Dropping items

voidgift

I have an object in my quest that I want the player to pick up. So I made it interactable and made it drop the item the player is to pick up, then disappear. It works very well.

But... I also want to make some text when the player pick it up, so I checked for 'Contact' and put in the interaction text there. That to works wery well. The player get to see a long description of the item.

Then... I later notice that when I check for 'Contact' the item does not drop anymore. I want the contact text to appear, but if I do, how do I make it drop the item?

kithlis

I think if you want a dialogue object to drop an item, it can only be done through the Story Objective.
(Not in-system atm, so forgive if some terms aren't correct.)

Use an "Inspect Object" quest objective, and there should be a "drops item" option when selecting that objective on the Story panel.

You might be able to make an object *both* Interact and Contact if not an objective, but on mouse-over the player would get the option to choose Interact or Text-Box... which would mean they could potentially miss one or the other options. (Also heard rumors that this can cause issues with client crashes... but I *think* that's only if you make it a Contact and a Zone Exit.)

voidgift

That is bad news. It has to be a non-objective object that drops the item. If I put both contact and interactive it seems like the contact overrides, so you cannot interact. That might also explain why my client crashed a couple of times yesterday.

kithlis

You could make the item Contact only... then when they reach a particular Dialogue Choice, you respawn the item as an Interact that they can click to get the item.

voidgift

Yea, I was thinking something like that, but that would only be possible if the object was objective, wouldn't it?

I was also thinking about making two objects on top of each other. So that the first object on the top was contact and disappeared upon completion. Then the bottom one would be interact. But would it be possible to do that perfectly to be sure they were taken in the right order?

kithlis

I am fairly certain that you can do it with non-objective items. Just set the first to despawn when a Dialogue is reached.

Unless I've encountered a bug, I know for certain that I have an invis-sparkly asset marked as Contact AND it despawns itself during the dialogue but the text box remains open (whereas NPCs will close their text box if you despawn them during dialogue).

chieori

voidgift wrote: »

I was also thinking about making two objects on top of each other. So that the first object on the top was contact and disappeared upon completion. Then the bottom one would be interact. But would it be possible to do that perfectly to be sure they were taken in the right order?

If you use a invisible tube and place the interactable item inside it, then make it a contact and make it disappear when they reach a certain point in the dialog. The invisible tube does not sparkle but would still not allow the player to reach the interactable item inside the tube, until they complete the contact with it. You can even see the item and it's sparkle, through the tube. Once they reach a certain point in the dialog, the tube disappears and they can now interact with the item, that has the dropped item inside.

voidgift

kithlis wrote: »

I am fairly certain that you can do it with non-objective items. Just set the first to despawn when a Dialogue is reached.

Right on! I don't know why I didn't think it work, but it does. It's all going smooth now. I have two copies of the object. One with contact and one with interact in the exact same location. The contact disappears when the dialog is reached, and at the same time the interact appears. Perfect!