Whether you write in the visual editor or text editor, inside texts you can use a bunch of special syntax to make them look and behave just the way you want.
Additionally, you can also use BBCode, about which you can learn more in the Godot docs: BBCode in RichTextLabel.
📜 Content
- What is a Text Effect?
- 1. Variables
- 2. Breaks and New Events
- 3. Speed & Pause effects
- 4. Random selection
- 5. Signal effect
- 6. Portrait & Mood effects
- 7. Auto-Advance
What is a Text Effect?
A Text Effect (or text-tag) is a written command in the form of a special BBCode. While Godot's BBCodes require a Rich Text Label, Dialogic's work inside the timeline's Text Events and do not use Godot's system for custom BBCode effects.
Dialogic's Text Effects permit you to control Auto-Advance (whether text continues automatically), waiting some time, awaiting your own signals, or changing the text speed.
1. Variables
You can use dialogic variables (and even autoload variables) in your text events easily. Learn more about how to do so here: Variables
2. Breaks and New Events
[br] Inserts a break into a text event.
[n] Visually starts a new event, requiring manual advancement by the user or by the Auto-Advance system.
[n+] Requires some sort of advance (user input or auto-advance), but will append the following text to the previous without clearing the text box.
[input] Will simply await any input. As opposed to [n+], it is not breaking the text up into multiple sections and can thus be skipped.
3. Speed & Pause effects
Text speed is a complicated topic, as it can be used in numerous ways. Dialogic has
-
a letter speed that specifies the time to wait on each symbol when revealing
-
a speed multiplier that will temporarily modify the letter and pause speed
-
a user speed multiplier setting that will additionally modify letter and pause speed
3.1 Letter Speed
The default letter speed can be changed in the text settings. It can be changed temporarily (it will reset before the next event) with these effects:
-
[lspeed=x]Sets the letter speed to x in seconds (e.g.,[lspeed=0.1]). This is modified by the temporary speed multiplier and the user speed setting! -
[lspeed=x!]Sets the letter speed to x in seconds. This is not multiplied with the speed multipliers! -
[lspeed]Resets the letter speed.
3.2. Temporary Speed Multiplier
The speed multiplier is 1 by default, so it has no effect. It can be changed temporarily (it will reset before the next event) with these effects:
-
[speed=x]Sets the speed to x. As this will multiply the pause length or letter delay, higher values will result in a slower reveal, and lower values will result in a faster reveal. 0 will instantly reveal the text. -
[speed]Resets the speed multiplier to 1.
3.3 Pauses
You can pause the reveal with these effects:
-
[pause=x]Pauses the reveal for x seconds (e.g.,[pause=0.2]). This is modified by the temporary speed multiplier and the user speed setting! -
[pause=x!]Pauses the reveal for x seconds. This is not multiplied with the speed multipliers!
Related to this are Auto-Pauses, which can be configured in the text settings to insert pause effects after certain symbols. This can be used to easily alter the flow of punctuation.
3.4 User Speed multiplier setting
Oftentimes, you might want to expose the reveal speed as a setting to the player. To easily allow this, you can use the "text_speed" setting.
You can access it via the Settings subsystem Dialogic.Settings.text_speed = 0.5. This should enable you to implement a speed slider in your settings
Settings of the settings subsystem are automatically saved by dialogic and loaded back even across game-sessions! So you might want to reset this on game start if you don't want that. ---
4. Random selection
If a text is encountered multiple times during your game, it might be nice to vary it a bit. For this, the random selection modifier allows you to insert only one option from a list like this:
-
<Option 1/Option 2/Option 3>Inserts one of the options (separated with /) into the text.- E.g.:
<Hi/Hello/Howdy> <my friend/dude/bro>, how are you doing?
- E.g.:
5. Signal effect
If you want to notify/activate something outside Dialogic in the middle of a text event, you can use the [signal=arg] effect. It will trigger the Dialogic.text_signal signal with the given argument as a string. Learn more about the signal: Dialogic Signals
6. Portrait & Mood effects
You can change the portrait or typing mood of the speaker with these effects:
-
[portrait=name]Changes the portrait of the speaker to the portrait with the given name. -
[mood=name]Changes the typing mood to the one with the given name.
7. Auto-Advance
There are the following text effects to control Auto-Advance:
[aa]enables the Auto-Advance for the current text event.[aa=time]enables Auto-Advance after a fixed delay oftimeseconds; four seconds before Auto-Advance continues:[aa=4][aa=time?]changes the fixed delay for the current text event but does not enable Auto-Advance.