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Effects
Effects are animations of the UI, played by the Effect Commands: a screen flash, a shake, a fade to black, or any animation of the nodes around the dialogue. They play on effect players: AnimationPlayer nodes listed by name in the Engine's media_players_paths, like media players (see Effect Players). The Effect Commands mirror the Media Commands: Effect_Play, Effect_Wait, Effect_Pause, Effect_Resume, Effect_Skip and Effect_Stop list their players under Players with individual settings, wait with Wait_Loops and Wait_Time, pause with pause loops, and schedule stops with Loops and Duration, as the pages of this section describe for media. Every key is described in Effect Commands. Animations An effect player plays the animations built into its scene, and the animations of an AnimationLibrary file loaded by the Line: Library names a file in Candy_DE/Media/General/Effects/Animation_Libraries, a folder shared by every effect player (.tres by default). The loaded library replaces the one loaded by a previous Line; the player's own animations, including RESET, are always available. An empty Library retains the library already loaded. Animation names the animation to play, searched in the loaded library first, then in the player's own animations. This key is required. For example, an Effect_Play command on the Screen player with Library set to UI_FX, Animation to Shake and Wait_Loops to 1 shakes the screen once, and the Dialogue continues when the shake is over. The animation libraries that ship with Candy Dialogue Engine, and the ones you add, are 'safe' files: updates never overwrite them. The End of an Effect An animation retains the pose it reached when it ends, so a fade to black leaves the screen black until another effect, or the RESET animation, restores it. Stop_Frame decides the pose, on the Effect_Play command for an animation that ends by itself, and on the Effect_Stop command:
  • 0: the pose the animation ends on (the default of Effect_Play).
  • Clear: the RESET animation of the library, or the player's own, restores the properties the animation changed (the default of Effect_Stop).
  • -1 or a frame number: the pose of the last frame, or of that frame, counted from 1.
Frames An animation's frames are its keyframes: a value in frames (f=N) counts them. For an animation with no keyframes to count, FPS sets the rate, or the player's default_effect_fps. Effects Elsewhere Background layers and Visual Novel busts play effects of their own, with the BG_Effect and VN_Effect Commands: see Background Effects and Busts.