How to make cutscene running in background skippable?

clairesquare

Hi!

This is what I'm trying to do in this scene. The player can walk around inside a box. When the scene starts, the camera starts animating from a close-up to a wide view, and an audio track plays (meanwhile the player can continue to walk around). At the end of the audio track, the game ends. I want the player to have the option to press "k" to skip to making the game end.

In order to allow the player to continue walking during the camera move and audio, I am having those run as a OnStart CutScene that is set to "Run in Background" but this makes it so that the scene is not skippable. (I've tried making it skippable by using a Input:Check loop for the button press, and also by using a video playing that has the "is skippable" checked, but neither of these seem to work within a CutScene set to "Run in Background")

However, if I create a CutScene set to "Pause Gameplay" with "is skippable" checked, then the cutscene is skippable with the press of the k button, but the player cannot control the player character, which is frozen in place for the duration of the audio.

Here is my current OnStart Cutscene Action List for the "Run in Background" version: 

Thanks for your help! I've tried this a bunch of different ways and I can either get 1) the player can move while the camera moves and audio plays, but cannot skip OR 2) the player cannot move while the camera moves and the audio plays, but they can skip. Any ideas on how to get it so the player can move AND the sequence is skippable would be wonderful, thank you!

ChrisIceBox

Skipping a background cutscene is not possible - it's inherent to the way they're designed, which is why no skipping option in the Inspector is given.

What you can do, however, is create an Active input that triggers another ActionList that ends the cutscene and snaps the camera in place.

Active inputs are covered in Section 2.14 of the Manual, and should be used instead of a repeatedly-running Input: Check Action.  The ActionList: Kill command can be used to end a currently-running Action, and if followed by a Camera: Switch with no transition time it will snap the camera in place.

clairesquare

Thanks for the explanation - I made an Active Input that called an Action List like you suggested and it works great. Thank you @ChrisIceBox !

TayannaStudios

Hi Chris

Following on from this, I'm having a similar issue.

I have an actionlist running in the background providing subtitles for the video currently playing (I'm making an FMV).

When the assigned Skip Video button is pressed the video skips as expected but the subtitle actionlist running in the background continues to play over the next video.

I'm also created an Active Input for the Skip Video button that triggers another actionlist which should kill the subtitle actionlists. However, it doesn't.

What I've done in this actionlist is have about 60-70 actionlist-Kill nodes that all run, killing all possible actionlists that may be playing subtitles. Is this not the correct way about doing this?

ChrisIceBox

If your video doesn't need to run in the background, you could replace the Skip Video button with EndCutscene to have both the video and the subtitles ActionLists stop at the same time.

Are your Subtitle ActionLists in scenes, or asset files? If scenes, you could look into tagging them so that a custom script can just kill any ActionList with a given tag.

If assets, it may have to be based on naming convention, i.e. kill anything with a name beginning "Subtitles_".

TayannaStudios

Thanks Chris! I got it to work by creating 2 Active Inputs for the same key, one to kill actionlists that were set to 'normal' and one to kill them if they were in a 'cutscene'. This now kills them, so phew!

Thanks though, Chris!