Chatter

This ability is used to activate Chatter dialogue, which produces full dialogue boxes much like NPC dialogue.

Chatter data is stored on the tinker asset, as Dictionary<string, ChatterLinesData>, while the portrait, NPC, or display name is stored with variants. On ability activation, one set of ChatterLinesData will be picked based on priority and Condition, then one line out of the list will be chosen.

Args

Property	Type	Default	Notes
`ChatterPrefix`	string	null	A string prefix, used to filter for a specific group of ChatterLinesData by their keys.

Relevant Variant Data

Property	Type	Default	Notes
`Portrait`	string	null	A portrait texture, required to display a portrait and a name.
`NPC`	string	null	An NPC name (key of `Data/Characters`) to associate this variant with, used to derive the display name.
`Name`	string	null	A display name, used if there's no `NPC`.

The reason why Portrait/NPC/Name is stored with variants is so that you can associate portraits with their sprite, much like the appearance system in vanilla.

For trinkets that are meant to be a real NPC (or has at least an anti-social NPC entry), using the NPC field is preferred as it will make the dialogue box compatible with portraiture.

ChatterLinesData

Property	Type	Default	Notes
`Condition`	string	`"TRUE"`	A game state query used to check if this chatter should be picked. If you want to have chatter exclusively activate through ability with `ProcChatterKey`, use `"FALSE"`.
`Priority`	int	0	Sort priority of this chatter, higher number have their conditions checked first.
`Lines`	List<string>	null	List of dialogue for this entry, this can be: literal dialogue (and i18n token) translation key (e.g. `Characters/Dialogue/Abigail:Introduction`) tokenized text
`Responses`	Dictionary<string, string>	null	Response keys, needed only if your dialogue has `$q` that point to responses.

Choosing the next Dialogue Line

The Chatter system has nothing to do with the vanilla NPC dialogue keys beyond ability to reuse the same strings via translation key.

If the previous dialogue has not finished (i.e. $e is used), finish that dialogue first.
If a ProcChatterKey has been set and exists, skip the rest of the steps and pick that Chatter.
Chatter data is sorted by Priority (highest to lowest)
The first Chatter data that fits these conditions is picked:
- Key starts with ChatterPrefix (if set)
- Condition evaluates to true
- There are at least 1 Lines in this Chatter
A random dialogue from Lines is chosen, with equal chance, it can repeat.

Using $q in Chatter

Question depend on having key'd responses. To utilize this with Chatter, question goes in Lines, while matching response keys go in Responses.

(The following example is adapted from the official wiki)

Example:

"DialogueWithQuestion": {
  "Lines": [
    "I think I'll go to the beach tomorrow!#$q 305/306 beachquestion_followup#Would you like to go with me?#$r 305 15 beachquestion_yes#Sure, I would love to!#$r 306 0 beachquestion_sorry#Oh, sorry, I've already made plans with someone else...#$r 306 -10 beachquestion_no#No thank you."
  ],
  "Responses": {
    "beachquestion_yes": "Good! It's a date.$h",
    "beachquestion_sorry": "Oh. Darn. Okay.$6",
    "beachquestion_no": "Oh. Um. Sorry.$s",
    "beachquestion_followup": "$p 305#Tomorrow should be a lot of fun!$h|Hmm, I wonder if I can get someone to go with me...$s",
  }
}