branching-dialogue

A stateless API for modeling branching dialogue in role-playing games

Background / Initial Motivation

The initial motivation for this library was to power branching dialogue with npc's in a browser game.

To Install

$ npm install --save branching-dialogue

Usage

Conversations are directed graphs are stored as JSON

{
  "dialogue": {
    "1": {
      "text": "I'm doing fantastic! Want to get some dinner?",
      "responses": [
        {
          "next": 4,
          "reply": "Absolutely! I'll meet you at La Marina"
        }
      ]
    },
    "2": {
      "text": "Hey how are you?",
      "responses": [
        {
          "next": 1,
          "reply": "Great how are you?"
        },
        {
          "next": 3,
          "reply": "Not so good :("
        }
      ]
    },
    "3": {
      "text": "Oh no, do you need anything from me?",
      "responses": [
        {
          "next": 5,
          "reply": "Nah, I'm alright thank you."
        }
      ]
    },
    "4": {
      "action": "go-to-dinner",
      "text": "Sounds great!"
    },
    "5": {
      "action": null,
      "text": "Alright, well feel better."
    }
  },
  "start": [
    {
      "dialogueId": 2,
      "if": true
    }
  ]
  }
}

// The example convo.json file from above
var convo = require('./convo.json')
 
var branchingDialogue = require('branching-dialogue')
// We start at dialogue id #2
var startText = branchingDialogue.get(
  convo,
  convo.start[0].dialogueId
)
 
// We choose the second response, "Not so good :("
var nextText = branchingDialogue.get(convo, startText.responses[1].next)
// We choose the first response, "Nah, I'm alright thank you"
var nextText = branchingDialogue.get(convo, startText.responses[0].next)
 
// This gets executed based on the above replies
if (!nextText.action) {
  console.log(nextText.text)
  // Alright, well feel better.
}
 
// This does not get executed
if (nextText.action === 'go-to-dinner') {
  // Your code might send your player to the dinner venue
}

TODO:

• Implement the module
• Figure out API for conditional start / responses

API

branchingDialogue.get(convo, dialogueId) -> Object

convo

Required

Type: object

A JSON representation of the conversation.

dialogueId

Required

Type: Number || String

The id of the part of the conversation that you are retrieving

See Also

// TODO: Link to the module for parsing the conditional response DSL

License

MIT