User talk:Jmjimmy

Hi, welcome to the Dragon Age Wiki! Thanks for your edit to the Forum:Can't open locked chests as mage!! page.

I hope that you will stick around and continue to help us improve the wiki.

Please leave a message on my talk page if I can help with anything! -- Tierrie (Talk) 00:05, 20 January 2010

Conversation Options
I noticed you are adding Conversation Options, I did a simplified version of what you done Here. You maybe interested with it, to make it look a little cleaner (or another way if you like), so we don't get a clean up tags on the articles. This is just an fyi, in hopes of assisting you and the respective articles. 18:52, January 24, 2010 (UTC)
 * Hey Hollowness, thanks for that. I'm not sure if that will work for the more extensive conversations but it definitely is cleaner.  I think I'd like to get them in first and clean them up after.  (ie: hopefully the "crowd" can give me a hand :) Jmjimmy 19:45, January 24, 2010 (UTC)


 * Actually better yet now that the articles are being over run by dialogue, it is better to move them to Morrigan's Dialogue, Alistair's Dialogue etc. It is far more appropriate there.  19:59, January 24, 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I was thinking about that option. It doesn't quite fit there as well since those are passive conversations.  The other problem is that there would be a lot of description that would need to be added as to when and where these conversations can be had.  This is why I thought of putting them in the corresponding location.  If you have a better idea, even splitting each section of dialogue off and simply linking to it from the location's walkthrough section maybe? Jmjimmy 20:04, January 24, 2010 (UTC)
 * The article is named 'dialogue' not 'passive dialigue', just no one has added Companion and Warden Dialogue till now. I moved it accordingly (double check make sure I didn't miss any), see if it satisfies you, if you plan to go the distance with all dialogue options, I recommend make these pages your new home.  20:19, January 24, 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, and if you want to, you can link the Dialogue on the respected pages (Ostagar, Deep in the Wilds, Lothering) to the Dialogue article if applicable, so people know its available. 20:25, January 24, 2010 (UTC)
 * I just wanted to let you know what a GREAT job you are doing, this is a major task (I was planning on taking up, if no one else did but you did so OMG thanks :D). I know that you are putting a lot of time and effort into this project and I'd like to give you props and if I can help or assist you out in anyway let me know. Have a great day :D  20:06, January 26, 2010 (UTC)
 * No problem, I'm just documenting what info I can find, there's still a lot missing (like Wynne, Zevran, non-Human Noble specifics, and the triggers for Sten's further conversations) Jmjimmy 21:40, January 26, 2010 (UTC)

Alistair's Dialogue
First, I wanted to say a big THANK YOU for taking on the task of recording all the significant (in terms of approval change) coversation options in a game with a very complex dialogue tree. I'd like to help you, but before I myself make any changes/additions, I first need to record the exacting wording and approval changes for some specific conversations. Even before that however, I had some questions on the format you wanted to use for some specific situations. How do you want to indicate if a dialogue choice depends on a choice made in a previous, but seperate, conversation? For example, when you first meet Alistair you have the option of asking him about his tiff with the mage. If you *don't*, you have the chance for further approval gain/loss in subsequent conversations before entering the Wilds. Specifically, if you select "Tell me about yourself.", you get a very different response than if you had previously asked him about the mage - he quizzes you about your background first, specifically asking if you wanted to join the Grey Wardens. This leads to a gamut of choices that can raise, lower, or not affect his approval. Do you want to just indicate this with a parenthetical statement such as: ?
 * Tell me about yourself. (And you did not ask about argument w/ mage in earlier conversation)
 * Choice one. (+ Approval)
 * Choice two. (- Approval)
 * etc.

Then there's also the question of how to approach conversations where the character (in this case Alistair) is not the one you initiated conversation with. For example, while going over the plans for the Tower of Ishal with Duncan, you have the option of selecting something like "I agree with Alistair." which nets you a +1 approval bump. Do you just want to exclude them? Or perhaps include them as if they were initiated with the character in question? After all, there are group conversations like this were each party member has significant talk time.

A few other notes:
 * Deep in the Wilds: In all my games so far, I have gotten +4 approval from *both* Alistair and Morrigan, so while there may be some dialog options that conflict, it is certainly possible to get approval from both characters at this juncture.
 * Lothering: You don't *need* to give the Small Carved Statuette in order to get these conversation topics - it seems to depend more on approval rating in general.
 * Camp: Again, I think this conversation merely checks on approval rating, and the people he asks about depend on who is in the camp at the time. I *know* he can ask about Zevran. He doesn't seem to ever ask about Shale/Dog/Wynn. I don't know about Oghren.

I probably won't be making any additions/corrections until I hear back from you. Thanks again!

Nebuchadrezzar 16:06, January 25, 2010 (UTC)


 * Hey Nebuchadrezzar, thanks for the note - feel free to edit as you wish. The format I chose was to only specify the optimal route through the conversation.  There are many iterations and complexities that can't be covered in this format.  There is a guide that I used when first going through the game that covers many (but not all) of these in more detail so I wasn't going to duplicate it, more use the knowledge I gained from it (along with a couple corrections) to create a simple walkthrough.  As you pointed out, approval rating is what is important to trigger certain conversations - but rather than use specific numbers (which are hard to determine on consoles) I added the simplest way to gain the extra approval needed to get to the needed approval rating.

I handled dialogue loops in one of two ways: where order was important (ie: one set of dialogue opened up another) I simply continued the indent so the tree flows. Where the dialogue simply ends and loops back to an earlier dialogue set I would indent the same as the original dialogue.

Example:

1. x leads to A which opens up z 2. y 3. z (doesn't appear until conversation A has been had)


 * x
 * A
 * z
 * y

If you have corrections or improvements please feel free to add them. I'll paste a copy of the original guide I used in your talk page. Jmjimmy 17:00, January 25, 2010 (UTC)

Shale's Dialogue
Voxon e 19:48, January 26, 2010 (UTC)

I'll admit that my format was a bit complicated. It was an attempt (a poor one, apparently) to better show options and causality in the dialogue choices. Dialogue choices boil down to two types, XOR type, where only one option can be picked, and OR type, where you can choose more than one option from the list. Knowing that, I arranged the conversation options like this.

For the XOR type decision

(Option 1) || (Option 2) || (Option 3)

The next dialogue option was indented


 * (XOR Option 1) || (XOR Option 2) || (XOR Option 3)
 * (Next Option 1) || (Next Option 2) || (Next Option 3)

For the OR type decision, choices were indented to the same level.
 * (OR Option 1)
 * (OR Option 2)

An OR choice that led to a new dialogue option would be shown as
 * (OR Option 1)
 * (Next Option 1)
 * (OR Option 2

With this format you can combine the XOR and OR conversations
 * (OR Option 1)
 * (Next Option 1)
 * (XOR Option 2) || (XOR Option 3)
 * (Next Option 2)

This would mean that by choosing Option 1 the next choices displayed would be Next Option 1, XOR Option 2, XOR Option 3 If XOR Option 2 or XOR Option 3 were picked first, then OR Option 1 would be lost, and the conversation would proceed to Next Option 2

Here's an example of a combination XOR/OR options for Shale's Dialogue


 * 1. How did you end up in Honnleath? Do you remember?
 * 1.2 I though you would have enjoyed hurting humans.
 * 1.3 But why were you out in front the tower
 * 1.3.1 His wife?
 * 1.3.1.1 How does one shrink a golem?
 * 1.4 You don't like this Wilheim, I take it
 * 1.4.1 Not really. It was quite a bargain. || Wilheim's wife sold it, I believe. || Oh, yes. A fortune in fact.
 * 1.5 Do you remember anything before Honnleath?
 * 1.5.1 Just how old are you exactly?
 * 1.6 Interesting. I'm done asking about that.

1.x are all OR options so choosing one of these has no effect on being able to choose any of the other options. However, in 1.4.1 only one of the three choices can be picked before the conversation goes back to the 1.x level.

Shale's dialogue tree is very simple when compared to Alistairs or Morrigans. But using this format, with some explanations when needed, I think it would be possible to map out complete conversation trees regardless of complexity.


 * I found it very confusing to read and couldn't make sense of half of it. There's also the problem of looping dialogue which doesn't get taken into account.  Cases where you can follow different dialogue trees and it loops back to different points along the tree.


 * I updated Shale's dialogue again to be more complete and appear more as it would in game (numbered). I think it makes it a little clearer.  I included arrows as to which dialogue options are best to choose and numbered some where the order was important.  There are some "Conditional appearance" options that I'm not sure what the specific condition is but based on the guide (see previous talk) the conditions do exsist (note: I wasn't sure where the Race specific dialogue you added fit in - everything I have is based on Human Noble)


 * I think the reality is that the "[GoTo X] method in the guide is the best for completeness and a show/hide tree mechanism would be ideal but a lot of work to implement.