Dialogue

Dialogue is a feature rich core system that allows you to create complex AAA dialogue with ease.

You can adjust anything from speakers, cameras, text, audio, sequences with a bunch of easy to understand settings.

Creation

Create a new dialogue by right-clicking in the Content Drawer -> Narrative -> Dialogue.

Tabs

Here you will see two tabs. The Dialogue Graph and the Event Graph.

The Event Graph is where you can overwrite dialogue functions and add additional code to make your dialogue perform how you want.

The Dialogue Graph is how you build up the dialogue with dialogue nodes.

Class Defaults

Click the Class Defaults button at the top, and we can now populate the Dialogues default settings.

The class defaults give you access to modify how your dialogue will work. It lets you change the speakers in the dialogue, camera settings, character settings and more.

Dialogue Properties

Name	Type	Description
Speakers	TArray<FSpeakerInfo>	All the NPC speakers in this dialogue.
PlayerSpeakerInfo	FPlayerSpeakerInfo	The speaker info for our player.
PartySpeakerInfo	TArray<FPlayerSpeakerInfo>	For parties, each player in the party gets their own speaker info.
bFreeMovement	bool	If true, narrative UI won't show mouse cursor and set input mode to UI. You'll still be able to control your player.
bCanBeExited	bool	If false, default UI will disallow closing of the dialogue with ESC. You need to wait for it to end.
bAutoRotateSpeakers	bool	If enabled, narrative will automatically rotate the speakers to face whoever is currently talking.
bAutoStopMovement	bool	Automatically stop the characters' movement when the dialogue begins to line up the camera shot correctly.
Priority	int32	Priority. Lower values are more important. If a dialogue attempts to play with a higher priority, it will be discarded.
DefaultHeadBoneName	FName	By default, Narrative will aim the camera at the bone named "head". If your head bone has a different name, input it here.
DialogueBlendOutTime	float	Time to blend back into the player's camera after the dialogue ends.
PlayerAutoAdjustTransform	FTransform	In 1-on-1 dialogue, automatically adjusts the player's position so they stand the desired amount of units away.
bAdjustPlayerTransform	bool	If enabled, we'll adjust the player to be at PlayerAutoAdjustTransform relative to the other speaker. Only used in 1-on-1 dialogue.
DialogueCameraShake	TSubclassOf<UCameraShakeBase>	Camera shake the dialogue camera will play.
DialogueSoundAttenuation	USoundAttenuation	The attenuation to use for dialogue lines.
DefaultDialogueShot	UNarrativeDialogueSequence	If a shot, its speaker, etc., doesn't have a shot, the dialogue will use this one as a default.

Copy and pasting

Dialogue can be a time-consuming task to write and often, writers will not use Unreal to write the story and script. Narrative supports a copy-and-paste standard to help create dialogue faster.

You can create Dialogue simply by copying the speaker ID and text in the following format.

SpeakerID: Text

For example:

Reubs: Hey! Welcome to Narrative
Dan: Thanks!
Player: Who is Dan?
Reubs: Everyone knows Dan! You just need to decrypt it...

Narrative will take this and automatically create the speakers if they do not exist, create all the nodes and joint them the best it can.

Narrative does not let you import from Excel files, CSV’s or any other media.

warning

Copying and pasting dialogue nodes have been disabled until further notice.

It was causing corruption in assets and until it can be resolved up to the high Narrative standard, it has been removed.

Player Name

Narrative Pro allows you to set a default name for your player. Simply go to Edit -> Project Settings -> Narrative Pro.

Set the Default Username to the name you want for the player.

note

If you want to use the default username, leave this blank, and it will load the platform name (steam username, PlayStation PSN)

You can also override this using the ChangeName node.

Comments

You can add Unreal's comments around your dialogue to organise them or make them easier to debug at a glance.

Simply highlight your dialogue nodes and hit the C key to add the comment.