github dialogic-godot/dialogic 2.0-alpha-12
Dialogic 2.0 - alpha 12
on GitHub

latest releases: 2.0-alpha-16, 2.0-alpha-15, 2.0-alpha-14...
pre-release11 months ago

Style layers, background transitions, translations and more!

This alpha release brings a multitude of cool new features and a big bunch of bug-fixes.

  • New Style Layers: All styles have been broken down into style layers. This makes it easier to customize them for you and for us to improve them. It also means your existing styles will break… So make a backup/commit before updating. Take a look at the breaking changes below for more help!
  • Background Transitions: Dialogic now provides several background transitions. Hopefully, there will be more coming in the future.
  • Translations: Another important missing feature for translations — character names — has been tackled by the wonderful @CakeVR!
  • Floating Window: Dialogic can now be docked off into a separate window. This functionality is WIP, so try it out and give us your feedback.
  • Unique Identifier Changes: Dialogic uses unique identifiers for characters and timelines. Previously, these were fixed (based on the file name), but now you can edit them in the Reference Manager!
  • Documentation: And finally, our documentation has seen many improvements (both in content and presentation).

I wish you all a happy end of the year and fun with this release.

❓ Future plans

With the rework of styles, one of the last big points has been ticked off, and in fact, the other feature rework that was listed on the last release — variables — is already close to being finished.
So what's next? Well, it means that it's not unlikely that we have only one more alpha release before the beta. Personally, I will focus mostly on testing, bug-fixing and minor UI/UX improvements from here on. Once I feel we are ready to go into beta, I will start creating tutorials and working on the documentation.
Our beta will likely not mean a full feature freeze until very close to release. We just do not have a fast enough release cycle to push features off until the next release. So if you have a small feature PR, don't worry. However, the beta will be a time of focus on stability and bug-fixing for the core team.
The next release will increase the required godot version to 4.2 so we can benefit from all the cool new additions in that version.

⚠️ Breaking changes!

This release comes with one major breaking change: Styles. Basically, any style and custom layout scene from previous alphas won't be working as expected anymore.
Therefore, before you update to this version, PLEASE COMMIT ANY CHANGES OR MAKE A BACKUP COPY.

However, don't worry:

  • You can either recreate your things with the new system, which you can find explained in the docs (Styles & Layouts — Dialogic 2 Documentation) or in a small YouTube walkthrough (Dialogic 2 - New Style System - YouTube).
  • Alternatively, you can convert the old layout scenes (or your custom layout scenes) to work with the new system. This mainly means they have to inherit from DialogicLayoutBase. Then you can create a new Custom Style and replace the base scene with your custom layout. Do this only if you really need to. I recommend using the new styles as those will be the ones getting improvements in the future.

Any settings from your previous styles won't be able to be transferred.

Regarding styles, a couple of methods have been renamed/moved:

  • Dialogic.has_active_layout_node() => Dialogic.Styles.has_active_layout_node()
  • Dialogic.get_layout_node() => Dialogic.Styles.get_layout_node()
  • Dialogic.Styles.add_layout_style() => Dialogic.Styles.load_style()
  • Dialogic.find_timeline() => DialogicResourceUtil.get_timeline_resource()

This list is incomplete; it's just a selection I thought might be useful to you. If something breaks, and you're not sure why, just hit us up on Discord.

Unique identifiers

There is a small chance the new unique identifiers' system comes up with a different default name for characters or timelines (this should only happen if you have multiple characters/timelines with the same name). In this case, you can simply adjust the auto-generated identifiers in the Reference Manager. You can learn more about unique identifiers in the documentation: Reference Manager - Dialogic 2 Documentation

What's Changed

New Contributors

Full Changelog: 2.0-alpha-11...2.0-alpha-12

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