[Feedback] Dialogue Box For Lazy People

Hi everyone I did a dialogue box that uses XML and made a little game to show what it can do. I'd like to have some ideas for improvements.

You can check it there

https://www.scirra.com/arcade/other-games/dialogue-box-for-lazy-people-8915

and here is the project file

https://games.scirra.net/games/8915/files/game.capx

I've written a quick tutorial about how to write the XML files.

https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/5373/how-to-use-the-dialogue-box-for-lazy-people

Very nice.

Its very sheer, but you can add: skip all button, speed up animation button (or press X to speed up animation), and sklii check for decision ramification

I enjoyed the funny demo!

Your text typing effect has the same problem mine had, where if a word starts typing at the end of the textbox it doesn't get word-wrapped until it's gotten long enough and so you can see words 'jump' from one line to the other mid-typing. This is the function I wrote to fix it though, which basically processes the text to automatically have line breaks before it gets sent to the typer (source text goes into a variable named textToProcess, and my spritefont object has an internal variable charsPerLine containing the maximum number of characters per line - I decided to store this in a variable since it can change in my game depending on the content of the text box, because the text is longer and fills the whole box if there is not a character portrait):

I'm using Rex's Typing plugin for my typing effect, and you don't need to use the AreYouTyping boolean, I just added that to my code so I can test if my text object is currently in the middle of typing something already. Hope this helps

hobibit[quote:24niwbqf]Very nice.

Its very sheer, but you can add: skip all button, speed up animation button (or press X to speed up animation), and sklii check for decision ramification

I just added the skip button and a sound effect, thanks for your comment .

mikehive[quote:24niwbqf]Your text typing effect has the same problem mine had, where if a word starts typing at the end of the textbox it doesn't get word-wrapped until it's gotten long enough

Is it really a problem? I kind of don't mind this. Keeping the number of character per line is a good idea, but do you think it would still be possible if I allow to change the text font?

Is it really a problem? I kind of don't mind this.

Well, it's up to you! I hated it in my project; it looked turbo unprofessional to me. Like, you'd never see that happen in Zelda or whatever, you know? I like to make things look as slick as they can. But if you don't care you don't care

Keeping the number of character per line is a good idea, but do you think it would still be possible if I allow to change the text font?

You're right in that you do need to have your characters per line locked down to a constant number for this to work, which is a reason (one of many) I use spritefont objects for text, and not the actual text object, because yes, changes to font (and also differences in how fonts display on different systems) will mess up your count of how many characters to allow per line. I would really recommend using spritefonts for dialogue boxes instead of normal text anyway, aside from the issue of the typing effect - if you're making a serious game that will need to work on a variety of different machines, the normal text object is just not a robust enough approach to handle it.

mikehive[quote:2pkczd0m]Well, it's up to you! I hated it in my project; it looked turbo unprofessional to me. Like, you'd never see that happen in Zelda or whatever, you know? I like to make things look as slick as they can. But if you don't care you don't care

Well I guess that's what most people want, so I might as well do it if I want it to be useful for other people.

I never really used spritefont objects, I will look into that

By the way I checked out your dev blog, your game has a nice look.

Good luck! Let me know if I can help with anything

And thank you!!

mikehive

I fixed it

Ahhhh right on! Looks great man

Thanks

Oh wow, this is really good. I might use this for my Zelda Gamekit, if you don't mind.

Oh wow, this is really good. I might use this for my Zelda Gamekit, if you don't mind.

Thanks Go for it, that's why I shared it. Tell me if you have ideas of improvements you will need to make it more zelda-like.

I'll PM you if I run into any issues with what I've made

I'll PM you if I run into any issues with what I've made

I'll be happy to help

I just did a new update:

-Now you can put variable names (like this {variable})in the dialogue file, and it will replace it by it's value. The variable has to be in the dictionary "DialogueVariables".

• I also added a field "auto" in the XML. if set to 1 it will automatically go to the next speech line when the text is displayed.

I changed the demo to add this and updated the Capx file.

Hey, do you think you could make a version without the avatar faces? I'd would want to use that as a basis for the one I'm editing.

Also, you might want to simplify the xml file format or at least provide some sort of guide on how to build proper dialogs. A question, if we're using say, multiple entities (npcs, signs, etc), how would you differentiate from them in order to tell the dialogue system which part of the xml file is for which npc/sign?