This node is the most important node in the Dialogue System. It has a quite complex inspector window compered to other nodes.
Inspector
Actor Name: you can set the name of the speaking actor. If not set the system uses the name you set in the Dialogue Behaviour. Most common usage when you want an actor other than the active one interrupts the conversation.
Portrait: Here you can set a portrait to show it on the dialogue ui. This will override the portrait set on Dialogue Behaviour. The skin has to be set up to allow a portrait (check how to set up an ui skin). You can use this parameter for other than portrait too. If not set, no image is shown.
Text: Here comes the text the Actor says.
Answers: In general the answers are the options the player can choose. However there are some advanced usage options built in. You can add, remove and reorder answers in the inspector. There are three types of answers, but a text node can have only one next and/or time answer, but any number of custom answer.
- Custom Answer: You can set the text, and with the bool input (red square), you can control whether or not this answer should appear in the runtime answer list.
- Time: This answer type has two usages: first when only a single Time answer is on a text node (no other answer types) the conversation will continue after the defined seconds automatically. The other usage is to use it with other answers, in this case, the player will have X seconds to answer. (You can assign a timer in the UI)
Audio: In this section, you can assign an Audio Clip. When the Text node activates in runtime, the Audio Clip will be played
- Play Delay: you can delay the audio clip by seconds after the Text node activates in runtime.
- Playback: you can define the starting point and the endpoint of the Audio Clip for this Text Node. This way you can slice up a single audio clip for multiple text nodes. (with the „Play Audio” button, you can test in the editor)
Custom Camera: In this section, you can assign a custom camera for this Text Node. When the Text Node activates the Camera with the given camera index will be used. (you have to set the cameras in the Dialogue Behaviour)
Advanced Settings: In this section, you can find some advanced settings that aren’t commonly needed for dialogue.
- Custom Skin: You can set a UI skin to use for this text node. This will override both the skin defined in the Dialogue Behaviour and the one that is set in the Dialogue UI Controller as default.
All of the above information is visually displayed in the workspace, as you can see in the screenshot in the right.
Variable Interpolation into Text and Answers
You can show dynamic values in your dialogues by using the Variable Interpolation of the Dialogue System. You can insert the current value of any Local or Global Variable as well as the name of the Actor or the Player.
To use this feature, you just write your texts, with predefined markers. Similat to the screenshot below.
Showing a local variable:
Simply write the name of the variable after the local: part.
{local:variablename}Showing a global variable: Simply write the name of the variable after the local: part.
{global:variablename}Showing the name of the player:
{player}Showing the name of the actor:
{actor} 