Kwerulous
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I don't know if you're going to think this is a good idea, but I've always wanted a way to do this and personally I do think it's a good idea.

There's not much to explain about it; all it does is wait for all speech to be shown and then move on to the next command, instead of showing it whilst moving on.

I know it is possible to prevent this with cut-scenes, but I think a seperate "Wait for no speech" command would be easier to use.

Here's an example script (It is an NPC Halph):

Wait for clean room
Speech Beethro: "Jeebus what a difficult room."
Speech Halph: "I'll go and open the door for you"
Move to (14,27)
Activate Item at (15,27)
End

Now, what it would do is make Halph move whilst talking. What I am suggesting is that we have a command "Wait for no speech" so Halph would move after he spoke.

That's probably not a brilliant example, but you get the idea. I think...

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[Last edited by Kwerulous at 06-06-2008 10:34 PM]

Someone Else
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Yes, I see what you're saying. I agree that this would be nice, but it would inevitably lead to speed puzzles, which I wouldn't like. However, I would really like this for cutscenes. It would make it a whole lot easier to script them. I give my "Yea" vote.

TFMurphy
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Pretty much everything about this request has been brought up in this previous topic. I'm not criticising you for not finding that topic -- it *is* over two years old -- but it's worth reading to see the major stumbling blocks against this.

Monkey
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How about "Wait for speech during cutscene to complete", instead?

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Someone Else
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No, because while it can (easily) be abused, there are still uses for it outside of a cutscene.

Jatopian
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No, because it will lead to speed puzzles. That alone should kill this idea, I feel.

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mrimer
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Jatopian wrote:
No, because it will lead to speed puzzles. That alone should kill this idea, I feel.

No, this isn't the reason why it's not implemented. The reason is that saved games and demos don't precisely record the time taken between moves, so restoring to a saved game or playing back a demo could lead to non-deterministic behavior. For example, when playing, you make some moves, and speech ends after 5s, causing something to trigger the next turn via the proposed script command. However, when restoring to a checkpoint, the game thinks the player has actually only played through a total of 4.95s to that point, causing no special event to fire the following turn. It's a limitation of the game engine.

It's possible that could be rewritten in a major patch, but then what about when players hit <Space> to terminate speech early? That could also change how events play out, so I think we'd need to change how speech itself is handled, such as not allowing the player to end speech ahead of time...naturally causing more annoyance to the player. So I'd vote a "no" on this one.

However, I myself don't have a particular problem with adding time-based script commands in general, but again, that might be something that annoys many players too, as you point out. It's probably best to leave that out of a game like this. It might be more appropriate for DROD RPG though.

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[Last edited by mrimer at 06-07-2008 05:09 AM]

eb0ny
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I believe, that it should be implemented. But only in cutscenes, command would do nothing outside the cutscenes. For example:

Cutscene 50
Speech Mud Coordinator: "Why is there tar on this level anyway?"
Wait for speech end
Move to (5,5)
Cutscene 0
End

Here "Wait for speech end" would be internally replaced with something like "Wait 20", because that's how much turns it would take for the speech to end under that speed. Changing cutscene speed would brake this, but same goes for "Wait X" commands anyway, so no harm done. Cutscenes would be SO much easier to code.

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[Last edited by eb0ny at 06-07-2008 06:41 AM]

Kwerulous
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Thank you for your comments

I think what eb0ny said was a good idea - because instead of working out how long you have to wait yourself it would calculate it for you. Which would be MUCH quicker and easier for the architect.

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[Last edited by Kwerulous at 06-07-2008 08:10 AM]

mrimer
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I agree this kind of feature would be much easier for the architect to work with than counting turns, which is a pain. But, even during cut scenes, the player can speed up cut scenes by pressing Space, and also cut speech short, so even during cut scenes, this type of script interface would not be reliably deterministic.

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NiroZ
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mrimer wrote:
However, I myself don't have a particular problem with adding time-based script commands in general, but again, that might be something that annoys many players too, as you point out. It's probably best to leave that out of a game like this. It might be more appropriate for DROD RPG though.

Whoa, when did this come about? Is nothing sacred?

mrimer
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NiroZ wrote:

mrimer wrote:
However, I myself don't have a particular problem with adding time-based script commands in general, but again, that might be something that annoys many players too, as you point out. It's probably best to leave that out of a game like this. It might be more appropriate for DROD RPG though.

Whoa, when did this come about? Is nothing sacred?

Well, you didn't hear it from me, but I recall it happened just before the time that Erik disappeared. I can't say I know anything regarding the particulars of that event, however.

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Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

NiroZ
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I was actually referring to this thread, but it appears that I misunderstood the reasons entirely.

Nevermind.

eb0ny
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mrimer wrote:
But, even during cut scenes, the player can speed up cut scenes by pressing Space, and also cut speech short, so even during cut scenes, this type of script interface would not be reliably deterministic.

Here is what I am trying to say: if, during cutscene, the speech lasts for 60 turns, "Wait for speech end" gets replaced by "Wait 60". This command is just an alias for Wait X turns, where X is calculated by engine, not Wait for event. Now, if the speech is skipped, cutscene will not break, because exactly the same amount of turns passes, because of this replacement. I'll use my previous example:

Cutscene 50
Speech Mud Coordinator, 1000: "Why is there tar on this level anyway?"
Wait for speech end
Move to (5,5)
Cutscene 0
End

Speech lasts 20 turns under these conditions. That's why the engine, when saving the script, should replace it with

Cutscene 50
Speech Mud Coordinator, 1000: "Why is there tar on this level anyway?"
Wait 20
Move to (5,5)
Cutscene 0
End

And nothing breaks the script above. There.

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Remlin
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You can't really expect the engine to know what the speed of a cutscene will be when a given line of code is executed, or even if you'll be in a cutscene at all. (Even in the simple case where the cutscene is started by the same NPC doing the talking, it could be started in an if block, or in a totally different part of the code and then goto'd.)

eb0ny
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Remlin wrote:
You can't really expect the engine to know what the speed of a cutscene will be when a given line of code is executed, or even if you'll be in a cutscene at all. (Even in the simple case where the cutscene is started by the same NPC doing the talking, it could be started in an if block, or in a totally different part of the code and then goto'd.)

Good point ().

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Jutt
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Is there any problem with tackling this the other way around? So instead of having events depend on when speech ends, have speech delay depend on other events. This may already possible to some extend with the flush speech command, but it would be nice to have these actually as standard speech delay options, i.e. delay in turns or delay until specific event.
Since the other events are never dependent on speech, this isn't going to screw up the determinism in DROD.

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eb0ny
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Jutt wrote:
Is there any problem with tackling this the other way around? So instead of having events depend on when speech ends, have speech delay depend on other events. This may already possible to some extend with the flush speech command, but it would be nice to have these actually as standard speech delay options, i.e. delay in turns or delay until specific event.
Since the other events are never dependent on speech, this isn't going to screw up the determinism in DROD.

Well, this would help with fitting speech to script, but not the other way around.

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