RE: [Tads3] AltTopics and SuggestedTopics

["Mike Roberts" <mjr_@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I wrote:
> An easy way to keep the suggestion with the root of an AltTopic tree would 
> be to define a subclass of AltTopic that delegates all of the 
> suggestion-related methods to its 'location' object.  This could be called 
> AltTopicSuggestion, say.
This seems to open up a bit of a can of worms.

When each of the AltTopic alternatives for a topic entry is also a 
suggestion, does it make sense in some or most cases to consider the whole 
set as really being a single suggestion?  What I'm getting at is this: 
should the suggestion be repeated when the different alternatives become 
active?  Or should the PC's "curiosity" be satisfied for the whole set of 
alternatives, as a group, when any one of the alternatives is ASKed ABOUT?

My original thinking with alternatives and suggestions was that each 
alternative would be completely independent in terms of making suggestions.  
On reflection, this thinking assumes that whatever triggers the different 
alternatives must be something the PC knows about, and knows is relevant to 
the conversation, because the suggestions come and go as the alternatives 
become available and unavailable.  Asking about the topic once would make 
the suggestion go away (because the PC's curiosity is satisfied), but then 
the suggestion would come back as soon as the other alternative became 
active.  When the alternatives truly are triggered by things the PC is aware 
of, this is fine; when the topic inventory is a thought of as merely a hint 
system, this is fine; but if the topic inventory is meant to be an 
indication of the PC's state of mind, it's not always fine.  The problem is 
that, in some cases, the trigger for an AltTopic could be entirely internal 
to the NPC, in which case the PC wouldn't have any reason to change the 
contents of their topic inventory - they wouldn't have any reason to know 
that they'd get new information by asking about the same topic again.

What I'm wondering is if there's some general approach the library should 
take to such situations.  The SuggestedTopic system is already abstract 
enough to allow for it, in that the SuggestedTopic interface doesn't make 
any assumptions that a SuggestedTopic is associated with a single TopicEntry 
object.  The implementation does make this assumption, though, so it would 
take a bit of work for a game to create a custom suggestion object that's 
aloof from the individual alternatives for a topic.

Maybe, rather than creating the AltTopicSuggestion class, we should create a 
new suggestion class that you combine with the root TopicEntry of an 
alternative tree to indicate that the whole tree counts as a single 
suggestion.  You wouldn't have to do anything special to the AltTopic's 
within the tree - you'd just add this new class (instead of SuggestedTopic) 
to the root TopicEntry.  This new special class would (1) be active as a 
suggestion when any alternative in the tree is active, and (2) would count 
its curiosity as satisfied when any one of the alternatives in the tree has 
been ASKed ABOUT.

Any thoughts?  Eric, does this line up with the scenario that led you to 
raise the original point about AltTopics and suggestions?

--Mike

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