Game different behavior in openning vs in game

[eri0o]

Hello,

I am making the opening scene of my game and I have a question. Playtesting showed that players prefer dialogs to be click to advance only instead of click + timer. In the opening scene though, I feel it would be better if the dialog used click to advance plus timer, because each looping state feel better under a time constraint.

Would keep my game click to advance and the opening click to advance + timer be a good or a bad idea?

[Cassiebsg]

I've tried both, just click and click+timer, there are advantages and cons to each... If you are a speed reader and still don't want to miss a single line, the click only is preferred...but you won't be able to just lay back and follow the scene and it will effectively pause the sequence until the next click. The timer has the advantage that you can just relax and save on your finger and clicking mania (but often the reading speed is left to default, which is a bit too fast for non-english fast reader natives).

Personally, I like the option "let the player choose and adjust the speed self".
Of course, being the opening, that may mean that the player has yet to have the change to reach the settings (unless the opening happens after the main menu), so I would say: adjust the reading speed by default to a lower value (try reading the longest line slowly to figure out an appropriate slow value), let the player click away and add a no-click after x loops/seconds (to cover for those "damn! I clicked the text away just as it timed out and now I missed a line!" moments).

[Snarky]

What Cassie said: this is an easy thing to offer a player setting for, so that people can get the behavior they want.

As for inconsistency between cut-scenes and other dialog, I think that's acceptable. For example, a lot of games that normally let you advance speech by clicking make it unskippable in certain cut-scenes, because they want to have control over the timing (matching music cues to animation, for example).

let the player click away and add a no-click after x loops/seconds (to cover for those "damn! I clicked the text away just as it timed out and now I missed a line!" moments).

This setting is Game.IgnoreUserInputAfterTextTimeoutMs, by the way.

[Radiant]

Would keep my game click to advance and the opening click to advance + timer be a good or a bad idea?

That's precisely what I do, and I haven't received complaints so far.

For example, a lot of games that normally let you advance speech by clicking make it unskippable in certain cut-scenes, because they want to have control over the timing (matching music cues to animation, for example).

If you're doing this, please do add a way to skip the cutscene entirely. Unskippable cutscenes are something I have little patience for as a player.