Timing in conversations. - by Lady Rowena
Yandros on 7/2/2014 at 19:43
(Forgive me if I'm reversing 'step' and 'action' from Dromed's usage, I don't have it open here. I may have reversed them above, but I'll continue here using them as a conversation step has multiple actions. If that's backwards, I'll fix it later in both posts.)
You can have just one action in a step if you want, and need not fill the screen. The way I approach it is, all the actions in one step (screen) go together, meaning they must all finish before the flow advances to the next step. Inside that step, the actors will perform actions in parallel, meaning if actor 1 and actor 2 have actions within the same step of the conversation, the second doesn't wait for the first to finish before doing his action. Multiple actions by the same actor will be performed in sequence, though, with the exception of playing a line. In that case, the flow moves to the next action as soon as the motion part is done, even if the voice line sound is still playing (like in my example above). This is good, since it means you can play multiple motions in a row under a single voice line.
nicked on 8/2/2014 at 06:55
Thanks for that explanation Russ, that makes a lot of sense and explains a few infuriating bugs I got in Sturmdrang Peak due to not fully understanding conversation steps.
Lady Rowena on 8/2/2014 at 14:13
Glad to see that I'm not alone.....:D
Sometimes I feel so stupid for not understanding things after all these years that I'm too ashamed to ask. Thanks Yandros. :)