Overhead Dialogue Text

[FiftyTifty]

One o' me pet peeves with Bethesda's games, is that the dialogue text is limited tae one line only, with said line being at the bottom of the screen. What would do wonders, 'specially for Morrowind (since it has hardly any voice acting to begin with), is to have an NPC's spoken dialogue text appear above their head, like in games of yore.

Prime example would be Neverwinter Nights, 'specially with that TES3MP project coming along nicely; each character has their own dialogue box above their head. Whenever the character (player or NPC) has something ta say, it appears above their head. After a wee while, the time depending on how long the dialogue is, the dialogue box will then disappear.


How I'd wager it should be done, is essentially just cloning the gui functionality of NPC names, as shown below:


But rather than showing a box with the NPC's name, when the player has their cursor o'er them and is at a close distance, have the box show spoken dialogue within a fair distance. And aye, it shouldn't be canceled out by one NPC speaking; have it so multiple NPCs can have the floaty dialogue box of justice.

Would possibly be a gateway feature, for being able to set up scenes (dialogue between NPCs sans player) like we have with Skyrim. And since we don't need to have voice actors ta fit in with the game, makin' mods that add 'em would be much easier.


So yah. Any chance of getting floaty dialogue boxes in the near future?

[SquireNed]

I could see this being very useful for game designers who want to move away from using vanilla Morrowind content and create a new experience on OpenMW.

[Chris]

I suggested something like this a long long time ago. It's pretty annoying when you see subtitled dialog at the bottom of the screen but don't know who's talking or where they are, so having it float by them would be pretty handy. It also means you can have it show at a longer distance, since each dialog would be its own separate thing instead of all being put into the same message queue.

[Capostrophic]

Not entirely on topic, but I think it'd be cool to allow to include speaker's name (as variable, like in "real", non-voiced dialogue) in subtitles like it's done in, uh, Skyrim, so some random mod could add something like this:

Fargoth: I think we're about to become very close.

Code: Select all

%speakername%: I think we're about to become very close.

[SquireNed]

Not entirely on topic, but I think it'd be good to allow to include speaker's name (as variable, like in "real" non-voiced dialogue) in subtitles like it's done in, uh, Skyrim, so some random mod could add something like this:

Fargoth: I think we're about to become very close.

Code: Select all

%speakername%: I think we're about to become very close.

GASP, he suggested something from Skyrim! Oh no he didn't!

Actually, I think this is a great idea. As someone who doesn't always do well with listening to speech (ergo having subtitles on), it would be nice to have subtitles that tell me who's speaking, especially since Morrowind doesn't have a whole ton of animation and other cues to inform you of who's speaking.

[BlueFootedBooby]

Not entirely on topic, but I think it'd be good to allow to include speaker's name (as variable, like in "real" non-voiced dialogue) in subtitles like it's done in, uh, Skyrim, so some random mod could add something like this:

Fargoth: I think we're about to become very close.

Code: Select all

%speakername%: I think we're about to become very close.

GASP, he suggested something from Skyrim! Oh no he didn't!

Actually, I think this is a great idea. As someone who doesn't always do well with listening to speech (ergo having subtitles on), it would be nice to have subtitles that tell me who's speaking, especially since Morrowind doesn't have a whole ton of animation and other cues to inform you of who's speaking.

I too am not great at auditory processing, and especially have trouble remembering stuff I'm told out loud, even in real life where I don't typically have half a dozen people with identical voices all talking over eachother.

The only downside I can think of to having names for who's speaking is the possibility of spoiling a reveal when an unknown/unseen character is talking to you. I can't actually think of anywhere that happens in the stock game, though it'd be worth having some kind of tag for dialog that replaces the name with "???" or something.

Hovering text boxes have a similar issue in games with scripted jump-out-of-the-bushes sort of ambush events (remember the dudes behind the dragon lady's secret door in the original Deus Ex? "[MJ12 Trooper]: *whistles*"). Again, I can't recall anywhere this actually happens. Okay, there's at least one enemy who's chameleoned, but who cares about that guy?

[SquireNed]

My rule of thumb is that if you hear them, it doesn't make a difference if you know their name/can read their text.

Then again, I am not the most observant (my hearing is actually really good, but I tend to play music while I play).