character talk portrait
a character zoomed in portrait (of the face),, I want to use this every time the character is having a conversation,, should I just add the portrait animation in the 'talk frame animation on the sprite itself (in the _char file) or should I include it seperately as a sprite, what would be the smar-*test*-('")? (would take alot of programming perhpas to keep it seperately..but I do need to switch between emotional states displayed in the talking zoomed up portraits (over the small character sprite)..hmm,, maybe I can switch between different talk frames in the _char swf file (and animated them with different portraits),,if that's possible ..(?) and is there someway to make the text (talking, dialogue, game narrator etc) appear in a decorative framing in the game window? (no biggie though) Karen

Greg or John would know how exactly to do this.... but I believe you can put script in your talk animation that will call a separate (full screen I assume) sprite to animate durring the talk sequence..... however, I'm not certain how well that will work.... Maybe when a talk action is initiated, you enter a new "room" that has the close up sprites of the two people having dialoge (ala Monkey Island 1 in the scumm bar), and do it all in that room. Hmmmm, maybe someone else has better ideas

I fiddled around with it a little,,and used the 'set sprite draw' in the room timmy editor, and it works fine,turn it on and off between dialogues and converstaions,, (just alot of individual scripting),, but it's probably the best way (would be nice with more ideas though:) and suddenly the changeroom thing stopped working,,now I can only script changing rooms if I look, talk or use,, putting in an arrow (nr) dispplays a *insert default dialogue' and nothing happens afterwards..hmm,, the scripting isn't wrong but maybe the cursor file has been altered..mm :)

btw,, is it possible to trigger scripted events based on or activated by the room's (bg) coordinates alone? (for example,,have a character walking around and if they walk over a specific x and y room coordinate a queue can be set and triggered (and initialize events like cutscenes or alike) ->without inserting hotspots that need to be clicked

and suddenly the changeroom thing stopped working,,now if i remember right in the convo editor the Advance Line needs to be set at -1 to get out of the convo sequence

oh,,thanks, I'll try that and just played your game (2dassasin), short but very nice!! (much much better than most fan games I've played, very nice puzzles, cutscenes and the plot was short but intense,, congrats! btw..can I ask how long it took to make? (the art and 3d would probably take the longest to create?)

If you want a narrator window, where the big talking heads appear, then you could simply add a "narrator window"-charater sprite in each room (an swf that contains all possible talking faces and characters) ... so when someone is supposed to talk you can make the "real" character walk someplace and when he/she looks at it not he/she but the window could start to talk ... you know, the dialogue doesn't need to involve the sprite that "starts" the dialogue. The only problem might be that the text that is spoken by the narrator window will be displayed on top of it. So you'd have to try to get the design fitting ... and maybe it wouldn't be clear who that face belongs to... I don't know. But that would be a possibility. Interesting idea you have there :)

sorryKarens its its -2, -1 will just send you back an advance if everything locks up when characters are animated theres a bit of code you need to add, its more if its something like a reach action.. just trying to find the code :oops: found it on the last frame of a movie sequence you need to add: _root.runActions(); in 2DA when he closes the blind, he reaches forward stops for a few seconds than his arm goes back as the blind goes down.. without that bit of code everything in the room just stops if the frame has a stop command, the code just tells the movie to run the TIMes after the reach action 2DA took 2 weeks lol BUT another 2 weeks to figure out why the inventory was doing crazy things, i used the the wrong player, the one i was using was from 3DA which was built with the first Beta version of Lassie

aha,,thanks, yeah,,that's what's taking up my time,, getting stuck somewhere with a particular (scripting) problem, matt: I would have to try that out,, it sounds logical, but I'll see if I can get it implemented,,thanks! :) thanks guys,

First question... character portrait zooms. The easiest thing to do would be to add the zoomed animation into the character's talk frame. Just be sure to position the window in such a way that it doesn't substantially alter the character's bounding box so that it appears off screen if the character is near an edge. btw,, is it possible to trigger scripted events based on or activated by the room's (bg) coordinates alone? (for example,,have a character walking around and if they walk over a specific x and y room coordinate a queue can be set and triggered (and initialize events like cutscenes or alike) ->without inserting hotspots that need to be clicked Nope, there are no BG x-position listeners built in, but again... the answer that everyone it getting tired of: you can write a custom AS widget-dad to monitor that. Okay, I just checked in the DOM diagram included in the TIMe dictionary. You'd just need to write a simple frame action to check "_root.room.bg_mc._x;"

ok,, I'm not very good with scripting in lassie I have to admit, so I appreciate you taking the time to reply (to my probably stupid questions) thanks again,

There's no such thing as a dumb question... unless it has been addressed in three previous forum posts that a user doesn't bother to read before re-asking. And no, you have not been an offender. ;-)