How to use AGS Part 34 (Dialogs 4 - Gabriel Knight Style) Video Lecture | Learn and Master: Adventure Game Studio (AGS) - Game Development

hi folks and welcome back to the HS
tutorial this video begins a series of
videos where we're going to talk about
the Gabriel Knight style dialogue system
and how to do that in your game and
basically it's really a series of videos
not just on the game real Knight style
dialog but also on how really you can
customize hgs one of the many many ways
you can customize your game you know you
don't have to accept the defaults that
the game gives you for example the
dialogue system you can change it
however you want to change it I'm not
going to try to attempt to show you a
very extremely complete version of a
Gabriel Knight style dialogue system
really it's just kind of a basic system
there's a lot of improvements that could
be made but it but it is workable and it
does work and it's sort of something
that you could plug into your game if
you wanted to and you're free to do so
along the way we're going to touch on
several different things within a GS
that we haven't touched on before so you
know this is going to be a little bit
more advanced than the videos that we've
gone over in the past but I'm sure that
you know everybody that's followed along
this far is ready for some advanced
stuff some little bit more advanced
stuff so so hopefully hang on tight
follow the follow the the tutorial and
your and we'll be in for a ride here so
we'll see how it goes the first thing
that we want to do then with the Gabriel
Knight style dialog box our get dialogue
system is to create a new room within a
GS within your game and this room is
going to be the where the players
basically go to whenever the dialogue
starts if you remember in the Gabriel
Knight dialogue system there's sort of a
black background room and you see the
two characters portraits in the corners
and then the dialogue conversation in
the middle well that black background
room is actually a room within it'll be
a room within our game so that we can
use that room for every single dialogue
that we create so what I'm going to do
then is right click on rooms say new
room create a blank room that's fine
and I'm going to name the room under
edit room I'm going to name it dialogue
or I'll just say GK dialogue room gk
standing for Gabriel Knight of course
you could just call it dialogue room if
you wanted to now the black background
the default black background that I put
is exactly what we want so I'm not going
to worry about drawing a background for
this room because we want to keep the
black background so that's the first
step and again whenever we start the
dialogue basically the ok the game will
switch to this room for the dialogue to
take place and then when the dialogue is
over it the game will switch back to the
room that the dialogue came from the
next thing you're going to need to do is
download some code that I wrote and
you'll basically paste that code that I
wrote at the top of your rim script file
to get the code if you click if you look
on the the to the right side of on
youtube you'll see the notes for this
video and I've included the link to the
to the notes that you're going to need
and I've marked it there just click on
that link and that will bring up this
page here which which you can scroll
down and click on the download link to
download the file called dialogue room
script text just save it anywhere on
your machine so that you'll know where
it is once you have that file saved then
you want to open it up into text editor
and I've got text pad here this is this
is the file that we just downloaded so
I'm going to basically just copy this
file exactly like it is just copy the
whole thing go back into a GS open up
your the room that you just created the
dialogue room open up the room script
and just paste that code on top on top
of the at the top of your file our file
was empty it had that one common in
there I just took out that comment and
just pasted that entire code here in
there I won't be going over exactly this
whole this whole code I guess I can if
folks won't want to see it but really I
just created this so that this
sort of a working engine and working
skeleton if you will of part of part of
what we're going to need for the the
dialogue room to work I've also included
some directions if you want to look at
the directions i'll be going over these
directions in the videos and this is
basically what i'm going to be doing in
the videos so if you want to just go
over these directions yourself you can
certainly do that as well but it might
be easier to watch the videos because
i'll be going into a lot more you know
in-depth explanations as the videos as
well and i just noticed that i numbered
this for twice oh well I'm human I make
mistakes so there's two number fours but
that's okay so basically what we just
did is we created a new room we called
it a dialogue room or we call it gk
dialogue room we could we pasted the
code at the top of the scripts file so
we're going to step 3 now you'll need to
create a separate and I'll just read it
here you'll need to create a separate
view for each character that will be
used for the character speech portrait
animation to use while in the dialogue
what I mean by that is I'll bring up the
GK the Gabriel Knight dialogue here and
you'll see that each character has a
different view when they're in this room
when they're in the dialogue they have a
different view it's not just the
standard Gabriel you know view of his
full body view with an animation there's
a separate view from when he's in this
dialogue and similar to down the lower
right corner whatever character you're
talking to will have it will have a
different view so you're going to need
to create those views with in HS now
what I did is that created views within
the original Sammy's quest game which i
didn't use for dialogues but i used in
the introduction for Sammy's quest and
so I'm just going to use those those
sprites and that view for demonstration
purposes within these videos so I'm
going to go to my sprite section I'm
going to scroll down to the appropriate
vide the appropriate views here this is
the view i'm going to use for Sammy it's
the same view that I used in the
introduction video for dialogues this is
the view that I'm going to use for Sammy
so I'm going to go to views right click
create a new view
I'm going to call it V Sammy dialogue
and then I'm going to go back to my
sprites and assign this dialogue view by
right-clicking assigned to view we've
done this a long long time ago I want to
assign it to the new view i just created
which was dialogue which was view 7 i'll
assign it to the very first loop which
is loop 0 and click OK and that assigns
that for the secondary character then in
this case I'm only going to have one I'm
going to have mr. Donatello I'm going to
use this other series of sprites again
you would need to draw these to yourself
i'm going to write use these other ones
so i need to create a new view right
click new view i'm going to call this
one v Donatello dlg and I think that's
within 14 characters I'm going to go
back to the sprites select this series
that I want to use for that view right
click assign to view this is going to be
assigned to view number eight click OK
so now we have two views here that are
that we've opened up we have this first
one this is my character portrait for
for Sammy and this is going to be the
character portrait for Donatello
obviously these aren't Sammy and
Donatello but you get the idea so close
those ok so that's step whatever that
was step 3 you'll need to do that for
every character that's going to
participate the dialogue so you know
using this Gabriel Knight dialogue
system is going to take a lot more work
you're gonna have to create a lot more
sprites a lot more animations for your
characters but you know it's worth it if
that's the kind of dialogue system that
you want to have in general this
dialogue system does require more work
than just the standard dialogue system
that's included within ATS so the next
step we need to do is we need to add a
new property to your character and
populate it for each character with that
characters dialogue view that you
created in step 2 what the heck do I
don't mean by that well we're going to
get into something called custom
property someone had asked in a couple
of videos ago they left a comment i
think was wasco that
ask about you know custom properties and
what are they and how are they used so
that's where we'll pick up on the next
video is um custom properties and will
continue to go from there so join me in
the next video guys I hope this is
useful