A long time ago (think October 2014), I had the crazy notion that Dehoarder 2 was going to have dubbed lines of dialog. I even recorded a few. However, I soon realized that dubbing all lines of dialog was going to be a monumental task, and so dubbed lines have been out of scope for a while (at least for the first release).
The problem with this is that all my events were written with this real-time dubbing in mind. Subtitles would display for a fixed period of time, and could not be advanced or delayed to accommodate different reading paces. Now that real-time dubbing is out and the few dubbed lines are removed, it became glaringly apparent that control over the pace of the dialog needed to be given to the player. The main playtesting symptom of this problem, impatient button-mashing during cutscenes, indeed manifested during the expo.
This is a horse that is pretty hard to switch midstream, though the benefits are worth it. Every single Subtitle event action is being changed over to a new Dialog event action (and there are hundreds). Dialog actions are a new animal in Dehoarder 2. Visually they look similar to subtitles, but behind the scenes they pause the running of events until the player decides to continue. I kept Subtitle action available for those rare cases when they are more appropriate than the new Dialog action, and to ensure a smooth transition.
So, if you find yourself in a position to decide between real-time and player-gated dialog for a game, do yourself a favor and get that decision right the first time. You will save yourself a big headache that I have inflicted on myself.
The new dialog system will remain even if dubbed lines eventually return. Even with dubbed lines, not all players will be playing with audio enabled. There were also several dialog lines that were getting “lost in the gameplay”, as they were not a part of a cutscene but were spoken during gameplay. Now that the player interacts with that dialog, it is less likely to become lost.
This is the last big action item from the expo feedback, so once this is done, I can return to content and story. Of course, the holidays are nigh upon us, as is the time for getting some work done for Ivory Skies, so I will be busy as always.