Hi!
So, I need to have character speech appearing in the game. But I’m not quite sure where to add it or how to present it to make it obvious.
At the moment, I have “Thoughts” appearing at the bottom of the screen, so these could interfere if I was to put it at the bottom.
Any possible suggestions? I guess I could have a box pop up or something? Hmm…
I like the mockup you have here, especially if the characters are not visible in the game.
Is there other dialog in the game that is not character speech?
@t0neg0d said: I like the mockup you have here, especially if the characters are not visible in the game.Is there other dialog in the game that is not character speech?
Not a mockup, that’s an image from the game? Unless I misread what you meant there! :).
No not really, unless the characters “thoughts” count as internal dialogue?
@avpeacock said: Not a mockup, that's an image from the game? Unless I misread what you meant there! :).No not really, unless the characters “thoughts” count as internal dialogue?
Sorry… I meant mockup as in “I may place the text here”. I personally like it.
And story line dialog, player thought and character speech would all work there.
@t0neg0d said: Sorry... I meant mockup as in "I may place the text here". I personally like it.And story line dialog, player thought and character speech would all work there.
I’m worried though that people will struggle to differentiate between thoughts and speech. Because thoughts will occur as you’re being spoken too so they both need to be displayed on the screen…thoughts at the moment can flood the screen so if there’s lots of thoughts and stress it should make the environment a little harder to interact with.
I guess I could do thoughts afterwards?
Speech: “Cmon, we’re going out!”
Thoughts(in this context, worries): “Where are we going?”, “How are we getting there?”, “This wasn’t part of the plan”…etc etc
An easy trick:
(I think I will ask which way to go.)
Me: “Which way do I go?”
Them: “You should go east.”
(I think I will go east.)
i think even if you seperated this stuff in to two locations it wouldnt be clear that one place on the screen is containing thoughts and one is speech.
A lot of times though, theres no issue with just lumping them together. usually the tone of the sentence kind of gives away if the character is thinking it or if the character is saying it outloud. (or sometimes the difference doesnt really matter).
What if external speech was actual recorded voice played back and the user is actually distracted by reading about how he’s distracted? 
Basically two choices: Chat bubbles as tempory gui textboxes OR a single expandable “chatbox” that will create a wall of text depending on how busy thoughts and voices are.
I’d also suggest thinking about the subject matter too, my partner has Aspergers (a form of autism) and I know that if there are too many conversations AND/OR noises in the room her thoughts go crazy and she’ll quickly leave and/or shut down externally.
So I’d suggest trying methods and see what produces the internal process of the subject matter. Although again each subject handles it differently which makes it harder but should be effective…
A) expandable wall of text
or
B) screen filling with chat or thought bubbles? (chats with straight borders, thoughts with wavy ones like clouds would suffice)
just my 2c
Cheers.
-Radan.
@avpeacock said: Ah :)I’m worried though that people will struggle to differentiate between thoughts and speech. Because thoughts will occur as you’re being spoken too so they both need to be displayed on the screen…thoughts at the moment can flood the screen so if there’s lots of thoughts and stress it should make the environment a little harder to interact with.
I guess I could do thoughts afterwards?
Speech: “Cmon, we’re going out!”
Thoughts(in this context, worries): “Where are we going?”, “How are we getting there?”, “This wasn’t part of the plan”…etc etc
Italics possibly for thought?
Quotes for spoken text… none for thoughts.
You can pretty much define this yourself, as long as it stays consistent, I doubt there will be any confusion.
@pspeed said: An easy trick: (I think I will ask which way to go.) Me: "Which way do I go?" Them: "You should go east." (I think I will go east.)I'm worried though it will get a bit mixed up still...I could change the text as Chris has suggested, using italics or something. Perhaps a video demo would be better than be explaining, but this is a suggestion that could work; I just feel there could be something better. I can't think of many games that use internal thoughts though? Actually, I could make the characters thoughts italics, rather than speech.
@icamefromspace said: i think even if you seperated this stuff in to two locations it wouldnt be clear that one place on the screen is containing thoughts and one is speech.A lot of times though, theres no issue with just lumping them together. usually the tone of the sentence kind of gives away if the character is thinking it or if the character is saying it outloud. (or sometimes the difference doesnt really matter).
@radanz said: Basically two choices: Chat bubbles as tempory gui textboxes OR a single expandable "chatbox" that will create a wall of text depending on how busy thoughts and voices are.I’d also suggest thinking about the subject matter too, my partner has Aspergers (a form of autism) and I know that if there are too many conversations AND/OR noises in the room her thoughts go crazy and she’ll quickly leave and/or shut down externally.
So I’d suggest trying methods and see what produces the internal process of the subject matter. Although again each subject handles it differently which makes it harder but should be effective…A) expandable wall of text
or
B) screen filling with chat or thought bubbles? (chats with straight borders, thoughts with wavy ones like clouds would suffice)just my 2c
Cheers.
-Radan.
@normen said: What if external speech was actual recorded voice played back and the user is actually distracted by reading about how he's distracted? :)
That would be great and the most ideal! I think I’ll definitely do this at a later date (i.e after my dissertation is submitted on this and I continue with the project).
I’m going to have to find others to do the speaking though, don’t think I can bring myself to do it! Haha. It also means during periods of stress(player contentment is lower, I can make it harder to hear the person talking…but then it means recording additional sounds I guess as JMonkey doesn’t have much to distort audio that I remember)…maybe I should just find someone to record a voice and play around with it. It would require less coding!
p.s I hope to make this whole project open-source in a month or two :). Firstly because I want other people with autism to be able to design and implement their own scenarios and situations and secondly, I think it would be a great way to pay back the JMonkey community for all you’re amazing help?..I’ll await better documentation and code clean up though :). The project is maybe 4k lines of code without comments.
@avpeacock said: I'm going to have to find others to do the speaking though, don't think I can bring myself to do it! Haha. It also means during periods of stress(player contentment is lower, I can make it harder to hear the person talking...but then it means recording additional sounds I guess as JMonkey doesn't have much to distort audio that I remember)...maybe I should just find someone to record a voice and play around with it. It would require less coding!
You should ask Normen to help out, he’s a sound engineer and from the tutorials he has recorded, has a pleasant voice too
As for distorting sound, I think jME has a good platform for processing sound. It can change pitch, reverb, simulate environments and such.
https://wiki.jmonkeyengine.org/legacy/doku.php/jme3:beginner:hello_audio
https://wiki.jmonkeyengine.org/legacy/doku.php/jme3:advanced:audio
Maybe those effects are enough to achieve what you are looking for.
@jmaasing said: You should ask Normen to help out, he's a sound engineer and from the tutorials he has recorded, has a pleasant voice too :-) As for distorting sound, I think jME has a good platform for processing sound. It can change pitch, reverb, simulate environments and such.https://wiki.jmonkeyengine.org/legacy/doku.php/jme3:beginner:hello_audio
https://wiki.jmonkeyengine.org/legacy/doku.php/jme3:advanced:audioMaybe those effects are enough to achieve what you are looking for.
The effects i’d require would be more like distortion of sounds I think, i’d have to ask a few family members with ASD. Some described sensory overloads at times being noises of a radio tuning in and out(so information whilst being spoken too would be missed)…I guess I could mess around with the volume going up and down of the person talking actually, whilst playing either a high horrible thing or a radio in the background or…something?
Just realised i’m going off topic from the original need haha. And actually, it’s a feature I can alter add (distortions with speech); I could just play it for now.
Here’s one good example of sound related stuff though it doesn’t entail character speech lol.
