First Bark Child Node Never Gets Used

[lcn_mc]

Hello, all.

When creating barks, I typically generate three to four options. Recently, I've noticed that the first bark entry is never used, and it's not at all clear why. Here's an example:

I have a conversation called 'Bark Conversation.' This conversation has three child nodes that come off of the main start node. The child nodes are named 'Bark 1,' 'Bark 2,' and 'Bark 3.'

If I set this bark to occur through a trigger, such as a player walking near an object, I will only ever see 'Bark 2' and 'Bark 3' get used.

There is nothing in the Console to suggest an error is occurring, and all barks get evaluated as true. (e.g.: "Dialogue System: Add Link (Empty): ID=250:1 'Bark 1' (True) - where '250' is the conversation number.) All barks are equal priority and there's no per-bark sequences or variables being used.

I also thought this might be something unique to the Articy imports I do (I write and organize my dialogue in Articy, then import it into Unity via the Dialogue System's importer), but I'm seeing the behavior I described above in conversation I create directly within the Dialogue System in Unity as well.

The only way I've found to get around this is to duplicate the first bark entry. (So, using the example above, that means my bark conversation would have four child nodes - 'Bark 1,' 'Bark 1', 'Bark 2', and 'Bark 3.'

If anyone's seen this or has a suggestion for how to solve it, please let me know. Thanks.

[Tony Li]

Hi,

Are you using the current version of the Dialogue System? If not, can you back up your project, make sure you have a good backup, and then update the Dialogue System?

Here's an example scene:

DS_TestBarks_lcn_mc_2023-05-26.unitypackage

There are two cubes that bark from a conversation named "Barks". This conversation has 3 nodes: "First", "Second", and "Third". The left cube barks in order. The right cube barks randomly. You should see that all 3 nodes appear in barks.

[lcn_mc]

Thanks for the reply, Tony.

Yes, I've been on the most-recent version after updating a few weeks ago. Prior to that, I hadn't updated since around November last year, and I didn't remember the problem occurring.

This bug I'm experiencing isn't a major deal because I can work around it by duplicating the first entry, but if there are any things I could've configured differently (such as in the Dialogue Manager, or maybe in how I'm importing from Articy) that you think I should look at, please let me know.

[Tony Li]

Hi,

I have no idea. Does the example scene above work correctly in your project?

If you'd like to investigate further, please feel free to send a reproduction project to tony (at) pixelcrushers.com.

[lcn_mc]

Tony,

I'll look through the example scene over the coming days (I don't have a lot of free time this week, I'm afraid), and will let you know how it goes.