Question About Conversation Clips in Unity Timeline

[Luseya]

Hello!

I am using the Dialogue System with the Unity Timeline feature for a cutscene event.

I was just wondering if there is a way to play a conversation using Unity Timeline without the need to add a Continue Conversation clip for every dialogue node? I have a game with lengthy and complex dialogue trees and a lot of cutscenes. I'm still learning, so I'm just wondering if there is an easier way to do this that I may have overlooked.

For my cutscenes, the Player is required to hit the Continue Button in order to progress in the conversations. Right now, I'm using this default sequence:

Timeline(speed, NameOfTimeline, 0);
required Timeline(speed, NameOfTimeline, 1)@Message(Continued)

So my cutscene currently doesn't have any Conversation Clips, but you can still play through the whole dialogue without them. However, since the duration of the conversation depends on Player inputs, and other events in the cutscene depend on the duration of the entire conversation, it looks like I will need to add them after all. But I would like to avoid using 20+ Conversation Clips if possible as that might get a little difficult to manage.

Hopefully I wrote this out clearly enough! Thanks so much for this asset. It's absolutely wonderful

[Tony Li]

Hi,

You're going to need to provide some kind of information at each dialogue entry to let either the conversation or the timeline know when to advance. It's probably simplest overall to use Continue Conversation clips and your default sequence above. This gives you precise control of when each subtitle appears in the timeline. If you want, you can augment the default sequence like this to hide the subtitle text after the player clicks continue:

Code: Select all

Timeline(speed, NameOfTimeline, 0);
required Timeline(speed, NameOfTimeline, 1)@Message(Continued);
required ClearSubtitleText()@Message(Continued);

You could use timeline signals, but that's no less work than dropping in Continue Conversation clips.

[Luseya]

Hi Tony,

Thank you for getting back to me! I'm still encountering issues when using Conversation Clips.

1) The Timeline keeps stopping after StartConversationClip and doesn't continue even if there are Continue Conversation Clips. Do you know what might cause that?
When I play the Timeline in Scene View, it looks like it's playing through the whole game. But when the cutscene happens in Game view, it stops at the Start Conversation Clip. The conversation starts but doesn't continue (which might be the cause of issue #2 below?)

2) One of the conversations has a PC node (not a response menu, just something the Player character says). The Continue Button pops up for a second then disappears, and then the conversation doesn't proceed. I tested the conversation with a Usable character without using the Timeline, and it works normally there, but when this particular conversation is part of a Timeline, that's when the Continue Button flashes briefly. I tried using the command SetContinueMode(true) to keep it there, but this does not solve the issue.

Thank you for taking the time to help me!

[Luseya]

I still haven't figured it out but discovered that the issue specifically happens when this Timeline runs after a previous one that also had a conversation. If I tick "Play On Awake," everything is normal. Also, the issue happens no matter what conversation is used in the StartConversationClip.

Timeline#1 starts Conversation#1. At the end of Conversation #1, I use a sequence command to play Timeline#2. Timeline #2 starts, plays an animation in the timeline, but then when it gets to the Start ConversationClip, it plays the first node and immediately stops, and that's when the Continue Button disappears.

I will continue investigating but just wanted to provide those additional details for now!

[Tony Li]

Hi,

Temporarily set the Dialogue Manager's Other Settings > Debug Level to Info. Then reproduce the issue. Examine the Console logs. It should give you some information about what's going on. More info: Logging & Debugging Tips

[Luseya]

Hi Tony,

I checked the logs, but everything is showing up as expected; there are no errors or anything out of the ordinary.

[Tony Li]

Hi,

Can you send a reproduction project to tony (at) pixelcrushers.com?