Pixel Crushers Forum

How many actors can I create before I should split to a new database? 100? 1000? Will having too many actors impact performance?

To select an actor for a dialogue entry, is there a quicker way than scrolling? Especially once you have too many you will need to scroll a lot each time.

There is already a nice search box in the Actors tab of the database but it would be great to also have a search box for each Dialogue Entry

Hi,

There are no hard limits in dialogue databases. The number of actors shouldn't impact performance. When it comes to editor performance, usually Dialogue Editor performance is tied to the number of dialogue entry nodes. (Really, it's simply tied to the size of the database.)

To make selecting an actor easier, you can use forward slashes in the actors' Name fields. Set the actor's Display Name field to the name you want to show to the player. For example, if these are your actor Names:

• Companions/Adam
• Companions/Barbara
• Companions/Charles
• Elves/Tanathiel
• Elves/Galadris
• Elves/Fayren
• Goblins/Fizgig
• Goblins/Lowblatt
• Goblins/Hurleywirl

Then Actor dropdowns will show 3 submenus: Companions, Elves, and Goblins.

Oh pretty neat! Thanks I see there are no group foldouts in the Actors tab like the Variables tab.

Search box inside the dialogue entry would still be amazing. Workflow wise, when you work on a character you can see their name as a gizmo label and you know their name so searching from a box for the name would still be quicker than categories, but I imagine it would be difficult to implement because that field is already a dropdown?

In the future, the Dialogue Editor will get an overhaul. I'll add that idea to the list of possible features in the future overhaul.

Will people be able to safely upgrade? Don't wanna put pressure on you with specifics but in a more general sense is the overhaul coming in a few years or months?

Hi,

People will be able to safely upgrade just by importing the updated version. No need for any extra steps. I don't have a timeline. Everything should look basically the same; it will just be a little faster.