[Feature suggestions]: Copy/paste nodes between conversations | Search & Replace

[Abelius]

Hi there,

Here are my humble proposals for you... oh, already overworked developer!

1. Copy/paste nodes between conversations:

To the best of my knowledge, there's no way of selecting a specific node/s and get it/them duplicated to another conversation. Only whole conversations could be duplicated to a new one.

I've used the latter with success to save some time, but there are numerous times when I only want to copy one specific node, like when I need to add an unexpected node doing something identical in multiple conversations.

I'd totally kill for this.

And to a less critical extent...

2. Enhance the 'Search' bar with a replace feature:

This would also be nice, as sequence commands tend to be very repetitive with only minor changes between conversations.

For instance, I use sequence commands in every node to trigger talking animation FSMs. The only difference in them is the name of the character object that needs to receive the event.

Tbh, without a copy/paste nodes feature this wouldn't be extremely time-saving. But combined would make a very neat tag team.

So, just my two cents. Thank you for your time and work.

[Tony Li]

These are indeed on my wish list, as well as a search-and-replace that would work globally across the entire database or only within a specific conversation. They won't be in the next release, but I'll try to get them implemented as soon as I can. If you come up with any other editor suggestions, please let me know. I might as well get to them while I'm working on the editor code.

[Abelius]

These are indeed on my wish list,

Oh, that's pretty awesome! Tbh, I didn't get my hopes really high when asking for them, as I imagine the kind of work involved.

So, yeah: you rock!

If you come up with any other editor suggestions, please let me know. I might as well get to them while I'm working on the editor code.

Well, I have another one, although this is minor.

I tend to use dedicated nodes to run scripts and/or sequences. That way I could use the title to identify them more clearly than if they were inside a dialogue node.

And in addition to that, I assign to those nodes a special actor colored in yellow. "Problem" with that is that the actor name gets pre fixed, using the node title text space.

I don't quite understand why this is happening because 'Actor' and 'Conversant' actors don't get shown in dialogue nodes, but it would be nice to have those additional actors to follow the same rules, I guess.

Well, that... or "simply" adding an override color setting for nodes.

Anyway, this is not something I'd die for anytime soon.

Thanks!

[Tony Li]

I tend to use dedicated nodes to run scripts and/or sequences. That way I could use the title to identify them more clearly than if they were inside a dialogue node.

And in addition to that, I assign to those nodes a special actor colored in yellow. "Problem" with that is that the actor name gets pre fixed, using the node title text space.

I don't quite understand why this is happening because 'Actor' and 'Conversant' actors don't get shown in dialogue nodes, but it would be nice to have those additional actors to follow the same rules, I guess.

The editor prefixes the actor's name if the node isn't spoken by the primary Actor or Conversant. This helps highlight nodes that are spoken by "third parties." It would be fairly easy to implement a toggle to turn this feature on or off. I'll do that in the next release. There's already a toggle to show all actor names, even the primary Actor and Conversant. I'll just add a similar toggle to hide all actor names.

I'll also think about adding an override color setting for nodes. I don't want to bloat the dialogue database format, but then again I could probably fit it in a single byte per node, which would be negligible.

[Abelius]

Last hour (although minor) suggestion...

When a (single) node is selected... how about highlighting in red all of its links? (receiving ones also)

[Tony Li]

That's a really good idea. Can you suggest a different color? At runtime, links from the current node are drawn in green or red depending on whether their Conditions are true or not. Short orange links denote cross-conversation links. What about blue?

[Abelius]

Oh, I actually meant while in the editor, outside of execution.

There, when you select a link it turns blue...:



...so I thought of red as an alternative for highlighting them all and don't confuse users. But now that I think about it... if you were to delete that selected node, all of those links would also be deleted so... it's not so far fetched to think it would be good to use the same blue color.

Anyway, I'm okay with any color you think it's good for this purpose, really.

Thanks again for your enthusiasm at my suggestions.

[Tony Li]

I had forgotten that blue also indicated the selected link. I'll play around with colors and settle on one (or two, if one looks better in the light skin and another in the dark skin).

[Abelius]

Last hour (although minor) suggestion...

When a (single) node is selected... how about highlighting in red all of its links? (receiving ones also)

Hi Tony, sorry for necro'ing this.

It's come to my attention that you included the above feature. Thank you!

But I'd also find very useful too have the incoming links highlighted. Maybe in another color?

That way we'd have full knowledge of that node flow. And that... would be good.

[Tony Li]

Will do. Any colors suggestions? Different color choices for the light and dark editor skins are fine.