Documentation 11 - Setting up the scenes

The process of merging Conversa and messenger style templates into my game is way more challenging than my imagination. To keep the consistency of scenes, I decided to make two scene templates for face-to-face conversation and messenger-style conversation. To set up the templates, I started working on coding and design to implement the designed features in the templates. 

1. Face-To-Face Conversation

I used Conversa, a dialogue system developed by DBugger from the Unity store, to build the face-to-face conversation. I created the avatar profile with a name, message, and avatar images(the original one only had a name and message, so I made a new namespace for my characters) to easily add a character by creating a new profile. I also learned how to create nodes and events to figure out which of them is better in my case. I finally decided to use events to change stats, switch scenes, and add sound effects. The stats were quite challenging initially, so I was thinking about using the property in the dialogue system to control the tracking stats. However, the properties are temporary data that cannot pass through the scenes, and I have to access the property values by my code and get the stats updated with the settings. I set up player preferences for stats at the beginning of the game(the scene that will only run when starting the game) to keep the data consistent and safe. Then I created several events in the dialogue systems to change the stats based on players’ decisions. Stats will update at the end of the scene and set the current stats as the player preference of the stats. 

I also modified the UI of the Dialogue system that I used my UI design and created a stats inspector with bars to display stats. 

1. Messenger Style Conversation

I used a messenger style template from Unity developed by High Level to build a messenger style scene template. This very simple asset contains almost all the main features I need for the scene. However, of its simplicity, it’s hard to modify it to my design since it’s too exclusive. To implement the features, I changed the arrays in the original code for text messages and added several elements to it. The other problem is that the answer only has two options in the original code, and there is no auto-message from the sender's side. I changed the length of the array so that there will be several(1-4) options for players to choose. I also go with tabbing every option in the template for not modifying no auto message from the sender’s side since some of the players thought it would be more realistic if they could choose each sentence they sent. This turned out to be a huge hit in the playtesting that some of them said they liked how it required a tab for every option, and they felt more immersive. I also created another element for stats in the answer array to change the stats for different options easily. The code for tracking stats will update as the face-to-face conversation template at the end of the scene. 

After setting up the scene templates, I finally could start to put everything together. This is the most challenging part and techy time of the project. Next will be more focusing on the game itself and the design of the visuals.