[Bug] Dialogue text from Articy randomly swapping

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leonfor
Posts: 17
Joined: Tue Nov 30, 2021 6:31 am

[Bug] Dialogue text from Articy randomly swapping

Post by leonfor »

Hi Tony,

we've unfortunately encountered a rather mysterious bug which is quite annoying. Basically, when the system reaches node A (which has nothing special so this feels really random) in its normal evaluation, the correct node appears to be evaluated (it becomes green in the conversation view) but the text from node B, which is completely unrelated, appears in the UI.

We've tried deleting node A in Articy and recreating it from scratch with the same text as before and after a new import in the system it works -- BUT! -- the problem "moves" to node C, again, chosen randomly apparently. If we do the same thing on node C the problem is solved on that node but moves again to node A. Really weird behaviour.

Things we've tried/noted:
- If we change the text in node B and re-import, still the same unchanged text appears! And searching it in the database with the search function yields no matches...
- Deleting the database asset and its backup database does nothing;
- There should be no scripts/sequence involved. The node after node A has a function call in the script field but that's it. I should note the designer reported the problem started happening after we made some changes to that function but it's not even evaluated when the problem arises so we don't think it could be causing issues..? (the function sets the dialogue UI's alpha to 0, disables the input in the dialogue system brings up some UI and when the user dismisses it resets everything back to normal)

Overall it's very weird that even deleting the text it still comes up when evaluating node A. How can we fix this?

Thank you so much as always!
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Tony Li
Posts: 22112
Joined: Thu Jul 18, 2013 1:27 pm

Re: [Bug] Dialogue text from Articy randomly swapping

Post by Tony Li »

Hi,

If it possible that you're using an older version of the database than the one that was most recently imported?

Are you using multiple databases? If so, maybe there are internal ID conflicts between them. This can cause the UI to show the wrong node.
leonfor
Posts: 17
Joined: Tue Nov 30, 2021 6:31 am

Re: [Bug] Dialogue text from Articy randomly swapping

Post by leonfor »

Hello,

just wanted to update because we fixed the issue and it was one of those extremely-painful-to-discover-but-stupid things.

"Use I2 Language At Runtime" was ticked in the Dialogue System Uses I2 Language script. We could modify the nodes all we wanted, but the system would still fetch the translated text (even in the default language) from I2's database completely ignoring the one in the DS database.

Very annoying, but at least it's fixed.

Thank you!
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Tony Li
Posts: 22112
Joined: Thu Jul 18, 2013 1:27 pm

Re: [Bug] Dialogue text from Articy randomly swapping

Post by Tony Li »

Hi,

I'm glad you found the issue; I'm sorry it was annoying. The checkbox's purpose is to do exactly what you said: get translations from the I2 database at runtime. If you have any suggestions on how to make this clearer or prevent similar frustration for users in the future, please let me know.
leonfor
Posts: 17
Joined: Tue Nov 30, 2021 6:31 am

Re: [Bug] Dialogue text from Articy randomly swapping

Post by leonfor »

Hello,

I've spoken to the team and yes, we do have some feedback on that checkbox. The most important thing is that it effectively makes you "lose" the simple, direct connection to the Dialogue System database which we were accustomed to.

What I mean is: when we started using the DS, the pipeline was always modify something in a dialogue node (either dialogue text, sequencer or script), test it -> rinse and repeat. Losing that "testing" bit is a rather heavy step which should be signaled extremely clearly.

Something like "hey, if you tick this checkbox, please be aware that the text you see in the DS database is not the one that will be printed out, but it will be the translated text, even in the default language".

Thank you as always.
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Tony Li
Posts: 22112
Joined: Thu Jul 18, 2013 1:27 pm

Re: [Bug] Dialogue text from Articy randomly swapping

Post by Tony Li »

Thank you for the feedback. I'll make this very clear with a "warning" text box that appears in the inspector when you tick the checkbox.
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