Input, and exiting a cutscene for dialogue

[gradiustheguide]

Hello @Gavalakis thanks again for your hard work on this awesome product!

I have a situation where I am animating a cloud sprite from left to right: when it reaches the centre of the screen it spawns two miniclouds which float down to the bottom of the screen. This is all during one cutscene, and all 3 sprites (cloud + mini clouds) have idles when not moving from one position to the other.

1) First question: I’m currently controlling the cutscene using the Animator track, but is this the best tool to use in this case?

I then want a character sprite in a later cutscene to speak some dialogue, which will appear as text. The player must click on to progress to the next cutscene and cannot interact with the scene in any way when the cutscenes play out.

2) What is the best method to accomdate moments of interaction during a cutscene? Is it to create a looping cutscene to bridge from no interaction -> interaction -> no interaction?

3) Can you layer cutscenes, i.e. Could I direct the clouds and character in two separate cutscenes played at the same time?

4) Once a cutscene is finished, what are the best practices to ensure the final positions of the ‘actors’ at the end of the cutscene persist into the non-cutscene (so the minicloud remains at the bottom of the screen after the cutscene ends)

[Gavalakis]

Hey,

Thanks as well for your feedback!
Let me address your questions 🙂

1) If the animation of the clouds are simple ones, it may probably be better if you simply use a “Properties Track” and animate/keyframe the clouds right within the Slate editor (instead of creating animation clips and using them with an Animator Track).

2) Right now “moments of interaction” as you call them, will require a bit of scripting. way to handle this, would be to create an event that calls a function on of your scripts attached on the same gameobject Cutscene is attached on, by using (“Director Action Track -> Events/Send Global Message”). Then in your custom script and when the function is called, you could Pause() the cutscene and wait for player input before calling Resume() on that same cutscene again.
If you need a code example of this, please let me know!

3) Yes, two cutscenes can be played simultaneously, but please keep in mind that if you are using a Camera Track, only one of them will take effect (the one on the cutscene that was started first).

4) If you set the “Stop Mode” of the cutscene in the inspector to “Skip”, then when the cutscene is finished, all affected objects will remain intact (at their final position for example).

Please let me know if the above answer your questions, or if you need any further clarifications.
Thanks!

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