Dialogue Displays (UI)

Dialogue Displays provide the user interface (UI) for the player to see lines of dialogue, information about speaking characters (such as their name, character image, etc.), and options when appropriate, along with functionality for the player to be able to select an option.

There are several different Dialogue Display prefabs included with EasyTalk in the 'Prefabs/Dialogue Displays/Screenspace' folder. You can see the complete catalogue here.

Dialogue Display Prefabs included with EasyTalk

Each Dialogue Display utilizes a few different types of display components: Conversation Displays, Option Displays, and Continue Displays, each of which contains various sub-components of their own.

Conversation Displays are used to display lines of dialogue and information about a speaking character, such as the character's name.

Option Displays provide the logic and components to present dialogue options to the player via Dialogue Buttons.

Continue Displays are used to make the player aware that they can continue to the next line of dialogue via input controls.

Display Components

tip

The Character Name Display is actually part of the Conversation Display composed of image and text components. If you don't want to show a character name of the images, you can just disable the "Character Name Panel" object.

Dialogue Display Settings

Each Dialogue Display has many different settings that allow the functionality of the UI to be fine-tuned based on the needs of the game. The settings are described in the sections that follow.

Settings Asset

Dialogue Settings

An EasyTalk Dialogue Settings Asset containing universal settings which are not specific to individual Dialogue Displays, such as language and translation settings.

Sub Displays

Sub-Display Settings

Setting	Description
Conversation Display	The Conversation Display which the Dialogue Display should use to show lines of dialogue.
Option Display	The Option Display which the Dialogue Display should use to present dialogue options to the player.
Continue Display	The Continue Display which the Dialogue Display should use to alert the player that they may continue to the next line of dialogue.

General Settings

General Settings

Setting	Description
Destroy on Load	Whether the display should be destroyed when a new scene is loaded.
Hide On Exit	Whether the conversation display should be hidden whenever dialogue playback ends.
Hide on Pause	Whether the dialogue display should be hidden whenever a Pause node is reached during dialogue playback.
Continue on Story	Whether the Dialogue Display should automatically tell the Dialogue Controller to continue to the next node whenever a story node is reached.
Allow Quick Exit	Whether the display should allow the player to instantly exit dialogue playback by pressing a button (configured as 'Exit Conversation Action Name' or 'Quick Exit Button Name' depending on the input system being used).

Conversation Settings

Conversation Settings

Setting	Description
Default Conversation Display ID	If this is set, whenever a Dialogue Controller begins playback, if it doesn't specify a Conversation Display to use, the Dialogue Display will automatically switch back to using the first Conversation Display in the scene which has a Display ID matching this value.
Are Lines Skippable	Whether the player is allowed to skip lines of dialogue early via the continue mechanism (after the configured continuation delay or once audio finishes).
Hide Convo When Showing Options	Whether the conversation display should be hidden when dialogue options are presented to the player.
Clear Convo When Showing Options	Whether the conversation display should be reset, having the conversation text and character name set to empty strings whenever options are presented to the player.
Refresh Convo On Character Change	If this is true, the conversation display will transition to a hidden state before the character name is updated, and then it will be shown again.
Refresh Convo On Text Change	If this is true, the conversation display will transition to a hidden state before the displayed text is updated, and then it will be shown again.
Switch Convo Display On Character Change	Whether the active conversation display should be switched to another conversation display whenever a character name change is detected. If this is true, then the Dialogue Display will attempt to find the conversation display with a Display ID which is the same as the new character name and use that display.

Autoplay Settings

Setting	Description
Time Per Word	The amount of time to allot to each word in a line of dialogue when calculating a display time for the line (Note that if audio is assigned to the dialogue, the time will be determined by the length of the audio clip).
Min Convo Time	The minimum amount of time a line of dialogue should be displayed, despite word count.
Convo Line Delay	An additional amount of time which is added to the display time for a line of dialogue.

Option Settings

Option Settings

Setting	Description
Present Options Automatically	Whether options should be presented automatically to the player. If this is false, options won't be shown until the player continues.
Option Delay Mode	Determines how long the display should wait before presenting options to the player when presenting options automatically. This can be set to present options immediately when the last line of dialogue is reached in a conversation node, or to present options after a delay or after audio for the prior line of dialogue has been completed, or a combination of those.
Option Delay	When options are to be presented after a delay, this specifies the time period which the Dialogue Display will wait before displaying options.

Continuation Settings

Continuation Settings

Setting	Description
Use Continue Display	Whether the continue display should be used to alert the player that they may continue to the next line of dialogue.
Continuation Mode	Specifies when the player is allowed to continue to the next line of dialogue. This can be set to allow continuation immediately, or to wait for a delay or audio on the current line of dialogue to finish playing, or a combination of both.
Continuation Delay	When continuation is to be allowed after a delay, this is used to specify the duration of that delay before allowing continuation on each line of dialogue.

Dialogue Listeners

Dialogue Listeners

Dialogue Listeners which will be called as events occur during dialogue playback and display events.

Display Events

Event Name	Description
On Continue Enabled	Called whenever the player is allowed to continue to the next line of dialogue by pressing a button.
On Continue Disabled	Called whenever continuation to the next line of dialogue is disabled.
On Option Selection Enabled	Called whenever options are presented and the player is permitted to make a selection.
On Option Selection Disabled	Called after an option has been chosen by the player and options can no longer be selected.

Dialogue Events

Event Name	Description
On Continue	Called whenever dialogue playback continues to the next line of dialogue, or in some cases, the next node.
On Display Options	Called whenever dialogue options are to be presented to the player.
On Option Chosen	Called whenever a dialogue option has been chosen/finalized.
On Display Line	Called whenever a line of dialogue is to be displayed.
On Dialogue Entered	Called whenever dialogue playback begins.
On Dialogue Exited	Called whenever dialogue playback ends.
On Exit Completed	Called one frame after dialogue playback ends.
On Story	Called whenever a story node is encountered during dialogue playback.
On Variable Updated	Called whenever a dialogue variable's value is changed.
On Character Changed	Called whenever a character change is detected.
On Audio Started	Called whenever audio playback starts for a line of dialogue.
On Audio Completed	Called whenever audio playback stops or finishes for a line of dialogue.
On Activate Key	Called whenever a line of dialogue is being processed.
On Wait	Called whenever a Wait node is encountered during dialogue playback.
On Conversation Ending	Called whenever dialogue playback reaches the last line of dialogue in a Conversation node.
On Node Changed	Called whenever dialogue playback moves from one node to another.
On Pause	Called whenever a Pause node is encountered during dialogue playback.