Yea its called murphys law, named after Charles Murphy in 1991, when online forums were starting to pop up

This is gonna be an absolute pain to restructure if he ever tries to. This is off the top of my head and flags are fine but I would have built quest objects that contain all the flags that pertain to that quest along with the tasks for said quest. Quests usually are a set of tasks so that could be a struct and each individual task could be a struct that contains the individual steps

Even if this game doesn't have generic quests "go kill this" "talk to this" "pick up this object" you can break down any step into a task to fill the structs with and it would be dead simple to add new quests or scenario, plot-points etc.

Add additional methods that complete the quest that talks to some UI that updates and checks flag there, again this is napkin design

Not enough mention is made of the fact that he actually has years of professional experience in social engineering, not programming. 

He just then used social engineering to convince people otherwise. 

You mean using the Steam achievements as DRM?

Ahh. Like the good old no CD checks used to be. I loved to disassemble them as kid and patching them using a hex editor. Good times.

Yes. PirateSoftware is a joke. This would be a failing grade in a first-semester programming class.

He also incorrectly thinks his programming language of choice does not support booleans. He wasn't merely unsure, he confidently statrd that they were unsupported, despite his coffee using them, but only in around 10% of the places they should be used.

I used to think that way, but now I'm writing more comments.

For example, a block of code might be absolutely readable and clear because of how all the variables and functions are named, but it'd be of GREAT help for anyone reading that block to have a small preface as to what to expect from this code.

Having a "# Performs X on A but not B" before a fully readable 10-line segment primes the reader's mind into verifying whether you're performing that X correctly and makes them more likely to notice whether or not you're checking for B in the right way

Disclaimer: i’m NOT a game dev. i’ve taken 1 course on unity game dev in my ms

at that scale it may by relevant to have some type of sql lite database to manage each character’s dialogue lines. they would each have a hash/pointer/reference to a directory where all the actual voice acted lines are stored.

it would be easier to manage over time, add, delete, update, as well as create backups. this may work better on a team as well.

alternatively, you would store all the dialogue in some XML/JSON file which is a tree structure. so unless you had a second data type indexing it, it would be fairly slow to parse.

you’d also want to leverage some event driven design. entering a new area is an event that has context like a group of characters. along with if you’re on a quest or something. these character models/data type can be loaded into the game state.

Insert into DB ```SQL

INSERT INTO npc_dialogue ( npc_id, location, trigger_type, text, audio_path, conditions ) VALUES ( 'nazeem', 'whiterun', 'proximity', 'Do you get to the Cloud District very often? Oh, what am I saying, of course you don’t.', 'audio/nazeem/cloud_district.wav', '{"player_has_not_attacked_nazeem": true}' ); ```

Event Driven Game State Load Example ```python def load_proximity_dialogue(npc_id, location, player_context): conn = sqlite3.connect('game_dialogue.db') cursor = conn.cursor()

cursor.execute('''
    SELECT text, audio_path, conditions
    FROM npc_dialogue
    WHERE npc_id = ? AND location = ? AND trigger_type = 'proximity'
''', (npc_id, location))

rows = cursor.fetchall()
for text, audio_path, conditions_json in rows:
    if conditions_json:
        conditions = json.loads(conditions_json)
        if not all(player_context.get(k) == v for k, v in conditions.items()):
            continue  # Skip this line if conditions not met
    play_voice_line(text, audio_path)
    break  # play first valid line

conn.close()

def play_voice_line(text, audio_path): print(f"NPC says: {text}") # You'd hook into your audio engine here print(f"[Playing audio from: {audio_path}]")

Simulated game event: player walks into Nazeem's proximity

player_context = { "player_has_not_attacked_nazeem": True, "player_faction": "none" }

load_proximity_dialogue("nazeem", "whiterun", player_context) ```

you would probably want a function or member of some larger object where you define all the static game state like “players in X village regardless of quest/game progress” the perhaps another function or member of object that can inject any players in the game state for a particular quest you are on. the quest has priority and will overwrite the first injection.