NPC and conversations

One of the most interesting features of Coderblock World is that you can insert Non-Playable Characters (NPC) into your virtual scenes or lands and create conversations that are activated whenever a user interacts with them!

These conversations represent a significant step towards a more immersive and dynamic gaming experience: interactive and realistic dialogue - enhanced by artificial intelligence - helps to create a more lively and engaging environment, making the user experience unique.

How to: place an NPC in the scene

You can add either one of our Codys or one of the Digital Humans to your scene as an NPC. Search for NPC in the Builder's search bar and choose your favourite!

Once you've selected the NPC, place it wherever you like in your scene. It could greet players at the entrance to a building, be next to a desk or table in a meeting room, or perhaps near where you've placed the start of a quest: any location can be suitable for an NPC in your scene!

Setting up the conversation flow

Once the NPC has been placed, click on it and then click on 'Create Conversation'.

Conversation flows are managed by Narrative Events.

Each Narrative Event represents a 'node' in the conversation flow, and the user's choices determine the order of the nodes and therefore the conversation with the NPC that is displayed. Within each Narrative you can add one or more 'Items', which can be thought of as 'sub-nodes'. There are two types of item to choose from:

• ItemText: This is an 'informative', 'conversational' item. It's a simple text that you can decide to insert into the conversation, it doesn't involve a choice, but allows the flow of conversation to continue until the end of that particular Narrative Event, or until an ItemChoice is encountered. If there is no ItemChoice and the Narrative Event ends (i.e. there are no more ItemTexts), the conversation with the NPC will end.

• ItemChoice: Allows the user to make a choice via 'Answers' that will redirect the conversation flow to another Narrative Event. Click 'Add Answer' to add the choices that the user can make (with the text that will appear on the choice buttons) and the corresponding Narratives where the conversation flow will land based on the choice.

For both types of item, you can use the 'Dialogue Text' to enter what the NPC will say when the conversation reaches that particular item.

To add an item to the narrative event, simply click 'Add ItemText' or 'Add ItemChoice' and it will be placed after the last previously created item (or as the first if you haven't added any items yet).

For each item, you can also define Conditions and Effects, which allow you to better manage the conversation by specifying the conditions under which this 'sub-node' will be displayed to the user during the conversation, or the effects that it will trigger.

The main purpose of these two settings is to manage quests, as explained HERE.

Once the conversation is created, you can change it at any time by clicking on the NPC and then clicking on 'Update Conversation'.

Remember to click 'Save' on each item within a Narrative Event when you make changes, as well as the 'Save' button at the top of the entire conversation.

Finally, click the green 'Save Scene' button in the top right corner to save your changes.

Quest management - Condition and Effect

Our NPCs are not just friendly characters who provide information and companionship, they can also play a crucial role in your virtual environment.

The activation and management of Quest is entirely up to the NPCs and their conversations!

The part of the conversation flow related to quest management deserves a separate discussion. We are talking about the Condition and Effect sections, which can be found in detail HERE