Magic mouth issue.

[Matt 82•]

I realise this sounds basic but I seem to be having a problem with my magic mouths disappearing before players can read them.

I have a small, 3 mouth cutscene. All three are triggered by a magnetic switch which is part of a permanent switch.

Why do the other 2 disappear after a couple of seconds?

[CCubbage]

I've had this problem when the magic mouths are too close together. I don't know why. But when I separated them out a big, it solved the problem. The symptoms I would experience were all the magic mouths being triggered, but then 1 of them disappearing before I opened it.

[DanC•]

What is the perma switch connected to? Here is what I would do:



*Its meant to say MAGNETIC1,MAGNETIC2,MAGNETIC3, these are all magnetic switches. The key passes them and activates them. They follow through to perma switches, which follow through to the mouths.

So the mouths are directly connected to perma switches.

[DanC•]

Perhaps this will help:

[Matt 82•]

Thanks guys. It`s weird, as I'm playing about with it now, that the second two only disappear, if the first one isn`t closed quickly enough, whereas I can leave the second mouth forever without 3 disappearing..

I think the distance thing has some merit as the 1st one is spaced further away from 2 and 3. I'll keep plugging away to see what happens.

[Matt 82•]

Well, just to confuse the issue further, I moved them together and it works fine!

So if anyone is having this problem, they`re either too close, or too far away. Helpful!

[dcf]

Distance isn't the issue.

I've experimented with this quite a bit. When you use cut scenes you can accidentally cause magic mouth boxes to disappear. The cause is when one cut scene's camera doesn't include the other magic mouths. Make sure that all the magic mouths can be seen on each cut scene. (They can still be invisible.)

Trickster's technique will work if the piston is slow (giving the player time to read) and you set the magnetic key switches radius small enough that they don't overlap.

[DanC•]

With my technique, you can also spend as much time reading the speech bubble as you want, since it is a 'perma' switch so it permanatly stays there.

[dcf]

With my technique, you can also spend as much time reading the speech bubble as you want, since it is a 'perma' switch so it permanatly stays there.

Oh, never mind then.

Sorry, then your technique doesn't solve this problem at all.

Up to 8 magic mouths can be active at one time. However, any that are not onscreen will be deactivated. To avoid this problem you must either put all the magic mouths on screen or activate them sequentially. Activating sequentially means one must be allowed to finish before the next one begins. Using permanent switches will not do this.

Use just the piston without the permanent switches to activate sequentially if you want to work around the all on screen limitation. Alternatively, use a magnetic key cart. This is how I do complex cut scenes in my levels.

Using permanent switches to override this limitation is a bad idea. It will only work for fast readers. Slow readers will still lose magic mouths.

[DanC•]

I don't have this "all on screen limitation" issue. I'm using the technique which I descirbed above, and I can place magic mouths throughout the entire level, no matter what the size of the radius is, and still not have this problem.

[dcf]

I don't have this "all on screen limitation" issue. I'm using the technique which I descirbed above, and I can place magic mouths throughout the entire level, no matter what the size of the radius is, and still not have this problem.

Only if you read fast. Slower readers will lose magic mouths. Your technique only works if all of the activated mouths are on the same screen as the current cut scene. A fast reader may finish reading and click circle before the next magic mouth is activated. Hence they will not have a problem. Slower readers, who don't finish reading the magic mouth before the next one activates will have a queue created. If a mouth in the queue is not on screen it will be removed from the queue and the message lost.

[DanC•]

Ahh, I see now. Thanks for clearing that up.

[dcf]

Ahh, I see now. Thanks for clearing that up.

Not a problem. Maraz and I have done an enormous amount of experimenting with this. It was really tricky to nail down.

[Matt 82•]

That`s some good researching. That knowledge will come in handy, thanks.

[td4life08]

lol ................