Can't center dialogue editor on start

[nicmar]

Hi, I think I reported this before, but couldn't find the thread now.
The dialogue editor won't let me have the nodes in the center of the screen, it's always top left.

When i middle click and drag, i can just move it outside the screen of the top left, not anywhere else. See the video. Also I can't center on home position.

Is this a known behaviour? Can it be fixed? Maybe it's just me, but I'd like to have the start in the middle, then go down from there.

Thanks

[Tony Li]

Hi,

Conversations exist on a finite canvas where the upper left corner is (0,0) and the bottom right corner is something like (100000,100000). Each node has an absolute position on the canvas. You can only pan up and left as far as (0,0). You can't pan to negative coordinates.

I think Unity's animator window, which has a similar look, can pan to negative coordinates. I can look into implementing the same for the Dialogue Editor. But currently it doesn't support this.

In the meantime, can you drag the <START> node down and right so you can put it in the center of the current view? You might want to lasso the entire conversation and move the whole thing down and right.

Auto-arranging will also put the <START> node in a position that centers better, but auto-arranging has its pro's and con's since you'll lose any custom positioning you've done.

[nicmar]

Ahh, didn't think of dragging start. That worked of course, so that will help my OCD (or my will to just read from the middle of the screen). But you were right in that auto arrange vertical would arrange all, and then put it in the top left corner.

So it's not a biggie. I'm also considering getting Articy:draft for creating dialogue in the future. Not sure if their interface is better/different.

[nicmar]

Wait a second, can you arrange it so each new node comes downwards? Now it goes to the right all the time, and it's pretty messy after adding 10 lines, or should i auto arrange it while writing?

I think I remember that it came downwards before, but I could be wrong.

Also, can you display more than one line of text in the nodes?

Thanks

[nicmar]

I think i messed up some setting or something, cause when creating multiple child nodes, they all come on top of each other, so i spend a lot of time organizing the nodes..

[nicmar]

Hmm, now I can't set the cursor when editing text. I tried changing node and restarting unity:
Is there any way to reset so it works like normal? I think it worked earlier today..

Ah, I think i know what's going on. This happens when I click any part of the text which is within the node, so I think it thinks that I clicked the node or something. As the text that is outside the node box, i can click and select as normal.

[nicmar]

Sorry for all the negativity, but I'm having a really hard time today. I thought that I could click in the inspector to edit the text, but anywhere I click in the inspector, it takes me to the root node.

When I click an empty spot in the hiearchy, nodes are selected, that are on the left of the screen.

Reeaaally weird. Maybe gonna restart my computer and see if it's something with the mouse or multiple screens or anything. I have Unity only on one screen at the moment though.

[Tony Li]

Hi,

Sorry to read about the troubles today.

If you want new nodes to appear below the current node instead of to the right, turn off this menu option:

addNodesDirection.png (24.61 KiB) Viewed 825 times

If you turn on the menu option to always auto-arrange after adding a node, it will arrange according to the setting of the menu option above. I prefer to not auto-arrange after adding a node. This way I can manually set where each node should be. If I want to auto-arrange a group of nodes, I can always multi-select them, right-click on them, and select Auto Arrange from the context menu to auto-arrange only those nodes.

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A node's expanded text input area will appear when you double-click on a node. If you only single-click, it will select the node. Then you can drag the node to move it.

When you double-click on a node to edit its expanded text, I do see the issue where the cursor jumps to the beginning of the text. I'll work on a fix.

[nicmar]

Thank you, that helped. I can imagine that it's hard to autoarrange the nodes in a way that suits everyone.

[Tony Li]

I have some ideas to improve the auto-arranging algorithm (although you're right that it can never exactly match every person's individual preferences). It's just a matter of making time to implement the ideas. But it looks like I need to prioritize a fix for that text cursor bug first. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.