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Some questions about Adventure Creator's capabilities...
Hi there, and thank you in advance for looking! 
I'm a super-newbie developer with a background in art + writing and I'm interested in creating an adventure game (puzzle solving, free movement, inventory system, etc) with visual novel-type conversations. Ren'py will not work for this, and neither will Fungus, but Adventure Creator looks just about perfect. Money is tight right now though and before I drop $70 on this framework I need to make absolutely sure it'll be able to do what I need it to do. I've been crawling the forums and googling all night long and haven't been able to get definitive answers, so here I am at this forum!
Okay, so:
1. Can you bring up large portrait sprites of an NPC when you speak to them? (And can you change the sprite mid-conversation if the character's expression changes?) Such as these examples:
2. Can you make dialogue options that "matter?" I'm not sure I know the terminology here. Like, if you talk to an NPC, can two dialogue options be present that have different variables attached which affect other parts of the game if you choose them? So, for instance, could you make it so that if you ask a character to give you a certain item, it appears in a nearby drawer? Or if you have a certain conversation with a character, another area of the game becomes available? Or if you treat a character nicely, more dialogue options with them show up? Can dialogue options trigger cutscenes? (Essentially I want to make some NPCs romanceable.)
3. Would it be possible to make a gift-giving system so you can give NPCs things you've crafted or collected or found through puzzles or whatnot?
Once I know if these things are possible, I'll buy the Creator and learn it and probably be super embarrassed later about all these dumb, probably super-obvious questions, haha. Again: thank you so much!
I'm a super-newbie developer with a background in art + writing and I'm interested in creating an adventure game (puzzle solving, free movement, inventory system, etc) with visual novel-type conversations. Ren'py will not work for this, and neither will Fungus, but Adventure Creator looks just about perfect. Money is tight right now though and before I drop $70 on this framework I need to make absolutely sure it'll be able to do what I need it to do. I've been crawling the forums and googling all night long and haven't been able to get definitive answers, so here I am at this forum!
Okay, so:
1. Can you bring up large portrait sprites of an NPC when you speak to them? (And can you change the sprite mid-conversation if the character's expression changes?) Such as these examples:
2. Can you make dialogue options that "matter?" I'm not sure I know the terminology here. Like, if you talk to an NPC, can two dialogue options be present that have different variables attached which affect other parts of the game if you choose them? So, for instance, could you make it so that if you ask a character to give you a certain item, it appears in a nearby drawer? Or if you have a certain conversation with a character, another area of the game becomes available? Or if you treat a character nicely, more dialogue options with them show up? Can dialogue options trigger cutscenes? (Essentially I want to make some NPCs romanceable.)
3. Would it be possible to make a gift-giving system so you can give NPCs things you've crafted or collected or found through puzzles or whatnot?
Once I know if these things are possible, I'll buy the Creator and learn it and probably be super embarrassed later about all these dumb, probably super-obvious questions, haha. Again: thank you so much!
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Comments
1. Can you bring up large portrait sprites of an NPC when you speak to them?
Yes. The layout / scale of the portrait sprites is up to you (designed with Menus/UI) but AC allows for per-character portrait graphics and expresssion-chaning mid-speech. Tutorials are available here and here.
2. Can you make dialogue options that "matter?"
Conversations are essentially just a way of running a new chain of Actions (AC's logic building-blocks), so what happens when an option is chosen can be anything you like - see this tutorial. To use your first example, an option could run the Object: Teleport Action (amongst others) to place an item inside a drawer.
AC's Variables system can keep track of choices made by the player, and then used elsewhere in your game to change other things - which is useful for reactions that are less immediate. In the case of your second example, a boolean (true/false) variable named "Can access new area" could be used to keep track of whether or not a new area is accessible. Talking to a character could invoke the Variable: Set Action to set the variable's value to True, while attempting to open a door elsewhere in the game could read the Variable: Check Action to determine if it's unlocked.
So far as making NPCs "romanceable" goes, I'd expect you'd need to make use of quite a complex set of Variables / logic patterns to have everything work in AC vanilla. However, AC does allow for scripting on top of it, including custom Actions, which may be more appropriate if you have the coding knowledge. A more advanced feature of AC, but still one that needs no coding, is the use of ActionList parameters, which allows you to recycle complex ActionLists for different scenarios.
3. Would it be possible to make a gift-giving system
So far as interactivity goes, NPCs are treated the same as stationary Hotspots, meaning the player can "use" inventory items on them to get reactions. Depending on your chosen interface options, it is also possible to distinguish between "use" and "give" verbs.
It is also possible to do this through Conversations - dialogue options can be limited by what the player is carrying, making it simple to include "Give X to NPC" options as part of a natural dialogue.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!