Basically I decided to add dialog boxes so as to add a story narrative to the game, however for the moment the tutorial I’m following has been leading me to problems, possibly brought on by a newer version of Unity.
So far my code below is what I’ve come up with. I’m also hoping to have it so that the game is paused when the dialog appears (since I don’t want the player to get shot when s/he is reading) and I think I’ve cracked that part, however why there is a compiler issues I’m uncertain.
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;
using UnityEngine.UI;
public class TextBoxManager : MonoBehaviour {
public GameObject DialogBox;
public Text Dlog;
public TextAsset Dialog;
public string[] DialogLines;
public int StartOfLine;
public int EndOfLine;
public PlayerController player;
void Start()
{
player = FindObjectOfType<PlayerController>();
if (Dialog != null)
{
DialogLines = (Dialog.text.Split('\n'));
Time.timeScale = 0;
}
if (EndOfLine == 0)
{
EndOfLine = DialogLines.Length - 1;
}
}
void Update()
{
Dialog.text = DialogLines[StartOfLine];
if (Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.Space))
{
StartOfLine += 1;
}
if (StartOfLine > EndOfLine)
{
DialogBox.SetActive(false);
}
}
}
As I understand it, you have declared Dialog of type TextAsset, not having watched the tutorial, I am assuming this is a raw text file you have as an asset which is being read in.
On line 34 you then try to set it’s text property;
Dialog.text = DialogLines[StartOfLine];
I’m guessing what you are trying to do is output the text from the raw file to a UI Text object in the scene, if so, I believe you named that Dlog in your code.
Ahhh I see what my problem was…it’s the problem I often run in when I give my own titles to commands instead of simply following. That seems to have fixed it, now hopefully I can have it paused when it starts and then start after it goes.
Text text;
text.text = "This is some text, how many times can I say text";
Perhaps consider renaming some of your variables… for example, the variable for the TextAsset, that’s your raw text, or source text, perhaps consider one of those as a name for it, or just textAsset
Updated Wed Sep 27 2017 01:18
You could consider popping a little check around that line in the Update method also, to see if the text has already been set, other wise you are hitting that array and populating that UI Text object in the scene many, many times and unnecessarily. Just a thought
I think at the moment the code is prone to some issues…
For example…
You are attempting to read the text file in, splitting it by the escape newline.
Lets say for example this is the raw text;
This is line one
This is line three, there are two newline characters in this text block
So, hypothetically, you would have an array consisting of three items.
In your Update method, I would hazard a guess that when you press the space bar, even with ninja like reflexes, it will increment your StartOfLine variable to be greater than these three lines of text.
Need to really break this down a bit…
Firstly, I’d comment out all of the content in the Update method.
Lets actually check you have something in the array first.
So, in the Start method, change your Debug.Log statement to something like this;
Debug.Log("Array DialogLines has " + DialogLines.Length.ToString() + " lines of text");
What do you get back? Does this correspond with your raw text file asset?
Claims it has 4 lines of text and nothing else is reported.
The problem appears after I press space after the end of the message where the box stays on screen. That is what I’m thinking might be part of the issue here…
Ok, great… so we now know that the \n is handling the newlines correctly.
The if statement is true, EndOfLine gets set to the length of the array, minus 1 (to handle the fact it is zero-based), so EndOfLine = 3 and at this point StartOfLine = 0.
The first time the Update method is called it sets the Dlogtext property to the first line of text.
Check for a space bar press and increments StartOfLine.
Lets put a Debug.Log() in the Update method, so we can see the value of StartOfLine, and we’ll put a Debug.Log() in after the increment so that you can see the values after they have been incremented…I would recommend commenting out the second if statement for now, thus;
Ok, that’s good… so the issue then is that at the beginning of the Update method where you access the array, your index value is greater than the number of elements it has…
So, we need to add some code to protect against that from happening and not just assume StartOfLine will be within the correct boundaries… perhaps something similar to this?
void Update()
{
if (StartOfLine <= EndOfLine) // this would allow for indexes 0, 1, 2 and 3 (length of 4)
{
Dialog.text = DialogLines[StartOfLine];
if (Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.Space))
{
StartOfLine += 1;
}
}
else
{
Debug.Log("I am now out of text, so we can close the dialog box");
// DialogBox.SetActive(false);
}
}
lol… of course… hehe… serves me right for copying and pasting chunks of code from further up the thread
The Debug not showing up is a problem then, as you would want it to in order for you to be able to close the dialog. So, the reason for that then is this;
Step 1
StartOfLine = 0
First line of text appears automatically
Space bar pressed
StartOfLine = 1
Step 2
Second line of text appears
Space bar pressed
StartOfLine = 2
Step 3
Third line of text appears
Space bar pressed
StartOfLine = 3
Step 4
Fourth line of text appears
No need to press the space bar, no indication to user to do so…
StartOfLine never reaches 4 and thus the else is not triggered.
You could add a “Space to close” message, that might be quite nice…
void Update()
{
if (StartOfLine <= EndOfLine) // this would allow for indexes 0, 1, 2 and 3 (length of 4)
{
Dlog.text = DialogLines[StartOfLine];
if (StartOfLine == EndOfLine)
{
Dlog.text += "\n\n";
Dlog.text += "Press space to close";
}
if (Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.Space))
{
StartOfLine += 1;
}
}
else
{
Debug.Log("I am now out of text, so we can close the dialog box");
// DialogBox.SetActive(false);
}
}
I think the above would do it… getting tired now, so apologies if not… but after the 4th line of text appears, you should also get the prompt to press the space bar… when the player does so, the Debug message should appear.
If you don’t want the prompt to the play about pressing space, then we just need to move where the increment is in this loop so that on the next call of Update, the Debug is displayed.
