Timeline and Dialogue System

[hipsterdufus]

Hi, I am exploring using Dialogue System and Timeline to create cutscenes in my top-down 2D RPG. I was wondering if I could get some advice. Is it generally best practice to have Timeline drive the cutscene or Dialogue System drive the cutscene? In my mind, if I used Timeline, it wouldn't be able to handle branching very well. For example, in the cutscene if the player is asked a question and depending on the answer a new Timeline would have to be started depending on the answer. Wouldn't it be easier to have Dialogue System trigger timelines depending on answers in the dialogue? That way I could have all my cutscenes in a single dialogue system conversation. I was wondering if there is any advice on this or if there is anyone who has experience with this. Thanks for any help.

[Tony Li]

Hi,

If your conversation branches, you'll almost certainly want the conversation to kick off different timelines for each branch.

For linear, non-branching conversations -- and linear, non-branching pieces of a larger branching conversation -- it's fine to run it all in a single timeline. In this case, set the Dialogue Manager's Subtitle Settings > Continue Button mode to Always (or set it for the conversation by editing the conversation's properties or using the SetContinueMode() sequencer command). Then use Continue Conversation clips to advance the conversation to each dialogue entry node.