Hi again. Most of the code for the demo is done (act 1 of a 3 act game). Still a ton to do, replace edited Sierra backgrounds with original ones, add and pretty up some views, clean up some code (aside from a bit of scripting and the C++ courses I took in high school 20 years ago, I'm not a programmer), and waaaaay too many "responseless" possibilities. Still, there are two complete positive paths through the end of the section I have, it's been amazingly rewarding, and thank you so much for the help with my absolute beginner's questions.
One thing that isn't necessary, but I'd love to include, and I realize it may require a ton of rewrites or additions, is customized dialogue boxes for conversation, similar to QfG2. Basically just background and text colors customized depending on who's speaking. Snail Trek (love it and looking forward to Cascadia Quest) also has something very similar; I don't know that speech bubbles would fit stylistically here, but it is basically that idea.
I've looked at the code and guess what's there can be used to implement this, but as a non-coder, my method for doing so would probably be super convoluted. Is there any kind of built-in method for the customization of dialogue boxes, or a sample of code that doesn't suck for doing so? I can certainly add sucky code, but I know many of you have been here for a long time doing these things, so figured I'd ask before tromping ahead recklessly.

Thanks!