Dialogue/Animtools issue. (1 Viewer)

[VincentL]

A request for help from experienced dialogue writers and/or DialogueActions/Animtools developers before I commit seppuku with my keyboard.

Taking a short break from the endless task of working on my second dialogue, I decided to work on massively improving my first one. The new version is pretty much all ready for release, except one issue which just refuses to go away and which I can't get rid of.

The idea is that the dialogue begins with oral sex with the option of transition to vaginal sex whenever you like, and after a certain point, the option to go back to oral appears. Everything works flawlessly except the button of transition back to oral.

The code is the following:

Spoiler

button8:"[oral2][ANIMTOOLS_Loving_Wife_oral]"
which leads to one of three identical (besides what she says) "oral2" lines:
oral2:"[BUTTON8_OFF][BUTTON9_OFF][BUTTON10_ON]her speech before giving another blowjob" {"set":{"position":"oral2"}}

However, I get an empty dialogue box and nothing happens (the brief fade/in out from animtools doesn't happen either) after pressing the button8, every single time.

For comparison, the button for transition to vaginal sex is coded in an almost identical way:

Spoiler

button10:"[transition][ANIMTOOLS_Loving_Wife_fuck]" {"check":{"position":"oral"},"style":"thought"}
which again, leads to one of several identical (besides her speech) "transition" lines:
transition:"[AHEGAO_MOOD][BUTTON10_OFF][BUTTON9_ON]her very enthusiastic speech" {"set":{"position":"fuck","da.clothes.panties":"none,0,0,0,1"}}

...and this button has worked flawlessly every single time the last 4534642 times I've tested the dialogue.

- I use DA v.4.01 and animtools V14
- both positions are in Settings -> animtools_positions, and named exactly as in the dialogue triggers. I've tried using different ones, the "fuck" position is always fine, the "oral" one never works.
- at first, before I moved the triggers around, at least the dialogue kept working properly with the "post-sex" lines as intended if I changed the position manually. Now just the empty box happens regardless of anything.
- as above, I've tried moving stuff around in all possible ways, and ended up trying to make it as similar to the button that works properly as possible, but yet it refuses to work.
- the "position" parameter exists only to trigger the right dialogue lines later, it's pretty much irrelevant to how the button itself works
- the SDT dialogue log only says "playing line" as if nothing wrong happened.

I've seriously checked every single angle I could think of, and the damn thing just won't work. I really don't know what I'm missing here, it's the most resilient bug I've encountered so far. Any help is greatly appreciated, and if you'd like the full dialogue file to take a closer look, let me know.

 

[Fleack]

If you're triggering another line, nothing after the trigger will play. Or it shouldn't atleast, I don't know how your button10 line is working.

Change the oral button to:
button8:"[ANIMTOOLS_Loving_Wife_oral][oral2]"

Change the fuck button to:
button10:"[ANIMTOOLS_Loving_Wife_fuck][transition]" {"style":"thought","check":{"position":"oral"}}

It's easier to have a button that just switches between oral and fucking imo however. You'd do that just by doing this:

button10:"[ANIMTOOLS_Loving_Wife_oral][oral2]"{"style":"thought","check":{"atv_position":"!=0"},"set":{"da.button10.name":"Fuck/Sex/Whatever"}}
button10:"[ANIMTOOLS_Loving_Wife_fuck][transition]" {"style":"thought","check":{"atv_position":"==0"},"set":{"da.button10.name":"Oral/Blowjob/Whatever"}}

 

[VincentL]

I switched them around, and returned to the point when the line is actually played, but the position doesn't switch, and the dialogue functions properly after I change the position manually to oral. But I still can't figure out why the position is not changed as intended, and there is no fade in/out from animtools at all. The button to switch from oral to vaginal sex still works without issues, regardless of the order.

That's a good point actually, I'll try to figure out how to make it without screwing anything up. Thanks :)

 

[aztlan]

When did this change?
It always used to be that you could place a trigger for another line first, then other triggers, and it would trigger the other line when everything else was fired off (like animtools, button on/off etc.). But now that doesn't work anymore and it seems you have to trigger the new line last.
In any case, thanks much for pointing it out!
Maybe the Dialogue Checker or at least the Dialogue Suggestion guides should be updated...

 

[Slingerbult]

I was not aware this had changed either, is this a confirmed change? What caused it to change, is it the loader or Dialogue Actions?

Sometimes position changes get botched so I have the habit of putting the position trigger (ANIMTOOLS_blabla) twice in the row, like so:

b24:"[AUTO_OFF][BUTTON2_OFF][SETVAR_lasthole_*atv_position*][INSTANT_FLASH_000000][ANIMTOOLS_hervag][CHANGE_BACKGROUND][ANIMTOOLS_hervag][END_FLASH]" {"style":"Thought","check":{"atv_position":2},"set":{"da.background.load":"bg2.jpg","da.button1.name":"Settings","initpref":1,"menu":0}}

So it triggers both before and after the background change. Before I added it twice, I was having maybe 30-50% failed position changes when pressing a button and now it's much less than 10%.

 

[aztlan]

This is the only place I have seen it. However I had an '_INSTANT' line trigger and an animtools trigger that recently seems to have been crashing 100% of the time (it always used to work), and reversing the order solved the issue. Removing the '_INSTANT' part of the line trigger didn't solve my problem, so it seems like it affects all line triggers.

As I said putting line triggers first used to work fine (and in fact was recommended to create the "interrupted" technique of sandwiching her dialogue between two line triggers thus allowing the player to choose a path through a dialogue by interrupting her speech before a line finished which would trigger the first line trigger).

I suspect the issue was introduced by the most recent or penultimate version of the Loader (5.45 or 5.44x).

Logically this new way sort of makes more sense but unfortunately seems to make old dialogues not written in this style buggy.

A feature in the dialogue checking tool to spot these issues would be VERY handy!

 

[Slingerbult]

OK, I guess I'd just like confirmation from ModGuy that this was indeed a change made in the loader before I go changing things. I suppose many things could be going on in your dialogue and I don't want to generalize and jump to conclusions. Might test it out myself this weekend if I have an opportunity.

Actually the interrupt method still sort of works, you just have to use it like I did in my first school girl saga episode: rather than two triggers you use one trigger and a set variable. As the line with the "cock insertion choice" fires, the variable is set. If you insert the cock, the final trigger never resolves since it points to a speech line. However if it does, the speech line triggers setting the value of the variable to something else. And in this manner, you can use cock insertions to disrupt speech and thereby getting two different values on a variable, which is really all you need for a player selection :) Hope that makes sense!

 

[VincentL]

Sorry for taking a while to reply, but THIS WORKED:

I was not aware this had changed either, is this a confirmed change? What caused it to change, is it the loader or Dialogue Actions?

Sometimes position changes get botched so I have the habit of putting the position trigger (ANIMTOOLS_blabla) twice in the row, like so:

b24:"[AUTO_OFF][BUTTON2_OFF][SETVAR_lasthole_*atv_position*][INSTANT_FLASH_000000][ANIMTOOLS_hervag][CHANGE_BACKGROUND][ANIMTOOLS_hervag][END_FLASH]" {"style":"Thought","check":{"atv_position":2},"set":{"da.background.load":"bg2.jpg","da.button1.name":"Settings","initpref":1,"menu":0}}

So it triggers both before and after the background change. Before I added it twice, I was having maybe 30-50% failed position changes when pressing a button and now it's much less than 10%.

I added the position trigger also to the "oral2" line, and it works as intended now.

I'd send you free cookies if I could.