Adding NPC dialogue

This week, we've begun to add NPCs and dialogue to our game!

NPC dialogue is something we already had working in our previous Unity build of the game. However, unlike other aspects of the game that we've since rebuilt, such as platforming mechanics, I always wanted to go back to the dialogue system and redesign it. For instance, I like the idea of being able to use an external data source such as JSON or a spreadsheet to store lines of dialogue, and I want to make lots of visual improvements too.

The clip above demonstrates where I'm at with this currently. The sound effect is something I've nicked - temporarily, obviously, and purely for demonstration's sake - from the Croc 2, from the guy who sold Croc the jellies and the crystal ball. (I still have such vivid memories of playing that as a child on my PlayStation 1!)

People always ask us if we're going to have voice acting in our game, and the truth is that we don't know for sure yet. At the very least I think it's nice to have sounds that resemble speech - hence the Croc 2 SFX I'm using as a placeholder here - and I think that's a route we could go down. Recorded voice acting costs money we might not necessarily be able to get, and even then I'm not totally convinced that it's even a good fit for our game generally. I guess we'll see...

I've made it so that the camera zooms in when dialogue is initiated, but now that I watch this back I think it really draws attention to the fact that Kinoko continues to look so energetic even whilst engaged in what could - at times, potentially - be a serious conversation, so I think I'll be talking to Chelsey about giving Kinoko a separate 'conversation' animation.

Anyway, that's where I'm at.

I'm going to focus on adding additional lines of dialogue next. Right now it's all code-driven, with the text being drawn straight from the C# script, but once I'm able to display multiple lines of dialogue I'll then look at getting it stored elsewhere, and get NPCs picking out the right lines at the right moments.