Best practice for making larger dialogue trees and avoiding looping errors
Posted: Fri May 06, 2022 10:43 am
Hi
First post as I'm very new to the dialogue system, really enjoying using it so far but have run into one problem with dialogues that become larger and more sprawling.
In this example I've made a dialogue tree that essentially has three branches for the player to explore. Once they have fully exhausted one I would like to present them with the option to go back to the start and explore one or both of the other two.
However after completing one branch and going back round to the top to begin another one, I get a console error like this ...and the text stops appearing in the subtitle text, although the response buttons still display and (oddly) the space the text would have taken up still advances. I can continue to click response options but the empty space just grows. I understand from this post https://www.pixelcrushers.com/phpbb/vie ... php?t=3246 and from slowly chewing my way through the manual that
1. this is probably happening because the text is forming a never ending loop and
2. my fairly disorganised and haphazard way of putting a dialogue tree together is not best practice
But I'm struggling to understand why, and how to do it better. Am I missing a guide somewhere on the basic principles of assembling a workable conversation tree? The dialogue editor section of the manual introduces some concepts like gather nodes but then doesn't really expand on how or where or why to use them.
Based on a kind of a hunch I've inserted an empty node in the links between each "branch", and strangely this does seem to allow me to go back to the top once, but when I try to explore the third branch I once again get the error and the "empty"/invisible subtitle text.
One possible solution I've thought of is to make each branch of the tree into separate sub-conversations that link to each other, but I don't know if this will solve my looping problem either.
I do apologise if this question is very broad or demanding, as I say I'm new to the dialogue editor (and to making games in general) and am really trying to keep things as simple as possible for myself while still being able to make large conversations.
Thanks in advance for any help.
First post as I'm very new to the dialogue system, really enjoying using it so far but have run into one problem with dialogues that become larger and more sprawling.
In this example I've made a dialogue tree that essentially has three branches for the player to explore. Once they have fully exhausted one I would like to present them with the option to go back to the start and explore one or both of the other two.
However after completing one branch and going back round to the top to begin another one, I get a console error like this ...and the text stops appearing in the subtitle text, although the response buttons still display and (oddly) the space the text would have taken up still advances. I can continue to click response options but the empty space just grows. I understand from this post https://www.pixelcrushers.com/phpbb/vie ... php?t=3246 and from slowly chewing my way through the manual that
1. this is probably happening because the text is forming a never ending loop and
2. my fairly disorganised and haphazard way of putting a dialogue tree together is not best practice
But I'm struggling to understand why, and how to do it better. Am I missing a guide somewhere on the basic principles of assembling a workable conversation tree? The dialogue editor section of the manual introduces some concepts like gather nodes but then doesn't really expand on how or where or why to use them.
Based on a kind of a hunch I've inserted an empty node in the links between each "branch", and strangely this does seem to allow me to go back to the top once, but when I try to explore the third branch I once again get the error and the "empty"/invisible subtitle text.
One possible solution I've thought of is to make each branch of the tree into separate sub-conversations that link to each other, but I don't know if this will solve my looping problem either.
I do apologise if this question is very broad or demanding, as I say I'm new to the dialogue editor (and to making games in general) and am really trying to keep things as simple as possible for myself while still being able to make large conversations.
Thanks in advance for any help.