I’ve recorded audio for several lines of conversation. These are the correct format, have imported properly into the game and play properly when I click on the Play button in the Actions Taken tab.
They are correctly added to the lines in the conversation yet when I play the game the only one that is voiced is the last line.
I’m thinking that because I’m using the dialogue boxes rather than above the head conversations, somehow by clicking on the line which should have audio to accompany the response when clicked, it then immediately goes to the next line maybe without allowing time for the sound to play?
I have tried waiting a moment before clicking on the next response but to no avail.
I’ve also tried removing any music playing in the scene but that doesn’t work either.
Does anyone have experience with this?
UPDATE: Zapped the conversation and built it up line by line in a clean module .
If you assume OWNER / PC/ OWNER/ PC convo only lines 1,3 and 4 will play audio and 2 won’t. It almost feels like I need a CONTINUE in there but I can’t see why.
Just done further testing and its looking like this isn’t me being daft ( unusual!)
Clean module with lines 1,2,3,4 as above and again 2 doesn’t work. 1 +3 being the OWNER work fine, 4 being the last line in the conversation seems to work but 2 doesn’t.
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Have you tried swapping around the order of the audio in order to isolate the problem. For example, instead of playing audio 1 on line 1, how about playing audio 2 on line 1?
Perhaps there’s an undocumented maximum audio length that can be played on line 1? So that if it is too long, then line 2 won’t play.
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Thanks for this. I’ll try it in a while although I have tried it in the clean module only using a voicing of 1,2,3,4. One word on each line so shouldn’t be a maximum length issue. I’m wondering if it is a timing issue though as both OWNERS lines ( 1+3) play all the time and 4 (PC’s last line is no problem) so my thinking is still that line 2 is in an awkward position with line 1 getting spoken then the reply to it brings up the next dialogue box immediately - maybe before the audio for the reply to line 1 can be spoken?
I’m surprised this hasn’t come up before though, or maybe nobody voices lines since the lips don’t move in EE.
This is a story for my granddaughter though, for her lockdown and she took great care in getting her lines right so I’d like to find an answer. I put myself in the story ( as the world’s greatest wizard naturally !) so I’ve recorded all my lines and it’s just a little frustrating. If I knew that the toolset cant cope with this I’d give up on it but I can’t believe there can be a huge issue with one short line of audio.
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My guess is that you can’t have voiced reply lines - most likely because there’s no time to play the audio - just as you’ve said.
You could leave (3) empty and see what happens… perhaps (2) will play then. Not that it would help much…
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It’s fairly consistent now that I’ve tried 4/5 different conversations. It appears that you can’t have a fully voiced conversation. The sound will be played on all the Owner’s line because everything is suspended till the player clicks their response. That gives time for the sound to be played.
However, when the PC clicks their reply that dialogue box is automatically closed and the next OWNER statement called . No time to play.
The reason that the last PC line can be voiced is that you are waiting to click END DIALOGUE.
At least that’s my working theory. So, only options if I want to fully voice a conversation are
-
Find a way of slowing down the change to the next OWNER line. (Can’t think of one).
-
Use floating text above the players’ heads and add sounds with the correct delay.
-
Change the whole thing into a cutscene every time you have a conversation you want to voice. Even then the Gestalt system ( for me) doesn’t make it easy to add extra things outside its normal functions.
A pity as you have to think it wouldn’t have taken much to code in that if there was an audio connected to a line that the box didn’t change until it had been spoken.
Anyway, back to square one. . .
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You could try ActionPauseConversation for the duration of the PC voiceover (via a delayed call to ActionResumeConversation).
This works well for situations where a visual needs to complete before the next converation line, but I’m not sure about audio.
I dimly remember an argument that PC responses should’t have VO because players already imagine their own voice responding, so might lose ownership / immersion, or simply get frustrated by the delay, but who knows…
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Thanks, Proleric. That sounds like a possibility although my scripting is pretty poor.
It wouldn’t ruin immersion in my case. My 8 yr old granddaughter will be playing the game as PC and it is her voiceovers I’m wanting to use 
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Instead of
Owner(1) -> PC(2) -> Owner(3) -> PC(4)
you could try something like this:
Owner(1) -> PC -> Owner(PC)(2) -> Continue -> Owner(3) -> PC -> Owner(PC)(4) ->…
Means: whenever the PC select a line in the next step the owner repeats that line voiced. To improve this you could temporarily change the owner’s portrait to you daughter’s protraits.
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That sounds good, Kamiryn, but if I can be stupid for a minute…
Do you mean the OWNER says his own lines plus those of the PC ?
So, Dialogue box 1 would be just OWNER line 1
Dialogue box 2 would be OWNER saying and audio for PC (line2)
Dialogue box 3 = CONTINUE
Dialogue box 4 = OWNER next line (3) voiced.
Dialogue box 5 = OWNER (PC) line 4 saying audio for last PC line (4) ?
Now my mind’s whirling
Will have a go at this in a while. Thanks.
That’s more or less what I meant.
Dialog box1:
Owner: text (1)
- PC text
Dialog box 2:
Owner (says PC text from Box 1) (2)
- continue
Dialog box 3:
Owner: text (3)
- PC text (4)
Of course if there’s only one line to choose from in Dialog box 1 you could replace the PC text with ‘Continue’. But the idea should work also if there are more than one line…
Dialog box1:
Owner: text (1)
- PC text 1 -> 2a
- PC text 2 -> 2b
- ...
Dialog box 2a:
Owner (says PC text 1 from Box 1) (2a)
- continue -> 3
Dialog box 2b:
Owner (says PC text 2 from Box 1) (2b)
- continue -> 3
...
Dialog box 3:
Owner: text (3)
- PC text (4)
Hope this makes it more clear…
Yes, thanks. I’ll try it. Not that it wasn’t clear, just that my mind doesn’t seem to be . . .
Hmm, came up with a bit of a workaround which seems ok.
Starting off with the principle that just about anything is possible with this toolset, I went to bed last night thinking there must be a solution and I woke this morning with the clear notion in my head that conversations come in batches of two -OWNER and PC response.
So, I combined the audios of the first two lines into one file in Audacity and put it onto the OWNER’s first line. I added the word “CONTINUE” to the end of the PC line and continued down the conversation doing the same to every pair of lines.
Worked pretty well. Yes, you’re relying on the person playing the game not to click CONTINUE before the end of the audio but it’s actually pretty counterintuitive to do that anyway.
Will try a bit more and maybe post a short video to see what others think.
Btw, @Kamiryn, I’m sure your solution would work at least as well as this but I was actually struggling to keeps hold of who was speaking in any given line ! Entirely the fault of an addled brain (mine) , I fear.
No problem, best solution is what works best for you!
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