2 styles of dialogue...tracker update?

[Joseph]

Greetings amigos!

Ive read a few threads on the option of having 2 styles of dialogue at the same time...I believe someone even posted a link to having that feature in the "tracker".

Pumaman wrote in a thread  back in 2004 I think..."So what you're asking for is for the Lucasarts-style character animation, but with a Sierra-style text box with the speech in it? Sounds like a reasonable request."

Does anyone know the status of this feature, now that we are a good 5 years later?

[TerranRich]

If you're looking for a particular style of speech, it might be possible with some scripting.

[Galen]

Yes, I think (but don't quote me) you can directly control how text is rendered so you would just modify the code to draw a textbox and to implement wrapping of some sort.
It's gonna be relatively complex though.

[TerranRich]

All you have to do is figure out how the speech will look, then use a global function you define for that job every time you need it.

I'll give you an example. It's my own speech system that uses a fixed GUI label near the bottom of the screen, and to still support voice acting, I still use the Say() command, but with only voice turned on, and no text (using SetVoiceMode(eSpeechTextOnly) initially):

Code: ags

function SaySubtitle(this Character*, const string sText)
{
    lblDialog.TextColor = this.SpeechColor;
    lblDialog.Text = sText;
    this.Say(sText);
    while (this.Speaking == true) {
        Wait(1);
    }
    lblDialog.Text = "";
}

This allows me to use something like cBobJones.SaySubtitle("Hi, my name is Bob Jones!"); every time I want speech that looks like subtitles (much like newer adventure games use nowadays).

I hope this helps. (1) Figure out how speech will work. (2) Code it all out and put it in a global function. (3) Use that function each time you want to use that particular type of speech.