Menu Text without Dialogue

[pegassy]

Hi,

I am using DS on certain objects as an adventure controller (i.e. INSPECT, USE, etc) and I have got a few questions regarding this.

1) When I click on, let's say, INSPECT while "talking" to an object, I just want the player to read a comment on the next node. However, since I write "INSPECT" on the Menu Text, player first utters "INSPECT" before moving over to the next comment. Is there a way to skip a Menu Text without appearing in the subtitle entirely?

2) I am looking into in which different ways I can implement "USE" in such an adventure menu. How would I animate an object after choosing "USE" in the dialogue menu? Is that through the sequence commands?

Thank you.

[Tony Li]

Hi,

I am using DS on certain objects as an adventure controller (i.e. INSPECT, USE, etc) and I have got a few questions regarding this.

1) When I click on, let's say, INSPECT while "talking" to an object, I just want the player to read a comment on the next node. However, since I write "INSPECT" on the Menu Text, player first utters "INSPECT" before moving over to the next comment. Is there a way to skip a Menu Text without appearing in the subtitle entirely?

You could set the Menu Text to INSPECT and the Dialogue Text of the same node to the comment. When both fields are set, the Menu Text appears in the menu, and the Dialogue Text is spoken when the player selects the menu item.

2) I am looking into in which different ways I can implement "USE" in such an adventure menu. How would I animate an object after choosing "USE" in the dialogue menu? Is that through the sequence commands?

Yes. You can animate objects and do much more using sequencer commands. For example, say you have a Lever and a Light. (And those are the GameObject names.) The Lever has an animator state named "Pull". The Light is currently inactive, but 1.5 seconds after the lever is pulled you want to activate it and play an electric_buzz sound. Set the "USE" node's Sequence field to something like:

Code: Select all

AnimatorPlay(Pull, Lever);
SetActive(Light)@1.5;
Audio(electric_buzz)@1.5

The Audio() command locates the clip "electric_buzz" in a Resources folder or AssetBundle.

[pegassy]

You could set the Menu Text to INSPECT and the Dialogue Text of the same node to the comment. When both fields are set, the Menu Text appears in the menu, and the Dialogue Text is spoken when the player selects the menu item.

Thank you for the direction. I realized I did a poor job describing the problem in the first one. I would like the character to execute a certain node without saying anything at all. When I try USE in menu text and leave the dialogue text blank, the character will still say "USE". I would like to be able to click on USE and the character to say nothing, but I could not figure this out. Sorry for the misleading description.

[Tony Li]

Hi,

Would it work to set this conversation to not show PC lines? Edit the conversation, click on empty canvas to inspect the conversation's properties, and tick Override Display Settings > Override Subtitle Settings. Then untick Show PC Subtitles During Line.

[pegassy]

This does seem to work Tony. I had never accessed into this section, and apparently you may modify any given node. This is crazy! I was wondering where all those commands from within the Conversation Tree Nodes were going...

I am still trying to find out though if it would be possible to do it in a way that can silence a single node. For example, sometimes I have a node in a large conversation to go back to the previous conversation menu (i.e. similar to Investigation sub-menu in Mass Effect, and you just want to click on BACK to go back to the main menu, but you do not want your character to say BACK). In that case I would still like the PC to talk out all the dialogue lines, but I would like to have individual nodes where I just click to go back and forth between menus, without needing the PC to read the menu or conversation text. I tried to find this within the individual nodes settings in the conversation inspector, but could not figure out if any of the settings can mute a single node.

Thank you for the suggestions. I have learned a lot.

[pegassy]

I was wondering if there is any individual line command similar to [position=#] that can directly turn off the PC or NPC subtitle for that particular node, or even an indirect method that would yield the same result, such as changing the set appearance duration of that node's subtitle to zero.

[Tony Li]

There isn't yet, but I'll add a [nosubtitle] tag in an upcoming patch.

[Tony Li]

Okay, patch 20180713a is now available on the Pixel Crushers customer download page. It adds a [nosubtitle] tag. If this tag is in your Dialogue Text or Menu Text, it won't show the subtitle.

Using this patch, another way to not show the subtitle is to set the Sequence to:

Code: Select all

None()

[pegassy]

Wonderful!

Thank you.