Dialogical scheming

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Dialogical scheming

#1 Pallas Athene

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Posted 19 February 2011 - 11:48 PM

Many of you are familiar with my archive of dialogue from Cythera. Unfortunately, there are a few problems with it:

It's not complete. There are characters that I haven't talked to (I can think of apprentice mages and miners, offhand) and I'm sure there's plenty I missed in talking to the characters I did talk to.
It's organized wrong. I've presented it as a hierarchy, but it's really more like a tag system. Halos is [cademian, halos, human, strymon], not /human/strymon/halos or /human/cademian/halos. Not all members of House Strymon are from Cademia, and not all Cademians are from House Strymon (well, he's actually the only one in both categories).
I corrected some mistakes in the original text, but didn't copy down the original. In each case I made a note of what I changed, but I feel it would be more appropriate to have both the canonical and the corrected version.
It doesn't distinguish the different situations in which characters say different things—before and after quests, and especially in the case of the Seldane.

Since we seem to have all this extra activity here at the moment, is anyone interested in collecting more dialogue? I can take care of organizing it and making it browsable.

#2 Buzzzzy

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Posted 20 February 2011 - 03:59 AM

I might go ahead and attempt this, although I’m starting from scratch—if anyone has more of a head start and wants to instead, that would probably be ideal. This could take a while though, would you prefer them all at once or in pieces as they’re collected?

#3 BreadWorldMercy453

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Posted 20 February 2011 - 09:23 AM

Yeah Fiery, I really appreciate the page you have because it's very useful, but really as far as a complete collection goes, it's a chip off the iceberg. Am I using that term correctly? Chip off the iceberg?

I started collecting complete dialogues for all the characters a while back, using my computer with SheepShaver. It was much easier for me in SheepShaver because I could use window-mode and be able to see the text while copying it down into TextEdit. I got through LKH and a few other misc characters (Larisa and Joppa I remember for sure, but I can't remember whom else), but my project was put on hold because that computer won't start up any more and I don't have SheepShaver on this computer because I have Classic. Any other way to open Cythera in window-mode? I think my other computer would be repaired if I bought new RAM for it, but it's been like three weeks and I haven't gotten around to searching for any yet.

Of course I won't be offended if anyone else collects dialogues, it's fun! ^_^

I'll become even more undignified than this

#4 Buzzzzy

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Posted 20 February 2011 - 09:40 AM

You could take a crapload of pictures and record it from those, but that might not be a very convenient method and also wouldn’t identify what was asked. Actually, can’t you just run it in Classic (as in the Classic Environment, not actually Mac OS 9) and record it in OS X? The music’s always messed up, and it tends to corrupt savefiles, but it always crashed less for me this way.

Of course, you could just install Sheepshaver on that computer as well.

#5 Pallas Athene

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Posted 20 February 2011 - 09:49 AM

Buzzzzy, on 20 February 2011 - 03:59 AM, said:

You're welcome to post dialogue back to this topic as it's collected. It would be helpful if you could try to figure out, for any given response, whether it's particular to the individual you're speaking to or, if not, what group of characters respond with it.

BreadWorldMercy453, on 20 February 2011 - 09:23 AM, said:

I started collecting complete dialogues for all the characters a while back, using my computer with SheepShaver. It was much easier for me in SheepShaver because I could use window-mode and be able to see the text while copying it down into TextEdit. I got through LKH and a few other misc characters (Larisa and Joppa I remember for sure, but I can't remember whom else), but my project was put on hold because that computer won't start up any more and I don't have SheepShaver on this computer because I have Classic. Any other way to open Cythera in window-mode? I think my other computer would be repaired if I bought new RAM for it, but it's been like three weeks and I haven't gotten around to searching for any yet.

I don't know. I used SheepShaver when I was collecting the dialogue. You could always use a pen and paper. Or, if you copy it into your journal in-game, then it will be saved with your character file. I can grab journal entries out of a character file. That won't keep track of who you were speaking to or what you said, but you can probably deal with that separately.

Looking at that reminds me of something: another thing that's missing from the current dialogue entries is which terms are keywords (in blue). This time around, we should mark those, so that we can link from one piece of dialogue to another. Terms should be marked with an '@', like in entries copied to the journal:

I am called Hector - our legends tell of a great @warrior named Hector, and I hope to follow in his, and my @father's footsteps.

So you're the @stranger that Alaric has summoned here to aid him?

#6 Buzzzzy

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Posted 20 February 2011 - 10:30 AM

Pallas Athene, on 20 February 2011 - 09:49 AM, said:

It would be helpful if you could try to figure out, for any given response, whether it's particular to the individual you're speaking to or, if not, what group of characters respond with it.

So far I’ve been recording everything characters say, including a number of duplicates and some oddities (such as Alaric referring to himself in third-person). From there you can just find that bit of text and see which characters say the same thing. I suppose I could do that too, but…

Pallas Athene, on 20 February 2011 - 09:49 AM, said:

Looking at that reminds me of something: another thing that's missing from the current dialogue entries is which terms are keywords (in blue). This time around, we should mark those, so that we can link from one piece of dialogue to another. Terms should be marked with an '@', like in entries copied to the journal:

I am called Hector - our legends tell of a great @warrior named Hector, and I hope to follow in his, and my @father's footsteps.

So you're the @stranger that Alaric has summoned here to aid him?

o.0 code tags are color-coded now? Anyway, I’ve been marking them with ‘@’s, I hope 453 has as well.

#7 Pallas Athene

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Posted 20 February 2011 - 01:54 PM

Buzzzzy, on 20 February 2011 - 10:30 AM, said:

Sure, I can cross-reference, as long as you're searching for the duplicates.

#8 Seldane

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Posted 20 February 2011 - 04:37 PM

Example: If you mention "mother", a character will sometimes respond and mention whoever is their mother (etc). There seems to be a lot of "hidden" unique dialogue in Cythera.

Could there be a way to find out what words will trigger unique dialogue in conversation?

It would be very interesting to find out all the possible words the ghosts react to, for example. They respond to Abydos, Death and Tavara, but possibly more.

Every (or close to) human responds to Anti (as in antidote), but only the jailer talks about Antiphus.

This post has been edited by Seldane: 20 February 2011 - 04:39 PM

#9 Pallas Athene

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Posted 20 February 2011 - 07:42 PM

Presumably, if we had some way to get all of the triggers out of the Cythera Data file, we would be able to get the responses as well, and wouldn't need to go talking to everyone in the game. I don't know what Pandora's box is capable of doing with respect to a running process, but a dump of part of the memory could conceivably be useful too. One could try searching for 0x616e7469 or 0x414e5449, which correspond to 'anti' and 'ANTI'.

#10 Buzzzzy

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Posted 21 February 2011 - 02:59 AM

Seldane, on 20 February 2011 - 04:37 PM, said:

Now that you’ve brought that up, it occurred to me that it might be best if multiple people take on this project, and combine the knowledge. As Sfiera indicated, no one yet knows a method for extracting the triggers or dialogue out of the data, so I’ve been simply asking a lot of questions to everyone. There are very few three-letter words that people respond to, which leaves only 456,976 combinations of four-letter triggers.

I also recently discovered that nearly everyone in-game responds to swears with "Rudeness is not rewarded."

Seldane, on 20 February 2011 - 04:37 PM, said:

It would be very interesting to find out all the possible words the ghosts react to, for example. They respond to Abydos, Death and Tavara, but possibly more.

I was experimenting with this a few weeks ago, the words they respond to seem to be “tavara”, “demon”, “abydos”, “name”, “job”, “mage”, “sea”, and “death”. Since it only processes the first four letters though, they give a frigtened response when asked about Demodocus and such.

Seldane, on 20 February 2011 - 04:37 PM, said:

Every (or close to) human responds to Anti (as in antidote), but only the jailer talks about Antiphus.

I’d guess that his antiphus response simply overrides his antidote response, anyone care to fetch their way into Odemia and check what he says before they catch Antiphus?

This post has been edited by Buzzzzy: 21 February 2011 - 03:02 AM

#11 BreadWorldMercy453

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Posted 21 February 2011 - 10:12 AM

Antiphus was caught before Bellerophon arrived, he just wasn't killed yet.

Buzzy- if you want to post the dialogue you've gathered so far, I could work on seeing if you missed anything; or else you could assign me some characters you haven't done yet. This way I'm not wasting my time writing down what you've already copied, you know?

This post has been edited by BreadWorldMercy453: 21 February 2011 - 11:00 AM

I'll become even more undignified than this

#12 Buzzzzy

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Posted 21 February 2011 - 11:50 AM

BreadWorldMercy453, on 21 February 2011 - 10:12 AM, said:

I haven’t actually gotten very far (still in LKH), so you can start anywhere outside of there.

#13 BreadWorldMercy453

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Posted 21 February 2011 - 09:30 PM

I'm working through Odemia.

I'll become even more undignified than this

#14 Two Jacks

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Posted 22 February 2011 - 02:30 PM

Heh, this is pretty cool guys! Keep up the good work!

Also, as far as digging through the code for conversation triggers, anyone thought about giving Bryce a holler?

This post has been edited by Two Jacks: 22 February 2011 - 02:31 PM

#15 The Wizard

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Posted 22 February 2011 - 10:47 PM

I think making your dialogue page even more complete is a great idea, Pallas! Do you also plan to include the text that is displayed at the bottom of the conversation window (like "You see a tall, distinguished looking man") the first time you meet someone? Those would also make nice references, since they're about the only physical descriptions we get of people in-game.

This post has been edited by The Wizard: 22 February 2011 - 10:49 PM

Wizard

#16 Pallas Athene

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Posted 22 February 2011 - 11:02 PM

I'll take any information I'm given. Actually, in particular, I want to cross-reference the dialogue with the portraits from Slayer's guide. I'm assuming Slayer's guide is pretty complete with respect to those, so I don't need any more to be collected.

#17 Buzzzzy

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Posted 22 February 2011 - 11:10 PM

So far I’ve been collecting anything that you can take a journal entry of—as in dialogue and subtitles but not things like "train what part of your basic identity?"

#18 BreadWorldMercy453

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Posted 22 February 2011 - 11:13 PM

I think I'm finally finished with Odemia. I plan to tackle Cademia next - nervous about this! ^_^

I'm not sure about posting it all here. It's so big @_@

I'll become even more undignified than this