Changes in Articy Converter

[mrcsbmr]

Dear Tony,

first, thanks for DialogueSystem. We're using it in our game Unforeseen Incidents and it saves us a lot of work and troubles. We're using Articy Draft to write the dialogue. Since we have a complex text-heavy game and are working with professional voice actors, we have our own workflow to produce readable scripts for the actors. To do that, we parse the Articy XML and use some info from the asset-file produced by the DialogueSystem converter.
Last week we updated our systems to the latest Unity version. We also updated DialogueSystem from 1.6.9 to 1.7.6 (plus
Adventure Creator Support 2017-07-22). Since that update the asset files look differently and our parser doesn't work correctly anymore. It's rather complex to get a grasp of what is different exactly now. My question: is there a way to tweak the converter settings in a way in produces an asset file that fits the older format? We're now just using the old DS version for producing the asset file for the voice acting script conversations. Or: would it be possible for you to tell us what changed so we can adjust our parser?

Thank you!
Marcus

[Tony Li]

Hi Marcus,

Sorry for the trouble. I recommend using 1.7.6 (or, better yet, the upcoming 1.7.7) if possible because it includes important bug fixes which are documented in the Dialogue System's release notes.

To generate a dialogue database like 1.6.9, you may need to change some of the converter window's settings. Some defaults were changed to better starting values for most users. Here are some things to check:

• Stage Directions: Set to Sequences if your authors have put sequencer commands in Stage Directions.
• Dropdowns as: Int.
• Slots as: ID.
• Recursion: Off. (Unless you're using articy 3's recursive conversations, which DS 1.6.9 didn't support because articy 3 wasn't out yet.)
• FlowFragments are: (Depends on your needs. Often set to Quests or Conversation Groups.)
• FlowFragment Script: <blank> <-- If this field has any content, that may be the problem.

If you can't find settings that give you the results you need, and if 1.6.9 converts properly for you, then you can probably get away with continuing to convert using 1.6.9. Apart from handling new features in articy 3, most of the changes in the articy converter address obscure edge cases or add new feature requests.

If you want to compare the source code, the main conversion file is in SourceCode.unitypackage. It's Assets/Dialogue System/Scripts/Core/Model-View-Controller/Model/Data/Articy/ArticyConverter.cs. Parts of it have changed significantly from 1.6.9 to 1.7.6 to accommodate structural changes introduced in articy 3.

[mrcsbmr]

Hi Tony,

thanks for your response. I will check that.

Marcus

[mrcsbmr]

I have one more issue with the new converter/update. We ordered the dialog options by positioning them in Articy from top to bottom. We're using Jumps, Hubs and Dialog fragments in Articy. That worked perfectly until the update. Now the dialog options are not in the Articy order anymore but somehow mixed up. I could not figure out a pattern yet, still onto that. Maybe you have an idea what's going on and how we can solve that.
Thanks again for your good support.

[Tony Li]

Hi,

I'm finishing updates to the articy converter this week, and I'll make sure this gets addressed. The order of hubs and dialogue fragments should be correct, but jumps were overlooked, so they (and their destinations) may be in the wrong order.

[mrcsbmr]

Thank you. Until that, we use the old converter. It creates an asset file working for us for that case, too.

[Tony Li]

Version 1.7.7rc1 is available for download. It should fix the ordering issue with jumps. You can read more here.