Printing a random sentence

Question

Hello! I was wondering if it was possible in Quest to have the game print out a sentence compiled randomly of predetermined components?

Let's say for example's sake I was making a game where I would want the description of a TV screen to change every time the player looked at it. I want the description to be "X is doing Y to Z", where the words for X, Y, and Z are randomly chosen from a list of possible phrases. The choices for X could include "the dog", "the cat", and "the giraffe"; for Y, "is eating", "is chasing", and "is jumping on"; and for Z, "a man", "an apple", and "a car". So the description for the programme playing on the TV could be "The dog is chasing a car", or "The giraffe is eating a man", or "The cat is jumping on an apple", or any other combination - always different, but always in the same order.

Sorry for the convoluted explanation, but I hope you get what I mean! I don't think this should be too complicated or completely out of Quest's wheelhouse, but I just don't know how I can do it.

Answer 1

if you can deal with code (or can figure out how to do this stuff in the GUI~Editor):

(I don't have the time now, but later I can give an answer via using the GUI~Editor)

the answer is using List~Dictionary Attributes and the Randomization Functions

http://docs.textadventures.co.uk/quest/guides/using_lists.html
http://docs.textadventures.co.uk/quest/functions/stringlistitem.html

http://docs.textadventures.co.uk/quest/using_dictionaries.html
http://docs.textadventures.co.uk/quest/functions/stringdictionaryitem.html

http://docs.textadventures.co.uk/quest/functions/corelibrary/diceroll.html
http://docs.textadventures.co.uk/quest/functions/getrandomint.html
http://docs.textadventures.co.uk/quest/functions/getrandomdouble.html
http://docs.textadventures.co.uk/quest/functions/corelibrary/randomchance.html

for example:

// pretend the list's items~Values are sentences and not words

as scripting:

game.dialogue_list_1 = split ("hi; bye; okay; doh", ";")

as 'creation' tag:

<game name="xxx">
  <attr name="dialogue_list_1" type="stringlist">
    <value>hi</value>
    <value>bye</value>
    <value>okay</value>
    <value>doh</value>
  </attr>
</game>

for example, for 'whatever' Object's 'whatever' Verb:

dialogue_selection = StringListItem (game.dialogue_list_1, GetRandomInt (0, ListCount (game.dialogue_list_1) - 1))
msg (dialogue_selection)

---

String Dictionary Attributes are pretty much the same, except instead of using index numbers like lists do, you use a string

I'll help with using String Dictionaries later, I got to get off now... (didn't have much time at the moment to post, lol).

Comments

Thank you! I'm not too great with code, so I would be interested to hear how this works in the GUI editor as well, but this already clears up a few things. Thanks a lot!