Feature Request / Clarification: Skippable Post-Line Delay for Dialogue
Hi Chris / AC community,
I’m using the Dialogue: Play speech Action with both narration and character lines. My settings allow subtitles to be skipped, so pressing the skip key moves on to the next Action immediately. That part is working fine.
What I’d really like, however, is a built-in way to add a short “post-line pause” after each speech line — something like 0.3–1 second — that is automatically bypassed if the player skips the line with (InteractionA).
I know about the “Initial post-line delay” in the Speech Manager, but that delay is enforced even when the line is skipped. So if the player presses skip, the text/audio ends but the ActionList still waits out the delay before moving on.
I also tried using the [wait:x] token, but that only adds a pause within the line before displaying the following text. Putting it at the end delays the line appearing instead of holding after it’s finished.
What I’m looking for is essentially a “Skippable Wait After Line” option:
If the player does nothing, a small pause happens naturally before the next line begins.
If the player skips, the pause is instantly bypassed, and the ActionList continues right away.
Is there a way to achieve this natively that I might be missing?
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Not currently - but perhaps the option to ignore the post-line delay when skipping would be useful here.
Very much! Would you consider adding this as an option in a future update? It feels like it would be a small but impactful improvement for pacing dialogue.
Thanks again for all your support and the continued development of AC!
Hi Chris,
Following up on this topic — I realized that the Dialogue: Play speech Action already includes its own optional “wait time offset,” which is great. However, at the moment that offset is not skippable — the ActionList always waits it out, even if the player presses the skip key.
My suggestion would be to add the ability to make this wait time offset skippable (as an option). That way:
If the player lets the line play out naturally, the ActionList observes the pause before moving on.
If the player skips the line, the offset is immediately bypassed and the next Action begins right away.
The key difference from the “Initial post-line delay” would be that, designers could set different natural pauses for different lines (e.g. a short 0.3s pause on one line, a longer 1s pause on another) without having to enforce the same delay across all speech.
This would give designers finer control over dialogue pacing while also keeping the experience responsive for players who prefer to skip through lines.
Sorry, I'm not clear - are you looking to have skipping ignore the per-line "Wait time offset", or the global "Initial post line delay", or both?
Yes the "Wait time offset"
But still retaining the "Initial post line delay"? Because currently, the two values are added together.
I’ll leave it to your judgment on what makes the most sense overall.🙂
Personally, though, I think having an option (like a simple “Skippable” tick) just for the per-line “Wait time offset” would add a lot of flexibility. That way, each line can still have its own pacing, but players who skip won’t be forced to sit through that extra delay.
Thanks again for considering this!