The Twine engine is used to create text-based choice-oriented games. While the outcome is not the same, the way dialogue trees are handled is an interesting topic that could provide insight into the flow of the conversational agents project. As in my previous post, I will be discussing the similarities and differences between this project and the Twine engine, as well as my take away and thoughts.
An easy-to-use drag-and-drop UI for the creation of an option tree
Easily accessible for kids and non-tech people
The ability to use hidden systems to keep track of player choices
The ability to customise the player’s view/knowledge of the scene
Customise reactions of ‘agents’ (in this context they are mostly just written but Twine has the ability to insert images too)
Allows the player to guide the decision stream through the use of selection buttons
There are no predefined blocks - story is created completely from scratch
There is no real ‘agent’ that is being interacted with with animated responses
There is no design of a behaviour tree, as it is more of a story engine than an engine to create an interactive agent
HTML can be used to customise text/scene look and feel/other effects
Things can happen in the story without the player interacting with the scene - the engine is extremely customisable
This system has given me some understanding of how the dialogue trees should work in this project. I now understand:
Variable tracking can be extremely useful in designing the behaviour and results of interactions
It could be useful to include options for more than simply numeric value tracking - different options could be provided
I would hope to implement this in a more easily understandable way than Twine, as it requires a basic knowledge of coding to understand, as seen in the second image
Variables could be drag and drop boxes that are attached to dialogue segments, with drop down fields for what happens to the variable at each segment
Could have clutter issues when tracking many variables
A simple UI with complex features can be implemented
In my previous research post, I discussed the need to compare and weigh the importance of both, however twine does have both
A good game can be made with the default Twine settings, with only script text and very basic commands used
However, users can also apply a lot of customisation through the use of HTML
This kind of system could be designed for use in this project, as discussed in the TW3 research post
It could be beneficial to the user to implement a system by which the agent would react to certain events without the end user choosing a dialogue option
Similar to HTML use in Twine to make certain things happen without the player specifically choosing an option
Would use the behaviour tree section of the conversational agent