This has been a week of some story progress in the development of Moira Watts, with work being done on the conversation system and an interactable NPC for the first time which was exciting to take on.

Originally the plan had been to have a more intricate dialogue tree with the player able to make choices and have the NPC (in this case, the Police Sergeant) provide some details on the suspects of the case on command. This however was abandoned in favour of a computer that players can come back to and access in a format I believed was much easier for them to do so and quickly compare the details of the suspects rather than having to go through dialogue options again and again. Additionally, the system chosen was much simpler to implement as it didn't involve creating multiple dialogue nodes, and with time being a factor in the development of this game that is already behind, the philosophy of keeping things simple was certainly ringing in my ears.

Instead, the decision was made to have the NPC provide a short briefing to the player only should they interact with the NPC that provides full instructions and some narrative to add context as to what they have to do without vast amounts of text which can be overwhelming, and which there is plenty of coming in the game as it develops. So with simplified code to create a conversation system that is easily customisable, I instead looked at a new tool called LeenTween.

As can be seen above, learning a bit on LeenTween allows the conversation window to pop in and then retracts out when the player activates and ends the conversation respectively. This adds a much smoother feel to the game and doesn't just create an immediate flash-up of the information to the player which could be jarring. It also helps to show the conversation coming to a close nicely by removing the UI smoothly.

This has been a major milestone for the game and having a working and easily configurable conversation system will allow it to be adapted as and when required during development has been a great achievement on a personal level as someone wanting to create more narrative games.