This is part three of a series about adventure game dialogue. Part 1 analyses a simple conversation in The Secret of Monkey Island and part 2 takes a look at the tools that are already available
I part 1 I mentioned that using plain text as a game dialogue format is insane and should not be attempted.
What I didn’t mention was that I know this because I attempted it.
In part 1 of this short series about adventure game dialogue, I used one of the first conversations in The Secret of Monkey Island as an example of the complexities involved in creating dynamic and believable dialogue in an adventure game.
In it, I mentioned that I might have accidentally become distracted by building my own dialogue editor. (If you’ve been following along with my journey into adventure games, you may be noticing a theme.)
Adventure games use a lot of dialogue. Characters are going to have to talk to one another and, unlike books or movies, game dialogue is non-linear and gets complicated quickly.
To see just how complicated it can get, I laid out the initial conversation between Guybrush Threepwood and Mancomb Seepgood in the Scumm Bar early on in The Secret of Monkey Island. This conversation is short enough to be manageable yet still has many of the advanced features of a complex interaction.