Module Settings
Module settings hold the project-wide defaults for conversation behaviour. Open them with:
BardTreeLtd/Dialogue/Module Settings
That opens a dedicated window rather than the raw inspector, with the settings grouped into the sections below. The underlying asset lives at Assets/BardTreeLtd/Resources/DIALOGUE-SYSTEM/System/DialgoueSystemSettings.asset -- see Scene Setup for the note about that filename.
Most of these are defaults rather than hard rules. Individual conversations can depart from the conversation flow, player control, and cursor settings through conversation overrides.
Conversation Flow
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Default Dialogue Tree | none | Fallback tree used when an NPC has no assigned dialogue tree. |
| End When Player Stops Interacting | on | Auto-closes the conversation when the player looks away from the NPC. |
| Mood Repository | none | Project-wide mood set. Agents can carry their own. See Mood. |
The window warns you if End When Player Stops Interacting is on while both movement and look are disabled -- the player cannot look away, so the setting does nothing.
World & Physics
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Pause World During Conversation | off | Sets Time.timeScale to 0 during dialogue. |
| Disable Cloth During Conversation | on | Disables cloth simulation on the speaking agent during dialogue. |
Leave cloth disabling on when pausing the world. Cloth simulation produces visible artefacts when time resumes, and the window warns about this combination.
Player Controls
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Disable Player Movement | on | Blocks movement input for the duration of the conversation. |
| Disable Player Look | off | Blocks look input. |
| Manage Cursor During Dialogue | off | Whether the cursor policy changes cursor state at all. |
| Show Cursor | on | Cursor visibility during conversations. |
| Cursor Lock Mode | None | Lock mode to apply. None is what lets the player click options. |
The cursor fields are disabled unless Manage Cursor During Dialogue is on. Which player rig actually gets blocked is decided by IPlayerInputBinding, not here -- see Conversation Policies.
Camera
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Camera Backend | Cinemachine | None disables the camera system entirely. Cinemachine requires the package. |
| Camera Settings | none | Shot selection profile. Falls back to Resources/DIALOGUE-SYSTEM/Camera/CameraSettings. |
| Default Blend Time | 0.5s | Blend duration when a shot specifies none. |
| Collision Mask | layer 0 | Layers raycast against to avoid placing the camera inside geometry. |
The Cinemachine option is greyed out when the package is not installed, and the window offers a button that opens Package Manager at com.unity.cinemachine. If the asset already selects Cinemachine while the package is missing, no camera control happens at all until you install it. See Camera.
Agent Detection
How the player finds an NPC to talk to.
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Detection Mode | Raycast | Raycast, SphereCast, or Proximity. |
| Max Distance | 5 | How far detection reaches, in units. |
| Sphere Cast Radius | 0.5 | Width of the sphere cast. Range 0.05 to 2. |
| Detection Angle | 30 | Cone angle for proximity detection. Range 1 to 90. |
| Detection Layer Mask | all | Layers checked during detection. |
| Require Line Of Sight | on | Whether obstacles block detection. |
See Player Conversations.
Conversation Triggers
Agent-to-agent triggering. See Conversation Triggers.
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Enable Conversation Triggers | on | Master toggle for the whole trigger system. |
| Auto Attach | DialogueAgents | Disabled, DialogueAgents, or AllAgents. |
| Default Sense | none | SenseDefinition used when a trigger source has no profile sense. |
| Default Headless Tree | none | Fallback tree when agents have no headless tree assigned. |
| Evaluation Tick Interval | 3s | How often triggers are evaluated. Range 0.5 to 30. |
| Default Cooldown | 30s | Global cooldown between triggers. Range 0 to 300. |
| Default Probability | 0.5 | Chance a successful perception becomes a conversation. |
| Player Conversation Cooldown | 0s | Cooldown on an agent after it finishes a player conversation. |
| Exclude Player | on | Whether the player agent is excluded as a trigger target. |
| Max Triggers Per Tick | 0 | Caps conversations started per tick, as a fraction of total sources. |
Input
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Input Mode | AutoDetect | Force keyboard or gamepad prompts, or detect from the last device used. |
| Input Actions | none | An InputActionAsset with a Dialogue action map. Falls back to the built-in default. |
See Input System.
UI
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Default Theme | none | The DialogueUiTheme applied at startup. |
| Reference Resolution | 2560 x 1440 | CanvasScaler reference resolution for the dialogue canvases. |
| Match Width Or Height | 1 | CanvasScaler match value. 0 matches width, 1 matches height. |
Buttons alongside the theme field create, select, and ping a theme asset. See UI and Theming.
Overhead Text
Floating text above the speaking NPC's head. See Agent-to-Agent Conversations.
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Enabled | off | Master toggle for overhead text. |
| Headless Only | off | Show it only for agent-to-agent conversations, never alongside a panel. |
| World Text Prefab | none | Prefab instantiated for each bubble. |
| Head Offset | (0, 2, 0) | Offset from the agent's origin. |
| Max Width | 4 | Wrap width in world units. |
| Font Asset | none | TextMeshPro font. |
| Font Size | 36 | Font size. |
| Text Color | white | Text colour. |
| Show Background | on | Draw a panel behind the text. |
| Background Color | 50% black | Background colour. |
| Background Padding | (0.15, 0.08) | World-unit margin around the wrapped text. |
| Billboard To Camera | on | Keep the text facing the camera. |
| Fade In/Out | on | Fade bubbles in and out. |
| Fade Duration | 0.2s | Fade time. |
Keep Max Width under the spacing between two speakers, or their bubbles overlap.
With CIVIL-AI-SYSTEM installed, these settings also set the look of Civil AI barks, and you can edit them from its Barks settings tab too. Enabled and Headless Only don't affect barks. See CIVIL-AI-SYSTEM Integration.
Typewriter
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Enabled | on | Reveal text character by character. |
| Characters Per Second | 30 | Reveal speed. Higher is faster. |
| Sync With Audio | off | Match the reveal duration to the beat's audio clip length. |
| Apply To Overhead Text | on | Type overhead world text out too. |
Apply To Overhead Text matters more than it looks. Headless conversations have no panel, so overhead text is the only place their lines are typed at all.
With the typewriter off entirely, lines land all at once and self-paced conversations depend entirely on the reading hold for their pacing.
Reading Hold
How long a beat lingers after its content finishes. See Progression and Timing.
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Enabled | on | Turn off to advance as soon as content finishes. |
| Minimum Hold | 0.7s | Shortest hold, however short the line. Range 0 to 5. |
| Reading Speed | 18 cps | Characters per second used to size the hold. Range 1 to 60. |
| Revealed Hold Factor | 0.35 | Fraction of reading time still owed when the line was typed or voiced. |
| Maximum Hold | 4s | Upper bound. Range 0 to 15. |
Portrait
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Enabled | on | Show a character portrait in the dialogue panel. |
| Default Portrait | none | Used when an agent has no portrait of its own. |
Debug & Diagnostics
See Debugging.
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Enable Debug Mode | off | Master switch. Every option below is gated on it. |
| Log Trigger Evaluation | on | Log why each trigger fired or was skipped. |
| Log Sense Perception | on | Log sense perception results. |
| Log Chat Flow | on | Log node navigation and beat playback. |
| Draw Sense Gizmos | on | Draw sense ranges in the scene view. |
| Draw Conversation Links | on | Draw links between conversing agents. |
The five sub-toggles default to on but produce nothing until Enable Debug Mode is ticked, so turning debug mode on gives you everything at once. Turn individual channels off from there.
Practical advice
The settings you will actually change on a new project are the default theme, the agent detection distance, and the debug toggles. Everything else has a default chosen to work.
Before changing a setting to fix one conversation, check whether a conversation override is the better tool. Overrides exist so that one scripted moment does not force a project-wide change.
Next step
Continue to Scene Setup if you have not set a scene up yet, or Dialogue Agents.