I apologize if this is painfully obvious, but I went through the video catalog/searched in the manual and I was not able to find a concise answer for this.
Up until now I have not needed to respond to NPC's dialogue. I was under the impression that to make a conversation node a "response", you just set the Actor as Player. However, a response menu never appears for me.
How can I set a conversation node as a response, and how can I make sure that the response menu appears?
Tick the Dialogue Manager GameObject's Display Settings > Input Settings > Always Force Response Menu.
If an NPC node leads to only one player response node, then the Dialogue System will treat that node as a subtitle unless Always Force Response Menu is ticked, or if you include the "[f]" (force menu) markup tag in the text.
Side note: If the Dialogue System treats a player node as a subtitle, it won't be visible unless you tick the Dialogue Manager's Subtitle Settings > Show PC Subtitles During Line.
However, I need assistance selecting an option with user input.
Currently, in my game the mouse is completely disabled and the continue button is pressed by hitting the "select" action from the New Input system.
How can I make the response menu driven by the new input system as well? i.e - pressing up/down & selecting an option.
The response menu is plain old Unity UI. Make sure your EventSystem has an InputSystemUIInputModule that's properly configured to handle up/down and select.
Also tick the Dialogue Manager's Input Device Manager component > Always Auto Focus to ensure that a menu button remains focused so you can navigate them.
