I have a character named CJ … Previously , when I “ask cj about key” he would respond " oh you mean this"… suddenly , he doesn’t recognize this question…
my source looks like this :
Instead of asking CJ about “access”: say “’ sure, its our phone number”.
Instead of asking CJ about “key”: say “‘you mean this?’”.
Instead of asking CJ about “the key”: say “‘you mean this?’”. CJ holds the small siliver Yale key
The can’t take people’s possessions rule does nothing
Instead of asking CJ about “greg”: say “‘hey, have you seen him?’”.
CJ answers about “access” and answers about “greg”… but no longer answers about “key”…
ask cj about key
There is no reply
I can still take the key from CJ, but when I ask about it - it somehow stopped working… any ideas ?
So you’re including Conversation Framework. That’s what’s causing the problem.
With CF, there are two relevant commands: “ask [someone] about [a text]”, which maps to the usual “asking it about” action, and “ask [someone] about [any known thing]”, which maps to the CF action “quizzing it about”.
Your command “ask CJ about the key” is being interpreted as the “quizzing it about” action, because “the key” matches an item in the game. (The ACTIONS command can tell us what action is being attempted.) So your rule should be
Instead of quizzing CJ about the key: say "'you mean this key?'".
(But it you’re intercepting all conversation attempts with “Instead” rules, then there’s not much point in including Conversation Framework in the first place.)
Sidenote: “The can’t take people’s possessions rule does nothing” completely disables that rule - which means that the player will be able to grab anything any NPC in the game is holding at any time.
This might be what you want. However, you can disable it selectively:
The can't take people's possessions rule does nothing when the noun is the key and the key is carried by CJ.