Dialogs With Time Limits?

[FrancoFranchi]

Very much an amateur when it comes to doing anything beyond the manual basics, so hoping some kind folk could give me a steer in the right direction, as I couldn't find anything on this in the forum search.

My ideal dialog system for a game I'm working on would have all the dialog options run with a time limit - i.e. the user gets to choose from multiple responses A/B/C OR let the time run out (which would count as 'no response', which would impact the dialogue accordingly).

Is it possible to overlay dialog on a GUI with a timer?  Or would it require a completely new GUI that would bypass the dialog options entirely (with buttons representing the A/B/C/D dialog options)?  As my design document as quite dialog heavy, I'm trying to work out how to code this as 'elegantly' as possible.

Any help would be appreciated!

[hedgefield]

It's funny that you ask because only recently I built this very same system as an experiment. You can see it in action in my game 15 Minutes.

I'm not sure how good your scripting is, but if you say you cannot do much beyond the basics yet I would strongly recommend not trying to build a similar system by yourself.
For the timer and the auto-selection to work you will have to completely abandon the built-in dialogue system and write your own, something that takes a lot of advanced coding. I have been using AGS for over 5 years now and it was a hefty brain-twister for me already.
That being said, the system I made is pretty modular and can easily be ported to another game, so if you really want a dialogue system with a timer I could certainly help you set it up.

[FrancoFranchi]

It's funny that you ask because only recently I built this very same system as an experiment. You can see it in action in my game 15 Minutes.

I'm not sure how good your scripting is, but if you say you cannot do much beyond the basics yet I would strongly recommend not trying to build a similar system by yourself.

Wow, that's very similar to what I was envisioning (Tex Murphy-esque dialogue choices with a Mass Effect twist) - love the Con-Flo thing you put together too.  I've got a bit of a disdain to the usual "ask everyone everything" approach as tends to turn the characters into just ATM machines giving out information machines instead of money.   I'm hoping it'll help give interaction with the characters a bit more gravitas.

That being said, the system I made is pretty modular and can easily be ported to another game, so if you really want a dialogue system with a timer I could certainly help you set it up.

That would be incredibly awesome - as I said, I am relatively inexperienced, so I doubt I can redesign an interface from scratch (I think I'd end up having to create a GUI for every single separate dialog in the game, which would get very messy) but I'm patient enough to tinker around to get a half-decent result.   

Will leave some space in the credits for you if you can lend a hand

[hedgefield]

PMed you.

[monkey0506]

This actually is exactly the reason why we need a Dialog.RunInteraction(int option) function. If that function existed (or could be reasonably worked around*) then you could pair this question together with the custom dialog rendering functions and a bit of custom timer scripting.


*It can be worked around, it's just bloody messy trying to do it with the built-in dialog system, and I believe actually impossible to do via said system if using the text parser on the dialog. Which stupidly can't be switched off via the script.