[SOLVED] "Say" ZOrder?

[Knox]

Hi,

I've finally decided to update my project I left behind years ago for serious medical reasons...but I'm running into a problem since trying to get it to work with this newest version 3.4.1.12 Patch 1

It seems that in 3.4.0.16 everything was working normally for custom dialogs:

The "player.Say" zOrder gets drawn behind my customDialogGUI (and behind the semi-transparent black GUI) **I temporarily moved down the dialog GUI to show you how it should be drawn: behind the custom dialog GUI**

But in 3.4.1.12 Patch 1 I get this problem:

The "player.Say" zOrder now gets drawn IN FRONT of my customDialogGUI (and also in front of the semi-transparent black GUI)...also most text labels are now too low (this is an easy fix but still wondering why).

What has changed since these 2 AGS versions and how can I get the default "say" zorder to act like it did before?

[Crimson Wizard]

What has changed since these 2 AGS versions and how can I get the default "say" zorder to act like it did before?

This:

- Fixed speech portrait was displayed below GUI, contrary to speech text.

In the previous version the speech text was displayed above GUI, but portrait was displaying below, which caused issues, for example, when character speech is displayed above inventory window.
Currently there is no switch to turn this back, because frankly this was considered just a bug that has to be fixed: from the logical perspective speech and portrait are the part of whole "speech style" and so they should have same Z.


How to solve this in your case, depends on what you need to be displayed. If you need to hide portrait during some scene, you may probably disable speech view or switch to another speech style.
On the other hand, from the looks of screenshot you actually do need to display a speech portrait, just another one. If that's correct, you may also try to simply create a separate speech view for your character with this portrait and use it when GUI is on.
It is even possible to use dummy character to speak instead.

..also most text labels are now too low (this is an easy fix but still wondering why).

I cannot say why right away, but there were few changes to the font properties, which may be related. I would need to have an actual test case - know label parameters and used font -- which works well in 3.4.0 and does not in 3.4.1.

[Knox]

Hi Crimson,

Thanks for the info. I'll try a few things to see if I can get around this. Just one question, I know you said we can't have a switch to turn back having the speech portrait below the GUI, however...would it be possible to give the user the option to have certain GUI's zorder be above the speech portrait if  they want to?

[Crimson Wizard]

Thanks for the info. I'll try a few things to see if I can get around this. Just one question, I know you said we can't have a switch to turn back having the speech portrait below the GUI, however...would it be possible to give the user the option to have certain GUI's zorder be above the speech portrait if  they want to?

I did not say that "you can't have a switch to turn back", I said only that there is no such switch right now, because that was not considered necessary.
Everything is possible, if someone does that.
Although, to be completely honest, in my opinion that's not a good idea, unless this breaks some existing game that is already released and cannot be fixed.

Ideally the speech style should be customized at will, having any elements with any z-order person wants, but this was never implemented. Right now there is no way to set Z-order for speech (text, portraits or other elements), they are hard-coded into engine. Perhaps having such setting for each speech element would be more logical.
In other words: having speech, and Overlays in general, in same Z-ordering system as GUIs.

My opinion on your case though is still that you are trying some hacks to make it work, because if all you want is to hide the portrait, then the solution must be to turn the portrait off completely, not change its Z-order.
Maybe simply setting SpeechView to 0 may work (I don't remember how it works with Sierra speech style).

[Knox]

Oh you're right sorry I misread about the switch. It's all ok now, what I did is just temporarily set the default "say" view to a transparent one, then turned it back on once the custom portrait is done animating. The complicated thing (for me anyways) is that I have multiple layers of views/guis so that I can animate my portraits with various backgrounds, and put different emotions/clothes/props on top of existing views. All sorted now though, thanks!

Hope its ok I just use this thread for another follow up since I dont want to re-open the old one, but do you think we might be able to get AGSBlend merged into a new release some time? You said that this plugin is open source and that someone could just rebuild it, what does that mean? Would it be difficult (or not in your plans) to integrate it to a new version of AGS? Thanks for your time Crimson!

Hi,

Sorry for opening an old thread. I ran into a weird glitch and I also had a few questions regarding this plugin.

The glitch--> Since using 3.3.1 Alpha 1 (with custom resolutions), Ive noticed that using the PutAlpha function, it seems that some sprites get redrawn with semi-transparency in black/dark gray areas, when it should be opaque. Is this a problem with the plugin or 3.3.1 + custom res?

For my 2nd question, are there plans for this plugin to be merged into 3.3.1 with all the filters, Get/PutAlpha, etc?

Thanks!

[Crimson Wizard]

Hope its ok I just use this thread for another follow up since I dont want to re-open the old one, but do you think we might be able to get AGSBlend merged into a new release some time? You said that this plugin is open source and that someone could just rebuild it, what does that mean? Would it be difficult (or not in your plans) to integrate it to a new version of AGS? Thanks for your time Crimson!

You would have to ask someone else for that.
I do not have plans for next release, and my biggest wish is to stop working on AGS. I would do that already if not for Android port that I broke and trying to fix now.

[Knox]

Oh, that's too bad! Thanks for all the work you have done on AGS. Do you know who else might still be doing the kind of the work you've been doing for all these years?