Ok, I'm trying to make an interface similar to Gabriel Knight 1, where all text, dialog as well as other messages, appear in a letterboxed area at the bottom of the screen.
Easy, I thought, I'll just customize the text window and place it at the bottom of the screen. But lo and behold, as soon as I turn the GUI into a text box, the X,Y coordinate settings no longer apply. Is there ANY way of moving the speech box to the bottom of the screen and setting a fixed size (I'm keeping an eye on message lengths so as to not overflow the window). Or am I stuck using the DisplayAt command for all text?
I've considered using LucasArts speech, turning all text into voice, and making a hidden narrator character. But I really could use the anti-aliased fonts which doesn't work in LucasArts style (in my opinion, those different speech styles really confuse things more than they help. I still haven't figured out what QFG4 speech does). I'm using a black background for the text anyway, so there's really no need for the transparency of LA text.
I would make a GUI, which represents the text window, as you did, and put a large label to it, and control the text in that label with SetLabelText. You could create your own command which sets the text automatically and does the neccesery checks, something like SetTextWinMessage or so...
can you use this?
game.speech_text_gui=12; // the text gui you created
DisplaySpeechAt (int x, int y, int width, CHARID, string message);
I assume you are using sierra speech with background.
with that you can put the box where ever you like and specify the width, it sounds like what your after.
hope it helps
~Tim
Thank you very much. Sounds like it would get the trick done. I'll try it out!
Ok, it's official, I HATE the way AGS currently handles guis and text windows. Sure, it's flexible, but only as long as you're emulating Sierra and LucasArts. What I wouldn't give for an easier to customize gui setup - especially now when we have templates that allow newbies to start with the classic interfaces and speech styles anyway.
Sorry for that little rant, but either I've overlooked something very obvious, or I have one or two suggestions for the next version of AGS.
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can you use this?
game.speech_text_gui=12; // the text gui you created
DisplaySpeechAt (int x, int y, int width, CHARID, string message);
I thought I could, but then I realized that the speech_text_gui is ALSO an ordinary text window that centers on the screen. And the DisplaySpeechAt and DisplayAt commands MUST be used for each line of speech, don't they? This wouldn't be THAT much of a problem for ordinary messages, but it makes dialog scripting unnecessarily complicated.
If there's no other solution, I'd like to suggest this to CJ: Permanent (until changed in script) custom "int x, int y, int width" settings for Display and DisplaySpeech commands (the latter also used for ordinary dialog and should be set on a per character basis - or universal but able to be over-ridden per character). Maybe this could include the different-font-for-different character thing that somebody else suggested.
Somebody have a better idea, or I'll suggest it in the technical forum? For now I'll be scripting my game in the ordinary way. I hope that somewhere further down the line we'll be able to either set the placement and size of text windows or we'll have something similar to what I suggested.
Edit: Maybe a tad unrelated. But can you do Sierra style speech without the closeup view? I mean, I want my character sprite to be talking, but in his ordinary view. If I include a talking view of him moving his mouth, it's displayed as if it was a closeup, off-set from the character. I seem to remember some games that had the on-screen character moving his mouth as well as using a closeup, but maybe those were the original Sierra games and not AGS games?