Text Box System

[Sappy Secretary]

I need some help trying to make a Text Box System for a RPG game, something like earthbound is what i was thinking off. I would appreciate it if someone would help me or send a link to a video that helps explain how to do it.

Thank You :3

[maras]

There are tons of tutorials on the internet. Just google "game maker text box system" :P

[The Winter Bud]

A very very simple text box to get you started on your journey. It centers the text inside a background box. It uses a maximum width to guide the box. There is no maximum length to the box so supplying a very long string will result in a very long text box. To widen the text box just increase the "width" variable to a desired width. You can increase or decrease the border size by increasing or decreasing the "border" value.

DrawTextBox(xx,yy,text, font, color, backcolor)

// assign arguments to variables
var xx=argument0; // x/y location where you want to display textbox
var yy=argument1;
var text=argument2; // the text to be displayed
var font=argument3; // the font to use
var color=argument4; // the text color
var backcolor=argument5; // the background color

if(font_exists(font)) draw_set_font(font); // set font if it exists

var width=300; // maximum width of the textbox
var height=string_height_ext(text,-1,width);
var w=width div 2+4; // used in centering background around text
var h=height div 2+4;
var border=2; // how many pixel border

draw_set_halign(fa_center); // draw text centered both hor and vert
draw_set_valign(fa_middle);

// draw the background
draw_rectangle_colour(xx-w-border, yy-h-border, xx+w+border, yy+h+border, color,color,color,color,false);
draw_rectangle_colour(xx-w, yy-h, xx+w, yy+h, backcolor,backcolor,backcolor,backcolor,false);

// draw the text
draw_text_ext_colour(xx,yy,text,-1,width,color,color,color,color,1);

// reset character alignment
draw_set_halign(fa_left);
draw_set_valign(fa_top);

How to use

mytext="This is the text I want to display. It's a simple message and full of words. It was long winded so as to display the fullness of the textbox.";
DrawTextBox(x,y,mytext,fntTextbox,c_white,c_black);

EDIT - this is just a script that will draw a text box. To make it handy you might want to create an object to utilize the script

obj_textbox

create event

font=fntTextBox; // used by the textbox
text=""; // empty text
alarm[0]=150; // how long you want to display text (5 seconds)

alarm 0 event

instance_destroy(); // destroy ourselves when done

draw event

if(text!=""){
  DrawText(x,y,text,font,c_white,c_black);
}

Then all you have to do to use it is create the object where you want to show the box and give it it's text

var tb=instance_create(somex,somey,obj_textbox);
 // note somex and somey are where you want the textbox to show
tb.text="This is the text to be displayed";

This is common domain. no need for credit. it was created years ago by many people and used by many as a basic idea or concept. Searching the internet will return similar results. It was written to help you understand how GML can be used to create simplistic displays. Tweaking the script is up to the understanding of the user and are encouraged to play around with it to shape it into something you can use.