Need some more help... This time with IN Game Text.
I want to make something cool, like the text in Eternal Daughter or something, but I'm not very good with text...
I need help.
I already have the text writen, I only need to make it cool!
(for more information go and see my post at the Solitaire Club section of the forums)
Thanx
Profile edited as it messed the layout of the site up.
Each string (text) object can have several paragraphs in it. Each one is given an ID number. You can shift through these paragraphs, simulating a conversation.
There are other effects, like making the text appear one letter at a time. Lots of people use a very simple bit of code to add 1 to a counter and then set the text to left$(textOfCurrentParagraph, counterValue).
However, although it's more cumbersome, I prefer to complicate the process and have it check each letter before it displays it. There's a very good reason for this. Many commercial games actually have slight pauses, to make it feel more like conversation.
They have slight pauses at commas, periods and sometimes just inserted whenever the dialogue is meant to be jerky (eg: if someone says "but I - I don't know! ... It's not my area...")
I tend to do this by having a pause character, like '~'. When it reaches one of these characters, it doesn't show it up on the screen. The result is a pause where no characters are added. So you can have a paragraph like this:
"But I ~~~- I don't know!~~ .~~.~~.~~.~~ It's not my area .~~.~~.~~"
And it prints out as:
"But I " [pause]" - I don't know!" [dots are printed slowly] "It's not my area" [more slow dots]
It gives the impression of more natural speech.
A good trick to remember is to have the dialogue kept in one big text object which is invisible. Then have *another* text object that displays it in-game. Makes things neater.