Quick Start Tutorial

This section jumps right into using the Dialogue System to create and run a conversation in a new scene. You will learn how to:

Create a dialogue database and write conversations.
Set up the Dialogue Manager GameObject.
Start conversations.
Interact with objects.
Disable player control during conversations.

You can find more detailed steps in the sections following this Quick Start section.

Step 1. Create a new scene (File → New Scene).

Step 2. Drag the prefab Assets ► Plugins ► Pixel Crushers ► Dialogue System ► Prefabs ► Dialogue Manager into the scene:

Step 3. This GameObject already points to a basic dialogue UI that will suffice for now. But we need to create a dialogue database. Inspect the GameObject. Next to the Initial Database field, click Create:

Step 4. After specifying a name for your database, inspect the Dialogue Manager GameObject again. Click the Edit button or the Dialogue System logo banner. This will open the Dialogue Editor window:

Step 5. Click the Conversations tab.

Click the "+" button to add a new conversation.
Right-click on the orange START node and select Create Child Node. In the Inspector view, set Dialogue Text to "Hello." Make sure to set the Dialogue Text field, not another field such as Title.
- Note: You can also double-click on a node to enter Dialogue Text directly on the node.
Right-click on the gray node ("Hello.") and select Create Child Node again. Set Dialogue Text to "Goodbye."
Gray nodes are spoken by NPCs, blue nodes by the player. Your conversation should appear as below:

Step 6. Create an empty GameObject for the Player (GameObject → Create Empty) and a cube for the NPC (GameObject → 3D Object → Cube). Rename the empty GameObject to "Player". Rename the cube to "NPC" and set its position to (0,0,0) so it's visible in the Game view. (In your own project, you'll use your actual characters instead.)

Step 7. Inspect the NPC. Add a Dialogue System Trigger component:

Step 8. Click Add Action and select Start Conversation:

Step 9. Select your conversation from the Conversation dropdown, assign Player to the Conversation Actor field, and assign NPC to the Conversation Conversant.

Step 10. Finally, set the Trigger dropdown to On Start. This tells the Dialogue System Trigger to perform its actions when the scene starts.

Step 11. Now play your first conversation! The Dialogue System will show the NPC line ("Hello.") followed shortly by the player response menu, which contains one choice ("Goodbye."). It uses the Basic Standard Dialogue UI, which is a generic template that you can later customize to look however you want.

Next, we're going to use the interaction system to start the conversation.

Step 12. Set the Trigger dropdown back to On Use. This tells the Dialogue System Trigger to perform its actions when it receives an OnUse message, typically from an interaction component on the player.

Step 13. Add a Usable component. This tells the player's interaction component that the NPC is usable. Set Max Use Distance to 30, since the camera (where we'll interact from) is more than 5 units away.

Step 14. Inspect the Player and add a Selector component. Set the Select At dropdown to Mouse Position:

Step 15. Now play the scene again. Position your mouse over the cube so you see this yellow message:

This means the player's Selector component has detected the NPC's Usable component. Press the space bar or right mouse button. The Selector component will send an OnUse message to the NPC, whose Dialogue System Trigger will respond by starting the conversation.

The Selector component and a similar component, Proximity Selector, provide ways to trigger Dialogue System activity. They're very customizable. You can configure them to select usables many different ways, not just with the mouse cursor. It's also not mandatory to use them. You can run Dialogue System Triggers using your own interaction system or C# code if you prefer.

Step 16. You may notice that the Selector component stays active during the conversation. In many cases, during conversations you'll want to disable the Selector and possibly other components such as player movement and camera control. One way to do this is to add a Dialogue System Events component. This component has events that run on various Dialogue System activity. Configure On Conversation Start to disable the Selector and On Conversation End to re-enable it:

Note: Once you've configured your Dialogue Manager GameObject the way you want, you may want to drag it into the Project view to turn it into a prefab variant. The prefab variant will record your custom changes to the original Dialogue Manager prefab. This way you won't lose your customizations when you update the Dialogue System. You can add instances of this prefab variant to any scene to make it easy to playtest that scene directly in the Unity editor's play mode. When you need to make changes to the Dialogue Manager, edit the prefab variant. Your changes will automatically appear in instances of the prefab variant that you've placed in any scenes.

Quick Start Summary

This quick start has demonstrated how to:

Create a dialogue database and write conversations.
Set up the Dialogue Manager GameObject. (Suggestion: Save it as a prefab variant.)
Start conversations.
Interact with objects.
Disable player control during conversations.

Quick Start Scene Setup

You can use these quick start steps to set up the basics of the Dialogue System in your own scene. However, it's recommended to also follow the Quick Start Tutorial to learn about the Dialogue Editor, Dialogue Manager, and Dialogue UIs.

Add the Dialogue Manager prefab to your scene. (Recommendation: Make your own prefab variant of the Dialogue Manager.)

Click the Dialogue Manager's Create button to create a dialogue database and edit it in the Dialogue Editor.

If you don't want to use the basic standard dialogue UI, assign a different dialogue UI to the Dialogue Manager's Display Settings > Dialogue UI field. (See Dialogue UIs. Recommendation: Make your own prefab variant, or your own UI from scratch using the tutorial.)
To start conversations:
- In C#, use the DialogueManager.StartConversation() method, or
- Add a Dialogue System Trigger to your NPC or interactable object. Set the Trigger to the type of event that should start the conversation. (Recommendation: Set it to OnStart first to test.)
  - If you want to use the Dialogue System's Selectors & Usables system to allow the player to trigger conversations, add a Usable component to the Dialogue System Trigger's GameObject, and add a Selector or Proximity Selector to the player.
Optional: To associate a GameObject with an actor, add a Dialogue Actor component. Conversations will use the rules defined in Character GameObject Assignments when running conversations.
To disable player movement or other player components such as a Selector during conversations, add a Dialogue System Events component to the player. Configure OnConversationStart() to disable the player's movement components and OnConversationEnd() to re-enable them.

There's much more to the Dialogue System. Read on for more information. If you have any questions or need help, please contact us.

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