pauses between lines of dialogue

[FeMaiden]

this time i'm not asking about scripts but rather opinions from a design standpoint.

sorry for this "wall of text"(which is ironic because text in video games is kind of what i'm wanting to discuss)


I'm wondering you guys opinion when I have a trigger and it plays 3 or 4 hudPrint lines of dialoogue from the party members.
how long do you think I should make the pause between the lines of text as they get displayed?


I am testing my dialogue and I had a 2 second delay between the lines, and I thought that was long enough but I now realize, I was reading the lines faster because I already knew what they were going to say. plus I read a little bit faster than the average person. despite this, i was still having trouble following some of the longer lines.

so I adjusted it to 3 seconds and now I feel as if 3 seconds is not long enough to let a person read it either.

so I adjusted it to 4 seconds which seems fair.

however, I then thought "what if I read it out loud?" and i discovered that when i recited the lines out loud, it takes me 5-6 seconds to say them. so I adjusted it to 5 seconds(on the extremely low off chance that some youtuber might want to do a let's play...)

but the thing is, will it be too annoying if I keep having conversations that take 30 seconds to play out, and I end up conditioning my players to stop every time they see hear the sound of text popping up(i do a playSound whenever I do a hudPrint) for fear of missing an important plot element?

that could that be interpreted as me "artificially inflating" the length of my mod just because of all the reading? I don't know, I've played mods where i've been slowed to a crawl because they conditioned me to stop and inspect EVERY section of wall for fear of missing a secret button and I did not have the patience to finish those mods.

if I don't give people enough time to read the text, then they will complain.
but if Igive them too much time, will they be sitting there tapping their foot impatiently waiting for the next line of text?

and then , is it too much reading? I mean, lots of old school rpgs have text and reading in them. even the main campaign has the notes with text on them. but the difference with notes is that they can be read at your own pace, not mine. same thing with the Wordsworth's GUI tools with the dialogue box window that opens, you can read that at your own pace. and I assume those dialogue boxes temporarily disable monster movement?

right now, i currently adjusted all my delayes to go 5 seconds, but some of the shorter lines, have a slightly shorter delay of 3 or 4 seconds and It seems to be in a good place but I wondered about your opinions.

I might also be willing to attempt to learn the GUI toolkit and rewrite all my dialogue if you guys feel it would improve my mod

[Drakkan]

Start using John framework dialogue. This way you can make longer conversations as you saw in my mod, which player could either read, or eventually skip when do not want read it.

I think if you are using more hudprints dialogues it is quite boring for player as he need to wait till all is displayed one row by another... not mentioning that there is no correct answer for your "pause" question, because it just depends on how quickly can player read, which differs a lot. Also starting displaying these hudprints when player is heading somewhere is quite annoying as he need usually need stop and wait till all is displayed... so personally I am trying to avoid hudprints or use them just occasionally.

[FeMaiden]

Start using John framework dialogue. This way you can make longer conversations as you saw in my mod, which player could either read, or eventually skip when do not want read it.

I think if you are using more hudprints dialogues it is quite boring for player as he need to wait till all is displayed one row by another... not mentioning that there is no correct answer for your "pause" question, because it just depends on how quickly can player read, which differs a lot. Also starting displaying these hudprints when player is heading somewhere is quite annoying as he need usually need stop and wait till all is displayed... so personally I am trying to avoid hudprints or use them just occasionally.

yeah, what I tried to do is display most of the hudPrints in rooms, when the player first enters the door. only in rooms that have no enemies in them and the rooms usually have items on the floor, so the player is likely to linger around in that spot anyway. but yeah I see your point with having to always stop and read it. I thought putting shorter delays would speed that up but then people don't have time to read it lol.

I'm gonna try and see if I can make it work with the "john framework" as you called it

[FeMaiden]

shit...I'm worried i'm gonna have to do a whole overhaul of my mod just because of this...
like I said before. I just *love* doing things the hard way.

I probably should have just used john's tools to begin with

[FeMaiden]

someone told me once, I talk way too much, and I broadcast my thoughts when it is inappropriate.
I apologize for that. I don't want to spam the boards with my questions and commentary.

I'm learning to use the Gui tools, I've become proficient in the "messageBox".

however, this thing might not work for me, because it stays open until the player clicks it off, and it moves with the player and if I have multiple triggers to trigger other conversations, then the other conversations will not be able to open if the player leaves the box open from the previous dialogue...plus it obstructs the player's vision so I really can't have this thing popping up during combat or a boss fight.

I see many more options to explore. but now i'm feeling overwhelmed. basically, this dialogue/narrative is the thing that's taken me the most time in my mod, everything else went fairly quick. scripting my puzzles, making my maps, dropping the enemies and loot on the map. my favorite part was scripting the boss fights and making all the custom items.

it's this dialogue...my story depends on it. without dialogue this whole mod is gonna fall apart...

I know a "Classic" dungeon does not need ANY dialogue to work, so maybe I should have tried that as my first mod, I don't know.

I think i have a good mod here, if I can finish it.

I'm gonna try that window that pops up and the party can't move while they read it, I'm just hoping it stops monster movement too. but then I have boss fights where the characters yell out things during the fight, and the message boxes are gonna be inappropriate there.

I can't use any message boxes that stop the action when I have a boss fight where the player steps on a trigger and the villain comes out and the characters scream "it's him! run away! and then they try to get away and get to a door and then yell "the door is stuck! it won't open!" and the villain is bearing down on them and they have to find a secret button to open the door.

I could leave the hud prints in there for that one or use the info box message from the wordsworth tools.

but I dunno.

if it were not for this dialogue I might have been done by now lol

[Drakkan]

someone told me once, I talk way too much, and I broadcast my thoughts when it is inappropriate.
I apologize for that. I don't want to spam the boards with my questions and commentary.

I'm learning to use the Gui tools, I've become proficient in the "messageBox".

however, this thing might not work for me, because it stays open until the player clicks it off, and it moves with the player and if I have multiple triggers to trigger other conversations, then the other conversations will not be able to open if the player leaves the box open from the previous dialogue...plus it obstructs the player's vision so I really can't have this thing popping up during combat or a boss fight.

I see many more options to explore. but now i'm feeling overwhelmed. basically, this dialogue/narrative is the thing that's taken me the most time in my mod, everything else went fairly quick. scripting my puzzles, making my maps, dropping the enemies and loot on the map. my favorite part was scripting the boss fights and making all the custom items.

it's this dialogue...my story depends on it. without dialogue this whole mod is gonna fall apart...

I know a "Classic" dungeon does not need ANY dialogue to work, so maybe I should have tried that as my first mod, I don't know.

I think i have a good mod here, if I can finish it.

I'm gonna try that window that pops up and the party can't move while they read it, I'm just hoping it stops monster movement too. but then I have boss fights where the characters yell out things during the fight, and the message boxes are gonna be inappropriate there.

I can't use any message boxes that stop the action when I have a boss fight where the player steps on a trigger and the villain comes out and the characters scream "it's him! run away! and then they try to get away and get to a door and then yell "the door is stuck! it won't open!" and the villain is bearing down on them and they have to find a secret button to open the door.

I could leave the hud prints in there for that one or use the info box message from the wordsworth tools.

but I dunno.

if it were not for this dialogue I might have been done by now lol

reworking some parts of the dungeon belongs to the Log modding. If only dialogues need to be changed / scripted count yourself as a happy man .)
as for the solution - because you know the possibilities now, it is just up to you, how it will be done. Play some other mods / games , check how it is done and choose what you like the most or combine it somehow.

[FeMaiden]

reworking some parts of the dungeon belongs to the Log modding. If only dialogues need to be changed / scripted count yourself as a happy man .)
as for the solution - because you know the possibilities now, it is just up to you, how it will be done. Play some other mods / games , check how it is done and choose what you like the most or combine it somehow.

just for the record, I'm female, but I guess you couldn't know that, I tried to leave a clue to my gender with the "female beholder" avatar but I can't blame you for assuming "there's no girls on the internet" especially since modding seems to be the domain of guys, considering how many skimpy armor mods there are on the skyrim nexus... I don't suppose there are many female modders out there. I might be the only one on this site.
although i'm not quite sure I can really call myself a "modder" just yet. I had no idea what I would be in for when I attempted this.

and I'm sure theres all sorts of other stuff needs to be done.

example, I was using bridge pieces as the ceilings in my buildings and had places every bridge piece one by one, over 1000 of them. and then I noticed..there are ceiling pieces! and I was like, oh crap, no wonder my buildings look like ass, not to mention the automap was drawing the bridges over my buildings. so i spent hours going back deleting every bridge piece and replacing them with ceilings...it was tedious.

and now I have to rewrite ALL of my dialogues.

bosses are really easy to script, and my customized items were easy because I only changed stats around like attack power and gui names and power attacks.

custom monsters. I tried something different, I lowered the monster hit points, but I also lowered their movement cooldowns so it makes them much more aggressive but much more easier to kill.
seeing as many people consider the combat to be tedious, I tried to make it so combat goes faster while still remaining a threat to the player. and I was dabbling with the idea of messing with the brains but I don't quite understand how to do that.

[Drakkan]

reworking some parts of the dungeon belongs to the Log modding. If only dialogues need to be changed / scripted count yourself as a happy man .)
as for the solution - because you know the possibilities now, it is just up to you, how it will be done. Play some other mods / games , check how it is done and choose what you like the most or combine it somehow.

just for the record, I'm female, but I guess you couldn't know that.

consider yourself as a happy girl, then :d

[Isaac]

just for the record, I'm female, but I guess you couldn't know that.

The avatar was a give-away.

[Azel]

What?! That's a female Avatar??

Sheeiitt... wish I woulda known that before I got this tattoo