Speech windows with dialog trees
The following image (Figure 1) shows an example of a conversation used in our game, with the basic dialog text at the top-half of the UI window, and the various selectable choices presented at the bottom-half:
Theory behind conversation trees
In the general parlance of game development, the terms conversation tree or dialog tree are commonly used to specify the UI dialogs that are presented when interacting with NPC characters in a video game. This is a nice level of immersion because this is a chance for the player to interact directly with an NPC based on choices of dialog, instead of just stealing items from their homes or attacking them. The idea of conversation trees has existed before video games started to use them, such as the Which Way or Choose Your Own Adventure books, which gave the reader two choices at the end of each chapter. This mechanic of branching dialog choices led to either a good ending where the player was successful or a bad...