Disable Idle while talking (and listening)

AndersM · Mon 14/07/2003 23:28:36

OK. My hero goes into Idle animation while 'under dialog'. His talking animation only works while he talks, but when he listens (while the other guy talks) the hero gos into idle animation. This looks bad, 'cos the hero then turns his back against the character he talks to. Can I disable the idle animation during the whole conversation, and when it's over enable it again (in a way that not includes 22 lines of scripting) ?

AJA · Tue 15/07/2003 15:22:30

QuoteSetCharacterIdle (CHARID, int idleview, int delay)

Changes the character CHARID's idle view to IDLEVIEW, with a timeout of DELAY seconds of inactivity before it is played. Inactivity is defined as when the character is not moving and not being animated. Setting DELAY to 0 causes the idle view to be looped continuously when the character is not moving - this is useful when for example the character is swimming and they need to tread water when idle. Pass IDLEVIEW as -1 to disable the idle view completely.

Use SetCharacterIdle(CHARID,-1,0) just before the conversation and SetCharacterIdle(CHARID,IDLEVIEW,DELAY) after the conversation has finished.

AndersM · Tue 15/07/2003 15:53:26

He still goes into idle while talking...

Scummbuddy · Tue 15/07/2003 17:16:38

Add a wait command right after the set idle command.

AndersM · Tue 15/07/2003 19:00:15

OK, thanx to you i solved the trouble myself... Please help me with my other topic, the 'move npc to other room'

Pumaman · Tue 15/07/2003 20:17:53

The reason this happens is that often idle animations are simple things like putting their hands in their pockets or having a smoke - which they would still do when being talked to

Scummbuddy · Tue 15/07/2003 20:24:45

What if Bernard started picking his nose while in the middle of a conversation with Dr. Fred in Day of the Tentacle? Pure madness.

Anyways, did the wait command fix it, or what did you do?

AndersM · Wed 16/07/2003 00:00:07

actually, I dunno what fixed it. I put a mixture of a' wait' command and a 'disable idle' command, and it worked, and now I don't dare to remove any of them...

If it hadn't worked, i'd changed the idle wiev to a more neutral one. The one i use now the hero turns his back towards most people when he goes idle..

GarageGothic · Wed 16/07/2003 10:11:35

I was thinking, how about an option for a "listen" view? As Scummbuddy gave a brilliant example of, idle animations doesn't always fit the talking situation, but on the other hand static characters aren't very realistic either.

AndersM · Wed 16/07/2003 14:06:06

...or just something like 'disable idle under dialog' or something. And I would like to see that all player-character options where able for non-player characters too, it would save lots of scripting time...

Pumaman · Wed 16/07/2003 18:41:42

The problem is that a listen-view is impossible, since there's no way AGS can know which character is listening.

For example, if there are three characters on the screen, and two of them are talking to each other, it has no way of knowing that character A is listening to B, but character C is just standing on their own seperately.

QuoteAnd I would like to see that all player-character options where able for non-player characters too, it would save lots of scripting time...

I don't really understand what you mean - all the Character commands can be run for any character.

AndersM · Thu 17/07/2003 11:59:47

No they cant. If a non-player character walks of the edge of the screen, he does not get transported to the room that is put in the 'player walks off edge' command. I couldn't make it work, anyway. There is allso not any 'player stands on hotspot' that works with non-player-characters...

Pumaman · Thu 17/07/2003 20:43:28

Oh, you mean events. It's rather more complex to get them working for NPC's, but I take your point.