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Just as my project to record the text of all the books in Cythera has come to a close, I've found out something about the structure of the dialogue in the game: it uses some kind of multiple inheritance.

That there's a hierarchy of dialogue is something I learned early on; all human characters seem to know at least a minimum amount of information on the cities and houses of Cythera. However, until now, I'd been assuming a single-inheritance hierarchy, in which Naxos is only a member of "House Comana," which is in turn only a member of "Humans" (Seldane, for example, have a differently-rooted tree). This is easy to represent in an outline.

However, I've now found that characters can inherit from multiple sources: Naxos inherits from both "House Comana" and "Cademian." This can be verified by asking a Naxos, Darius, and a Cademian commoner about both Attis and Berossus. Naxos has the Comana opinion of House Attis, but the Cademian knowledge of Berossus.

Of course, that all makes sense. Naxos should have that information. But I've now got to figure out a way to display the list of characters and groups that's sensible. So far, I have no reason to believe that characters inherit from more than a faction and a locale, so maybe having two separate trees is the way to go. It's still much messier, though, as multiple inheritance often is.



As a side note, I'd like to say something about the Dodona incest thing that Slayer always complains about: the "cousin" text is all inherited directly from the Dodona group. So, if you ask Apis about Apis, she will refer to herself as a cousin; Parium, Crito, etc. will do so as well. I think that to be your own cousin, your parents have to be siblings, but I'd dismiss this as a simplification to provide consistent information across the family.

Pallas Athene, on May 19 2006, 10:15 AM, said:

Complex indeed. Would it be simpler, perhaps, to provide a city-by-city account of the people that is then organised further into groups such as the house they belong to, whether or not they are mages and a miscallaneous group for beggars and such?

I can see that each person falls under a certain category in dialogue. How about Pelagon? Would you think he would respond to?

I am sorry I am having everyone do all of the work for me lately. I do not have Cythera on this computer.

Hmm... it's also possible that the locational information is also just a tack-on, i.e. "See if person knows something, else see if the location knows something, else give confused response." Are there any characters who you see in multiple cities? Perhaps asking Ariadne about Sacas at different times would help.

Well, Demodocous. It is cool because if Aethon is in your party, he will still respond about Cademia.

Demodocus always refers to Cademia for some reason.