Need advice on displaying additional text and an Image

[Bempa]

Hello!
First and foremost i would like to thank you for an excellent tool!

The setting in my game that i am using Dialogue system is an sort of event-displayer.
It's pretty straight forward. The conversations consists of one dialogue text that describes an event and then the player gets to choose from up to 3 actions that are presented on response buttons.

Right now the only issues that i am having is that first i need to display a title text that is unique for every conversation/event. Example: "Your crew is starving".
To smoothen the workflow it would be nice to be able to write the text somewhere in the dialogue-editors Conversations-tab.
I thought of using either the Description-field or Menu text-field, in the Conversations-tab, for the title-text and then display it via one Standard UI Subtitle panel.
I have looked through the Standard UI Subtitle panel-script and found the reference for the subtitle text and am thinking of adding a "Title"-text field in there but my next problem is that i cant find the part where DS picks up the actual Conversation-subtitle text.

So i want to add a Title-textfield in the Standard UI subtitle panel and then reference it to display the content in the Description- or Menu text fields in the editors Conversations-tab, but i need some help to get references to the Conversations-tab fields.

Would this be a viable way to solve the issue or is there some more straight forward way of doing it?

Secondly i need to display an image that is unique for every event/conversation.
It would be nice to reference the image from the Conversations-tab.
I do see that under 'All fields' in the Dialogue Entry-inspector window, in the conversations-tab, there is a field called Pictures of type Files. Would this be a viable path to use to display the event-image?


So eventually my 2 questions boils down to 1 and that would perhaps be how i do get references from the data in the Dialogue Entry. I would be glad if you could point me towards a script where theese things happens and/or a tutorial that covers theese topics.

Best regards

[Tony Li]

Hi,

Thanks for using the Dialogue System!

Right now the only issues that i am having is that first i need to display a title text that is unique for every conversation/event. Example: "Your crew is starving".

What if you add a new subtitle panel to your dialogue UI that's only for the title text? For example, use these steps:

• Define a new actor in your dialogue database named "Title".
• In your conversation, link the <START> node to a node assigned to the Title actor. Set the node's Dialogue Text to the title.
• Then link that node to the event description text.
• Add a new subtitle panel to your dialogue UI. Assign it to the Standard Dialogue UI component's Conversation UI Elements > Subtitle Panels list, and make a note of its element number. Set the subtitle panel's Visibility to Always From Start.
• Add an empty GameObject as a child of the Dialogue Manager. Add a Dialogue Actor component. Select the Title actor. Set Dialogue UI Settings > Subtitle Panel Number to the new subtitle panel's number.

That's a way to do it without scripting, but there are alternatives. For example, you could add a script to the Dialogue Manager that has an OnConversationStart() method. In the method, get the conversation's Description and set a custom title text element that you've added to your dialogue UI. If you want to do that and you have questions, let me know and I'll post some code.

Secondly i need to display an image that is unique for every event/conversation.

That's a little harder. To keep dialogue databases importable/exportable to text formats without losing data, they don't directly reference other assets such as images. (Portrait images are an exception that the Dialogue System handles specially.) Here's one idea:

• You could use the Addressables system and mark your images as addressable, or put your images in a Resources folder. Addressable images will have a Key value. Images in Resources folders will have a filename.
• Store the Key/filename in a custom field in the conversation, or write a custom sequencer command. (For example, the built-in AudioWait() sequencer command does the same thing for audio files.) You can use an OnConversationStart() method to check the conversation's field, or let the custom sequencer command handle the name as a parameter.
• Use DialogueManager.LoadAsset<Sprite>() to load the image and show it.

[Bempa]

Thank you so very much for a swift and thourough answer!
Your suggestions feels like they are very much doable and i will get on it first thing tomorrow!

Thank you again!

[Tony Li]

Glad to help! I didn't provide as much detail on the second answer, so if you have questions about either one just let me know.

[Bempa]

It's done!

I just wanted to get back to you and thank you again.

I resolved the first issue following your first advice and the solution now feels kinda obvious

The second issue i finally solved by writing my own methods to load the images from resources and displaying the correct image by getting a reference from the 'current dialogue'-title.
I found the response that you left in https://www.pixelcrushers.com/phpbb/vie ... f=3&t=4191 helpful.

Best regards!

[Tony Li]

Glad to help!