Adventure Game Studio

AGS Support => Beginners' Technical Questions => Topic started by: on Fri 28/11/2008 12:09:14

Title: Beginners questions about the 3.1.1 display dialog feature
Post by: on Fri 28/11/2008 12:09:14
After reading the manual, I still feel a bit lost with the way you can script your "own way to display dialog lines". I understand the basic scripting well enough I think, but... here.

I want to display my dialog topics in an area of a fixed size, with scrolling arrows if there are more lines than fit the window. How would I do that? Do I need a GUI with the arrows and detect the clicks? Anything else? A few pointers in the right direction would be highly appreciated.

I'm not only asking for myself btw.; I think the feature is great but a bit too advanced for beginners, so a general "tutorial thread" should be useful.
Title: Re: Beginners questions about the 3.1.1 display dialog feature
Post by: Trent R on Fri 28/11/2008 13:26:01
If it existed, I'd use a String.Split(' ') function along with GetTextWidth/Height to be able to dynamically change the length of the string and wordwrap.

Looking at the manual, I'm thinking that you could possibly make a Split function using IndexOf, Truncate, Replace, and some other functions.


~Trent
Title: Re: Beginners questions about the 3.1.1 display dialog feature
Post by: Ishmael on Sat 29/11/2008 09:19:09
Dialog lines, yes, but having scrollable dialog topics I think you need to do a bit more than just that. You'll need to make a GUI where you put in the arrow buttons and some labels or buttons, and update their texts according to which ones are being scrolled to, as well as have clicking on one run the option number with the right offset.

I wouldn't imagine it being hard, it's just a bit of work. There might be an easier way I'm overlooking, but I'm pretty sure I'd know how to do the same thing if I needed it and get it looking and working as intended, which would be fine for me at least.
Title: Re: Beginners questions about the 3.1.1 display dialog feature
Post by: on Sat 29/11/2008 21:32:28
Ishmael, you're right I think... I see a way. Thanks for removing the "writer's block"!
Title: Re: Beginners questions about the 3.1.1 display dialog feature
Post by: Trent R on Sat 29/11/2008 21:38:21
Ahh, I did read 'lines' rather than 'topics'. My bad.

~Trent