The Dialog File Format

NOTE: The below is copied from a paper I'm writing about the game so I speak like a robot

In order to facilitate quick writing and iteration of ingame dialogs, we defined a plaintext file format with the extension of .dlg, with each file corresponding to a particular scene or extended exchange of dialog. A snippet of a file, representing an exchange between the player and Lindsay, a character, is shown below.

In the file as shown in the figure, each “line” of dialogue is separated by an empty line in the file. Different pieces of information regarding the “line” is separated by a line break character and uniquely identified by the amount of pound sign which precedes the line.

• No pound sign: unique key of the speaker of the dialogue, typically also the speaker’s name.
• One pound sign: the actual line to be said.
• Two pound signs: Possible responses to this line; multiple occurrences possible.
• Three pound signs: Reserved.

The file is then parsed, to then feed data to both NPC-to-Player and NPC-to-NPC dialogue in the game. The resulting in-game dialogue from the snippet in the above figure can be seen below.