Blueprint Dialogue System

[Grogger]

After some more testing I've found more specifically what is what's not working with the system.
The scanner detects everything but others Character Class Blueprints. So yeah you can interact with Pawns, Actors, ... but not with others Character Blueprints.
Is there anything special you have to do to work with Character BPs or is it just a bug?

I'm having a look to see if I can replicate this issue, I'll keep you posted

[Grogger]

Ok,
so i said "test it deeply" but right now it's more like "hitting a wall" XD

I read through the help and also saw your video-tutorials, but because i can't trust in what i see (i mean i forget it quickly) xD i'm running into a problem now.
Tried to implement the system in my game, but after adding the bpc_dialogue child into my npc character and the scanner into my character, when i play it it's like the scanner is ignoring the npc at all.

Tried the same with a cone/static mesh and worked ok.
Tried adding the skeletal mesh directly to the map and worked ok.

Then i decided to go back to your example (i thought that maybe was some kind of error with using blueprints instead of just skeletal or static meshes). So i turned the sign post into a BP just to find that everything works the same except that the alternate layout doesn't shows up. Everything is shown under the basic layout. But still was almost working and fully detected by the scanner.

Then tried one more thing; duplicated the Third person player character blueprint, called it NPCCharacter just for reference. Got rid of all the event graph nodes and the camera component. Got rid of the scanner too and just added the BPC_Demo_Topic to it, saved, tested and... voilá! the character gets ignored and the system doesn't work :/
Probably it's just me that i'm missing some important step but i can't find what it is.

Can you please point me in the right direction?

The reason it isn't working on a character is because the scanner uses the 'visibility' channel, which is disabled in the character. I'm not certain why it's off, it doesn't seem to have any negative side effect in my project to enable it though.

Alternatively, if you need the character's visibility channel to not collide, you can create a new channel and replace the traces in BPC_UseScanner with that new channel (of course, all of the actors would need to set their collision parameters accordingly)

Thanks for bringing this up! I'll update the documentation with this info

[Meguido]

Oh! so that's why. Then i guess i'll change the visibility channel in the a per-character-bp basis to avoid any issue that explain why it's disabled in characters. Not a problem

No problem mate, i'll keep on my testings ^^. If any other strange thing arises i'll keep you posted.

[Meguido]

Ok,
so far so good. I've been doing some more testing and implementing into my game.

And now run into another weird behaviour. I don't want to use the mouse so i went to BPC_Dialogue and got rid of that "Set 'Show Mouse Cursor' to true" to avoid showing the mouse cursor. But when i test it as soon as i speak to anyone and the dialog box appears, the cursor does too. Is there any node hidden overthere that's forcing the mouse to show up?

_____________

EDIT: Hmmm, looks like that the node "Set Input Mode...." (to whatever being it only UI or Game and UI) forces the cursor to show. If i can't find a way to override that i'll probably end up getting rid of that node too...

[Grogger]

Ok,
so far so good. I've been doing some more testing and implementing into my game.

And now run into another weird behaviour. I don't want to use the mouse so i went to BPC_Dialogue and got rid of that "Set 'Show Mouse Cursor' to true" to avoid showing the mouse cursor. But when i test it as soon as i speak to anyone and the dialog box appears, the cursor does too. Is there any node hidden overthere that's forcing the mouse to show up?

_____________

EDIT: Hmmm, looks like that the node "Set Input Mode...." (to whatever being it only UI or Game and UI) forces the cursor to show. If i can't find a way to override that i'll probably end up getting rid of that node too...

Hi Meguido,

You don't need to alter the core files to achieve this, simply set the component's input mode to "unmanaged" and it shouldn't trigger the cursor at all.

[Meguido]

Hi Meguido,

You don't need to alter the core files to achieve this, simply set the component's input mode to "unmanaged" and it shouldn't trigger the cursor at all.

Oh yeah, didn't thought on that at first because i was getting a hard time at understanding some processes but now it's clear and i'm alreayd using that. Thank you very much

[Meguido]

I seem to be having the baddest luck ever...
I have a question for you Grogger; is there any way that only altering the layout (the appearance of the dialog box, including changing panels positions and sizes aswell as adding my own new panels to it) can cause the syste to stop working? Even freezing the engine completly and having to hard close it?

That's all i did and got that behaviour. If there's just text it just doesn't show any text at all but i can't advance through it so my only option is to close the game. But if there's any option to chose (any response in the dt) the entire engine just freezes without showing any text at all too. But this time the only way to close it is by CTRL+ALT+SUPR and closing the engine the hard way because it start eating my ram really quickly.

Any solution?

[Grogger]

I seem to be having the baddest luck ever...
I have a question for you Grogger; is there any way that only altering the layout (the appearance of the dialog box, including changing panels positions and sizes aswell as adding my own new panels to it) can cause the syste to stop working? Even freezing the engine completly and having to hard close it?

That's all i did and got that behaviour. If there's just text it just doesn't show any text at all but i can't advance through it so my only option is to close the game. But if there's any option to chose (any response in the dt) the entire engine just freezes without showing any text at all too. But this time the only way to close it is by CTRL+ALT+SUPR and closing the engine the hard way because it start eating my ram really quickly.

Any solution?

I haven't experienced this myself but I don't modify the base UI, I only inherit from it when creating new interfaces (the alternative dialogue UI in the sample does this).

My first instinct would be that the interface isn't the cause, but the data might be.
Have you tried different content, or tried the same content on the default interface (you can plug your data into the sample project to see if it is the cause)?

That being said, I can't be certain of anything from where I'm sitting. Keep me posted on your findings and I'll shed some light if/when I can!

[Meguido]

Thank you for your time and help,

this being said yeah it's working completely cool with the default layout. But as soon as i switch to this one...
Could this be caused because i move and resized the panel where the text must show? Dunno just throwing out crazy facts. I tried deleting any new panel i added but still the same problem.

Also i changed some of the "adjust size to content" checkboxes

[Grogger]

Thank you for your time and help,

this being said yeah it's working completely cool with the default layout. But as soon as i switch to this one...
Could this be caused because i move and resized the panel where the text must show? Dunno just throwing out crazy facts. I tried deleting any new panel i added but still the same problem.

Also i changed some of the "adjust size to content" checkboxes

The size and location of the panels aren't important, so long as they exist. I don't think the adjust size to content should matter very much, though the text populates the wrapbox at runtime - there might be some dependency there?
There is also a large 'click zone' box that fills the screen and is required to move forward in the dialogue. If that's not there, you'll need to advance the dialogue through some other means (custom).

[Meguido]

Ok so look like i'm finding the cause.
Can't be fully sure but it's a start.
I increased very much the size of the portrait then i got forced to resize the Scroll Box for the text and add a negative value in the Left Padding to match it with my designed area for the text...
And looks like this is it!
Probably UMG don't like that negative value because as soon as i reverted it back to 0 it started working suddenly. I suposse i'll have to get the portrait panel out of that horizontal box in order to match my design.

[Grogger]

Ok so look like i'm finding the cause.
Can't be fully sure but it's a start.
I increased very much the size of the portrait then i got forced to resize the Scroll Box for the text and add a negative value in the Left Padding to match it with my designed area for the text...
And looks like this is it!
Probably UMG don't like that negative value because as soon as i reverted it back to 0 it started working suddenly. I suposse i'll have to get the portrait panel out of that horizontal box in order to match my design.

Oh interesting, I'm very glad to hear you figured it out! Thanks for reporting back

[Meguido]

It was definitely that. Probably i would never noticeed if i have portraits already configured but because i haven't, the scroll box panel was moved to its spot -150 or so, meaning it was out of the screen.
Looks like it can't draw text if its out of the screen and that's why it was getting stuck in there.
Now finally, everything is working fine!

Thank you for your help, this system is really great ^^

[Grogger]

It was definitely that. Probably i would never noticeed if i have portraits already configured but because i haven't, the scroll box panel was moved to its spot -150 or so, meaning it was out of the screen.
Looks like it can't draw text if its out of the screen and that's why it was getting stuck in there.
Now finally, everything is working fine!

Thank you for your help, this system is really great ^^

Ah I see, yes that makes sense now!

If you feel up to it, it would be helpful to get your rating and possibly a review of the system on the store page

I'm glad it's all working now, I'll keep this UMG behavior in mind in case it happens to anyone else!

[Meguido]

Thank you!
And yeah i'll be doing it as soon as i can ^^