What is a modal mode w.r.t movement? What does w.r.t stand for? What is an controller?

* In programming "modal" means that the standard behavior is blocked as long as a particular mode is on. It's used as "modal dialog" what means that when such a dialog is open, the document window below is not useable until the dialog is closed. What I meant with this in the context of your dialog system is that the dialog system block the standard possibility of moving around.

* w.r.t.: as frob already told.

* Controller is a usual name for those part of a game engine with which the player controls the player character. This is the counterpart of AI, which controls non-player characters. A controller usually interprets user input and alters the state of the player character accordingly.

Thanks for the explanation! I understand now.

What is a modal mode w.r.t movement? What does w.r.t stand for? What is an controller?

I got the implementation to work. The implementation is mostly state management.. I am just confused by the terms you used. Google did not provide much help on the definition.

WRT: with respect to.

In several games I there is a pattern where once game actors are in a conversation or dialogue they leave the idle state; they have a state that indicates they are involved in an interaction. That interaction is controlled by a system dedicated to dialog or other types of interactions. They are composed of all the actors and game objects necessary for the interaction to take place. All of them are locked until the interaction is complete, then they return to idle.

It doesn't need to just be actor-to-actor interactions. It can be actor-to-object interactions, or simply interactions targeting themselves. They can't do anything else while in the interactions, although you could easily design the interactions to detect situations that may cause an interruption or higher priority interaction to cause a premature ending of the interaction. That's the kind of thing you see in The Sims. An actor will start doing something at autonomous priority they may do it for several hours. When they are pushed to do something much more interesting or at a higher priority they will transition out of their interaction, return to idle, and move to the next interaction.

Interesting. My implementation works exactly like the first paragraph. Thanks frob for the explanation!