Very hard to read that code, sorry. From what I’ve gathered it seems way unnecessarily complicated for what it’s doing.
@will the idea is that the conversation feels slightly more dynamic than just a list of questions. But, I agree it is a bit complicated (and I was even thinking to make it more complicated).
@poison_mara the idea is that the conversations are entirely optional, no changing anything else in the rest of the game. Basically, for those that want a RO, some additional character development is in those questions. For those not interested, the game continues without any problem. All the RO are entirely optional (and I know I’m not the best at writing them, but…), they just add some flavour to the game.
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So Ro depends of me asking their favourite color? Then is NOT optional. It is like say end game is perfectly optional. 
Then I recommend you put a skip this will blocking romance for your character. Because if not many casuals will not discovered the romance and complaining about WHERE IS ROMANCE? it happened to me in several games that i had to asking very boring questions about character grandma before try to flirting lol. Because it seems info dump is key to turn on npcs…
i see that personally as a burden authors put over my shoulders to see if i am worthy to bang this characters is like the trial by boriness
I think what makes it hard to read is the fact that the forum screwed up the whole formatting there. The conditions (the ones using Qx_family_John for example) are so that the question isn’t selectable again; this is because in a *gosub usng *disable_reuse will work while the player is still inside the *gosub, but once it’s called again the choices will be reselectable. I had to do the same on mine by adding global variables.
What makes the questions seem not optional in your code to me is the amount of relationship they give. %20+ and %40+ are a lot of relationship points that you would be missing out if you skipped on these. On mine I’m still debating if I’m gonna attach relationship values to them at all. Maybe just a very tiny amount if I do.
Like mine they may be optional in a sense that you aren’t required to select those options and those can be skipped entirely, but with so many points at stake it might make the player have issues later on in the game if those points are required.
I also wanted to comment on this bit here. I think it’s unfair to label any sort of questioning as “interrogation”. When you’re meeting someone in a non-time critical/relaxed moment you’re usually going to ask them questions as part of a conversation and as a way to get to know them — that is also a natural and organic way conversations and relationships flow.
The questions @adrao added are very similar to the ones I also did on my game. Family, origin, work (looks like surf in John’s case) are some questions I’ve myself when getting to know new people; feels appropriate to have them as questions for some people you’ve just met.
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In the culture i am into not Spanish the Galician one. That questions in first days of knowledge could get or directly being insulted or never being considered friendly. We have in spain a fame of being impossible to be questioned. There are saids about that. one of most fmous You are like a Galician you replay to a question when other.
It probably has a unconscious thing to the repression our culture had since medieval times until few years ago. If a person you don’t know asking questions maybe wants sell you out or something.For me all this questions are rude and to some here the response Would be WTF you care? are you a police? And you?
So for me aren’t natural or logical. Here we use to introducing ourselves like Hi i am x and i am from x welcome or etc… and then talking neutral stuff then if other person want add something personal is the person choice
Alright I think you may be understanding all of this a bit wrong, let me try to clear up. We’re not talking about asking these sorts of questions to anybody you just met on the street or to everybody you meet. This is to get to know someone you might share a context with or someone you know you’ll share time with.
Relationships like neighbors, co-workers, fellow students, some goal you’re both working towards, part of a group such as sports team fans, etc.; people that you’ll likely be meeting more times than just this one conversation. These people share a context that may lead them to socialize frequently; in @adrao’s case it seems the player and John might be fellow surfers or something like that (not sure if it’s that exactly but let’s use that as an example) — they will be hanging out again and again as a result of that context (they will be meeting up to surf together and maybe do something else after and as time goes on their friendship will grow). On mine you’re having a lunch with your neighbor (whom the MC isn’t all that familiar with yet) and a fellow co-worker (whom the MC met the previous day); you’ll be interacting with these two several times in the future so it seems very appropriate to get to know them better.
As an example, in my first day on my previous job I had one more experienced worker teach me the ropes. He taught me a bunch of stuff and we didn’t have time to socialize that much earlier in the day but I learned a lot. Later when the workload died down a bit we passed time talking about all sorts of things — we knew we’d be seeing each other for a while and asked these sorts of questions to get to know each other better. Like where do you live? Are you from this city? Do you like doing this sort of work? Do you have a family? Do you like video games? What sort of games do you enjoy? Etc… Even though we aren’t working together anymore we still talk to each other, hang out etc. It was a relationship that formed naturally; we simply had to ask those questions to know what each other was like and what interests we shared.
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Ah well That is natural and have sense. And that’s a conversation I will certainly maintain and i would have and is organic.
What I hate is the npc Info dump many many many rpgs has. Where you’re bombed in the face with the story of npcs you will never meet again aren’t important at all and you are pressing button faster you can to skip it.
But even then asking someone where you came from should not giving 20% approbation lol. If i give a present what ro wil do lol
In my opinion that questions should have some action between questions for instance I have a vignette were you and this person are walking tyour dog between possible questions I have the dog doing tricks and attacking other dog the reason basically to don’t break the flow and make all more organic and don’t look like an interrogation
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No, sorry, you misunderstood. This doesn’t block the RO, you can still romance the guy (you can invite him to the masquerade, etc). But, it provides the opportunity for the MC to know more about the character, IF he/she wishes to. So, if you want when you talk to him you can get to know more, or just skip along entirely. It’s purely cosmetic, aimed at those that complain (rightly so) that my NPCs lack character development. This just gives them a bit more about who each character is, if they care about it. Otherwise, it affects the game in no other way (well, it allows you to influence a bit what they think of you, but that is about it).
@GoldenSilver yes, these are global variables (they were just placed these so you can see them, but by their nature they have to be global… my games tend to have quite a few global variables, actually…). And yes, the questions do influence the character, and this is good for making choices matter (even if only slightly). However, I note that this particular character also has many other interactions in the main game, so you can manage to influence him anyway without going into these questions.
@poison_mara If you give them a present its a %+40 or 50% bonus! I agree not very realistic in RL, but interactions with characters are much more condensed than what would happen normally. And yes, the point of these subroutine is that the first time you get to ask 3 questions, then go back to the office, then in a second occasion you get to ask another 3, then back to the office. Then the masquerade comes, and you decide whether you invite this character (or any other that you’ve met). I’m not planning to implement this subroutine for all characters (some others will give you information on different ways, so that it does not feel the game always works in the same way)
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Let’s see, without looking at any other things listed by anyone else, IRL this is a handful of things I talk about when getting to know people, roughly in order:
- Animals/Pets
- Work (What do they do/do they want to do?)
- Food (What do they like/don’t like, and/or dietary restrictions)
- Sex (Okay, not “normal,” but in addition to being queer I’m usually involved in kink communities, so it comes up a lot for me personally)
- Family (Number of siblings, and relationship with parents)
- Politics (Usually the above leads into this considering I’m queer and only really hang around LGBTQ spaces/people)
- Philosophy (Outside of religion, which I rarely bring up myself, how someone views the nature of the world tells you a lot about them)
- Hobbies & Leisure
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