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

Hi red2blue,

Thanks for the kind words and no problem at all, glad to help!

Definitely, the amount of work that has gone into LDC over the last 2 years will make the price seem negligible. If you compare the cost of LDC into work hours it becomes a no brainer!

I'm actually working on an RPG myself at the moment and using LDC to work with quests, etc. I'm using it every day in my commercial work. Basically, it has built-in file management that allows you to use 'Visual Logic' (a point-and-click style of scripting without coding) on LDC's Tokens or Unity PlayerPrefs (or a mix of both!) to open up conversations, control the flow of dialog between characters, etc. These can be setup to be automatically saved / loaded which takes out even more work for you.

There are actions in every phrase / screen of LDC to provide quick access to all sorts of things, including setting the values of Tokens / PlayerPrefs. this makes creating quests (or any kind of element that requires storage) to be easily setup during gameplay with LDC. There really is so much power in the framework and its very flexible!

- Mel

 

Quick question, sorry if this was asked before, is it possible to add voice acting to the dialogs? Basically have a sound file play right when the dialog comes up and cuts off is the user hits next?

 

Hi dberroa,

Firslty, thanks for your interest in LDC!

Yep, it's easy to have LDC play audio on each dialog screen!

You can either drag and drop a sound clip into the audio actions tab (the easy way), or you can do the memory efficient way and type the path of the file on the dialog screen!

- Mel

 

Awesome.

One additional question, the way you worded it kinda seems like only one sound clip is allowed. What if I wanted the voice acting and let's say an explosion in the background, would that be possible as well?

 

Hi dberroa,

Not a problem. There are 4 drag and drop audio channels in LDC, as well as one for loading audio via an audio path ( 5 audio channels total ).

In the unlikely event you'd need more than that on 1 screen, you could also setup an audio prefab (a gameObject with an audiosource component set to autoplay) and have LDC create the object at the start / end of the screen essentially giving you unlimited audio channels at your disposal. No programming needed for any of the above!

Hope that helps!

- Mel

 

Very cool.

I'll be picking up this plugin today.

Thanks for the answers.

 

Hi dberroa,

Awesome!

Happy to help!

- Mel

 

Hi melgeorgiou , I recently just bought this plugin, my question is if it supports native tool unity 2d or unity 3d 4.3.
Regards

 

Hi lucks17,

I haven't personally tested LDC in a 2D game yet but I see no reason why there would be any issues. It should be fine!

I have tested in 4.3 and works perfectly!

- Mel

 

Hi lucks17,

That error is coming from a script you have in your project at Assets/scripts/testconrollertScript.cs.

That isn't LDC

- Mel

 

Yes sorry, bad copy paste, let me found the correct one

 

No worries!

 

Ok this I want to run the demos but i have this:

 

this image: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3033779/test.jpg

 

Hi lucks17,

Hmm, that's strange.

If you still have compiler errors in your custom script ( check your console for compiler errors ) then any new scripts you add to your project won't get compiled and it will cause any new script including LDC to look like that because unity can't add it to the project. You need to first make sure your console isn't reporting any errors.

To quickly fix you can comment out anything in your other scripts causing the errors, I noticed you were trying to do something with a rigid body before?

Try that first and let me know if that fixes things

- Mel

 

Ah, something else I've just noticed is that you've moved the directories of LDC around. You need to make sure the main scripts are in the Plugins folder. Those in particular are very important, as are the ones in the Editor Default Resources folder and the Editor folders. The Gizmos folder is the only one that isn't important (it will get rid of the icons in the inspector if you move it).

Install LDC into a new project and look at how the files are organised. Then copy the layout back to your project.

If there are errors from your other custom scripts you still need to fix that first, no new scripts will compile anything unless those errors are fixed!

Hope that helps!

- Mel

 

Yes, you're right, I had to delete a few scripts, and also had duplicate some of the demos scripts in my project and I think that was the problem which kept me running the project.
Now I'll see if I can incorporate into my game, thank you very much.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3033779/works.png

My videogame: Canek
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3033779/canek.png

 

Hi lucks17,

Awesome, glad it all worked out!

Good luck with your game!

- Mel

 

Hi mel! I've been working with your software for a little while and it is brilliant.

I am currently working with a small group to create a simple educational role-playing game and had a few questions about features we are not sure how to instantiate.

First: One of the major emotions we would like to trigger is the frustration of seeing the "right" choice, but not being able to select it. Currently, my understanding of the require condition logic is that it removes the option entirely. Is there a way we could 'grey out' an option, make it unclickable, but still visible?
Second: We also would like the option to show the dialogue on the same screen as multiple choices, though at the moment that seems limited to cards with two choices. Also, the lack of conditions on 'two choice' screens means we must choose multiple choice screens. Essentially, we currently can't think of a way to show dialogue on-screen while also requiring a condition for a button.

Do you have any suggestions for how we could possibly pursue doing this?

 

Hi kBecker13,

Thanks for the kind words, glad you're enjoying working with LDC!


Greyed Out Buttons

If you are using Unity 4+, you should be able to use rich text to simulate a greyed out effect.

In the text of the button you want to show you should be able to grey it out like this:

<color=grey>This was the correct answer</color>

You can find more cool rich text tags here - LDC should support it right out of the box:
http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/StyledText.html

What you would have to do is set that button's navigation screen back to the same screen - as currently all buttons in LDC need to go somewhere. It should still show the effect you're looking for though



More Text In Multiple Choice Styles

Adding conditions to 2 button dialogs is a good suggestion, added to the wishlist for a future update.

In the meantime, other than having a standard screen before, you could also try having the text show up as graphics (using the Actor Layers tab). That would give you total control over the positioning too which would probably be the best solution for the design style you want.

Hope that helps!

- Mel

 

Thanks a lot, mel! I hadn't thought of having the button redirect to itself. I will test it. Wouldn't it cause the same screen to reload with all the same animations, though (fades, etc)?
I have played with modifying the appearance of your built-in buttons, is there a way to modify them individually? An easy way to indicate a button is unclickable is to disable its hover function.

 

No problem!

Yes, unfortunately this would mean you have the fades coming back. Although you may be able to "trick" this by using the Actions to create prefabs that temporarily disable the fades and then bring them back.

That needs a little scripting though, haven't tested it but you can try something like this:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.  
3. // =======================================================================================
4. // Change LDC Transition Options At Runtime.
5. // Put this script on a prefab and set the enableFades property,
6. // one on true, and one of false. This way you can turn them on and off dynamically!
7. // =======================================================================================
8.  
9.  
10. var enableFades : boolean = false;
11.  
12.  
13. function Start(){
14.  
15.  
16.     // Make sure we can see the DialogUI
17.     if( DialogUI.dui != null ){
18.    
19.         // Turn transitions off
20.         if( enableFades == false ){
21.  
22.  
23.             DialogUI.dui.options.fadeDuration = 0;
24.             DialogUI.dui.options.usePortraitFades = false;
25.             DialogUI.dui.options.useButtonFades = false;
26.             DialogUI.dui.options.useTextFades = false;
27.             DialogUI.dui.options.usePortraitTransitions = false;
28.             DialogUI.dui.options.useButtonTransitions = false;
29.             DialogUI.dui.options.useTypeWriterEffectForText = false;
30.  
31.  
32.         } else {
33.  
34.  
35.             DialogUI.dui.options.fadeDuration = 0.75;
36.             DialogUI.dui.options.usePortraitFades = true;
37.             DialogUI.dui.options.useButtonFades = true;
38.             DialogUI.dui.options.useTextFades = true;
39.             DialogUI.dui.options.usePortraitTransitions = true;
40.             DialogUI.dui.options.useButtonTransitions = true;
41.             DialogUI.dui.options.useTypeWriterEffectForText = true;
42.  
43.  
44.         }
45.     }
46.  
47.  
48.     // Destroy Prefab When Done
49.     Destroy(gameObject);
50. }
51.  
52.  
53. // =======================================================================================
54.  
55.  

Put this script on 2 GameObjects and make them prefabs. Call one of them Enable Transitions, and the other Disable Transitions (set the variable "enableFades" appropriately!).

Use the Create At Start / Create At End actions to load these prefabs to modify the UI options.

This method has worked for other people trying to change settings at runtime but I'm not sure if it will work well navigating to the same screen. Worth a try though! lol

Right now we can't access buttons hover state individually. I will also think about adding this kind of functionality in an update.

Hope that helps!

- Mel

 

Thank you very much for the help!
I have to say, I agree with fedarkk (a couple pages back) about the helpfulness of a graph view.
For instance, since the game my group is creating is primarily text-based, it is very, very long to try to scroll through linearly. Additionally, we have cyclical and branching dialogue (circa choose your own adventure novels) that make linear viewing difficult. Also, if you have to add screens in (as seems to be the case with mine, because I forgot a few when typing it up) there is no easy way to move it into a place that makes sense.
As it stands, I am up to eighty screens on one dialogue, and it is now prohibitively slow to type in (no complaints about running performance). I'm hoping to get around this issue by breaking them up into scenes of dialogue instead. I've figured out how to switch between dialogue controllers, but I can only get them to start at id 1. The problem I am running into is that I have to access a different part of the dialog depending on where I exited the previous, so I would have to change the start ID through scripting? I think I should be able to do this using your send message action to an existing prefab, but I'm a little unclear as to how to set up the listener and how to appropriately access and change the start ID of a dialogue given it's game object name.
Any help would be appreciated.

 

Hi kBecker,

80 screens in one object? Haha yeah you'll probably get a little slowdown because the editors also play animations and are updating. I agree its usually best to split them up if you're going over 30-40 screens in one go for the sake of clarity more than anything else.

To access a dialogcontroller's start ID you can do this:

// Find an LDC Dialog called "My LDC Dialog and change it's startID to 5.
var dc : DialogController = GameObject.Find("My LDC Dialog").GetComponent(DialogController);
dc.startID = 5;

Another note, if your dialog is saved as a prefab you can use the "Resort" button on the dialogcontroller to resort the order of all your dialogs. Helpful if you've had to add things and make changes!

- Mel

 

1 Hey Mel, i was looking to a Cinematic Plugin when i found your Dialog System ... and you made my day , i spend all day long reading all your posts ... all your upgrade from version 1.0 to 3.6 , and maan ... you are EPIC !! i already had a dialog system , but i had to buy this (i just bought), and i'm going to change to yours... so , congratulations on your Plugin, and keep going the great work! i'm gonna use it alot !

2 what is the Cutscene thing ? do you have anything to create a cinematic like there is on the ninja app , or is just like the novel model ... i did not found anywhere talking about it...

 

I just checked out some of the YouTube tutorials. None seemed to address creating a level selector like in the 2 demo apps you suggest checking out in asset store preview pics. Any chance you plan to make a tut on how to use this system to create more in game menus and level selections tools etc.

Thanks!

 

@ SamuZen

Hi! Thanks for the kind words and thanks for purchasing LDC! I'm glad you are finding it useful, its only going to get better with time!

The way we did the cinematic in ninja guy was simply by animating the camera (you can create these easily in unity itself using the Animation editor ). When the dialog plays, you can use LDC's Actions to play the animation and bang, you have a fully working cutscene in literally minutes!

Each phrase in a dialog can be used to start, pause or play camera cutscenes by using the SendMessage action, or creating a prefab with a script that controls a part of your game (such as a camera animation).

Once you start becoming more familiar with LDC and take on the prefab workflow / mindset, you will find that it essentially becomes the glue to the rest of your game, as events tend to happen around the story (which is practically always shown through dialogs), and thats where LDC really shines as it controls and sequences everything else in your project!

@ productofself

Thanks for your interest!

I think you're definitely correct that I need to make some more tutorial vids. It's on my to-do list. The problem is I keep adding new features so fast I keep making my videos out of date! lmao

I'm not sure what you mean by creating more in-game menus / level selections. What specifically are you trying to build?

- Mel

 

Thanks for the reply. Mainly was asking the same thing SamuZen was asking. What really sold me on purchase was how level selection was achieved in 2 game samples. A tut on these when you have time would be super appreciated. I haven't dug in too deep yet, but the vast amount of samples seems great. Thanks for your hard work...and I'm also loving the new features. Logic feature is dope too!

 

Menu's like:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9g4pxixd0r8ewth/2014-01-26 11.58.56.png
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9nxzh9etcfi9nv5/2014-01-26 11.58.44.png
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cwsztk33vym7kwb/2014-01-26 11.58.08.png

 

Hi productofself,

Ah looks like there's been a misunderstanding here. The demo apps ALL use LDC to power the story driven dialogs and all other features that are advertised in the Asset Store. It can even power story cutscenes in-game which I believe is what samiZen was asking. The level selection screens are actually outside of the scope of LDC.

In saying that, that would make for a cool addition to the system so I've added it to my development wishlist. Perhaps somewhere in the 4.x cycle.

- Mel

 

Great to hear. Thanks!

 

No problem!

 

Hey Mel

I managed to buy LDC at last, better late than never, I guess

First: about the latest developments, is there a PDF available for the new version 3.6? I see you were very buzzy adding features, since we talked last time.
Second, do you plan to integrate a save system like Adventure maker or Ren Py have, in the future?

ocimpean

 

Hi ocimpean,


Glad to hear you’ve invested in LDC!


Yep, just updated the docs on the asset store page, it should also be installed along with the LDC package in the Plugins > Black Zombie > LDC Folder.

... Or Online link to PDF here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52105961/Promo/Localized Dialog Plugin/Docs/DOCUMENTATION.pdf


LDC Already has File Management if that’s what you mean? You can have your tokens saved either automatically or manually (See File Management in the docs). More recently, now that LDC has native support for comparing and saving PlayerPrefs you essentially have 100% control over your saved data!

It's file management really is quite powerful, it even supports multiple save slots (although that is more on the advanced side and requires a little more work on your part).


Hope that helps!


- Mel

 

Thank you for the PDF!
Regarding the save system, I am sorry I was not clear, as you know, I am not a programmer. I was wondering if it will evolve into a complete system for Visual Novel game creation, with an integrated saving system for the player to save his game progress.
I have no idea what is the File Management you are talking about , but I will try to read a little bit after I post this, maybe some knowledge will get into my thick skull

 

Haha no worries

Basically "File Management" is a Save / Load system. If you setup LDC Tokens in your game you could for example create a token called "Progress". Every time the user reaches a chapter you could set the progress token to that number.

For example, at the beginning of chapter 2 in your visual novel, click in the Token Actions of LDC, and set a Token called "Progress" to 2. If you've enabled File Management with Auto-Save and loading, LDC will save this progress and load it automatically.

In the main menu of your game, you could ask the user if they want to continue from their last save point, and setup a "Logic" dialog style to check the token called "Progress".

Example: If Token "Progress" Equals 2, then move to screen X. From there you could load the appropriate Unity level where Chapter 2 takes place.

Have a quick look at Tokens and File Management in the docs, it will be VERY useful to create these kinds of features!

Hope this makes it a little clearer!

- Mel

 

I will try this in my current project! Thank you for the super fast answer Mel, I wonder when you find time to sleep!

 

No problem!

Haha I often wonder that myself! lol

All the best!

 

Hi Mel

I did a quick project with LDC last night, a short history presentation for my wife for the college, 21 frames
No interaction and complex stuff, just a slide show, more or less, compiled to an .exe. I would gladly send you the files if you wans to use as a sample or demo, but they are over 100 mb.
There were some things that I want to ask about:
1) Background image can be set to stretch or scale, but I do not see the option to leave the image as is, even if do not cover whole background.
2) I had a text file, that was a little longer and I wanted to copy and paste in LDC dialog box. For some reason, no right click paste option is available and no Ctrl+C either, so I had to type by hand.
3) I found myself limited by the amount of text that I can insert on each screen. If the text is to long, it does not fit in the box. ,Also the fact that text go only on the bottom of the page, and no full screen is available, like a page of text over background in the middle of the screen. In Visual Novels is used often, especially if you have bad graphics and you want to hide it with a lot of text
4) The typewriting effect is kind of... strange, kind of like going to the end of the box then repositioning by itself.

 

Hi Ocimpean,

Looking good!

1) If you want more control over the images you should use the Actor Layer (perfectly fine for props, etc). Backgrounds are designed to be full screen.

2) I've seen this happen when you're copy pasting from Word on the Mac. Seems to be a Unity bug in the inspector with rich formatted text. My workaround is to paste the text into a plain text file (not RTF), and then Copy paste again from there. That way Unity seems to accept it!

3) Hmm, I see what you mean by the screenshot. Perhaps the "Title" dialog style would work better for that, as it can take up the whole screen (I'm going to update the inspector in the next release to give you more space in the subtitle section as its a little misleading). But you can actually copy / paste LOADS of text in there!

4) Ah I think I know what you mean. This is because as it is typing out the text it doesn't know where the end of the line is until it gets there. You can stop this from happening by adding line breaks in yourself using the inspector (that way the typewriter effect will follow the line breaks too)!

Hope that helps!

- Mel

BTW: feel free to send me a personal message with the link to your project , I'm thinking of making a sample gallery on the website at some point - Thanks!

 

The one with the text on the bottom was done in Unity with LDC. The one with small white text is just an example how I would like to do it, as it will hide the ugly background picture with a semitransparent object for text box (.png custom graphic) and scrolling text. A lot of text, is useful for narration. Like for this project for college, is no need for manga characters.

This is what I like about LDC, is so flexible, can be used for a lot of projects, not only games. How they said in that tv advertising, so "simple a cave man can do it"?

 

Haha glad you like it!

If you work on modifying the skin for the "Title" Screens, I'm pretty sure you can get something close to what you want!

- Mel

 

Hey Mel

The manga girl screen is not mine, I just posted as an example.

I can send you the project later on, but is over 100 mb, is not uploaded anywhere, so I can not just give you a link, I have to upload it.

Regarding the richtext issue with copy and paste, I thought about so the text was transferred in Notepad, but I did not save it, so I am not sure if richtext tag was removed when I pasted in notepad, I will do some research. Thanks for the other suggestions!

 

No problem!

- Mel

 

LDC v3.7!

Other than a few minor bug fixes, the first thing I want to talk about in this update is Navigation. I have responded to the most common questions I get regarding to linking different dialogs together as well as cleanly changing scenes. This was previously possible using small code snippets but now its integrated right into the inspector, making it easier than ever!

New Navigation Options!



If one of your dialog screens is marked as the "Last Dialog", you will be presented with 2 new sections.

The "Load Unity Scenes" section allows you to easily restart the current level as well as load a new one by name.

For those who are constructing large dialogs, the next section will make things WAY easier by splitting up bigger dialogs into smaller manageable chunks!

The "Play Another LDC Dialog" offers a seamless approach to linking different dialogs together. You can create an 'Auto-Play' dialog from a prefab by simply drag-n-dropping it into the inspector. You can also play an existing dialog by typing the name of it in the text field. It doesn't get easier than this!

New Ground... PlayMaker Actions!

The second feature is new territory for LDC! A highly requested feature has finally been packaged in LDC as a separate package that PlayMaker users can optionally install. This will provide you with an array of LDC Actions that have been created to allow you to talk to LDC directly from your PlayMaker scripts! You can even access your LDC Tokens, control file management and more!



As this is 3rd party, I have to state that these actions should be considered bonus content and provided as-is. I will of course do my best to support it but please think of it as separate to the core LDC product. There's not much I can do if the author totally changes everything, etc. Although PlayMaker has remained pretty consistent so hopefully we should be good for the foreseeable future!

This update should be live at my site by tomorrow (I'll post the link when its live), and up to a week or so to be approved by the Unity Asset Store.

I hope many of you find these features useful. Last month was a great one for LDC and I really do thank all of you who have purchased the plugin. It's only going to get better!

- Mel

 

I hope this isn't a duplicate question, this is a pretty long thread so I haven't read everything.

I have a dialog using multiple buttons. Is there an easy way to make a button one-time use? I would like the ability to have a button disable itself once it has been selected. I realize this can be done with tokens or playerprefs, but with a lot of dialog that becomes a big mess to manage. If that feature doesn't exist, please consider this a feature request.

 

Hi loadexfa,


Thanks for your interest in LDC!


You can also achieve this using Playerprefs. You can do this on the fly without setting up tokens in DialogUI - in this case it takes out a third of the work!


That means just come up with a condition that says:


PrefInt "MenuButton" Does Not Exist


When the button is pressed, add the action:


Set PrefInt "MenuButton" to 1.


That way, you don't have to manage tokens, it becomes a dynamic flag in your game that is also automatically saved and loaded on future runs!


Hope that helps!


- Mel

 

Hi, is it possible to use a texture atlas with LDC? I have a lot of 2D images and would like to reduce the drawcalls etc

Thanks

 

Hi sicga123,

Thanks for your interest in LDC!

At the moment it doesn't. As LDC efficiently uses Unity's built-in GUI System an atlas wouldn't help performance because graphics are handled differently in their current system. I can assure you the amount of draw calls LDC uses makes this pretty much a non-issue, even on mobile (Ninja Guy was first released on the original iPhone 2G and used the first ever version of LDC without issue!).

Hope that helps!

- Mel

 

LDC v3.7

Is now live on my website!

Asset Store version still awaiting approval - will post again when its live!

IMPORTANT: Backup your project before updating!

LDC Direct Website Link
http://www.mel-georgiou.co.uk