To walk up to an NPC and start a conversation with an ASK ABOUT, and then, after a few more conversational commands, to terminate the conversation by simply walking away or ceasing to converse can make the game transcript seem a bit abrupt and not very life-like. In real life one normally starts a conversation with "Hello" or "Excuse me" or something else designed to open the channel of communication, and then concludes it with a similar winding-up exchange to signal that it's now over.
In order to handle the beginning and end of conversations, you put a HelloTopic and a ByeTopic in the ConversationReadyState, for example:
++ sarahLooking : ConversationReadyState
isInitState = true
specialDesc = "{A sarah/she} is standing by the shore, apparently
looking at something, though she occasionally throws a curious
glance your way. "
stateDesc = "She seems to be looking for something. "
;
+++ HelloTopic, ShuffledEventList
[
'<q>Hello there,</q> you say.\b
<q>Hello.</q> she smiles at you, slightly quizzically.'
]
[
'<q>Hello again.</q> you greet her.\b
<q>Hi!</q> she replies. ',
'<q>It\'s me again.</q> you tell her.\b
<q>So I noticed.</q> she answers.',
'<q>Er...</q> you start.\b
<q>Yes?</q> she asks. '
]
;
+++ ByeTopic
"<q>Cheerio, then!</q> you say.\b
<q>See you!</q> she replies. "
;
+++ ImpByeTopic
"{The sarah/she} gives a little shrug and goes back to
searching her surroundings. "
;
The effect of this is that when the player character strikes up a conversation with Sarah, either explicitly through a GREET SARAH, TALK TO SARAH or SARAH, HELLO command, or implicitly by addressing a conversational command to her like ASK SARAH ABOUT HERSELF or TELL SARAH ABOUT BANANA, the greeting message from the HelloTopic will be displayed, and then Sarah will switch into the associated InConversationState. Conversely, once the conversation is over, Sarah will switch back into the ConversationReadyState and either the ByeTopic or the ImpByeTopic will be displayed, depending on whether the player ended the conversation explicitly with a BYE command, or implicitly by either leaving the location or failing to address a conversational command to Sarah for the number of turns needed to exhaust her attention span.
We'll be giving more examples of this later.