Dialogue Pacing

Derrick Freeland · Wed 14/12/2011 23:22:50

I'm starting to put dialogue into my game and I have a question about the pacing. AGS will let me do pauses, long or short, allowing me to pace the dialogue for more dramatic effect, but I'm worried that it might get tedious or confusing to play through these scenes. Any thoughts?

Khris · Wed 14/12/2011 23:41:11

I hate pauses in dialogs because one usually can't skip them.
There's nothing more irritating than when you accidentally click an option the second time and you just want to quickly click away 10+ lines of dialog but can't due to the pauses.

I don't know if it's possible to use the Start/EndCutscene commands in dialog scripts; it might work fine. That way, one could for instance skip a single line with a click and all of the dialog option's lines with the escape key. Certainly worth a try.

Knoodn · Wed 14/12/2011 23:59:46

Yes, StartCutscene/EndCutscene is working inside dialogue scripts.

What I do is the use of the WaitMouseKey command. So you can define the lenght of the pause and it's cancleable with a mouse click and by pressing a key.

Radiant · Thu 15/12/2011 00:06:33

What you could also do is have the character.Say ("...") to demonstrate a dramatic pause. This has the advantage of working exactly the same as other lines of dialogue.

Derrick Freeland · Thu 15/12/2011 01:43:54

Thanks for the excellent suggestions. I think I'll try out a combo of the three. It'll be good to see the pauses as (...), but also be able to click away from them. As it is now, you can click through the pauses, but I haven't added in the 'say' option yet.

In general, do you think pacing the dialogue and using dramatic pauses are annoying for players? As the designer of the game, I'm all about finding in-game ways for the characters to 'perform' their parts, but I don't know if players will respond to that kind of thing in a positive way.

Snarky · Thu 15/12/2011 08:17:36

Personally I've always liked it (and also if characters do stuff while talking, like turn away, take a step towards the person they're talking to, etc.). It does often come across as a little theatrical, but as long as you don't take yourself too seriously in writing it, I think that adds to the fun.

The ways people have suggested for making sure pauses are skippable are definitely recommended. It might also be best to limit it to cases where the acting actually has an impact, or your character will seem hammy: "I can't pick ... that up!"

Secret Fawful · Thu 15/12/2011 08:55:05

I wouldn't personally make a game without dialog pacing, dramatic dialog, and theatricality, because that's how I enjoy games. People who skip dialog annoy me, because all I can think is...THEN WHY ARE YOU PLAYING?

I used to be an awful person to play video games with because I used to FORCE friends to sit there and read every bit of dialogue. I would of course give the option to skip a cutscene or a piece of dialog in a game I designed. I see pacing and theatricality all too little in AGS games and it leaves me wondering...why? Why not put in that extra effort to do these things? Yes, it's slow. Yes, it's tedious. But it's so SO rewarding.

Well, okay, I see it a lot more than I used to.

Radiant · Thu 15/12/2011 16:46:24

Quote from: Secret Fawful on Thu 15/12/2011 08:55:05
People who skip dialog annoy me, because all I can think is...THEN WHY ARE YOU PLAYING?

Probably because they're a fast reader.

It really breaks gameplay if you've finished reading a paragraph and are not allowed to go to the next paragraph for another five seconds.

Secret Fawful · Thu 15/12/2011 23:10:30

Quote from: Radiant on Thu 15/12/2011 16:46:24
Probably because they're a fast reader.

It really breaks gameplay if you've finished reading a paragraph and are not allowed to go to the next paragraph for another five seconds.

No I mean people who skip dialog and don't read it. As in "Boring! Let me get to the game!" skip skip skip skip skip sort of people.

Darkdan · Fri 16/12/2011 13:08:24

I personally find very important to give a precise rhythm to dialogues.

For me :

stepmother : "I'll come and stay with you for a week"
son-in-law : "Oh... Great."

Is not the same thing as :

stepmother : "I'll come and stay with you for a week"
son-in-law : "Oh..."
< long pause >
son-in-law : "...Great."

cat · Fri 16/12/2011 13:29:55

Exactly, the second example with the pretty useless and overdramatic pause would make me want to skip.
This example would only make sense if the character, instead of making a pause, would turn to face the player. Pauses can be a nice thing to make dialogs more dramatic but they tend to be overused.

Anian · Fri 16/12/2011 13:41:09

Quote from: cat on Fri 16/12/2011 13:29:55
Exactly, the second example with the pretty useless and overdramatic pause would make me want to skip.
This example would only make sense if the character, instead of making a pause, would turn to face the player. Pauses can be a nice thing to make dialogs more dramatic but they tend to be overused.

Indeed, the first example has quite enough of a pause, in text esspecially you already have signs and agreed symbols that people who read know what they mean and how to percive them. The extra long pause would only break rythm if anything, like you broke the thought of the sentence into two paragraphs, you'd never do that in a book because it means you changed the thought and theme to another, maybe even, unrelated thing.
Maybe a middle ground like there being to separate line "Oh..." then the other "...great" would work fine - the pause is like between two thought/sentences and that's what it is.

"Oh, great" would mean that they like it and "Oh...Great" means saracastic, it's already incorporated into reading culture, same way you roll your eyes when you think something is stupid, you don't roll them twice when you think it's really stupid. Now a writer might put "Oh," he managed to crack a smile "great." but that's without an extra media (music, drawing) which you can do in a game, so there's no need to indicate everything with text quite the opposite.