Character.Speaking not returning true if there isn't a SpeechView set?

[Ryan Timothy B]

So what's the deal with Character.Speaking not returning true if you don't have a SpeechView set and the character is talking with the regular Say function?

Is there a workaround?

Thanks.

[Snarky]

Is there a workaround?

Uh, set a SpeechView? If you don't have any separate animations for it, you can just make a 1-frame view using the standing frame. (Or 2-frame using the standing frame for both; I can never remember if you need two frames for SpeechView to run.)

[Ryan Timothy B]

This is for my animation layering system for Journey of Iesir. Where you have a head character and a body character (can be used for multiple game characters at once, but mostly just the Player character). The body character does the walking and talking, and the head character animates depending on if the body character is talking or not. That is, if there is a SpeechView set for the head.

It's nearly functional minus this one last issue, since there are some body poses that will more than likely not have a SpeechView.


I could create the extra Loops for the talking View. I guess it can work there will be hundreds of Loops. And it does open a new issue though. Where if I wanted to Animate the body character dropping a bag of coins for instance while he's talking, I won't be able to use Character.Speaking to check whether to animate the head character to talk.


The only other solution is to use the head character as the Talking character, but since with the majority of the game the character won't be layered with the head and body characters. I'd have to create my own extender function to talk with either the head or body depending on if the head character is currently active. But extender functions don't work with auto-number speech lines and voice acting script.


Ughh.. Why doesn't Character.Speaking just freakin work while he's actually speaking regardless of whether he's animating or not? lol Headaches suck.

[Ryan Timothy B]

So now that the AGS code is released, is there any chance the engine could have Character.Speaking set as true regardless of whether the character has a speechView set and is animating? Or does this break anything?

I'm not sure what AGS does with the Character.Speaking boolean, it must use it to check then animate the talking frames. But I see no reason why it can't simply check if the speecView is higher than 0 and animate or not with that information.


It would also be nice to have a Character.SpeakingBackground boolean as well. Possibly even having sayBackground animate the character when they talk as well (although I've never actually used sayBackground, just read up on it, but I plan on it soon).