LDC (Localized Dialogs & Cutscenes) - Powerful and intuitive Dialog System with tons of features!

I am happy you released v5. Could you add a demo, with 2 scenes: scene 1 with a GUI, a canvas with a simple text like, "Mel's New VN", and 4 buttons PLAY, OPTIONS, LOAD, QUIT, with the scripts for navigation, and a basic LOAD/SAVE menu connected to tokens, on scene 2?

 

Hi ocimpean,

I'm quite swamped at the moment but everything in v5 works pretty much the same way as it did previously. If there's something you're having problems with feel free to send me a pm with your invoice number and I'll be happy to help

- Mel

 

Sorry to bother you, I know you are very much in demand. The only thing that I had trouble with is the save/load & tokens. As I am not a programmer, for the last project I went with another one that had what I need out if the box.
Regarding the invoice number, I sent it to you few years back when I bought LDC from your site

 

Hi ocimpean, please send a PM / email and let me know exactly what you're trying to do!

- Mel

 

Hi Everyone!

I am a total noob to Unity and I've been enjoying building games with LDC, but sometimes my complete lack of coding gets in my way. I hope you guys can help me.

I'm building a new adventure game using LDC. I want the player to be able to choose inventory at the start of the game. Throughout the game, they can trade with other characters, and I also want to spring surprises on them like - oh no! You've just lost half your supplies!

I can see how to set up tokens, no problem. But since I don't know how many, for example, guns they will have in their inventory, I don't know how or where to set up an algorithm to figure out what they have and deduct 1/2. With tokens I can add or subtract, but that would depend on what that individual decided to do. There has to be a mathematical way to do this. But how? Would it be in player preferences? What sort of code would I use?

I sure would appreciate any help you can give me. Thank you so much!

Beth

 

Hi Beth,

The fastest way to do this would be to create a small function that LDC would call via the SendMessage action.

Lets assume you've setup the following tokens as weapons (knife, pistol and shotgun), and whenever the player finds one of these items, you set the token for it to 1. So in other words, 0 means they don't have it, and 1 means that they do.

TOKENS IN LDC INSPECTOR
$HasKnife = 0
$HasPistol = 0
$HasShotgun = 0

CREATE THIS SCRIPT
Create this example script "CustomFunctions.cs" and add it to your Dialog UI GameObject in the hierarchy. This script will check to see if the player has found any of the weapons above, and then give them a 50% chance of losing it.

The example code is below:

Code (CSharp):

1. // CustomFunctions.cs
2. using UnityEngine;
3. using System.Collections;
4. using HellTap.LDC;
5.  
6. public class CustomFunctions : MonoBehaviour {
7.  
8.     // Randomly lose Items
9.     public void RandomlyLoseItems(){
10.  
11.         // If the player has the knife, give them a 50% chance of losing it
12.         if( DialogUI.API_GetTokenAsString("HasKnife") == "1" ){
13.             DialogUI.API_SetToken("HasKnife", Random.value > 0.5 ? "0" : "1" );
14.         }
15.  
16.         // If the player has the pistol, give them a 50% chance of losing it
17.         if( DialogUI.API_GetTokenAsString("HasPistol") == "1" ){
18.             DialogUI.API_SetToken("HasPistol", Random.value > 0.5 ? "0" : "1" );
19.         }
20.  
21.         // If the player has the shotgun, give them a 50% chance of losing it
22.         if( DialogUI.API_GetTokenAsString("HasShotgun") == "1" ){
23.             DialogUI.API_SetToken("HasShotgun", Random.value > 0.5 ? "0" : "1" );
24.         }
25.  
26.     }
27. }
28.  

SENDMESSAGE ACTION

With the script attached to the Dialog UI GameObject, you can now reliably call it from any LDC Dialog using the Send Message action.

You can setup the SendMessage action like this:

GameObject - Find By Name: Dialog UI
Function Name: RandomlyLoseItems
SendArgument: None

This will tell the Dialog UI GameObject to look for a function called RandomlyLoseItems on one of its attached scripts and run it.

You can follow this development approach to add more functions to the script and build up a collection of specific functionality for your game.

Hope this helps and puts you in the right direction!

- Mel

 

Thanks again, Mel! I so appreciate your help!
Beth

 

No worries!

 

Hi there. Thanks for all your hard work on this very cool project. I'm very interested in LDC, but when I try to add it to my cart in the Asset Store, I'm getting a popup that warns of possible incompatibility with Unity 5. Will the current version of your scripts work in Unity 5? If not, any plans to support? Thanks for your time and help.

 

Hi mizer257, thanks for your interest in LDC!

It's definitely compatible with Unity 5 and 2017.x

- Mel

 

Thank you!

 

you're welcome!

 

Hi there,

I just did a fresh install of LDC in my project, created a new LDC Dialog game object with some dummy text and set Autoplay to true only to receive a null reference exception on line 199 of DialogController.cs

 

Hi FetchQuestGames,

You probably haven't put a Dialog UI Object into the scene

- Mel

 

Ha, looks like I scrolled right past that in the docs. My apologies, and thanks for the quick reply.

 

No problem!

 

Hi,
Do you think your plugin will be able to work with TextMesh pro when it will be fully integrated in Unity?

 

Hi Tropobor,

LDC won't be getting TextMesh Pro support because it is fundamentally incompatible, but the newer Dialog / UI System I'm working on for later this year hopefully will be.

I've actually paused development on the new system because I want to see how the Unity version of TextMesh Pro can be implemented into the Kit from the get-go and make it an integral part of the system. I'll be sharing more news about this as things progress.

- Mel

 

oh cool. Great news! And well... if I may... is the "newer Dialog / UI System" is planned to be something similar to LDC (I mean : editors with tabs and sub tabs design...) or a completely different architecture?

 

Hi Tropobor,

Yep!

It's going to much be more advanced in terms of what it can do, but the good news is design of the tools and how you work with them will indeed be very similar to LDC. It's still early days and its going to be a massive project, so there's going to be plenty to share moving forward!

Hope that helps!

- Mel

 

Thanks for your answers and these insights. And yes indeed, it does help. Congrats, Cheer

 

You're welcome!

 

Hi everyone,

I thought I'd shamelessly plug my new tool, Interaction Kit, which has just been released on the Asset Store!

In short, it's an extremely powerful system that allows you to easily setup complex interactions in almost any kind of game! It also has a built-in custom scripting system which looks very similar to LDC's visual logic and has special custom actions for LDC users!

Hopefully you guys will find this just as useful as LDC!

INTERACTION KIT - QUICK OVERVIEW VIDEO:

There is almost an hour's worth of in-depth tutorial videos on both my site and the Asset Store! The tool is on discount for the first month so if you're interested or have any questions, feel free to ask! I don't want to muddle this thread too much with this so if you do have any questions please reply on the official unity forum for Interaction Kit, which is located here.

Thanks everyone!

- Mel

 

Hey Mel
It's been a while since it was announced. Can you post an update regarding the newer Dialog / UI System you're working on?

 

Hi ocimpean,

Nice to hear from you!

It's been delayed because I was waiting for TextMeshPro to be properly integrated into the latest version of Unity so I could tap into those features for the new system. I want the new system to be as future-proof as possible so I wanted to wait for that (which looks like it may be released officially after Unity 2018.1 ). After that, development on the new Dialog / UI system can continue.

In the meantime, I'm working on other tools while Unity wraps that up!

- Mel

 

Hi everyone,

I've just released a new tool called Pool Kit - The Ultimate Pooling System For Unity.

PoolKit is an incredibly powerful system for pooling, spawning and despawning objects with unique features to improve the performance of your games! This isn't just another pooling system, it offers totally new concepts such as "Pool Types", "Chain Spawning" and "Automatic Despawning".

As with all of my Unity plugins, it uses visual inspectors everywhere in an effort to make things as easy to use as possible. Please check out this introduction video to see how PoolKit can help with your own projects!

PoolKit is currently on sale with a 50% launch discount! For more information about PoolKit check out the Asset Store page here. If you have any questions or suggestions for PoolKit, please use its own unity forum page here.

... OK, now back to LDC!

- Mel

 

Has LDC been tested for compatibility with the current version of Unity 2018.+?

 

Hi @KitCoda,

I've tested on 2018.1 and everything seemed fine!

- Mel

 

Hi @melgeorgiou

I'm happily using LDC in my current Project. I am using the easy "Next/One Button" setup and I am looking for a way to force user input instead of auto - continue after time. Ideally there would be a checkbox to ignore the Dialogue Screens duration and force the user to click the "Next" Button. How can I achieve this plz ?

I do know using a two Button setup will give this Behaviour by default, but since Screen Space is limited and Text is quite alot in my Scene the second button really does get in my way. I have tried to change the Buttons layout regarding size and Screen Position, but customizing the UI is still giving me a hard time, so I hope to stick with the "One Button" setup.

Edit: In fact in LDCs Store picture you are using the setup I wanted to achieve - a small circular shape with the Icon on Top.

Spoiler: Image

Thanks in advance and keep up the good work...

 

Hi @Weblox,

there's an option in the Dialog UI settings called "Ignore All Dialog Duration". If you check that, it forces the user to have to click a button to navigate.

You can turn on / off this option at any time using the following code:

DialogUI.dui.options.ignoreAllDialogDuration = true;

If you want to trigger it from LDC using SendMessage or something, that is possible too. You just need to put the command in a script first. I would make a new script and attach it to the Dialog UI object prefab. In the script, have some functions like this:

Code (CSharp):

1. public void IgnoreDialogDurationOn(){
2.    DialogUI.dui.options.ignoreAllDialogDuration = true;
3. }
4.  
5. public void IgnoreDialogDurationOff(){
6.    DialogUI.dui.options.ignoreAllDialogDuration = false;
7. }

Then, you can use the SendMessage action in any LDC dialog to look for the GameObject "Dialog UI" and send the function "IgnoreDialogDurationOn" or "IgnoreDialogDurationOff" to trigger it at any time.

Hope that helps!

- Mel

 

Yes, I somehow must have missed that option. Just tested and it's exactly what I wanted.

Thanks a lot for the instant help and the extra code snippet.

 

You're welcome!

 

Hi I have a couple questions that I need some help with a couple of things using LDC.
1) I'm having some problem with the timing of the Next Button dialogs, it moves to the next dialog before the previous one finishes.
2) I wanted to find out if I can resize and position the dialog boxes above the characters heads instead of the bottom of the screen?

Thank for your help

 

Hi IrfanZ,

Please send an email / PM with your invoice ID and I'll be happy to help

 

LDC v5.0.1 IS NOW AVAILABLE ON MY SITE!

IMPORTANT: BACKUP BEFORE UPDATING!

LDC Direct Website Link
http://unitygamesdevelopment.co.uk/downloads/ldc-localized-dialogs-cutscene-plugin-for-unity/

LDC 5.0.1 is a small maintenance update that fixes a bug with fading custom colours ( usually when using @Styles ).

Will post again when Unity approves this version on the Unity Asset Store!

All the best,

- Mel

 

LDC v5.0.1 IS NOW AVAILABLE ON THE ASSET STORE

IMPORTANT: PLEASE BACKUP BEFORE UPDATING!

LDC Direct Website Link
Localized Dialogs & Cutscenes

- Mel

 

Hi everyone!

It's been a while since the last big LDC update. Today I'm happy to be introducing ...

LDC v6.0

I think there's a lot to love about LDC 6 but the biggest new feature is that LDC now supports WORLD SPACE and VR!



Let's take a look at some of the cool new features:

What Is A World Space UI?

For the last 7 years, LDC has always used "Screen Space" which means the UI would be rendered directly to the screen and on top of the game world.

In contrast, LDC's custom World Space solution allows the UI to be rendered onto an object inside the scene. This means you can make the UI appear on a flat quad ( see image below ) or using interesting shapes such as the curved mesh in the image above. This allows the UI to be moved around, scaled and rotated just like any other 3D mesh as well as giving depth to the UI and making VR possible with LDC for the first time.



Choose Where To Render The GUI ( Screen or Material )

The first change is that the "DialogOnGUI" component now has a section called "GUI Rendering". Here you can choose to render the GUI to the Screen (the standard mode) or to a Material (for World Space).

When the GUI is rendered to a material, you can then apply that material to any 3D object in the scene ( with the correct UV mapping ) in order to display it in 3D space.




Control The World Space GUI

In order to interact with LDC's World Space GUI, the DialogWorldSpaceGUI component is needed. It should support any GameObject with a MeshCollider. We can choose to control the World Space GUI using the mouse or via a Transform ( for VR ). A Typical VR Setup looks like this:



In the screenshot above, we setup LDC to use the VR platform's right hand Transform as the pointer ( an example VR pointer beam script is also included . We've also setup Joystick Button 0 as the input key used to trigger buttons. We can change this to any keyCode unity supports as well as optionally configuring keyCodes or axes to provide scrolling for Dialog Styles such as Icon Grids.


On-Screen Keyboards For VR

To help with inputting data into VR platforms, there is a "Use On-Screen Keyboard" checkbox in the DialogWorldSpaceGUI component which transforms the existing Data Entry and Password styles into this:




TRY IT! Early Web Demos Ready!

To get a feel for the new World Space UI mode, I've setup a few early web demos which are available at the links below:

> World Space Demo - Mouse Input
A quick example of using LDC in World Space with standard mouse / keyboard input.

> World Space Demo - VR-Style Input
This demo simulates a VR setup by allowing you to move a fake VR hand with the ASDW keys. To trigger buttons, use the 'E' key.


Other Cool Improvements

- Performance improvements in the Editor and at runtime.
- Less memory allocations.
- Auto-translate routines updated for newer Unity versions.
- Icon Grid flickering scrollbars fixed in new Unity versions.
- Text color bug fixed in Title dialog screen.


Pricing And Availability

I'm hoping to finish the update by the end of the week. There will be no change in price and even better, LDC 6 will be a free update to all existing users!

I hope everyone is looking forward to the new features! If you appreciate all the hard work that went into this ( and the fact that LDC has had 7 years of free updates so far ) please consider giving LDC a positive rating on the Asset Store!

Thanks everyone, more news soon!

- Mel

 

LDC v6 IS NOW AVAILABLE!

IMPORTANT: PLEASE BACKUP BEFORE UPDATING!

LDC @ The Unity Asset Store
Localized Dialogs & Cutscenes

LDC Direct Website Link
http://unitygamesdevelopment.co.uk/downloads/ldc-localized-dialogs-cutscene-plugin-for-unity/

Thanks everyone!

- Mel

 

Hi @melgeorgiou - Hope you're doing well.

So I am starting a new Project and ofc I want to include LDC again. AFAIK we are not longer tied to using a Resources Folder for our LDC related Sound files, which is a good thing.

However, I still have that one wish for LDC: Is it possible to change the default LDC Behaviour (maybe in settings somewhere?), from referencing the audio filepath (see Screenshot) to a direct reference of the actual Soundfile? So that we could change our folder structure at a later stage in development, without breaking all our existing Dialogues (really highly requested). Please, can you make this happen with a (near) future update?



Also any news about Material/Texture Baking/Atlasing in MeshKit?

Thanks in advance and keep up the good work...

 

Hi @Weblox,

I'm doing fine thanks, I hope you are too!

LDC Audio

I think you may be mistaken here. The reason the "Drop AudioClip To Stream" field isn't displayed in your screenshot is likely because you don't have a DialogUI component in the scene ( that's where it gets the audio resource prefix from ). So in fact, you do actually need to stream the audio from Resources as that allows you to vastly optimize memory usage and performance. On top of that, I don't think there is actually a way of getting Unity to do it using full filepaths at runtime because it will strip out all Assets that are not directly referenced when you build your game (except of course the ones that are in Resources folders!).

However, here are some more points:

1) You CAN change the folder structure by going to Settings > File Management > Audio Resources Prefix ( in DialogUI ). By default, this is setup so that all of your AudioClips should be in any folder called "Audio" within any Resources folder in your project. So whatever you change the prefix to must still be in a "Resources" folder. Please note that by changing the prefix you'll likely break all of your existing links in your project so its a good idea to do it at the start of a new project rather than half way through!

2) For DIRECT audio references, you should be using the Audio Actions instead of the default streaming method ( keep in mind this isn't generally recommended due to memory concerns ). However, you can use one of the SFX audio channels to directly play any AudioClip if you'd rather do it that way and want to keep an eye on memory usage yourself.

MeshKit

It's still on the roadmap but not highest priority right now. I have a new tool I'm working on at the moment which is taking up most of my time!

Hope this helps!

- Mel

 

@melgeorgiou - Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.

Yes, you are right, no DialogueUI. But I did not refer to the "Drop AudioClip To Stream" field anyway (that I ofc use to apply my audio), as that will just generate the file path to the audio file itself, which will then be stored by LDC - so if we we're to change that folder structur later LDC will still play the Dialogue Screen with all the UI but would not be able to find and play the sound file.

So I was completely wrong about independent from Resources Folders? That's really sad. The Resources Folder seems to be a Source of Common Problems, as Unity states in their "best practices" Tutorials and strongly advises not to use it at all.

https://unity3d.com/de/learn/tutorials/topics/best-practices/resources-folder

Since I am not a Programmer at all, I might totally don't get to the point here, but I would appreciate a bit more of your insight.

EDIT: So if this is my Prefix, my Folder Structure should be: Assets/Resources/Audio/MYLDCFILES?
>>> or I can have different Folders spread in my Project also like : Assets/MyFolders/Resources/Audio/MYLDCFILES

Thanks for all your support and keep up the good work...

 

Sorry, I’m away for the weekend so replying on my phone!

Thanks for pointing that link out to me, I wasn’t aware Unity was taking a hardline against the Resources folder now.

In any case, the document you linked to seems to suggest that using the Resources folder to stream low-memory / cross platform assets such as audio isn’t an issue. I think the warning is generally intended for those who are putting huge parts of their games ( think textures, models, etc) into the Resources folder rather than just small audio clips. As the resources folder has a 2GB limit there are obvious problems if you’re doing that. LDC’s approach shouldn’t be an issue

Anyway, as Unity is pushing this I’ll look into adding an option for using direct audio clips on the main part of the screen in addition to default streaming

Hope this helps!

- Mel

 

Awesome! I can't LIKE that enough!

 

After testing many other scripts.. and after carefully deciding.. i've joined in.. hope i made the right choice

 

Ok.. I having this problem.
When I type the dialogue... it's lagging.
The keys i type , is appearing very slowly... ( in the Dialogue text panel )

 

Hi @siddhattha888,

Can you please email / pm with your invoice number and I'll be happy to help

- Mel

 

Sent a msg to you in conversation

 

Got it!

 

LDC v6.0.1 IS NOW AVAILABLE!

The latest version of LDC is now available on my site and should soon be approved on the asset store ( I'll let everyone know when Unity release it ).

LDC v6.0.1 is a small update which includes some very handy additions:

Tokens And Navigation

In the navigation tab, you can now load new scenes and find other dialog prefabs using the value of a token, like this:



This is an incredibly powerful addition to navigation. One of the cool things you could do with this feature is track the progress of your player every time a new scene is loaded to create an auto save / load setup ( see the new demo below ).

New Auto Save / Load Demo

There is now a new demo showing how to setup an automatic save/load setup ( useful for visual-novel type projects and pretty much anything else! ). This makes use of the new token navigation features above!

This setup tracks the player's current scene and the current dialog being played. Whenever you quit the game and resume it later, it will automatically resume your progress back to the scene and last dialog played! It comes with 3 scenes, a main menu and an ending screen to give everybody a great starting point for their own projects

Automatic Next IDs

Whenever you create a new dialog, the Next ID will automatically be populated based on the current ID number. If you're using Dialog IDs normally, this will make creating Next dialogs even easier 99% of the time

Better Token Loading

There were cases where if you changed your setup of tokens (by deleting some that were previously saved, etc ), LDC could sometimes not resolve the changes. There are now improvements to how Tokens are loaded back into the game. If the number of tokens has changed since your last save, it will try to sync the tokens that match your current token list and ignore the older ones that no longer exist. This should help development and be significantly more flexible with setups that change over time.

Misc

Finally, there are some minor editor improvements.

IMPORTANT: PLEASE BACKUP BEFORE UPDATING!

LDC Direct Website Link
http://unitygamesdevelopment.co.uk/downloads/ldc-localized-dialogs-cutscene-plugin-for-unity/

Thanks everyone!

- Mel

EDIT NOTE: v6.0.1 was updated again with a few more goodies!

 

AWESOME