Whatexists

I've been trying to set up a HUD that will display an allied portrait (and allow us to switch which portrait of that ally's is displayed by changing a variable) but I don't know how to get it to target the right ally... or even an ally at all.

Under the HUD settings I've set the HUD type to combatant.
Combatant type is group (because, theoretically, I'd like this HUD to be able to display multiple allied portraits at once.)
Displayed group is ally.

The rest of the HUD is copied over from a HUD that is designed to display the player characters portrait and swap his expression based on a changing variable. I've changed the variable used so it can be controlled separately and I've changed Combatant Origin to individual target instead of user.

I'm not sure what to do from here. The HUD, when turned on, displays the player characters portrait, which I don't want as the player characters portrait is supposed to be displayed separately and in a different location and this HUD is only supposed to display your allies.

For the record, my end objective is to be able to have multiple portraits on the screen at the same time during a PC/NPC conversation and to be able to do things with those portraits like adjust the alpha based on who is talking or apply basic animations to them.

gamingislove

How do you select the ally that you want to display?

Usually, a Combatant HUD in Group mode lists all combatants of the defined group - where allies are combatants that are not part of the player group and belong to a faction that is friendly to the player.
E.g. if you want to display a HUD for an individual target of the player, you need to display the HUD for the Player and use the Individual Target origin in your HUD element.

Based on your end goal, I'd recommend using image nodes in your events instead of using HUDs. See the available nodes in Add > UI > Image. Or just use the portrait options in your dialogue nodes :)

Whatexists

How do I control who the target is? Or have a target at all? I have my player combatant run up to a NPC and talk to them using a basic interaction controller and event. The NPC is an allied combatant, but doesn't seem to be registering as a target.

Whatexists

It would be really cool if dialogue nodes could have multiple portraits. For things like this where the developer wants multiple characters to have portraits on the screen at once with a marker indicating which one is talking (or changing the alpha or color or whatnot). But also for instances of like... having two characters interject in unison.

(For example: NPC 1 and NPC 2 are arguing about what to do, the curious main character goes to press the big red button, Party Member 1 and Party Member 2 shout, 'No!' in unison to stop the main character. Where NPC 1 and NPC 2 are fixed characters that are always in that particular scene and Party Member 1 and Party Member 2 are variable based on which of your followers you currently have with you.)

I've been trying to figure out a way to do this sort of thing where as much of the work can be done up front as possible so that when I'm actually creating the conversation events I have fewer nodes to input since I'm the only developer and the RPG has 50 characters with dozens of portraits each (the writer/artist is very prolific) and a substantial script. So it's pretty important to have as few nodes per line of dialogue as possible. I was attempting to figure out a workaround by handling all the portraits through a HUD so that between each show dialogue node I could just have a change game variable node and swap all the variables that determine what the HUD says around. But I've been having problems with that (both the one here where I can't get the HUD to display any portraits besides the player characters portraits and also a problem where the HUD Status Elements don't go away when the bool that I'm using as a Variable based display condition is set to off.)

UI Images seem potentially the simplest route to doing what I want, but I'm concerned about needing 3 or 4 nodes every time I change who's talking in a dialogue event whose script is already 3 pages long and has 4 characters in it (such as needing 2 change image color nodes to change the tint of the character who was talking and the character who is now talking, and/or up to 4 show image nodes to override their previous portraits with new portraits as their expressions change.) I'd also need to find a way to make sure that the images always turn off if the event ends as my team wants it possible to pull up your escape menu during an event and that means that loading other save files or other scenes through fast travel is a possibility. You've solved that problem for us in the past with dialogues remaining on the screen after loading another scene with the Stop on Destroy but that doesn't seem to get rid of the images.