[SOLVED]beginner here, i'd like to have sierra and lucasarts type dialogues---

[Ardentsideburns]

i'm doing a little project to see if i can manage to make a short adventure game by myself. I'm an absolute beginner in regards of ags and programming, but i think i'm figuring things out little by little . I'm using the lucasarts template for my game and since the game has a small resolution i'd like to have some close ups of the characters when they talk, in addition to their normal lucasarts-like talking animation.

i thought of using a custom gui wirh two buttons  that would act as the characters portraits but i'm having a hard time understanding the help files and i don't really know how to change the button graphics dynamically to represent the characters talking nor how to have them animate when each character is talking.



(this is what i got so far using the custom gui..too bad it's room sensitive and i have no idea on how to do it for different characters..)


how would you tackle this problem?

[CaesarCub]

Hello mr Burns, good to see you here.

To change the graphics of a button for an animation, you can use Button.Animate(view, loop, delay, repeat)
Just create the talk animations like you would a character walking animation and put the number of the animation View and Loop, the delay is the speed (how many cycles it takes to show the next frame) and the repetition.

Since you are new when it comes to coding, I'd personally recommend you to try using the Sierra style speech. (in the General Settings tab, Dialog > Speech Style)
It's made for showing only one portrait at a time, but it is handled by the engine and automatically sets the length of the animations based on the amount of text the character is saying.
What you do to set it up is to set the animated portrait as the default character speaking animation.

[Khris]

You can simply use LucasArts style speech for the close ups, too.
All you need to do is create an additional AGS character for each close up. Set their normal view to a new view with the silent portrait as frame 0 in each of the four first loops, then add their speech sprites to a speech view, just as if they were regular characters.
When it's time for the close up, just do this:

Code: ags

  cPlayerPortrait.ChangeRoom(player.Room, 50,200);
  cDemonPortrait.ChangeRoom(player.Room, 250, 200);
  cPlayerPortrait.SetAsPlayer();
  dDialogDemon.Start();

Since cPlayerPortrait was moved to the current room, the SetAsPlayer command in line 3 shouldn't get queued; I haven't tested this though.

Anyway, just treat the close ups as characters standing close to the camera.

[CaesarCub]

I really like that solution, quite clever

[Ardentsideburns]

thanks guys, using your advices i managed to solve the problem!