Messages

1

Everything-Else / Re: Dialogue Interface

« on: January 31, 2021, 04:23:41 PM »

Thanks, Kawa!
I'll have a look into this next time I have a block of free time, and I'll let you know how I get on!

2

Everything-Else / Re: Dialogue Interface

« on: January 29, 2021, 08:34:06 PM »

I like the look of the inventory when you're selecting items, with only the highlighted option getting a border. Also, I expect having some more generalized code to handle this would be less of a headache, if I could get it to work.

I'm pretty new to coding, and I've spent a lot of time trying to pick apart the inventory to no success. I might come back to this later. At the moment I'm enjoying writing fun dialogue trees - so I'm satisfied with my shitty looking buttons for now.

The dialogue tree is definitely the way to go over parser based conversation, dialogue being kind of an in-game hint system, the story has better momentum.

3

Everything-Else / Re: Dialogue Interface

« on: January 24, 2021, 03:07:40 AM »

Y'know, I've stared at my janky button interface for so long that I've learned to love it.

I may change my mind if I can ever get my head around customising buttons.

4

SCI Community How To's & Tutorials / Re: Must Print pause the game in SCI.?

« on: January 24, 2021, 03:06:17 AM »

I see!
I ended up making a local procedure which handles the delay, the character animation, the placement of the text and the title, so in each case all i need to type is:
(1
AlGoreSpeech("You are hearing me talk" 3) ;the text will end up in a text resource
=seconds 3
)
(2
JoeySpeech("Woah.." 2)
=seconds 2
)
(3
Shutup() ;this procedure stops both characters mouths flapping so they can awkwardly state at each other for a moment.
)

This is much neater and faster! This is the first time I've created custom procedures like this so I will probably be re-examining some of my old code yet again!

update:
I've added several other functions to handle animation, now the faces and bodies are separate so I can call in different facial expressions and gestures whenever I want, eg:

(1
     JoeySpeech(803 4 4) //Whoa! for 4 seconds
     JoeyFace("surprise")
     JoeyBody("armWaving")
)
(2
    JoeyBody("beStill")
    RonaldSpeech(803 5 2) //that's a what I'm talkin' about!
    RonaldFace("angry")
    RonaldBody(''handsOnHips")
)
And so on... It's a lot of fun, kind of like puppetry,  this really brings the characters to life.

5

SCI Community How To's & Tutorials / Re: Must Print pause the game in SCI.?

« on: January 22, 2021, 10:07:50 PM »

I've been banging my head against the wall trying to figure out that LSL3 code, then I just started trying random things.
it turns out if I add #time 3 and #dispose 0, the print window will linger on the screen for 3 seconds as the gameplay continues.
This seems like a pretty simple way of doing this?

6

Everything-Else / Re: Dialogue Interface

« on: January 22, 2021, 05:42:33 PM »

Thanks Kawa, I'm trying to get my head around this, if there was an area of the documentation which explains this it would be most helpful!

Would I call these custom buttons as I would in a print statement? eg: =button Print("" #CustomButton "And then I said that's not a chicken!" 1)

7

Everything-Else / Re: Dialogue Interface

« on: January 22, 2021, 04:02:17 AM »

I've decided to attempt a dialogue tree interface, if only to see if it's an improvement to the pacing / flow of the game

It functions fine, it's basically just buttons which direct to different states in the script.

The tricky thing is styling the thing so it doesn't look like total garbage.  So far I've customised a few things, using a smaller font and vertical alignment for the buttons plus taking away all of the spacing to make it more compact. Also the directional keys for selection when choosing dialogue options.
Is there a simple way to take away the button borders of the deselected options, kind of like in the inventory?
Also I've been looking for a way to align the button text to the left rather than centered?

8

SCI Community How To's & Tutorials / Re: Must Print pause the game in SCI.?

« on: January 21, 2021, 05:38:12 PM »

Thanks Kawa! This is very useful.
Maybe I could get a global procedure going for dialogue.
I'll report back if/when I get it to work!

9

SCI Community How To's & Tutorials / Must Print pause the game in SCI.?

« on: January 20, 2021, 02:46:54 AM »

Hey everyone,
I've taken it for granted that the game must pause when dialogue is being displayed, but I wonder if this is necessarily the case?
I'm sure there's moments in Leisure Suit Larry 3 and Space Quest 3 when dialogue is displayed while either character animation and/or ego movement is going on.

Does anyone have any idea if there's a way to toggle this? It would be awesome to get some animation while a character is talking!

10

Everything-Else / Re: Dialogue Interface

« on: January 19, 2021, 03:42:12 PM »

However, what you are trying to do may be possible.  I did have a degree of success with dynamically loading scripts which handled Said()s and disposing of them as soon as they were unneeded (IIRC lots of Unload or DisposeLoad calls).

I have a feeling this is the solution I need. So far I've moved all of my dialogue scenes into separate (but identical) rooms you go into when you begin a conversation, where there's only dialogue interaction. This seems like a smarter way of implementing the same idea!

I was thinking of separating the dialogue into separate scripts (say have a "who is" script with all the possible characters, a "what is" script for every possible noun etc) it'd be a lot of work, but I think worth it. I like the 'dungeons and dragons' feel of the parser when it feels like the options are limited only by your imagination, so i think that's the way to go, time to learn a bit more about memory management...

I'll take a look at Tex Murphy and see what you mean about that...

11

Everything-Else / Dialogue Interface

« on: January 19, 2021, 02:25:34 AM »

Hi all,
I always wanted dialogue to be a big part of the SCI.0 game I'm working on. Initially I thought it would be cool to use the text parser for any dialogue sequence (Instead of INPUT the parser either reads "Action:" or "Say:" depending on whether you've initiated a conversation.) I got the idea from Space Ship Warlock (anyone remember that game?) where you would input fairly naturalistic dialogue into the parser ("Who is the captain?") ("What do you think about space pirates?")etc.

This was all before I found out about Heap memory restrictions so it's not like I can create a dialogue option for every imaginable topic relevant to the game. I'm considering implementing more of a dialogue tree like the one in Space Quest V, Gabriel Knight or Lucas Arts games. This would simplify things, maybe even streamline the gameplay a bit, where you're not constantly guessing what I thought was a good question to ask a character. Trouble is, it seems a tad inauthentic, and weird to keep switching to mouse in a mostly keyboard orientated game.

Also, dialogue choices can ruin the joke, if you already know the phrasing of the question before you ask it.

What are people's thoughts on this?
I'm so involved in the development of this project, when making a design decision I must ask myself, "is this fun?"

12

SCI Syntax Help / Re: Telephones

« on: December 17, 2020, 03:48:34 AM »

Great artwork! That looks really fantastic! Do the buttons press in when you click on them?

One small critique - the bottom left corner of the phone stand looks much more squared than the bottom right corner, which looks rounded.
EDIT: I think it's actually not the corner itself, but that there is no gradient in the shading underneath

Thanks! Yes the buttons press in with a satisfying glitchy 8-bit clicking sound.

Also thanks for your constructive criticism, I've added some lines of dark grey + black dithering and it looks much better!

13

SCI Syntax Help / Re: Telephones

« on: December 16, 2020, 06:07:05 AM »

Yes, this was drawn in companion with vectors. Finally my fine-arts degree is paying off!

EDIT: apart from the buttons, which are sprites.

14

SCI Syntax Help / Re: Telephones

« on: December 16, 2020, 05:00:44 AM »

I'm glad I ended up going with the graphic interface after all!

15

SCI Syntax Help / Re: Telephones

« on: December 13, 2020, 06:23:39 PM »

Sometimes the solution to a problem is super obvious the next day!

turns out it's not that hard to use a while loop to iterate through both arrays to match them.

Also a combination of mouse and keyboard control seems to work fine! I take away player control and the text parser while you're close up on the telephone.