Advanced Dialogue System Reccomendation (Journalist game)

[Rodeo]

This is my first thread here so forgive me if I have this in the wrong place. (Couldn't find where exactly to ask for opinions on things)

I'm making a game where you play as a journalist who will go around a university campus asking people questions about a particular person of interest. The ultimate goal of the game is to find out as much as you can about the person by interviewing others around campus and asking about their experiences with the person. In the end you write an article about the person and how well it's reviewed is based on how much information you have gathered about the person.

My skills as a programmer are limited, but I know enough that I can follow a good tutorial just fine. For example, I'm going through the Little Town tutorials, I'm on session 4 and have been able to follow them along well so far.

I'm looking for a dialogue system for the above game, and hopefully one that I can buy from the market place and is easy to use.

My ideal dialogue system would:

-Allow the user to ask preformed questions to NPCs. "How do you know Steve?" and get different answers back from each NPC
-Allow them unlock new questions and dialogue options as they progress. (After talking to NPC X they unlock the ability to ask any NPC question Y)
-The answers given by NPCs are tracked in a log. *Picture of Steve, and below it are the questions you asked him and his responses*
-Show an indicator of what to ask to progress main quest. (A "!" or "?" next to specific questions that will advance the main quest when they are asked)
-Game tracks the answers the player has received, and rates them for final scoring. (This may be something outside of the dialogue system I have to program separately)

Can anyone suggest a relatively easy to use dialogue engine that has these features?

 

[RefresherTowel]

I'm pretty sure you're not going to find a dialogue system with all those features and even if you do, I doubt it's going to be beginner-friendly to work with. The kind of system you're asking for is probably the most advanced form of dialogue programming in general, with branching dialogue/answers affecting outcomes/new dialogue options appearing on the fly/etc. If you're at the beginner level (i.e. doing Little Town tutorials), I'd recommend going through ALL the tutorials there are to offer and then start doing some experimenting. See if you can make little bits of the dialogue system on your own. Make a small game where you just go around and talk to people, with a dialogue box popping up. Have the game end once you've talked to everyone. Then try implementing multiple choice answers, have it so you have to pick a particular answer with a particular person to end the game. Then start trying to make it so that an answer given to one person allows a new answer to appear in the dialogue of another person. Etc, etc.

If there is a dialogue engine out there, it's more than likely you'll have to modify it to fit the needs of your game anyway, and if you don't understand how dialogue systems in general work, you won't have a hope in hell of modifying one as advanced as what you are talking about. That's why it'll be better if you can slowly build one from the ground up so you understand what each piece is doing and how it affects the overall system.

(Also, it might just be better to start with a less advanced concept for your first few games. No-one wants to hear it, but it's often the most useful way to grow quickly as a coder; to tackle things at or just above your current skill level, rather than reaching for the stars immediately)