In your opinion what is the easiest dialog system for Godot?

jbskaggs

I am curious just what you think is the easiest dialog system for godot is. My current game is almost 70% dialog and I would love a simple easy system to save me time as I am lazy. And I know this is just your opinion as everything has pros and cons.

cybereality

I haven't really tried any. I know Dialogic is popular, but it may be overkill for a simple game. https://github.com/coppolaemilio/dialogic

jbskaggs

@cybereality said: I haven't really tried any. I know Dialogic is popular, but it may be overkill for a simple game. https://github.com/coppolaemilio/dialogic

I tried it out and seems to be what Im looking for. Created a short dialog, images, and sounds pretty easy. I think I will stick with it.

fire7side

I picked it because it's popular and has been updated recently. There are others around, but it's a little scary if they haven't been updated recently. Especially with Godot 4 coming out. Who wants to update someone else's code? I don't know how much weight it's carrying for like a phone game or something. That might be something to think about. I think this one might be lighter weight and you can code it yourself. https://github.com/AnidemDex/Godot-DialogPlugin

fire7side

So, I don't know, I'm having trouble with emitting signals when I want to in Dialogic. Found this tutorial which is the best so far if you need dialog with options:

He just uses dictionaries, which would be fine for a small game or the style is like json so easy to do outside with an editor.

jbskaggs

@fire7side said: So, I don't know, I'm having trouble with emitting signals when I want to in Dialogic. Found this tutorial which is the best so far if you need dialog with options:

He just uses dictionaries, which would be fine for a small game or the style is like json so easy to do outside with an editor. HI thanks.

I have written several dialog systems over the years. And this method is similar to what I have done. You are correct in that dialogic has a couple of bugs that has not made me happy. (animation, random crash, and naming bugs) I have found several more systems I will look at them as well.

BUT it did please my wife sufficiently that I was able to write up the opening scene and after she played it created about 4 pages of mock ups. SO whether or not I continue to use it, the scene I made in dialogic succeeded in my books. :)

Maybe I will find them all and post the same scene made in each and see which is the most stable, has most features and is easy to use. We will see.

fire7side

Yeah, I would love to have used it, but it's no big deal either way. The other trouble is they don't have a forum or anything. Good tutorial. You can post questions there but I don't know how long before they get around to answering. I really just need options and signals. The nice thing about trying things like that is it gives you ideas for your own code if it doesn't work out.

jbskaggs

@fire7side said: Yeah, I would love to have used it, but it's no big deal either way. The other trouble is they don't have a forum or anything. Good tutorial. You can post questions there but I don't know how long before they get around to answering. I really just need options and signals. The nice thing about trying things like that is it gives you ideas for your own code if it doesn't work out.

one of the issues i dealt with is the addon changes the file name of json of the timeline but does not change the file pointer name in some of the functions. Because of that it created multiple copies with same meta name but different filenames and varying degrees of missing data.

Also animations if you leave them set to default will not always appear or update.

And text colors do not update till after they a user input when they load- this can mean that the text color of a new choice can be the same color as the previous character color until you make a choice.

Yet a great deal of the ground work has been done. I will look at the signals and see if they fire for me.

Like you said isnt a huge deal.

some_lame_kid

I guess it's up to whether you value how easy it is to use, or how easy it is to set up. I didn't know there were dialog systems and just started making my own. My way is probably not as easy but it is giving me a ton of programming experience and once I'm done, I have a system tailored to what I need. Hopefully. That being said, as you said, you're lazy. I don't recommend making your own. It's pretty hard. I'm hallucinating pretty regularly from the coffee and no sleep and not seeing the sun in almost a week. I don't want to complain, I want to share my experience of building an "alternative dialog system".

jbskaggs

Thats funny and not funny. I have been there as well and know exactly what you mean.

fire7side

I left a comment in there and apparently I needed to use version 1.4 dev to get the signal calling I was trying to use. Kind of wish I hadn't seen the problems you are having, but I'm going to play around with it some more if it works with the dev version. I think a lot of the problems you are having are 2d related. I'm just calling 3d animations with signals, plus I imagine I'll be changing inventory, etc. There's still a lot of work done there that would come in handy. I can always write my own if it doesn't work out. Having someone answer a question kind of made me feel a little better about it.

cybereality

I used to write everything from scratch myself. With that DX11 engine I tried to make, I basically didn't even use any libraries. I made my own math library, model importers, culling code, input handling, windowing, etc. It was all from scratch. I learned a whole lot, and I am grateful, but I wasted a lot of time. My versions were super basic, and I could have downloaded an open source library for free and had more features, less bugs, and saved months of effort. But it was a learning experience, so that is why I did it. If you actually want to finish anything, then download plug-ins, libraries, buy art or music, whatever you have to do.

jbskaggs

@fire7side said: I left a comment in there and apparently I needed to use version 1.4 dev to get the signal calling I was trying to use. Kind of wish I hadn't seen the problems you are having, but I'm going to play around with it some more if it works with the dev version. I think a lot of the problems you are having are 2d related. I'm just calling 3d animations with signals, plus I imagine I'll be changing inventory, etc. There's still a lot of work done there that would come in handy. I can always write my own if it doesn't work out. Having someone answer a question kind of made me feel a little better about it.

My issues arent major they are normal stuff for new tech. I found work arounds like I said. Was able to code about 120 lines of dialog pretty fast.

No its mainly just formatting etc.

jbskaggs

After messing with dialogic some more, I may have to rewrite or write my own or keep looking. Its a good system but its not what I am trying to do and Im going to start looking into the code tonight and see if I can change it to what I need it to do. That is if the license for lets me - I didnt even read if it has a use license.

fire7side

@jbskaggs said: After messing with dialogic some more, I may have to rewrite or write my own or keep looking. Its a good system but its not what I am trying to do and Im going to start looking into the code tonight and see if I can change it to what I need it to do. That is if the license for lets me - I didnt even read if it has a use license.

Yeah, it's really hard to decide on a dialog system. Right now I'm OK with it. I wonder how it works on phones or something? I'm planning on doing a pc game, so it's all right if they keep it updated. It saves me time. I may use a lot of those features as I get further into the game, but right now I just wanted options and be able to send signals when I want in the dialog, which really wouldn't be hard to write. I have a talk animation that I could even move into lip sync if I decide to using blend shapes from Blender. Right now I'm just using random phonemes as the text scrolls across. Probably what I'll end up with.

jbskaggs

@fire7side said:

@jbskaggs said: After messing with dialogic some more, I may have to rewrite or write my own or keep looking. Its a good system but its not what I am trying to do and Im going to start looking into the code tonight and see if I can change it to what I need it to do. That is if the license for lets me - I didnt even read if it has a use license.

Yeah, it's really hard to decide on a dialog system. Right now I'm OK with it. I wonder how it works on phones or something? I'm planning on doing a pc game, so it's all right if they keep it updated. It saves me time. I may use a lot of those features as I get further into the game, but right now I just wanted options and be able to send signals when I want in the dialog, which really wouldn't be hard to write. I have a talk animation that I could even move into lip sync if I decide to using blend shapes from Blender. Right now I'm just using random phonemes as the text scrolls across. Probably what I'll end up with.

Dialogic broke on me again. This time it will not allow any new timelines to load. It creates the files but will not load or read or allow you to edit them. This makes me very concerned about its reliabilty. this is ver 1.4 dev.

Last dialog system I wrote I made dialog based on a card deck. It worked petty well I may just rewrite that in Godot. What I did not write was a mapping feature- to be able to map out the dialogues and quests graphically would be a big help to me. Currently I have them all in a mindmap. But being able to have them all organized into a map in Godot would be better. But there are a lot of dialog systems out there. Ill let you know if I find something more reliable.

fire7side

I just ran into another problem also. I have a signal call for when the npc starts talking, and when he ends. If I press the bypass, so the text is immediately displayed rather than scrolled, the end talk signal doesn't get called. I suppose I could check if the bypass key is pressed and end the talk animation that way. Let me know if you find something else.

jbskaggs

@fire7side said: I just ran into another problem also. I have a signal call for when the npc starts talking, and when he ends. If I press the bypass, so the text is immediately displayed rather than scrolled, the end talk signal doesn't get called. I suppose I could check if the bypass key is pressed and end the talk animation that way. Let me know if you find something else.

I had that exact issue last night! I will keep ya posted

jbskaggs

I saw this one today and it looks promising.

https://github.com/QueenChristina/gd_dialog

fire7side

@jbskaggs said: I saw this one today and it looks promising.

https://github.com/QueenChristina/gd_dialog

It looks interesting but this line kind of worries me: Use "actions" to execute external events, which currently occur at the beginning of the dialog.

It sort of sounds like you can't call it in the middle or the end, just at the beginning. Other than that, it looks interesting and I might be not understanding it. I think I'll stick with dialogic for a bit and see how it works out. If you use it, let me know if it's working out for you.