Dialogue options disappear too fast!

[Adam__86]

I'm a disabled gamer using an onscreen keyboard and im finding many dialogue options disappearing before I can even react... Don't s'poss there's a way to increase lengh? I'm imagining no which is unfortunate as it looked AWESOME

[Aerisnoir]

For your sake, let's mutually agree that someone's written dialogue cannot stand as an example of their spoken dialogue.

[Wyrtt]

Originally posted by Aerisnoir:

For your sake, let's mutually agree that someone's written dialogue cannot stand as an example of their spoken dialogue.

Did I write about you as a person or used your post as example? I think difference is clear.

[goddling]

I though the devs just tried to make a play on how teenagers seem to talk in endless streams of speech, a sort of joke. I thought they talked about it in the dev logs.

[abspiel]

I too find that the dialog bubbles disappear much, much too fast !

I want to play this game ! I really love the theme and the atmosphere but as it is now it feels like having to swallow a 500 USD quality meal in a fine restaurant in less than 2 mn.

Sadly, I will not touch this game again as long as this issue is not fixed. I don't want to spoil the pleasure by rushing through it and missing the good stuff.

The devs said they were looking into it in June 2016.

A pity they are not as fast as their dialogs... ;)

Come on devs, do something about it ! This game is worth it !

[v00d00m4n]

Originally posted by Night School Kevin:

Originally posted by indy138:

*BUMP*

I'm not a native English speaker, the quickly disappearing text bubbles frustrate me to no end. I love the atmosphere of the game, but as is it will be very difficult to finish it, if I'll even get there.

Casual conversations feel as stressful as a hectic car chase, extremely dissonant. This basically wrecks the story for me...

I'm actually surprised nothing has been done about this since release...

I know we've been mostly silent on this, so let me give a quick update. We are definitely experimenting with some different ways to help with this issue and completely understand people's frustrations with the timing. Unfortunately we can't just globally change the settings as several moments in the game rely on the specific timing currently in the game. Completely understand the frustration, and we do hope to have an update on this soon.

In addition to fast disappearing, which happens way faster than phrase of any character ends - when you select dialog in a hurry it interrupt previously played line of any character in a very rude way, and gives not chance to listen it till the end, so you always miss some plot points.

And if you listen things till the end you missing chance to say anything as timer for answer ends way faster than phrase of character - can this be changed so that Alex could actually WAIT FOR PREVIOUS CHARACTER TO FINISH HIS\HER LINE, BEFORE SAYING HER LINE??? In case if scenario in this particular place means you have to interrup phrase of other character you can add exta control style - normal press would scedule reply to play after previous line will be finished, hold button a little longer will interrup it the way it is now.

The way it is now is really frustrating.

[v00d00m4n]

Originally posted by Cook:

I just started the game and I already faced the situation when dialogues disappear too quickly and I either do not have time to read anything and my character is silent or I just choose randomly most of the time.

And most of all I'm annoyed that when you choose the dialogue option the character who speaks at this moment is interrupted and you do not have the opportunity to listen to what he says. Some of the replicas are also interrupted by other cutscenes.

Why not just slow down the game time so that the player can choose a line while maintaining the illusion of a live dialogue?

In addition, there is no visual confirmation that I chose the option in the dialog, so I did not always understand whether I clicked on this option or not.

About last thing - well man, you are not dumb, dont you? I mean, do you really need visual confirmation for button you just pressed? Game always register button you clicked, and phrase in bubble correlate to what Alex says so you already got you immersive feedback, anything else would ruin immersion.

[Cook]

Originally posted by Voodooman:

Originally posted by Cook:

In addition, there is no visual confirmation that I chose the option in the dialog, so I did not always understand whether I clicked on this option or not.

About last thing - well man, you are not dumb, dont you? I mean, do you really need visual confirmation for button you just pressed? Game always register button you clicked, and phrase in bubble correlate to what Alex says so you already got you immersive feedback, anything else would ruin immersion.

Well, I'm not going to argue about that because for me the visual confirmation will definitely be more convenient. I can only say why it will be more convenient for me.

1. When the dialog option starts to disappear, I do not understand whether I clicked it or not. So the visual confirmation in the form of a small highlighting of the selected option after pressing makes this action intuitive. Man, this is the basis of design and usability.

2. There is only a short phrase in the bubble therefore, I do not know whether the character says the phrase I chose or it was a random choice.

Immersion or not, it's just a bad UI design.

[SlowMotn]

People are still dealing with this issue, after how long?! Its most likely a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ variable in code. Dialogue shows for X seconds. This many people don't like the variable at X, so change one variable to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Y. Or at least a setting. Does having a short time frame add anything to the game? No. Is it hard to change this to make the game better, no. So why no fix?

[Etragorn]

I think some people don't understand that in programming there are various types of timers (Global, event, etc...), and changing one, just slightly, can throw everything off. This is likely not an easy fix by any stretch of the imagination. It's likely, in order to simplify the code, they used a global timer system for most, if not all, event synchronization in the game. If they did, then there is no easy way to fix the dialogue issue because to do so would cause time critical events to fail or become distorted. In essence, they would have to scrap the code they have now, re-implement a separate timing system for dialogue, have it sync with the global timer system, and then debug it. That would be a huge undertaking. As such, please understand the people who made this game may have found it to be nearly impossible to do what was asked because of the required investment of time and effort.

[v00d00m4n]

Originally posted by SlowMotn:

People are still dealing with this issue, after how long?! Its most likely a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ variable in code. Dialogue shows for X seconds. This many people don't like the variable at X, so change one variable to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Y. Or at least a setting. Does having a short time frame add anything to the game? No. Is it hard to change this to make the game better, no. So why no fix?

Originally posted by spikeypsyche:

I think some people don't understand that in programming there are various types of timers (Global, event, etc...), and changing one, just slightly, can throw everything off. This is likely not an easy fix by any stretch of the imagination. It's likely, in order to simplify the code, they used a global timer system for most, if not all, event synchronization in the game. If they did, then there is no easy way to fix the dialogue issue because to do so would cause time critical events to fail or become distorted. In essence, they would have to scrap the code they have now, re-implement a separate timing system for dialogue, have it sync with the global timer system, and then debug it. That would be a huge undertaking. As such, please understand the people who made this game may have found it to be nearly impossible to do what was asked because of the required investment of time and effort.

Oh c''mon, dont be another devil's advocate.

Solution is easy and described one above - make timing equal to to timing of currently played phrase, make quick tap on button as "wait"event, and scedule reply to follow after previous character will finish, and make a hold same button to interrupt current line (basically make it work the way it is right now). There are not much unique truelly time based events that has to be handles separately, and overall number of dialogs is not so big to manually change timings for each (actually a skilled programmer can automate it - read current lengh of monologue and write same timing for it).

[joridiculous]

It is part of the game. You have to make quick choises.
If you need to play it slow, use cheat engine.

[Bomoo]

Just got the chance to play it a few days ago and this is probably the biggest flaw with an otherwise quite excellent game. The ends of v/o lines are CONSTANTLY getting cut off by my dialogue choices even if I wait until the absolute last second to pick them before they disappear. And often they actually will disappear. It feels pretty frustrating having to choose between cutting off other characters' voice lines to get my selected dialogue option in or hearing them in full while staying silent.

Now, this doesn't appear to be a problem everywhere, and some of Alex's dialogue options will properly queue up to play once the currently playing voice line completes, but many don't, and it's incredibly annoying. If I were one of the characters in the story and Alex was incessantly interrupting me mid sentence, I'd likely hate her guys just for that. It's not much better when you're the player controlling her and you'd kinda like to listen to the actors' voice lines.

And it really doesn't help for all you status quo apologists to make up bogus reasons why this is such a great thing. It's really not, it's a lapse in the quality of the game's audio design. Fix: have voice lines queue up to play one after the other instead of playing over each other or cutting each other off. Bastion does this perfectly, so why can't Oxenfree?

[v00d00m4n]

Originally posted by Bomoo:

Just got the chance to play it a few days ago and this is probably the biggest flaw with an otherwise quite excellent game. The ends of v/o lines are CONSTANTLY getting cut off by my dialogue choices even if I wait until the absolute last second to pick them before they disappear. And often they actually will disappear. It feels pretty frustrating having to choose between cutting off other characters' voice lines to get my selected dialogue option in or hearing them in full while staying silent.

Now, this doesn't appear to be a problem everywhere, and some of Alex's dialogue options will properly queue up to play once the currently playing voice line completes, but many don't, and it's incredibly annoying. If I were one of the characters in the story and Alex was incessantly interrupting me mid sentence, I'd likely hate her guys just for that. It's not much better when you're the player controlling her and you'd kinda like to listen to the actors' voice lines.

And it really doesn't help for all you status quo apologists to make up bogus reasons why this is such a great thing. It's really not, it's a lapse in the quality of the game's audio design. Fix: have voice lines queue up to play one after the other instead of playing over each other or cutting each other off. Bastion does this perfectly, so why can't Oxenfree?

Thats exactly what i was trying to explain to these devil's advocates.

Worst part about this issue - you missing part of plot, and because of this you have constant frustrating feeling of that you did something wrong.

[joridiculous]

You *do* know you have the option to not cut anyone off, at all? You even get an achievement for this

[Cutesune]

Originally posted by joridiculous:

You *do* know you have the option to not cut anyone off, at all? You even get an achievement for this :MIKU:

Unless you've already finished the game, no. And if you're finding the dialogue system super infuriating, you're unlikely to.