also there can't be duplicates of Topics and Journals, but there very likely is multiple Infos with the same name (ID's are internally slightly different, but that's a technicality). Anyway, what kind of UI is the most intuitive here? There are plenty of columns in the Info-section, so it can be difficult to fit them all into one table. With better spacing things can be improved, but is that enough? Note that there is already a very detailed record editing window that can be opened with right-click menu -> Edit Record.
MortimerMcMire
Posts: 11
Joined: 04 Nov 2012, 07:32

Re: Dialogue editing (Topic, Journal, Topic Info, Journal Info)

Post by MortimerMcMire »

This is probably outside of the basic implementation, but it would be very nice to be able to enter state variables and see which dialogue comes up.

For basic dialogues like the one shown on the gitlab page it wouldn't be much help, but I know in TR and other mods you can get some pretty complex interactions with 5-6 conditionals. Having a setting where you can say "TR_quest1 == 10, TR_quest2 = 15, disposition = 80, Race = Dark Elf" and it highlights the response for the given topic would makes this so much easier.
EvilEye
Posts: 33
Joined: 12 Feb 2014, 13:45
Gitlab profile: https://gitlab.com/Assumeru

Re: Dialogue editing (Topic, Journal, Topic Info, Journal Info)

Post by EvilEye »

Just built it and the first thing that stood out to me is that the most important column (Response) is last.
Untitled.jpg
In a lot of quests it'll be the only column that allows for easy identification due to most of the other columns being the same.

I also noticed that it's "possible" to sort the INFO columns, which clearly does something, but doesn't result in a (differently) sorted overview. I'd suggest just removing the ability to sort them altogether since the current way of sorting is the only one that makes sense when you consider that Move Up/Down exist.
unelsson
Posts: 227
Joined: 17 Mar 2018, 14:57

Re: Dialogue editing (Topic, Journal, Topic Info, Journal Info)

Post by unelsson »

MortimerMcMire wrote: 03 Jan 2021, 18:49 This is probably outside of the basic implementation, but it would be very nice to be able to enter state variables and see which dialogue comes up.

For basic dialogues like the one shown on the gitlab page it wouldn't be much help, but I know in TR and other mods you can get some pretty complex interactions with 5-6 conditionals. Having a setting where you can say "TR_quest1 == 10, TR_quest2 = 15, disposition = 80, Race = Dark Elf" and it highlights the response for the given topic would makes this so much easier.
I wonder if record filters would be useful for exactly this purpose? The point is that we have record filters implemented already, but there's no such thing as easy basic search.
https://openmw.readthedocs.io/en/stable ... lters.html
EvilEye wrote: 03 Jan 2021, 21:04Just built it and the first thing that stood out to me is that the most important column (Response) is last.

In a lot of quests it'll be the only column that allows for easy identification due to most of the other columns being the same.
You are probably right. I'll move it first (after modified and Id), so it's clearly visible right from the start.
EvilEye wrote: 03 Jan 2021, 21:04I also noticed that it's "possible" to sort the INFO columns, which clearly does something, but doesn't result in a (differently) sorted overview. I'd suggest just removing the ability to sort them altogether since the current way of sorting is the only one that makes sense when you consider that Move Up/Down exist.
Sorting was broken or only partially implemented. I haven't modded that much, but I get the feeling that sorting can be useful. For example, the creator might want to to get an overview of responses tied to different NPCs, therefore sorting by name would be helpful.
More technical notes on the bug here: https://gitlab.com/OpenMW/openmw/-/issu ... _477071176
Fix here (though it's not really a proper fix, just falling back to basic sorting mechanisms): https://gitlab.com/OpenMW/openmw/-/merge_requests/515
CMAugust
Posts: 285
Joined: 10 Jan 2016, 00:13

Re: Dialogue editing (Topic, Journal, Topic Info, Journal Info)

Post by CMAugust »

I pointed the Tamriel Rebuilt Discord to this topic and this is the feedback I've received so far (from team member arvisrend):
first, i'd love to have some flexible filtering: i want to filter, but it should show some indications of things being filtered out
ideally, there should be a bit of space between any two lines where something has been filtered out inbetween, and there should be a way to expand it
without completely dropping the filter
second, anything that makes conditions more readable should be great
the result script window shouldn't be 4 lines, but rather as much as it takes (to a reasonable measure)
oh and i hope there is a good way to open several dialogue windows at once
Another team member has indicated he'll provide feedback later also.
EvilEye
Posts: 33
Joined: 12 Feb 2014, 13:45
Gitlab profile: https://gitlab.com/Assumeru

Re: Dialogue editing (Topic, Journal, Topic Info, Journal Info)

Post by EvilEye »

unelsson wrote: 03 Jan 2021, 23:30I wonder if record filters would be useful for exactly this purpose? The point is that we have record filters implemented already, but there's no such thing as easy basic search.
https://openmw.readthedocs.io/en/stable ... lters.html
They're probably a decent fit for the (almost) arbitrary complexity of dialogue filters. It'd definitely be a nifty feature, even in a simplified form like only allowing users to select a cell.
unelsson wrote: 03 Jan 2021, 23:30Sorting was broken or only partially implemented. I haven't modded that much, but I get the feeling that sorting can be useful. For example, the creator might want to to get an overview of responses tied to different NPCs, therefore sorting by name would be helpful.
If there is to be sorting, there needs to be a way to undo that sort and return to the order described by the linked list that makes up a topic's responses. That order is one of the most important things to keep in mind when writing dialogue and it needs to be clear.

As for getting responses for specific NPCs, TESCS allows filtering by NPC/creature ID, which is occasionally useful.
Jani
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Joined: 05 Jan 2021, 16:57
Gitlab profile: https://gitlab.com/bjanos96

Re: Dialogue editing (Topic, Journal, Topic Info, Journal Info)

Post by Jani »

Some ideas that would be useful:
* Set visibility for properties (SELECT topic, npc, text FROM ...)
* Complex filtering for multiple properties (... WHERE disposition < 20 AND text = "%outlander%")
* "Drill down" for filtering out location-based dialogue: return responses filtered for a specific broad location (for "Balmora", this means all cell names starting with "Balmora"), and all NPCs present in the filtered cells.
* Add a new OMW-specific dialogue field, "markers", which contains various labels for filtering dialogue even more (e.g. "balmora, mages guild, MG_Sabotage")
* Add a way to re-link dialogue in case the linked list of IDs is broken. This should be possible for individual responses, and blocks of responses too.
* Drag and drop dialogue reordering
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