(solved) Pausing Dialog and Customizing Dialog Appearance? (sierra)

[skooperstooper]

I don't want to flood the forum today so I'm putting all of these together since they're related. I don't think I've been googling the right keywords or searching here properly.

1) Is there a simple way to keep "say" lines on screen until the player advances them in the same way "display/displayat" works?

2) Is there a way to customize the look of the dialog bar that pops up on the bottom? Just changing the background color or more importantly, how close the responses are to each other. It looks smooshed to me.

3) How do I change the border of the regular text box? I know I can change the background color in the gui but I could've sworn the tutorial said you can change the border as well somehow and don't remember.

4) This is random but the manual mentions a "thought uses bubble GUI" setting. Where is that?

Thanks!

Bookmark
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/Character.html
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/Globalfunctions_Message.html
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/Game.html

[heltenjon]

1) Is there a simple way to keep "say" lines on screen until the player advances them in the same way "display/displayat" works?

Go to General Settings in the project tree. Under "Dialog", find the line "Allow speech to be skipped by which events". Default should be mouse, keyboard or timer. Change it to what you prefer (excluding timer).

You'll also notice that in the same place, there are options for customizing the dialog bar, like you asked about in your second question ("Gap between dialog options").

[skooperstooper]

Goodness! I looked at the general settings for dialog obviously but I thought the gap between dialog options meant something else lol

For the other one, the setting says "allow speech to be skipped" and mine has always been on the default with the m/kb or timer. I thought that meant speech would stay on the screen unless I manually skipped it or scripted a timer for it to follow.

I didn't realize AGS already had its own timer it would use, so I thought the dialog was moving on its own because that's the normal behavior of speech. Not because of that setting. I switched it to m/kb and it's fine now, thanks!

Now I just need 3 and 4 and can mark it as solved.

[newwaveburritos]

What exactly are you trying to accomplish with the thinking setting?  I think for three and four you specify which GUI to use in general settings under "text output."  If you have nothing then it uses the built-in one.  I haven't messed with these personally though so I can't really speak to how they work.

[Laura Hunt]

3 and 4 basically have the same answer (if by "regular text box" you mean the box that is used for Display commands). There is a special kind of GUI called Text Window GUI that you can create by right clicking on the GUIs project tree and selecting "New Text Window GUI". These GUIs allow you to provide graphics for the four corners and the four sides of the box (up, down, top and bottom) and the GUI will resize itself automatically to fit its content.

Once you've created this GUI you can assign it to Display commands (General Settings -> Text Output -> Custom text window GUI) or to characters' Think commands (Custom thought bubble GUI). In the former case, the GUI will always appear centered on the screen, and in the latter, it will appear over characters' heads. Text Window GUIs' fonts can't be customized though, so they will always use whatever font you set as Game.NormalFont.

You can also use Text Window GUIs to display dialog options, but since the GUI in this case will always appear centered on the screen, it's better to use a regular GUI for that and assign it with General Settings -> Dialog -> Use GUI for dialog options. (this also answers part of #2: if you want to change the background colour of the dialog bar, just create a regular GUI, customize it to your heart's content, and assign it to dialogs).

[skooperstooper]

Thanks so much for the detailed info, Laura! I should've been more clear about what I already know and what I don't to save you time but this will help others anyway.

What I couldn't remember was how to customize the border for my text gui. I did it when I first started AGS but going back to update it, I couldn't remember how. I knew I imported graphics for the corners but couldn't figure out where and the only options I had in properties were for the colors.

I finally realized what I was doing wrong. I was zoomed out and the corner graphics were so small I literally couldn't see them. My gui looked like a solid block with no border and the faint outline didn't give it away.

I kept clicking around in it trying to get the borders to come up but I never clicked on the actual window edges themselves. I thought I was crazy until you confirmed that's how you do it! What I didn't know was for 2, that I can assign my own gui to the dialog box as well. I thought that might be its own thing for the Sierra template. Thanks!

It's gonna take me a while to remember every setting I see and where and what it does. There's a lot of jumping around between panels, so even though I already went through and played with this stuff and read all about it, I forget if I don't need to look at it again for a while. It took me an hour to remember how to change a character's sprite!

It'll stick eventually. Thanks so much for all your help! Also, newwave, the thought bubble thing doesn't have anything to do with what I'm scripting. I just saw it mentioned while reading the manual and didn't remember seeing that setting anywhere so I was curious about it.

[Crimson Wizard]

I finally realized what I was doing wrong. I was zoomed out and the corner graphics were so small I literally couldn't see them. My gui looked like a solid block with no border and the faint outline didn't give it away.

I kept clicking around in it trying to get the borders to come up but I never clicked on the actual window edges themselves. I thought I was crazy until you confirmed that's how you do it! What I didn't know was for 2, that I can assign my own gui to the dialog box as well. I thought that might be its own thing for the Sierra template. Thanks!

You do not have to click on them, you may select them for editing in the list on top of the properties panel. Same for GUI, rooms etc, there's a list of all the objects of the current editor / mode.

[Laura Hunt]

You do not have to click on them, you may select them for editing in the list on top of the properties panel. Same for GUI, rooms etc, there's a list of all the objects of the current editor / mode.

By the way, since we're talking about this, would it be possible, if it's not too much work at this stage, to implement a small quality of life improvement and give more explicit names to the different objects in the text window GUI? Right now, when you bring up the drop down, they're called simply TextWindowEdge; ID 0, TextWindowEdge; ID 1, and so on. It would be SO much more convenient if they were called something like TextWindowEdge (top left); ID 0, TextWindowEdge (bottom left); ID 1, etc.

I do know that AGS 3.6.0 is pretty much ready to ship though, so I'm only suggesting this in case it's straightforward to implement and doesn't risk breaking other stuff, of course.

[Crimson Wizard]

By the way, since we're talking about this, would it be possible, if it's not too much work at this stage, to implement a small quality of life improvement and give more explicit names to the different objects in the text window GUI? Right now, when you bring up the drop down, they're called simply TextWindowEdge; ID 0, TextWindowEdge; ID 1, and so on. It would be SO much more convenient if they were called something like TextWindowEdge (top left); ID 0, TextWindowEdge (bottom left); ID 1, etc.

I do know that AGS 3.6.0 is pretty much ready to ship though, so I'm only suggesting this in case it's straightforward to implement and doesn't risk breaking other stuff, of course.

The displayed names of objects and properties in the editor are purely cosmetic and they do not affect anything else. But certain names are constructed through a weird way and may require additional tweaking of the code to change; so I may look into this but don't give promises at this moment.

[skooperstooper]

Omg! I forgot that's a dropdown in the panel despite having the flyout arrow. Thanks! It would've been more tedious because of the generic naming so I would've had to scroll to select the edges I wanted anyway (I'm not going to memorize the order they're listed in). But the fact that it highlights the elements in red would've at least tipped to me off to their existence lol It's good that I don't have to click then, but that's how I learned it so not doing that is what I was doing wrong in my steps.

[Crimson Wizard]

I added them proper names in 3.6.0 (will be released in the next update), that appeared to be simple enough.

[Laura Hunt]

I added them proper names in 3.6.0 (will be released in the next update), that appeared to be simple enough.

Oh, awesome! Thanks a lot