Customizable dialogs!

This is a very important new feature of Solarus 1.1. The dialog box system is now fully scriptable using the Lua API!

The syntax of the dialog files

If you don't make a scripted dialog box in Lua, the engine shows a minimal dialog box without decoration. But it is recommended to make your own one!

Here is an example of a small map script with a non-playing character that shows a simple dialog when the hero talks to him:

local map = ...
function some_npc:on_interaction()
-- Remember that you specify a dialog id, not directly the text to show.
-- The text is defined in the dialogs.dat file of the current language.
map:get_game():start_dialog("welcome_to_my_house")
end

Here is a more complex example, with an NPC that asks a question. This example assumes that your dialog box system can ask questions to the player, and returns the answer as a boolean value.

local map = ...
local game = map:get_game()
function another_npc:on_interaction()
game:start_dialog("give_me_100_rupees_please", function(answer)
if answer then
if game:get_money() >= 100 then
game:remove_money(100)
game:start_dialog("thanks")
else
sol.audio.play_sound("wrong")
game:start_dialog("not_enough_money")
end
else
game:start_dialog("not_happy")
end
end)
end

The new dialog API is very flexible. When you show a dialog, you can pass a parameter to your custom dialog box system (this feature is not used in this example), and symmetrically, your custom dialog box system can return a result (like the answer selected by the player in this example).

Fore more details, see the documentation of game:start_dialog() in the Solarus Lua API.