Question How to delay speech bubble or thought bubble?

[VamBlaster]

Is there a way to delay when the speech bubble or thought bubble appears? I tried tinkering with the timer bottom section but no matter what I did the bubble appeared right away when triggered from a UI button.

Basically what I want to do is have the speech bubble first, then followed by the thought bubble. As of now they both come up immediately when triggered from the button.

 

[MacGruber]

You could use a LogicBricks Delay brick. You can trigger it, and it triggers back after whatever time in seconds you set. However, if you want something more complex like a whole conversation I would got for a StateMachine brick.

I recommend to check out my YouTube tutorials. First the one about triggers, then the 4 LogicBricks tutorials:

Guides - MacGruber's Video Tutorials

This page will gather my hopefully growing collection of video tutorials about various VaM topics. "Pay after watching, IF you liked it!" Producing quality video tutorials consumes a LOT of time. Just producing 10min of video takes about 6-8...

hub.virtamate.com

Also it may be worth checking out my CyberNight scene, which is a demo about how to do a simple multiple choice dialog with SpeechBubbles:

Scenes - CyberNight

Separate demo scene showing off new features that came with LogicBricks 7, which help with building scenes with branching multiple-choice dialogs. Please excuse the poor dialog, I'm a coder, not a Hollywood writer. Anyway, you got a couple of...

hub.virtamate.com

 

[VamBlaster]

Delay works, but just for a single conversation trigger. If I have another simple conversation called from another button (female says x and male says y, then male thinks z), don't see how I can use delay again, unless the plugin is duplicated for that other conversation to delay the thought bubble again. I looked at state machine and it looked overly complicated. I'm not sure I want to use something that complex just to delay a thought bubble from a simple, non interactive conversation. I'm sure it will work perfectly when implemented but I'm thinking if the workflow time would be worth it for what I want. Hopefully there's an easier way, perhaps built in something I missed, to make a thought bubble appear sequentially after a speech bubble or after a certain period once triggered? If not, I'd have to rethink my conversation flow and abandon this notion of having the speech bubble first followed by the thought bubble.

In a scene I typically have 10-15 buttons. Each button will call a pose for the male / female, an action (could be foreplay, dancing, walking, or could be a sex act), and a thought or speech bubble accompanying it. They're very simple scenes really so I was hoping to avoid using the more complex plugins but it looks like I may have to finally delve into them.

 

[MacGruber]

In a scene I typically have 10-15 buttons. Each button will call a pose for the male / female, an action (could be foreplay, dancing, walking, or could be a sex act), and a thought or speech bubble accompanying it.

So every button is independent? In that case I would say just add a Delay brick to each button that needs it.

If not, I'd have to rethink my conversation flow

If you have complex branching dialog, anything similar to the CyberNight scene which is also rather small, StateMachine is what you want. Really. It may seem complicated, and there is a like an hour of boring video tutorial to explain how it works. However, using a single StateMachine brick is WAY easier to work with than keeping track of 50+ logic bricks and buttons connected with a Spagetti of triggers. If used right, StateMachine give you structure and features for debugging, like quickly jumping to a particular part of the scene, disabling parts of the dialog branch (*), etc.

(*) for example think of a case where you would merge load another scene, load a subscene or switch some preset. If triggered accidentally it could ruin what you are working on, VaM doesn't have undo. So StateMachine allows you put a safe guard on things like that without having to disconnect triggers. Very helpful in a complex scene.

 

[VamBlaster]

So every button is independent? In that case I would say just add a Delay brick to each button that needs it.

So that's the proper way? I was adding the delay plugin to the male character. Adding to the button makes way more sense now that you mention it, so this basically does what I want lol.

If you have complex branching dialog, anything similar to the CyberNight scene which is also rather small, StateMachine is what you want. Really. It may seem complicated, and there is a like an hour of boring video tutorial to explain how it works. However, using a single StateMachine brick is WAY easier to work with than keeping track of 50+ logic bricks and buttons connected with a Spagetti of triggers. If used right, StateMachine give you structure and features for debugging, like quickly jumping to a particular part of the scene, disabling parts of the dialog branch (*), etc.

(*) for example think of a case where you would merge load another scene, load a subscene or switch some preset. If triggered accidentally it could ruin what you are working on, VaM doesn't have undo. So StateMachine allows you put a safe guard on things like that without having to disconnect triggers. Very helpful in a complex scene.

My scenes haven't gotten quite complex yet, but I'm progressing. I think I will learn machine state alongside timeline animations, then I think I can really start building the scenes I really want. I also prefer having everything contained in one scene (not merge loading), unless the setting changes. Like going to the beach back to the house. Right now I group all my buttons with master buttons, so group of buttons associated with one segment only appears when the master button is pressed. For example a group of foreplay actions only appear when the foreplay button is pressed, positions for sex, pre sex activities like watching tv etc.. Keeps things clean.

I was doing merge load scenes before but since Iearned to call positions and bunch of other stuff with button triggers, I like keeping scenes as one master file.

 

[MacGruber]

So that's the proper way?

Does not matter where you put them. You could put them on the person, only with 10-15 of them it would be hard to keep track of which is which. So, put them where you can keep things organized. If it helps, you can also add Empty atoms, rename them to something useful (so you know what it does) and put some bricks on there.

 

[ZRSX]

You'd like to do something like this?

https://www.patreon.com/posts/big-annoucement-49387703

I used Timeline. Just add a trigger track and shoot your triggers at different times.

 

[MacGruber]

You'd like to do something like this?

Unrelated to thread topic, but @ZRSX, you may be interested in the new ScreenFade and LoadingDelay bricks
(Also be careful with public posts on Patreon that contain adult content, Patreon may randomly decide to block your account, they seem to have some kind of AI thing that detects this. They allow adult stuff behind paywall, though...that's why everyone is paywalling )

 

[ZRSX]

Nice! Tbh I still haven't been further than the demo scene of logic bricks

I could see myself desperately needing some logic at times, but I've found quite a lot of workarounds ^^'
Not necessarily a good thing, I know

Also be careful with public posts on Patreon that contain adult content, Patreon may randomly decide to block your account, they seem to have some kind of AI thing that detects this.

Yeah, you've got a warning when the AI finds something (in image and text, don't know about videos but this one is pretty light). If you fix it before posting it disappear. Not 100% accurate (both ways), so the images that are online made it through ^^
I'll be more careful if they could block an account for that!

 

[VamBlaster]

Does not matter where you put them. You could put them on the person, only with 10-15 of them it would be hard to keep track of which is which. So, put them where you can keep things organized. If it helps, you can also add Empty atoms, rename them to something useful (so you know what it does) and put some bricks on there.

So I've been using Delay for a while and like it. I have a question though, is it possible to extend the delay to beyond 10 seconds? 10 is the maximum I can set but in the "stories" I use delay for, 10 seconds is still too short.

 

[MacGruber]

So I've been using Delay for a while and like it. I have a question though, is it possible to extend the delay to beyond 10 seconds? 10 is the maximum I can set but in the "stories" I use delay for, 10 seconds is still too short.

Sure, there are little range buttons to extend/reduce the range of the slider.

 

[VamBlaster]

Sure, there are little range buttons to extend/reduce the range of the slider.

Hmm, don't know why I didn't think of that first lol. I thought 10 was the maximum from the slider.