[solved] Macros to set italic/underline

[Petulencia]

I've been workign a little with Macros, in the hopes of making it a little easier to set colors for character dialog, in my sound novel, since I find that tracking who says what purely by speaking style is going to make life difficult in some scenes. Everything I mention here has been tried in a single-scene test novel, rather than in my main game, as I have a lot written and don't want to eff things up if something doesn't work out as planned.

I set up my character text macros in a TyranoScript blob at the beginning of the scene, thusly :

[macro name=ko_txt][font color=0x99ff99][endmacro]
[macro name=ka_txt][font colot=0xff9999][endmacro]

My narrator often thinks to herself in italics, and when i write the dialog sections using this method, I work them like this :

Some drivel written in the default font, which I use for narration.
[ka_txt]"Kasumi's question to Kotone"
[ko_txt]<i>Kotone's internal monologue</i>
[ko_txt]"Kotone's response to Kasumi"
[resetfont]Narration continues in the standard font settings again.

Which, after a save/reload, is modified slightly - each macro'd line is split into two boxes in edit view - one with the macro name, one with the dialog in it. Presumably this is done to make editing the resulting scene "easier", although I find it counterintuitive and feel that it really bloats the scene contents as viewed in in the editor.

Some drivel written in the default font, which I use for narration.
[ka_txt]
"Kasumi's question to Kotone"
[ko_txt]
<i>Kotone's internal monologue</i>
[ko_txt]
"Kotone's response to Kasumi"
[resetfont]
Narration continues in the standard font settings again.

Is it possible to include the italic tags within the macro somehow, so I can add a

[macro name=ko_tht]

which contains the color code *and* the italics code, so all I have to do is type the dialog, or do I have to use the HTML tags every time?

Also, can Macros somehow be set global for the whole game, or are they per scene?

Cheers.

[jay_rab]

Are you using a text box component to place your macros in along with your text? If so you need to use a tyranoscript box to keep everything together so that it doesnt split it out for having non-text parts.

[Petulencia]

Originally posted by jay_rab:

Are you using a text box component to place your macros in along with your text? If so you need to use a tyranoscript box to keep everything together so that it doesnt split it out for having non-text parts.

The original macro definition "blob" I enter in a TyrannoScript box, which is the first object in my scene.

When I'm actually writing the story, I write it all in a text box, entering the tyrannoscript commands where I want the macros to be used (as illustrated int eh OP), but that causes each macro'd line to be split into two boxes after a save/reload : one for the macro, and one for the text.

When I manually enter the HTML italics code :

<i> </i>

at the start and end of the internal monologue text that follows the macro tags, it breaks it out correctly. The bloating caused by the breakup isn't the problem (it's annoying, but it's not the subject of this thread). I am merely wanting to make another macro which can include the italic tags, so all I have to do is type the text without having to type the actual HTML tags for italic text.

Is there a way to do that, or do I have to suggest adding an italic and underline t-script font parameter like there is for BOLD?

[font bold=true]
; ^ What's available according to the t-script documentation
[font italic=true]
[font underline=true]
; ^ The above two examples don't exist, so I have to use HTML tags around the text I want underlined/italic.

Sorry if my question is unclear, or my reasoning for wanting to do this difficult to understand. It's very late (5:20am), and I'm about done for the day (mentally).

[jay_rab]

One of the more programing minded users on the forums may know how to make a work around but its likely that we will have to wait for italic and underline like you have in your example for the font tag since we only have access to bold currently.

[Petulencia]

Originally posted by jay_rab:

One of the more programing minded users on the forums may know how to make a work around but its likely that we will have to wait for italic and underline like you have in your example for the font tag since we only have access to bold currently.

I have posted a suggestion in the appropriate thread to add italic=true and underline=true to the font tag's functions. Hope the devs can implement this in the near future.

Thank you very much for your prompt and helpful replies.

[Petulencia]

Originally posted by jay_rab:

Are you using a text box component to place your macros in along with your text? If so you need to use a tyranoscript box to keep everything together so that it doesnt split it out for having non-text parts.

I see what you mean now - I'm probably going to have to rewrite what I have done so far then. I've used text boxes for everything.

On the upside, it seems macros are carried over between scenes, so that's a plus.

I do have two more questions :
- Regarding text display speed : what is the minimum/maximum/default?
- Can one make a character's dialogue text display pause for a certain length of time between words?

[jay_rab]

The default is a round 35, I maybe off by a couple but it will be close enough to not notice a difference, the minimum is 1, as for the maximum a dont beleive we set one.

If you have your text in a tyranoscript box, you can use the wait tag http://tyranobuilder.com/tyranoscript-tags-reference/#wait in between the parts that you want to pause at before continuing, I believe this will ignore a user clicking though.

[Petulencia]

Originally posted by jay_rab:

The default is a round 35, I maybe off by a couple but it will be close enough to not notice a difference, the minimum is 1, as for the maximum a dont beleive we set one.

If you have your text in a tyranoscript box, you can use the wait tag http://tyranobuilder.com/tyranoscript-tags-reference/#wait in between the parts that you want to pause at before continuing, I believe this will ignore a user clicking though.

Nice, thanks. I don't mind if it ignores user clicks. The character in question has speech issues, adn this is a lot easier on the eyes than "having... h-her... talk... like... this...".

Cheers!

[Petulencia]

Just wanted to add one more though on this thread - I am now preferring to do most (if not all) things in Tyrannoscript rather than using the drag/drop editing. I'm also finding it a little easier to work the basics in TyrannoBuilder, then edit the .ks files directly with Notepad++ . Hopefully this doesn't break anything.

At this rate, I may wind up graduating to RenPy sooner, rather than later, in order to take advantage of the power and portability of RenPy (especially the ability to do Linux builds of my VN). Hopefully there's an update soon that adds something that makes it worth staying with Tyranno.

[jay_rab]

Originally posted by Petulencia:

Just wanted to add one more though on this thread - I am now preferring to do most (if not all) things in Tyrannoscript rather than using the drag/drop editing. I'm also finding it a little easier to work the basics in TyrannoBuilder, then edit the .ks files directly with Notepad++ . Hopefully this doesn't break anything.

At this rate, I may wind up graduating to RenPy sooner, rather than later, in order to take advantage of the power and portability of RenPy (especially the ability to do Linux builds of my VN). Hopefully there's an update soon that adds something that makes it worth staying with Tyranno.

This shouldnt break anything though, you need to make sure that you have all your formating correct or it will halt.

RenPy is a great tool specially if you have a goal to get into coding in python, but what are you aiming to have included tyranobuilder in the next update?

[Petulencia]

Originally posted by jay_rab:

This shouldnt break anything though, you need to make sure that you have all your formating correct or it will halt.

RenPy is a great tool specially if you have a goal to get into coding in python, but what are you aiming to have included tyranobuilder in the next update?

Hmm... that's actually a tough question, and I feel that perhapse I misspoke there - apart from what this thread was originally about, there's not that much I can think of at the moment.

Perhapse an "expert mode" editor with integrated spell check and Tscript syntax checking. It would also be really nice to be able to copy/paste text from outside Tyranobuilder.

The ability to use any font installed on the user's system would be nice too. The current limitation (4 very similar-looking fonts) is a bit limited. I'm just not sure how you'd deal with licensing for fonts that aren't necessarily public domain.

One thing I'm really missing (that I won't get in RenPy either) is the point-and-click UI designer from Novelty, which supported designing multiple layers. Not that I'm currently building an ADV, but it would be nice to have if I ever decide to move away from the NVL format. I'd have stuck with Novelty, but it's been abandoned by it's author, and a Windows Update (not sure which one) rendered it unusable.

Honestly, any additions to the functionality would be nice.