How to use AGS Part 35 (Dialogs 5 - Gabriel Knight Style & Custom Properties) Video Lecture | Learn and Master: Adventure Game Studio (AGS) - Game Development

hi folks welcome back to the tutorial in
the last video we left off creating the
Gabriel Knight dialogue script and we
left off at step 4 here that's the first
step for not the second one but um we
just started talking about creating a
new property or a new custom property
for our characters it's I was going to
use this video to talk about custom
properties and what they are what they
can be used for and what they are not
and what they can't be used for so
basically a custom property is any
attribute or value that you want to
associate with a character or an object
or a room or a hot spot that's not part
of the default list of attributes for
that for that object for example if I
open up my Sammy character here and I
look through the list of attributes here
in the property tree you know he has
things like adjust volume with scaling
all the different types of views that
are associated to the character what
color the characters speech speech font
is it is an attribute whether the
character is clickable the character's
name things like that are all the
properties that you can you can get
these properties or set these properties
in the in yer throughout your game but
what if I wanted something like what if
Sammy had a nickname or what if all my
characters had a nickname for example
that I wanted to keep track of for some
reason you know I'm just just having the
name wasn't good enough or or let's say
that I had a I wanted to know each
character each object or something in my
game had a specific origin for example
where they from whereas this character
from well these aren't things that are
specifically accessible you know in the
custom property of the properties here
so we have to create a custom property
for those things if you click on the
property you'll see an ellipses button
and by default it just says properties
and that just means that there's there's
a collection of properties that you
can't really see in this tree so to be
able to see those properties you just
click the ellipses button and that will
bring up your edit custom properties
dialog box now by default there are none
because I haven't created any yet
but if there were I would see the list
of custom properties here in this window
well let's go ahead and create one by
clicking edit schema and this allows me
to add anuva a new custom property I can
right click in this empty window here
and say add new property now let's just
say I wanted to have a new property
called nickname description the nickname
of the character now this is the type
you can have up to three types boolean
which we talked about before is a true
or a false value you can have a number
or you can have text well in the case of
a nickname we want text and the default
value is let's just say no nickname or
it let's just say none that means the
default value if I don't set it's going
to be none for nickname so i click OK
and now it takes me back to the Edit
property schema window and I can see
that property listed there so I'll close
that because I've defined the property
that warm now remember that I'm in the
custom properties of Sammy so Sammy's
nickname is none right now well let's
change it to Sam that's his nickname so
therefore I've set Sammy's nickname to
Sam now notice if I close this I'm going
to Donatello now donatella has a
property's wind of properties attribute
as well if i click on his properties
attribute he doesn't have a nickname so
his nickname is none so i can set his
nickname to Donnie or something like
that so now now he has a nickname now
it's not just characters now that share
these properties if I go to the main
hall for example select my objects click
on this closed door I can go down to the
properties of that closed door I click
on the the ellipses button even it has a
nickname if I wanted to assign a big
name to it so properties are not custom
properties are not specific to
characters or objects or anything else
within the game anything can have a
custom property in custom property the
list of custom properties that you can
set are all shared throughout HS so it's
just a handy way of keeping track of
something that each character each
object should have a different value but
you don't want to have to create a new
variable for
every single character or anything like
that you can keep track of it within the
character itself using custom properties
know what custom properties are not as
they're not modifiable within the game
so I can't change a custom property from
within the room script I can I can see
what a custom property is but I can't
change it meaning it's really for
example if I wanted if I had the idea
that I wanted to have a health for
example kind of like you know link
within the legend of zelda had had a
certain number of hearts and that once
they were zero the link died if i wanted
to have something like that i could not
use a custom property because that's
something that has to change within
within the life cycle of the game or
while the players playing the game i
would need to have to be able to change
that value custom properties don't let
you change the value once the game is
running so i can set it once within the
editor and then from then on it's
read-only and it's stuck to that value
so you can't use custom properties for
those types of things anything that will
require you to to change you know a
value I might go over used later I might
show you a way to to get around that
without using custom properties if he
did want to have something that was
modifiable within you know all your
characters could to have a certain value
that was modifiable like health or
something like that but I'm not going to
do that in this video so let's go back
to what we need to do for for this next
step it says add the following new
property to your characters and
populated for each character with that
characters dialogue view that you
created in step 2 and it wants us to
create a dialogue view which is an
integer or a number and the default
value is 0 so let's go and do that now
we've seen how to do that already go to
the characters though the character that
you want go to the properties down at
the bottom click the ellipses I'll keep
nickname there for now just just because
although you don't need it for this
Gabriel Knight style dialogue system
edit schema to add a new one right click
add new property and we're supposed to
be creating a dialogue view property so
i'll say dialogue view description the
dialogue the view
for the character when in dialogue the
type is going to be a number and the
default value 0 click ok click close now
this dialog view here is set to 0 for
Sammy I'm going to close that because I
want to know what was the dialogue view
that I created for Sammy no highs right
here it's number 7 so we go into the
properties for Sammy we change his
dialogue view 274 mr. Donatello I'll go
into his custom properties window and
I'll change his dialogue view 28 because
that's what we created for him so if I
had several characters now if I had more
than just these two every one of them
then if they're able to participate in
the dialogue I would go through and
change the cut the dialogue view /
property for that character to whatever
the view is that I created for that
customer for that dialogue for that
character and the reason I'm doing that
there is because there's no dialogue
view attribute here for the characters
there's blinking view and idle view
normal view speech view and thinking
view but there's no dialogue view speech
view then would be this just the view
that's normally displayed in the
character speaks in a room but during
dialogue that's going to be a different
different view so that's what I did
there so we've done that now we've done
the first the first step for and then
we're going to get into the second step
which will be creating global variables
now we've already seen global variables
and one of the dialogues I guess in the
monkey island style dialog system where
we created a dialogue counter global
variables and so for this one we're
going to create two more we're going to
have a current dialogue which is an
integer and a/c secondary character
which is a character character pointer
so what we'll do then we'll go into
global variable now I'll show you what
these are used for later let's go into
global variables and go ahead and create
those to go into global variables then
like we did before way I still have this
dialogue counter that created earlier
right click add new variable the first
one we wanted to add was current
dialogue it's an integer the default
value is 0
click OK and then the other one we
wanted to create was this C secondary
character I'll copy that and it's
supposed to be a character or a
character pointer so I could right click
add new variable I'm going to call it C
secondary character I'm going to choose
character pointer from the list here the
default value now is you can't modify
that because you can't set a default
value for our character so I just click
OK ok so now I've got my two global
variables set up there and that's the
second step for finished so now we go
into the rest of this which which
shouldn't be that hard at this point the
part that's going to be that's going to
require something extra then is going to
be really this step number nine which
we'll get to maybe in the next video or
perhaps the next one after that but the
rest of these these steps right here for
the next couple should be fairly easy so
I'll go over those in the next the next
video so join us then guys