Adventure Game Studio

AGS Support => Advanced Technical Forum => Topic started by: Monsieur OUXX on Mon 29/08/2011 16:52:47

Title: non-blocking Sierra-style dialogs
Post by: Monsieur OUXX on Mon 29/08/2011 16:52:47
Hi all,
During Mittens I had this discussion with other forumers: Does a module enable non-blocking Sierra-style dialogs?
In other words :
- It displays the character's portrait with the line next to it
- The animations in the background (and more generally, the game loop) don't stop

The native non-blocking dialog options of AGS seem to be restricted to Lucasarts-style dialogs (no portrait).

I've been trying several "custom dialogs" modules (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=36313.0) but unless I'm mistaken they only allow you to customize your dialog options/dialog tree, but not the actual dialog (that is, when the characters speak, with their portrait visible).
Title: Re: non-blocking Sierra-style dialogs
Post by: Radiant on Mon 29/08/2011 22:48:09
That doesn't strike me as difficult. Just pop up a non-blocking GUI, use an animated button to display the portrait, and set a timer to remove it after awhile.
Title: Re: non-blocking Sierra-style dialogs
Post by: Monsieur OUXX on Tue 30/08/2011 08:55:20
Quote from: Radiant on Mon 29/08/2011 22:48:09
That doesn't strike me as difficult. Just pop up a non-blocking GUI, use an animated button to display the portrait, and set a timer to remove it after awhile.

I've done it already....
Just don't want to ever re-invent the wheel. That's my personal way of life :-)

Also it creates some side problems:
- It forces you to create a function to wrap the text (line by line)
- You need to handle the end of the timer yourself, and it becomes a mess if you have several successive dialogs -- not to mention if they're part of a cutscene.

Anyway if no such module exists I'll just continue with mine.
Title: Re: non-blocking Sierra-style dialogs
Post by: Khris on Wed 31/08/2011 08:47:48
-Labels wrap text automatically.

-Code it so making it blocking is optional, and the mess in cutscenes should be gone. (You usually wouldn't call non-blocking speech during a cutscene, right?)