Plugins VAMStory

@hazmhox I don't know where to ask for help but I did a rather substantial story and it took mehours and it was OK when I wnet to pack it down and after I 've uploaded the var to the hub people started messaging me that they couldnt start it. When I went to look, the buttons from VAMstory didn't function anymore and the dialogue seems to have disappeard. I don't know how to restore the backups because it says itäs not compatible. The only thing I did between finishing and packing it was I changed the name of the file from a number to a title. Vam story seems to have been compeltely disabled and messed up between that. Do you have any ideas how I can get my work back? I stupidly only worked on one file so I don't have any to go back to and I don't know how to use the backups

SCAMP said:

@hazmhox I don't know where to ask for help but I did a rather substantial story and it took mehours and it was OK when I wnet to pack it down and after I 've uploaded the var to the hub people started messaging me that they couldnt start it. When I went to look, the buttons from VAMstory didn't function anymore and the dialogue seems to have disappeard. I don't know how to restore the backups because it says itäs not compatible. The only thing I did between finishing and packing it was I changed the name of the file from a number to a title. Vam story seems to have been compeltely disabled and messed up between that. Do you have any ideas how I can get my work back? I stupidly only worked on one file so I don't have any to go back to and I don't know how to use the backups

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Something essential is that the plugin(s) must be enabled at all times, especially at scene load.
I've used the backups, manual ones only though as a kind of preset, and they've worked well so far. Worst case scenario would be to open them with a text editor and copy the story text to a new story.
Do you still have a working local scene to use?

atani said:

Something essential is that the plugin(s) must be enabled at all times, especially at scene load.
I've used the backups, manual ones only though as a kind of preset, and they've worked well so far. Worst case scenario would be to open them with a text editor and copy the story text to a new story.
Do you still have a working local scene to use?

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Yeah the timeline stuff is all there. I tried to delete Vamstory from the scene and re add it to start from scratch but vamstory doesn't want to work in this scene anymore. I might have to do it with regular vanilal buttons if nothing else.

I found the text I've weritten in the json file now too, so not all is lost, Only need to get vamstory workign again and I can do it from scratch

I don't know why it deos this? Alll the stuff is in teh json I don't understand why the game isn't reading it correctly.All this becaseu OI changed the name?

SCAMP said:

Yeah the timeline stuff is all there. I tried to delete Vamstory from the scene and re add it to start from scratch but vamstory doesn't want to work in this scene anymore. I might have to do it with regular vanilal buttons if nothing else.

I found the text I've weritten in the json file now too, so not all is lost, Only need to get vamstory workign again and I can do it from scratch

I don't know why it deos this? Alll the stuff is in teh json I don't understand why the game isn't reading it correctly.All this becaseu OI changed the name?

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Don't know why the backup won't work, used it several times (VAMStory Action/Director) as a kind of preset, not Story though.

atani said:

Don't know why the backup won't work, used it several times (VAMStory Action/Director) as a kind of preset, not Story though.

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I don't know how t

atani said:

Don't know why the backup won't work, used it several times (VAMStory Action/Director) as a kind of preset, not Story though.

Click to expand...

I usually make my own backups. But this story was only going to be a quick affair, but it developed into something more and bigger, however I just kept working on that one file. The only time I don't follow my standard procedures and this happens. Oh well, thank you @atani , for your help, you've at least given me a few good ideas I can use when I try to recreate it.

As Atani was asking, does your scene work locally? If not that's gonna be hard.
You can zip your folder and send it to me so that I can check.

If your renaming was the scene itself, it does not matter at all. The scene json does not has any effect on the data of the scene itself.

The backup system keeps 5 saves, so technically, if you haven't work a lot after that, you should still have a working copy. The system is simply a 1:1 of the data contained in the scene... so it should work, unless there's something wrong with the data itself.

If that was the case, it means the scene was already broken even before you renamed the scene. And I mean the scene. So even the backup wouldn't be able to be restored if the base scene was indeed broken.

hazmhox said:

As Atani was asking, does your scene work locally? If not that's gonna be hard.
You can zip your folder and send it to me so that I can check.

If your renaming was the scene itself, it does not matter at all. The scene json does not has any effect on the data of the scene itself.

The backup system keeps 5 saves, so technically, if you haven't work a lot after that, you should still have a working copy. The system is simply a 1:1 of the data contained in the scene... so it should work, unless there's something wrong with the data itself.

If that was the case, it means the scene was already broken even before you renamed the scene. And I mean the scene. So even the backup wouldn't be able to be restored if the base scene was indeed broken.

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Well, I've rebuilt the entire thing. It was acutally pretty easy with the help of the old jsons. It's actualyl even better now than before. I don't know what happened to break it like that. I have no idea. One minute it was fina and the next it was unusable. Oh well.

Thanks for Vamstory, Hazmhox. It's excellent and I use it a lot.

SCAMP said:

Well, I've rebuilt the entire thing. It was acutally pretty easy with the help of the old jsons. It's actualyl even better now than before. I don't know what happened to break it like that. I have no idea. One minute it was fina and the next it was unusable. Oh well.

Thanks for Vamstory, Hazmhox. It's excellent and I use it a lot.

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I'm glad you figured it out!

You won't believe it but I just came to think about why my story broke! atani said in one of his early posts that it's important to keep all Vamstory atoms ON, and yeah I knew that. But I jsut realised, my Director and my Dialog were indeed on, but I had earlier created a "Reset" actions button and just before I finished the scene I turned that Atom OFF and didn't just delete it. That's why my story broke!

Oh well I'm glad I spent a day rewriting it anyway because it came out a lot better anyway. Just thought I'd post this here for anyone who might have the same problem in the future! Keep those atoms on.

That's strange!

I know the on/off issue was mostly due to the synchronization system. But I never tested the actual save process of the plugin. Since it's a custom system, this might be possible that "offing" it might break the save process. Interesting. I should test this

You know what, this gives me an idea, I'm gonna make a warning for the next update when the atom containing a VAMS script is offed. That's gonna be easier for people to avoid mistakes : )

hazmhox said:

That's strange!

I know the on/off issue was mostly due to the synchronization system. But I never tested the actual save process of the plugin. Since it's a custom system, this might be possible that "offing" it might break the save process. Interesting. I should test this

You know what, this gives me an idea, I'm gonna make a warning for the next update when the atom containing a VAMS script is offed. That's gonna be easier for people to avoid mistakes : )

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You wrote it on the download page in the instructions, and I read it and knew it and still did that mistake so yaeh, a clear warning might be in place

It's written in one of the updates. But I'm mostly mentionning the synchronization process. Unless I'm missing something I don't think I have ever seen a save issue, but this is worth a test. Thank you very much for all that feedback, this will improve the UX in general and help people understand what they should or shouldn't do ^^

Ty hazmhox as always!
You think it would be worth adding to the plugin a feature that checks precise input? Like a field in which you input text and set the "right" input. And then there is a trigger for the "right" answer and for everything that doesn't fit. Many applications here: from character's phone password or door password to answering riddles. As a way of rewarding paying attention, or exploration of the scene.

VAMFantasy said:

Ty hazmhox as always!
You think it would be worth adding to the plugin a feature that checks precise input? Like a field in which you input text and set the "right" input. And then there is a trigger for the "right" answer and for everything that doesn't fit. Many applications here: from character's phone password or door password to answering riddles. As a way of rewarding paying attention, or exploration of the scene.

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That's a nice idea!
I would need to figure out the proper way to "read" the answer and compare it properly so that it's not too complex (like you know, case sensitive or not etc). I'll put that on my notes : )

That would be bloody awesome. That would let you create Ultima-style dialogue.

Still one of the best plugins out there.

Improvement suggestion is adding a button to trigger Vamstory from the dialogue number you have open in the actual plugin UI. Would make testing changes considerably easier so you don't have to go through the whole thing each time.

Director turned out to be surprisingly useful. I eventually ended up using it for most triggers, sometimes even ones with just one action. Set it up once, and never have to search for that logic brick or obscurely named clothing item again. Built in delays on triggers are very nice. Trigger sorting would be huge, even just making them alphabetical. All good

It might be a small bug where Spacer-type buttons break the function of Reset Action Panel. For instance, if I have 10 buttons and the 6th one is a Spacer, when I execute the reset, only the first 5 items before the Spacer will refresh and respond. It breaks at the Spacer, and the following 3 items won't refresh. Additionally, it seems to affect other copies that are sorted after it.

zrau said:

Still one of the best plugins out there.

Improvement suggestion is adding a button to trigger Vamstory from the dialogue number you have open in the actual plugin UI. Would make testing changes considerably easier so you don't have to go through the whole thing each time.

Director turned out to be surprisingly useful. I eventually ended up using it for most triggers, sometimes even ones with just one action. Set it up once, and never have to search for that logic brick or obscurely named clothing item again. Built in delays on triggers are very nice. Trigger sorting would be huge, even just making them alphabetical. All good

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Thanks!
Yeah, I would need a trigger that allows to start from any dialog, which does not exists at the moment. Not a priority but if I've got time at some point I'll think about it.

Sorting is quite a pain in the ass, the refactoring for VAMS took me a long time. Extremely low priority, maybe someday if I'm motivated

Shadow Venom said:

It might be a small bug where Spacer-type buttons break the function of Reset Action Panel. For instance, if I have 10 buttons and the 6th one is a Spacer, when I execute the reset, only the first 5 items before the Spacer will refresh and respond. It breaks at the Spacer, and the following 3 items won't refresh. Additionally, it seems to affect other copies that are sorted after it.

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Couldn't reproduce with a 12 buttons panel. Everything is resetting fine. Can you try in a vanilla scene and check if it's not a scripting issue?

hazmhox said:

Thanks!
Yeah, I would need a trigger that allows to start from any dialog, which does not exists at the moment. Not a priority but if I've got time at some point I'll think about it.

Sorting is quite a pain in the ass, the refactoring for VAMS took me a long time. Extremely low priority, maybe someday if I'm motivated



Couldn't reproduce with a 12 buttons panel. Everything is resetting fine. Can you try in a vanilla scene and check if it's not a scripting issue?

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Sorry, I encountered such an issue while using previous versions in scene creation. However, I just tried the latest version and couldn't replicate it, so please disregard the previous feedback. Thank you for your response!

By the way, I have a small question. When the game is in a state where sound and motion are frozen, the buttons created by Action, except for checkboxes and similar types, do not work (the native VAM buttons can function in a frozen state). I'm curious if there is any particular reason for this design. Of course, this is not a major issue, and sometimes it can even prevent accidental operations during editing. I'm just curious.

It can be a bit awkward when there are specific actions that you want users to perform only when the game is paused. For example, loading presets through UI buttons. However, there are other ways to solve this.

Shadow Venom said:

By the way, I have a small question. When the game is in a state where sound and motion are frozen, the buttons created by Action, except for checkboxes and similar types, do not work (the native VAM buttons can function in a frozen state). I'm curious if there is any particular reason for this design. Of course, this is not a major issue, and sometimes it can even prevent accidental operations during editing. I'm just curious.

It can be a bit awkward when there are specific actions that you want users to perform only when the game is paused. For example, loading presets through UI buttons. However, there are other ways to solve this.

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The design philosophy behind that is :

1. I think the global pause of VAM is a huge design flaw. You can allow a global pause system when you manage the whole execution pipeline through and through. The very core of VAM is based on custom scenes where the game itself has absolutely ZERO idea what a trigger can produce, it can enable a light, trigger animations, change states of plugins... and so on. You have absolutely no way of ensuring a proper execution of a trigger when in a paused in state.
2. Due to the previous factor, and the fact that VAMS suite can cascade several triggers with delays and such... it's very complicated to not have a scene explode because a button/action/dialog was click with the global pause enabled

Hence, the block system. And I think I caught several cases where it wasn't handled and I need to fix that.

I think meshed should have completely frozen any potential interaction through the pause system. This for me, is eventually, only a feature that should allow to reposition yourself in VR, or adjust some game settings. But the fact that you have absolutely zero idea what a trigger can execute, anything during freeze should be prevented.

This is why VAM feels so "glitchy" to newcomers. Everyone with a bit of knowledge on VAM has something in their way of interacting with a scene or handle creation that avoids them to fall into the basic "traps" (physics explosions, animation glitch, character issues and so on) because they know they should not do that or it's gonna glitch like 99% of the time.

From a certain perspective, it's kind of cool. For a developer/creator, it's a nightmare to ensure a proper smooth experience... half the support I have in some scenes is the usual "hey I did that and the scene was broken", and the answer is always "yeah, never do that in VAM, it's not gonna work".

So I design my plugin(s) to behave properly as much as I can. (it's not a magic solution, but it works most of the time)... so if you're paused, then interaction is paused. Want to interact? Unpause your game, as simple as that... like any other game

hazmhox updated VAMStory with a new update entry:

Features & QoL

General

• Added an alert in edit mode when "offing" the atoms or parent atoms holding VAMS plugins to prevent bugs related to having them off. (since no one reads update notes or documentation, they won't be able to say they haven't been warned... well, unless they do not read the alert window :x)
• Disabled Rich Text preview on all input fields, it was problematic with big texts or annoying to edit in the long run. You will now preview the text with the rich...

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Read the rest of this update entry...