This is a cool way to do modern dialogue

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Lord_Darkmoon, Dec 9, 2017.

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  1. Lord_Darkmoon

    Lord_Darkmoon Avatar

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    I am playing Spellforce 3 and they have a really cool way of doing dialogue.
    There is a window popping up over the head of the person speaking, with the dialogue in it and a portrait. This looks really cool, dynamic and atmospheric.

    Yes I know many of you will say now that this will not work in SotA for whatever reason or that the dialogue window we now have is the best ever done in any game or that the devs should spend more time on doing important things like retexturing statues to sell them in the item shop, whatever. I think it looks WAY better than what we have in SotA now.

    The dialogue window we now have is of course better than it was some time ago but now seeing what modern and interesting take Spellforce 3 provides it simply looks so much better.

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
     
  2. Sir Cabirus

    Sir Cabirus Avatar

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    Very cool, I like it :)
     
  3. Duke Gréagóir

    Duke Gréagóir Legend of the Hearth

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    Reminds me of the way Ultima 7 did it.
     
  4. Diab Blackbow

    Diab Blackbow Avatar

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    My favorite dialogue was from Borderlands 2. To bad something like that wouldn't work for SOTA or other RPGs..
     
  5. Dinsoo

    Dinsoo Avatar

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    Snarky but interesting.
     
  6. Arkah EMPstrike

    Arkah EMPstrike Avatar

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    Did shroud have this at one point and swapped it out for floating text over peoples heads
     
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  7. Paladin Michael

    Paladin Michael Bug Hunter

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    And I assume, it would be easy to do it also in SotA.
    Would be great, instead of having one big window "full of text" under the character for both participants of a dialogue.

    Instead one smaller above the counterpart, great with a small picture of the person, who is talking.
    Yes, sometimes that's just these "small" things, giving us a better feeling to be more involved to the story ...

    What about one above the counterpart (like the pictures shown above by Lord_Darkmoon) and one -smaller than now- for our Avatar, where we click/write our questions/answers?
    So to follow the story would be more clear, who is talking, instead of a "text block rushing" in the same window ...

    The whole dialogue text could be placed (like it is now!) in the left window, we can toggle on or off, to reread it later, if we want ...

    @DarkStarr, @Lord British, @Lum the Mad,
    may be, we could manage this until launch? :)

    It would improve the story telling - and feeling ...

    May be a christmas gift for all of us, who are here for the story ;)
    Thank you very much for considering!
     
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  8. Paladin Michael

    Paladin Michael Bug Hunter

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    So it should be no problem to improve it and insert it again :)
     
  9. gtesser

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    I just want portraits damn it.
     
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  10. Bowen Bloodgood

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    Just trying to imagine how this would work in multiplayer. You wouldn't really be able to do it well between players as the windows would block your view. It could work in any situation where you stop to talk to an NPC since the game hides the regular chat window at that point in favor of the NPC window. But not in multiplayer situations such as party chat.
     
  11. Sir Cabirus

    Sir Cabirus Avatar

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    Okay, but it would be a BIG improvement for the single player mode :)
     
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  12. Vallin Tregres

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    Reminds me of the Neverwinter Nights series.
     
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  13. Paladin Michael

    Paladin Michael Bug Hunter

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    You're right, Bowen. Imagine: 100 Avatars in Soltown Inn, talking to each other :)
    Joking ;) Yes, this part would be for talking to NPC's to improve the storytelling - to have a more "Face-to-Face" talk ...
     
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  14. Timmy Vortex

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    To be honest though; doesn't need much to improve on what we have now, you can list a hundred games which do a better job made in the last ten years :p
     
  15. Humbert_Humbert

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    I do think a fix to our current system will definitely help Sota not look so dated. The concerns about it would be confusing with so many players, why dont we cross that bridge if we come to it.
     
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  16. Paladin Michael

    Paladin Michael Bug Hunter

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    And hopefuly, this "not much" can be done soon.
    As I see and feel it: a great story is packed in a wrong way in something looking like a text editor ...
    And a little polish could make the presentation of the text so much better :)
     
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  17. Bowen Bloodgood

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    No real argument there. I do think it'd probably be more work than people seem to think though. You'd want a unique portrait for every story based character at least.. and there are an awful lot of them. Like in the screenshots you also don't want to completely cover the NPC you're talking to so there's dynamic placement based on position and orientation etc if we're talking about abandoning the zoom in which otherwise controls the camera.

    I personally don't mind the zoom in.. the real issue there is that the NPCs haven't been made pretty yet. Or at least made unique. Getting a lot of NPC polish in will go a long way I think.
     
  18. Vladamir Begemot

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    Well I'm glad no one said our dialog UI is the best ever done.
     
  19. Paladin Michael

    Paladin Michael Bug Hunter

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    Don't forget, that we have a lot of Leveldesigner, who did a lot of over-and-over-work of scenes before.
    Not to mention the shop articles (Think about Ice Nightmare masks, Zombie masks, Snowman masks, and all this stuff!)

    So why not polish faces as well to have a unique feeling by looking in unique faces?
    This and the actual "all-text-in-one-window"-presentation is one of the "story looks like a flood of text and every character the same" feedback from a lot of players.
    And as I remember back from may playing through all 4 paths:
    There are some unique faces, we look into:
    The titans - and the Oracle - well made! But that's just the finale!
    Samael, Min Liang Tan, Khasi and Siranto.
    Also the scary ones in Necropolis and Midras (Avatar's Crypt).

    Beside this could be done some polish for MAIN STORY characters. That would be enough to improve the story feeling.
    I don't think it is so much more work. Beside this it is also useful for the merchants looking all the same ...
    And the story of the Avatar should it be worth!
     
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  20. amarious

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    Big time agreed.

    For me at least.. the graphics could look really terrible but if characters had very well done portraits then I'd be ok with it.
     
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