Archive: 26 posts

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In my latest level, which I've almost completed, I've been attampting to use magic mouths to make sackboy (or sackgirl, don't want to appear misogynistic!) talk as they're running around. It's not been the easiest of tasks, as trying to make the speech bubble appear to come from their mouth and not appear in some random place, has caused me quite a few headaches. I've stuck with it, however, and I think that it's given my level a bit of a different twist, when compared with all my other random efforts. Has anybody else used magic mouths this way, or do you only tend to use them with characters which you've created, to tell a story or point the way? I've not found any other levels in which people make sackboy/girl talk in this way. I'd be interested in trying levels which have tried this idea. Anyone?

2009-09-16 23:02:00 Author: Frogmeister Posts: 236

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In my latest level, which I've almost completed, I've been attampting to use magic mouths to make sackboy (or sackgirl, don't want to appear misogynistic!) talk as they're running around. It's not been the easiest of tasks, as trying to make the speech bubble appear to come from their mouth and not appear in some random place, has caused me quite a few headaches. I've stuck with it, however, and I think that it's given my level a bit of a different twist, when compared with all my other random efforts. Has anybody else used magic mouths this way, or do you only tend to use them with characters which you've created, to tell a story or point the way? I've not found any other levels in which people make sackboy/girl talk in this way. I'd be interested in trying levels which have tried this idea. Anyone? There are a few actually, however the speech bubble doesn't really appear to look like it's coming from their mouth, it just switches camera views to show Sacky as the person talking.

2009-09-16 23:04:00 Author: Whalio Cappuccino Posts: 5250

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Moved to Help.

2009-09-16 23:11:00 Author: Killian Posts: 2575

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There are a few actually, however the speech bubble doesn't really appear to look like it's coming from their mouth, it just switches camera views to show Sacky as the person talking. But it is possible to make the bubble come from sack's mouth, it just takes a LOT of tweaking. Can you remember the names of any of the levels, or the creators?

2009-09-16 23:19:00 Author: Frogmeister Posts: 236

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I'm surprised this is really possible, props to you on very fine tweaking.

2009-09-16 23:21:00 Author: Burnvictim42 Posts: 3322

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Quite a lot of levels use the technique of self narration. Personally I used it for areas that require some kind of hint - I can't stand it when a speech bubble comes out of nowhere saying "this is what you need to do", like the creator is talking directly to the player. Of the top of my head, Subterranean Setbacks by yours truly, Free at Last by NinjaMicWz, Hectic Hallways by RickTheRipper, some of the Lone Ninja series by coyote_blue... and now I'm drawing a blank. All of those use a mixture of Sackboy talking on his own and conversations with NPCs.

2009-09-16 23:22:00 Author: rtm223 Posts: 6497

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Thanks rtm. As is always the way, I assumed I'd stumbled upon a unique idea. I guess there are very few unique ideas left. I'm off to try them now. Cheers.

2009-09-16 23:27:00 Author: Frogmeister Posts: 236

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You could always just have it so when sackboy stops like when he's in some kinda train of some sort then the speech bubble comes up.. Making it move could be difficult because you have no clue what the player mite do. They just might feel like stopping to read it carefully making it so (If the mouth was moving) It would go out of range. So that would be a very difficult thing to do. Good luck!

2009-09-16 23:42:00 Author: Dan930930 Posts: 77

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Thanks Dan, but like whaale said, you've got to use the camera in the magic mouth options, to make sacky stand still, otherwise the speech bubble just appears to come from thin air. I'm determined to make it as flawless as possible.

2009-09-16 23:54:00 Author: Frogmeister Posts: 236

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You could use a player tracker that keeps a magic mouth always close to the player, with this I don't think you would really need a cutscene camera either...

2009-09-17 00:17:00 Author: goldenclaw13 Posts: 224

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Good idea goldenclaw, but it'd be a bit thermo heavy. My levels already to the top, so I need to rely on the tinker method.

2009-09-17 06:35:00 Author: Frogmeister Posts: 236

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What happens if the player jumps into the detection area? TBH, I recon that having the mouth roughly placed and setting up the text so that it is clear who is speaking (no voice, first person, conversational style, etc.) then the fact that the mouth isn't spot on is overridden by the immediate assumption that it is sackboy talking.

2009-09-17 08:52:00 Author: rtm223 Posts: 6497

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There's plenty of conversations between Sackboy talking to camera/various characters in most of my SW stuff... although its fairly simple to set up so I'm not sure if thats' exactly what you're trying to do...if the player triggers a magic mouth (with a close proximity radius), its just a case of setting up the camera angle to make it look like it's coming from his direction...

2009-09-17 11:42:00 Author: julesyjules Posts: 1156

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^^^I second all those for another good example of story telling driven by 1st person dialogue, try Heart of Gold by Hexaghon. Really entertaining and fun, well written stuff and a great level. Since you're not using cut scenes to direct the "idea" that sackboy is talking and thus making the dialogue appear in a way that doesn't impede the player's movement (good idea IMO)... as far as keeping your dialogue in step with sackboy, a following system might help to keep the spike of the word bubble pointing directly towards the "head"... the same way you get spotlights and other things to follow along with sackboy's movement using double sided sensor switches and solid, stable piston combinations, and an invisible piece of material slathered with magic mouths and mag switches to trigger at the right time and always around sackboy... if you're gearing your level to build around this dialogue concept, accommodating the mechanism's movements shouldn't be too hard but will require alot of testing and the mouth/switch piece should be in an extremely underused and mostly unoccupied layer so it doesn't collide with things. You'll need things in mind that keep it from reverting back to it's start point... checkpoint respawns should precede it's speed of movement, but emitting impassible blocks of dark matter that prevent the following mechanism from fully retracting might be a good idea depending on how linear the level is, wether there's much backtracking, wether it's various degrees of horizontal or vertical, and upon the pace of the level... if the player's getting flung around alot and running jumping at constant break neck speed - in that case multiple following systems might be needed at different points to accommodate for predicted player behavior.

2009-09-17 19:12:00 Author: Unknown User

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Plenty of good tips there Ninja, I'll certainly listen to your wise words. But, unfortunately, I was trying to add this feature at the latter stage of the build and so cannot add sackboy follow mechanisms into empty layers as the level is mostly complete. It would take major deletion of whole sections of the level to incorporate these. Therefore I am restricted to other methods. And sadly, these methods direct me right back to the cutscene. I've used emitted mouths on tiny pieces of dark matter, mouths on invisible pistons and many other ways of trying to get the mouth to follow sackboy, and all have failed. My conclusion is that the only way to make the speechbubble apear to come from sackboys head is by only doing so on a stationary player. Any attempt at doing so on a moving player results in some perfect alignments, and many other random placements with slightly random results each time the level is played. So maybe what I need to do is to start over from scratch so I can include a follow mechanism. Not looking forward to that! But then maybe it's good to see this as a project and not just some random quick level design. Should I bother with a redesign or leave it as a finished level? Aaaaargh! What do I do?!?!!?

2009-09-17 21:35:00 Author: Frogmeister Posts: 236

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Well, I really like the concept either way. You would probably have an interesting level based on the story alone and the workaround you came up with sounds great... what you could do is release the as is version when it's polished off, and maybe do a super deluxe version afterwards... it'd be like going from rough draft to master thesis, and I bet you'd be able to pull off even more with the concept and design after having already done it once and being able to avoid alot of hassles that made the first build difficult.

2009-09-18 14:40:00 Author: Unknown User

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Well I've decided to push on and try to redesign the level to be as perfect as possible. I played your "Free at Last" level last night (And was very impressed. One of my favourites.), and realised that what I've got isn't really up to scratch and needs a lot more work to get anywhere near as polished. Can I ask how long Free at last took you from start to finish? Was it "as is" when you first published it, or did you spend a long time tinkering?

2009-09-18 15:01:00 Author: Frogmeister Posts: 236

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Thanks, man... I really wanted to do alot more with that level than I was able to fit in, and it was inspired by a friends level which had a great vehicle and ending sequence I had to leave out in my revamped version, but I'm glad you enjoyed it. I think I spent about a week and a half putting it together... I'd say I put a good hundred hours in it, but alot of the time I'd just be staring at the screen trying to think of the next area's puzzle, objective, or look. Try the level that inspired it called "Breakout" by my friend CENTURION24 and the puzzle design that inspired both of us in "(The Ancient Castle)" by _OIL. It was pretty finished when I published it, but there was quite alot of things I had to change when it came to the hint system and making objectives more clear - I made a very long and involving level like I wanted, but at the same time it was really frustrating for alot of people... and of course a handful of bugs and hassles. I am always impatient and use my first 2 days as beta testing instead of actually beta testing it like I should have heh I thought this idea of yours was cool, because that was actually one of the things I disliked in the dialogue use in my level, was not having things centered directly on the character that was speaking at all times.

2009-09-18 15:38:00 Author: Unknown User

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I was impressed with the use of dialogue for NPCs and sacky, in your level, and thought it worked really well. However there are a few inherent obstacles which always manage to spoil the illusion somehow. The worst of these is the floating speechbubble which floats around after you've already read it. This annoys the HELL out of me as it's ruined some of the most precise setpieces I managed to create. There's nothing worse (I think) than running about and seeing these speechbubbles popping up all over the place. The only workaround 've found so far, is using mouths attached to dissolve. But that doesn't sort out the movement issue and it can be difficult disguising that wisp of dissolve smoke. I must admit that a week and a half is mightily impressive for the creation on FAL. I liked the challenge in it, and that's what keeps me going back and playing it over. I far prefer having to use my brain rather than simply running from left to right.

2009-09-18 16:56:00 Author: Frogmeister Posts: 236

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Yeah, some of them weren't set up to close themselves off, but some of the speech bubbles (especially the long convos), I had wired to permanent switches out of necessity... I'd had so many lined up in small spaces where sackboy can be in a number of spots that I didn't want the speech bubbles to disappear too quickly based on proximity and the amount of dialogue, but a side effect was that all the speech bubbles could only be read once after being activated the first time. It had the fringe benefit of eliminating the read button popups, but the drawback of being a on time thing. If you want them to always be rereadable, a sensor switch is the way to go, but if you want them off a permanent switch is a good solution with some minor problems. This gives me an idea for a different talk box though... if the string of magic mouths were emitted... but it was only triggered by a sensor switch that slowly moves a piston down so that if a player is a lollygagging in a given area or waiting to reread text, the dialogue tree will reemit but it won't always be present when running past. The problem I foresee with this is timing the length that the dialogue stays active, before dissolving and allowing enough room to be replaced. That's one of the hardest things to guage... I'd wanted hint systems to be automatically delivered if the player was standing in an area too long without finding the solution, but simply couldn't predict what the average time would be before a player gets frustrated and gives up and not overshoot it to where players who don't want hints won't be given unwanted hints. On top of that, trying to gauge where a player would be and what they'd be doing (ie: hit a brick wall and stand still, or do they run back immediately?) at each area was more impossible lol More complete control over magic mouths in terms of timing, conditions, and iteration would be great.

2009-09-19 14:42:00 Author: Unknown User

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This gives me an idea for a different talk box though... if the string of magic mouths were emitted... but it was only triggered by a sensor switch that slowly moves a piston down so that if a player is a lollygagging in a given area or waiting to reread text, the dialogue tree will reemit but it won't always be present when running past. The problem I foresee with this is timing the length that the dialogue stays active, before dissolving and allowing enough room to be replaced. I agree. I've tried so many different emit/dissolve combos that it just gets far too complicated. I've already tried your idea, but unfortunately it throws up exactly the same problems as if the mouths were fixed. Timing is one of the flaws of using mouths for hints etc. The only workaround I've found is by setting a sensor switch to emit a key, and once the key has been emitted a certain amount of times then a mouth is emitted. But the same problem arises again. You have to guess how many times a player will visit the sensor before they need a hint. I think that the idea you used in FAL works best. Give the player a cheat sticker to use if they get stuck. That way you can choose to play with or without cheats and the player is never stuck as the hint is always available. This also allows players of differing abilities to see the whole thing. And also makes the magic mouth problem disappear. If only there was a way to attach mag keys and mouths to the players costume, things would be a whole lot simpler.

2009-09-19 16:15:00 Author: Frogmeister Posts: 236

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Hey, I just realized, that you could accommodate the time the player wants to spend reading, by having the emitted dialogue tree set up with it's own inverted sensor switch, so that when the player's done reading it and moves on (and out of range) the mouths disappear and free up the space for the time-based replacement. I can't test it or anything, but try it out sometime and let me know if you get something good out of it.

2009-09-21 14:35:00 Author: Unknown User

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Could you elaborate a little? Logic's not one of my strongpoints.

2009-09-21 20:46:00 Author: Frogmeister Posts: 236

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Say sackboy gets to point A, and an emitter is set up to emit a set of magic mouths in whatever arrangement and order you want. Do all this in pause. All the mouths should be placed on bits of dissolve (or one long piece of dissolve if you don't want them in different locations). Place them in the order you want them to read, starting with 1st instance of dialogue, and ending with last dialogue. Add a sensor switch with a good sized radius to make the trigger for the mouths a surefire thing, and attach the tab in the same order you placed them in - it's just there for insurance when the "dialogue tree" is later emitted. Now place another sensor switch on the dialogue tree (dissolve + mouths), set it to inverted and give it a decent range, at least the size of a single screen. Attach it to the dissolve piece itself. This will allow the piece to dissolve away when the player leaves the area, but not dissolve while in the area and still reading it. If the mouths must be on screen and visible, shrink the entire object and readjust the radius for everything to it's new size just to make sure everything's still in proper range. Capture this dialogue tree as an object. Put it in the emitter, 1 shot, infinite max, 1 at a time, infinite life time and have it emit in the area you envisioned the dialogue sequence happening, just as you originally placed it when you made the object. Now create a relatively long dark matter piston box with a mag switch and mag key... set the piston to stiff and it's speed to however long you want the delay to be (this can be tested and changed later). Attach the wire from the mag switch to the emitter that emits the dialogue tree. Attach a directional sensor switch to the piston. If all goes well, it should emit the dialogue when the player arrives, and dissolve the dialogue when the player moves on... but if the player stands still in the area long enough, it should re-emit the dialogue for rereading without having the consequence of constantly seeing the read signal balloon pop up. A good way to prep it for instant read the first time is create a dummy dialogue tree using the same object that's set to dissolve when the player passes by the area on their first visit... once dissolved, the previous mechanism will always do it's time-delayed dialogue replacements as per usual. You probably don't really need this for anything right now, but it might come in handy sometime.

2009-09-22 16:02:00 Author: Unknown User

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What a fab solution. I bow down to your logic know how. I shall have a go at playing around with this idea at the weekend, when I've got a spare day or two. Many thanks!

2009-09-22 22:53:00 Author: Frogmeister Posts: 236

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I have a fair amount of 1st person dialog (mostly sacky talking to himself) going on in my 00Sack - Revenge levels. Now, I am using cut-scene cameras to freeze him, so I know you are wanting to avoid that. But with regard to an earlier point you made - I also hate (usually) the floating speech bubble afterwards. So in many (not all) cases, I set the trigger to a player-prox switch, attached to an off screen perma-switch, which was set to One-Shot and attached to the magic mouth. This gives the speech bubble once, and only once. Didn't try to understand everything Ninja was passing on to you, so if this is redundant advice, my apologies. Otherwise, I hope it helps!

2009-09-22 23:10:00 Author: v0rtex Posts: 1878

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