#developer help

[ukagakadreamteam]

Since a ghost can have sound effects, would it be theoretically possible to make a ghost with voice lines?

Provided your voice lines are in fact sound files, there's nothing that makes them different from any other sound effect!

Such a theoretical ghost would have other things to take into account though, such as likely having a large file size, a greatly increased workload for every new dialogue added, and also not being able to have random elements within dialogues.

None of those are necessarily a problem depending on what you want for your project, just things to have in mind from the outset!

[ukagakadreamteam]

Hello UDT, I have been interested in Ukagaka for a while now and I’m sure you’ve had a fair share of complete newbies asking where to start and how to start. I am aware of Zarla’s walkthrough and intro, and wiki stuff. I got only so far reading through Zarla’s walkthrough (without actual commitment just yet) and I get stuck because something isn’t clear enough or I don’t understand the tasks anymore. I have brain damage, I need a direct video walkthrough or someone to intensely coach me, and as much as I feel bad asking the UDT, I really couldn’t find any other resources because of how niche Ukagaka is! Thing is, if I don’t understand what step eight means after going so far, my knowledge of what I’m doing utterly collapses and I don’t know what’s going on! 😭

To be more clear: are there any intense walkthrough resources or updated videos?

I hope this isn’t too much trouble, and I’m sorry if you can’t help or you can’t understand me. Please say all information that you think would be helpful, no matter how useless it might be. I will need it. Thank you in advance, I never try easy new things. 🙏

Hello! No worries at all.

There are not currently any video walkthroughs that we're aware of, unfortunately. However, there are folks working on new resources and guides! I can't guarantee what will come out or give any kind of time estimate, but it's definitely worth keeping an eye out for new resources that may pop up over time.

If the walkthrough you're looking at isn't working for you, you might consider Kawari no Kawari, which is another ukagaka walkthrough and was written more recently. It's also written in a different programming language though, so some portions of it will likely be unfamiliar. But, perhaps it will gel with you better!

You can also find various guides for different aspects of ukagaka on Ukadoc, such as this guide for creating shells. Ukadoc in general is one of the best resources you can use, since it is the official documentation.

Something else you might consider is breaking things down into smaller tasks. Ukagaka is very modular: shells exist independently of ghosts, and so do balloons. And the "ghost" portion (the code and writing) can be written in a variety of programming languages (called "SHIORI"). So, you might start with creating just a balloon, and get a feel for that. Then try something a bit bigger, like creating just a shell. If you create a shell for a ghost like Hydrate, this can be a super tiny project, but you can also build up and use it to experiment with more complex things like dressups and animations. You can also create shells for more involved ghosts, like FLELE or SSP Angel, for example.

Once you know how to create a shell (and, optionally, a balloon), then that's already half of the mechanics of ghost-making that you know how to do, and can do independently from the writing and coding portion. From there, you might experiment with different SHIORI to see what works better for you. If you're just experimenting and don't want to commit to a SHIORI until you're feeling comfortable, you could grab a freeshell to work with and try out writing dialogue. That way it's much quicker to try out the different options, and you don't have to sink time into the shell portion at all until you've figured out how you're going to write the thing. (Or you can always skip the drawing part entirely by using a freeshell! Creating ghosts with freeshells can be very fun.)

Ukagaka can really be broken down and attacked a bite at a time, and hopefully with each bite you're learning something fun that you can make use of later. A lot of folks take on a whole ghost as their first project, but you can absolutely take time to build up to it if that will help you!

I think it's also worth bearing in mind that ukagaka do not need to be complex to be fun and wonderful. Some of my personal favorite ghosts are ones that don't have any fancy mechanics, they just sit there and talk at me, and have interesting stuff to say that keeps me entertained for hours. So don't feel like you need to make something super complicated for it to be worthwhile, it can be just a simple shell and a pool of dialogue, and be great. Everything else is completely optional and can be skipped. I really mean that, I'll happily go into detail about how much can be omitted from ghosts if anyone is curious about it.

If you're comfortable with it, you might try joining our Discord server. I recommend it in this case because some folks there volunteer as mentors, and you might find it useful to be able to ask for help from experienced devs! Even if you mute most of the rest of the server, you might be able to find some help asking for mentorship and bringing up any specific questions you have, especially if there are points in the walkthroughs that are unclear to you. It's all on a volunteer basis, so we can't make guarantees that anyone will be able and willing to help, but it's the best place you can ask at the moment.

And of course, you're more than welcome to send more asks here. It will be a slower response time, but we're always happy to help if we're able! Especially if there's anything in this response that you need clarification on. Just let us know!

[ukagakadreamteam]

hello! i was wondering how to properly remove kero when using a template with 2 ghosts when i only want sakura. im still getting requests for surface10 but im not sure where?

The best way to do it is to set the kero's surface to \s[-1] and make sure it stays that way! You'll want to make sure you do this in OnFirstBoot, OnBoot, OnSurfaceRestore, and OnWindowStateRestore at the very least.

If you're having surface 10 called and you're not sure where it's coming from, there are a couple ways you can hunt this down. If you use a text editor such as Notepad++, you may find it helpful to perform a "find in files" search for \s[10] and see what turns up. This guide has some notes on how to do that within your ghost folder. (Or you can simply use a basic Ctrl F search in each file one at a time!)

As a note, if you're writing a ghost in YAYA, I would recommend not touching the code in the base SHIORI files. There are a couple calls to surface 10 in there, but so long as you have responses to the events I mentioned at the start, these will not cause you any issue and you can ignore them.

Another thing you can try is to open the script log with Ctrl L, and use that whenever you see the kero appear to see which script has the tag and what event it originates from.

(OnSecondChange in this screenshot is what causes aitalk to run, and the same will be true for many ghosts.)

This can help you get an idea of where scripts are coming from, and locate any that are causing problems! If you can't read the full script in the script log window because it's too long, you can click to highlight the one you want to check, click the copy button, then paste it into a text editor and use Ctrl F to check for surface tags, etc.

In 99% of cases, you should be able to find and replace all of the calls to surface 10 with these methods! But if you've still got some that you can't find, feel free to send in another ask with more details (a screenshot of the script log with the script that caused the kero to appear would help a lot).

[ukagakadreamteam]

"mode" anon here!

Thanks for the clear explanations (and cheering ;3)! The mode works perfectly now :D I did encounter some bits that did not work as intended but I managed to fix that on my own pretty easily with a bit of searching (and thinking back at your explanations helped tremediously)

I'm pretty close to being done now, how exciting !

Thanks again!

Glad to hear it's working now and that the explanations helped! Good luck finishing your ghost! ✨

[ukagakadreamteam]

Hello again! "mode" anon here

Sorry yeah now I see how confusing my ask was- (I mean I am very confused about how stuff works as a begginer so yeah sounds right)

So I use the girl and triangle template from Zarla so I think it's yaya? I think I saw that somewhere.

What I want to do: I want to have what I call a "watching mode" so that my ghost would sit still and watch stuff with the user. I have special poses for the mode.

To do that, I separated the regular poses in randomtalk with the mode poses using an if/else to check if the mode is on or not

To put the mode on and off, I put two buttons in my ghost menu

And what's not clicking is what do I need to write exactly under those buttons so it turns the mode on and off....?

I dunno if it's clear, here's part of my code:

this is in aitalk (the stuff in green is the stuff I want to happen when the mode is on) ->

RandomTalk : nonoverlap_pool { if watchmode == "on" { "\1\s[161]\0\s[162]" "\1\s[161]\0\s[163]\w8\w8\w8\w8\w8\w8\0\s[162]" "\1\s[161]\0\s[164]\w8\w8\w8\w8\w8\w8\0\s[162]" "\1\s[161]\0\s[165]\w8\w8\w8\w8\w8\w8\0\s[162]" "\1\s[161]\0\s[166]\w8\w8\w8\w8\w8\w8\0\s[162]" "\1\s[161]\0\s[167]\w8\w8\w8\w8\w8\w8\0\s[162]" "\1\s[161]\0\s[168]\w8\w8\w8\w8\w8\w8\0\s[162]" "\1\s[161]\0\s[169]\w8\w8\w8\w8\w8\w8\0\s[162]" "\1\s[161]\0\s[170]\w8\w8\w8\w8\w8\w8\0\s[162]" "\1\s[161]\0\s[171]\w8\w8\w8\w8\w8\w8\0\s[162]" "\1\s[161]\0\s[172]\w8\w8\w8\w8\w8\w8\0\s[162]" "\1\s[161]\0\s[173]\w8\w8\w8\w8\w8\w8\0\s[162]"

}

else {

all the other poses🌟

}

and then this part I struggle with is in menu, I know some stuff are wrong it was filler because I just can't figure out what I need to write here ->

MenuRun : all { "![*]\q[Ask something,askmenu]\n"

"![*]\q[Give something,giftmenu]\n" "![*]\q[Play,gamemenu]\n"

"![*]\q[Show me a picture,picmenu]\n" "![*]\q[Watch something with me!,screentime]\n\n[half]"

}

Select.screentime { ScreenOrNot }

ScreenOrNot : all { "\0\s[5]\b2Watching time?\n\n[half]"

"\![*]\q[Watching time!,watchon]\n"

"\![*]\q[Enough watching.,watchoff]\n\n[half]"

"\![*]\q[Nevermind,CANCEL]\n"

}

Select.watchon { "\1\s[161]\0\s[162]![enter,watchmode]" }

Select.watchoff { "\1\s[15]\0\s[5]That was great!![leave,watchmode]" }

I think I'm gonna give up this option if I can't figure it out soon enough but it makes me a bit sad because I was very enthusiast about the idea. Anyway, can you help me? That's fine if not

have a nice day!

Thanks for writing back! This paints a much clearer picture, we can certainly help! You are correct, if you're using the Girl and Triangle template then you're using YAYA (unless you have an older version written in AYA, but that's very unlikely these days)

You're actually almost there, the one thing you're missing is that you need to know how to assign your variable!

In RandomTalk you have written the following:

if watchmode == "on"

This is checking if a variable named "watchmode" is equal to the string "on". So all we need to do is assign the string "on" to watchmode when you want the mode on, and assign it to something else like "off" when you want it to be off.

This is quite simple to do. In your function Select.watchon, just add the following on a separate line within the brackets:

watchmode = "on"

And in your function Select.watchoff, do the same, but assigning "off" instead of "on":

watchmode = "off"

That should get it working for the menu buttons! (You won't need the \![enter,watchmode] and \![leave,watchmode] tags you have in red there, I'm assuming those are the placeholders you spoke of. They're not valid SakuraScript tags, so SSP would just ignore them!)

There are a couple other things you'll want to do to avoid bugs though. In your OnFirstBoot function, you'll want to make sure you define the variable watchmode, that way your ghost has it from the start and it doesn't cause any unexpected behavior. You can just add the following somewhere within the brackets of OnFirstBoot:

watchmode = "off"

And, assuming that you don't want watchmode to stay on if the user closes the ghost and then opens it again later, you'll also want to change it to be off whenever the user opens the ghost!

There are a few ways to accomplish this, but I would highly recommend that you add the event OnInitialize to your ghost for this if you don't already have it. This event runs any time your ghost loads, no matter the reason. A normal bootup? Changed from another ghost? Switched to this ghost because the last ghost got uninstalled? It doesn't matter, it always runs OnInitialize, so you don't have to copy this variable change to OnBoot and OnGhostChanged and OnVanished, etc.

This is the setup I would recommend:

OnInitialize { //If you use the Reload SHIORI option in the dev palette, this check ensures that this code won't run, so that it doesn't silently kick you out of watch mode. Just to make your life as a dev a bit easier! if reference0 != "reload" { watchmode = "off" } }

But of course, maybe you want it to persist across sessions until the user turns it off! If that's what you want, then you can skip this part.

I hope that helps you out! If you've got more questions or something's not working right, feel free to send another ask. What you're looking to do is very much possible.

And like I said, you very nearly had it figured out on your own, so take heart! You're doing well already, and if you run into anything that you're not sure how to approach, we're glad to help answer questions and give resources ✨

[ukagakadreamteam]

Hello! I hope you're having a good day!

I made good progress on my ghost but I am again stuck.

I'm trying to make a mode and I'm just very confused about the thing. It's a simple mode that has a few poses (that should replace the random talk when on)

I've put an if/else in aitalk and made buttons in my menu that are meant to turn on and off the mode.

But I can't figure out what to write to turn the mode on??? What do I write under my menu button??? ＼（〇_ｏ）／

thanks for the help in advance

Hello! Unfortunately it's difficult to help with just the description we have here. A "mode" is a very arbitrary thing, and could be implemented in a number of ways. In order to help you with yours, we'll need more details, including what SHIORI/programming language you're working in!

If you can post the relevant bits of your code, whether in text form or as screenshots, that would be very helpful. It would also help if you can describe in more detail what it is you're trying to achieve! We'd be happy to help once we've got an idea of what it is we're actually looking at.

[ukagakadreamteam]

hi! i've downloaded quite a few ukagaka's before but i really want to try making one myself. i was just wondering if you had any good resources to help?

We have many resources to help! Your best resource will always be Ukadoc, since it is the official documentation. (Albeit, this is a translated version, so do mind that there might be translation errors!) You can find documentation of all the things handled by SSP there, as well as guides for various things such as creating shells and setting up network updates. It covers every aspect of ghost making except the parts handled by the SHIORI.

When it comes to picking a SHIORI (the programming language your ghost will use), we have a little guide here on our wiki that you can use to see which ones we've explored so far, and resources for them (official documentation, walkthroughs), as well as English ghosts you can use as reference, etc. Most English ghosts are currently written in YAYA, but we're starting to explore other options, and they're definitely worth having a look at to see what gels with you!

Speaking of our wiki, this is the best place to find the accumulated knowledge of the English ukagaka dev community! There's a page linking to various other resources you might want to explore, a glossary of terms, templates, guides, freeshells, and also a link to our Discord server where you can chat with other devs to get direct help, join in events, and more.

If there's something in particular you're looking for and you're not sure where to find it, feel free to send us another ask and we'll point you in the right direction! There are so many resources and tools available now, and I'm certain there are more on the horizon.