Import Conversation

[Enthalpy]

It is proposed that a conversation, such as a press or an examine, can be imported from one place to another. For example, if Place Y has talk option A, B, C, and D, and place Z has talk A, B, E, and F, this would let Z copy from A and B directly, rather than needing to bother with frame redirections.

GUI implementation would need to be discussed, if we went forward with this.

[Noah Simon]

This could be like frame presets, except you can set a whole group of frames to be a preset.

[Enthalpy]

Bad idea. This way, if you want to change a frame in the group, it has to be changed once for each time the conversation is used. It would be better to simply redirect to the original conversation, so only one change is needed.

[Noah Simon]

The same could be said for frame presets: 1. I create a frame preset on a frame with a background, sound effect, and text. 1. I paste that preset in random places. 1. I edit the preset frame 1. I edit all the frames I pasted.

See?

[Noah Simon]

BTW, (off topic) as you can see I'm having trouble with markdown syntax. How do I make my lists work?

[Enthalpy]

Except frame presets and group presets are trying to solve two entirely different problems.

Frame presets are solving the problem of single frames that don't have to be repeated, but are repetitive. The frames just have to be very, very similar, but don't have to be the same thing. Setting the characters at court is a great example of this. Every time I switch to the court place, I'm going to have a very similar frame, but rarely the exact same frame. This time, I may want Phoenix to be in pose A and say "Your Honor, you're being too premature!" The next, I may want Edgeworth to be in pose B with a startup animation that plays before typing the text "As you can see, Wright is just bluffing!" Preset frames are similar but not necessarily identical. Having a preset to do the repetitive part while leaving room for customization, if applicable, is a great solution! Sure, it's not ideal, but implementing a macro that is editable on top of overridable is quite the feat, especially with the current GUI structure. (How are we going to let the author know the difference between a frame with no place overriden on top of the macro place, and a frame with "there is no place" overriden on top of the macro place?") This is a fitting solution to this particular problem, and while something more advanced would be nice, it would be painful to implement.

A conversation preset is trying to solve an entirely different problem - a group of frames that is meant to be completely identical and repeated, with zero variation! Here, we'd want the dialogue when Phoenix examines the detention center guard to not vary at all, no matter if the defendant is there or not. Under this proposal, simply copy-pasting the frames make no sense. They're meant to be identical, so of course a change in one would apply to the other. Here, making a reference to the examine conversation of the old one is the way to go.

Of course, if we decide that we want freedom to edit the shared conversations, besides maybe adding some frames before or after, then a direct copy-paste is the way to go, but I'm fairly sure that we want complete sharing.

As for markdown syntax, put the list elements on separate lines.