Better dialogue box support?

When I last used C2, I found there was no basic method to implement dialogue boxes without custom scripting. I find it strange to see such an integral feature to many games missing from the featureset, given the amount of features already provided.

Are there plans to have any form of dialogue feature in place in C3, maybe based off global array variables?

How exactly do you imagine this feature working?

I wouldn't want to implement all the rendering of the dialog boxes automatically, since that is getting too close to "cookie-cutter" engine features. It should also be reasonable to do with your own events, but that doesn't mean we can't add features to make that easier. The question is exactly what features you want and a detailed description of how they work.

The question is exactly what features you want and a detailed description of how they work.

I think a scrollable (with keyboard, mouse, touch, scrollbar on demand) text field with in-line formatting would solve most of the difficulties of creating a dialogue box. I've also coded my own recently, and while I agree that C2 and C3 shouldn't be a "cookie-cutter" engine, a text field like this could be very helpful.

This might be more along the lines of "prefabs", or snippets of events that can be copied and pasted from one project to another.

It was discussed a bit when C3 feature requests were made.

That or support for directly making plugs via the event sheet. (one of the main features I hope we get)

That or support for directly making plugs via the event sheet. (one of the main features I hope we get)

That would solve even more issues like this. This is on the top of my wishlist for C3.

Sorry for the delay, been in personal hell recently but have now emerged.

My thoughts on this are based on an older build, installing the latest now, but what I wondered was if it was possible have a system by which we can create a separate logic tree dedicated to dialogue and be ableto trigger segments of this, rather than draw text objects to the screen and hide them for triggering in an event later. The last I tried this, I was making a merchant screen and was drawing text to the screen for every item the merchant sold, manually, and it was rather cumbersome given I'd have to do it for 40+ planets.

Installing the latest C2 build to have a poke and see what else I can do to accomplish what I had in mind, but that is what I was thinking of.

Sorry for the delay, been in personal hell recently but have now emerged.

My thoughts on this are based on an older build, installing the latest now, but what I wondered was if it was possible have a system by which we can create a separate logic tree dedicated to dialogue and be ableto trigger segments of this, rather than draw text objects to the screen and hide them for triggering in an event later. The last I tried this, I was making a merchant screen and was drawing text to the screen for every item the merchant sold, manually, and it was rather cumbersome given I'd have to do it for 40+ planets.

Installing the latest C2 build to have a poke and see what else I can do to accomplish what I had in mind, but that is what I was thinking of.

It's possible to put together a dialogue system with events that can be used for each of those 40+ planets - there's no reason you should have to create a unique dialogue with events for every single one individually.

It's possible to put together a dialogue system with events that can be used for each of those 40+ planets - there's no reason you should have to create a unique dialogue with events for every single one individually.

Can you please provide an outline of how you'd accomplish this? I'm perhaps not yet accustomed to the event systems to that degree. My plan was 40+ planets, each with dedicated vendors, so their own inventories and a window that would display their items, like looping through an array and outputting data. I'm not certain how I'd go about making a dialogue system without drawing text objects to the screen and a bitmap layer to replicate a window...

Any links would be appreciated. Perhaps this could be moved to support as well?

How exactly do you imagine this feature working?

Ashley

Currently to achieve a scrollable, typing dialog effect with multiple fonts or webfonts, I am using Rex's Typing, Scrolling, and TagText plugins and also Boundary for the scrollbar.

You can see my end result here:

http://www.thezeroreview.com/growth

It was not elegant or simple to setup, but I think you could look a these plugins/behaviors as inspiration for a better way to integrate features into the editor in a game-agnostic way.

Currently the scrolling is really cropping the lines of text in a buffer, instead of actually masking the text etc. It would be ideal to be able to mimic a true scrolling text field element as if in a browser perhaps.

http://c2rexplugins.weebly.com/rex_text_scrolling.html

http://c2rexplugins.weebly.com/rex_text_typing.html

http://c2rexplugins.weebly.com/rex_tagtext.html

http://c2rexplugins.weebly.com/rex_boundary.html