Continuing to need help with screens and styles

[YamiiDenryuu]

I'm using the show text function to make some messages appear in my game, but as it is it looks... terrible.

What I can find about it talks about using styles, so there's apparently some way to change how it looks, but I can't seem to figure it out. What I'd like is to make it look something like the menu options- just add a box with a simple border behind the text. How can I do that? Is there a better function I could be using?

[Asceai]

show text is mega limited (and also undocumented =P). I'd suggest using a screen, then you can do what you want.

Code: Select all

screen message:
    default txt = ""
    frame align (0.5, 0.5):
        text txt

You can then style the frame and text as you like with window and text style properties just like you style anything in a screen.
You can then show messages in the script using:

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    show screen message(_transient=True, txt="PLACEHOLDER REPLY GOES HERE")

in the place of 'show text'
_transient=True puts the screen on the "transient" layer so the message disappears with the next click.

[YamiiDenryuu]

Okay, I'll try that out. Thanks!

[YamiiDenryuu]

Oh... kay, I almost succeeded in creating the box I wanted, but then suddenly I broke Ren'py.

Before that, I was getting the usual type of error messages, about "mesbox" not being defined with this code:

init:
$ mp = MultiPersistent("medukameguca")
$ style.create("mesbox", default)
$ style.mesbox.textalign = 0.5
$ style.mesbox.background = "#000"

screen message(style=mesbox):
default txt = ""
frame align (0.5, 0.5):
text txt

The error was occurring on the line with "screen message(style=mesbox)".

The new supererror happened when I decided to try indenting the screen message block another tab to line up with the init block (my code is really badly organized... but that's a separate problem), and persisted even after I undid that. Please send help.

Okay, removing the init block fixed the crazy error, at least. So what am I doing wrong?

[fluxus]

Well, badly organized code and super-errors are never separate problems

In order to get good advice on tab placement though (and coding style in general), you need to use the code tags when copy-pasting your program code.

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[code]
Your:
    code here

[/code]

By the way you can do

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init python:
    code
    code

instead of

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init:
    $ code
    $ code

[fluxus]

Hmm. I'm only beginning to look into styles myself, but, it looks like

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style my_text is text:
    size 40

is the standard way of defining a new style?

In your example that would be

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style mesbox is default:
    align 0.5

I'm not really sure about this, and haven't tried it out myself. Currently I'm trying to find out for myself how to find out where to fetch the colours defined by the theme so that whatever I define things as, a theme change won't break everything :]

Have you looked at http://www.renpy.org/doc/html/style.html though?

[YamiiDenryuu]

@fluxus: Well, I used the tag because it said it was for code, but I guess [code] is the better tag. So let me try that again:

[code]init:
$ mp = MultiPersistent("medukameguca")
$ style.create("mesbox", default)
$ style.mesbox.textalign = 0.5
$ style.mesbox.background = "#000"

screen message(style=mesbox):
default txt = ""
frame align (0.5, 0.5):
text txt[/code]

As for the code I used, I found it on one of the Renpy wiki pages... I'll try your code next, though.

[xela]

Code: Select all

style mesbox_frame:
    is default
    align (0.5, 0.5)
    background "#000" # Or path to a pretty background
    
style mesbox_text:
    is text
    align (0.5, 0.5)

screen message(txt):
    frame:
        style_group "mesbox"
        text txt

label start:
    show screen message("I am a Centered Text!")
    "Meow"

Add _transient=True if you want it to disappear with the next interaction. This is how it's done in modern Ren'Py if you want to use styles.

[YamiiDenryuu]

Awesome, thanks! It looks like it'll be easy to change the text color now, too, which is the last thing I needed to fix... I'll try that out tomorrow. (:

[fluxus]

xela: Ah.. so that's how you're supposed to use it. It makes more sense now. I think ^.^

[YamiiDenryuu]

... This doesn't look very nice. Gotta figure out how to get the nice border and stuff on it. But at least I'm on the right track.

Could I make it start with the theme I'm using for the rest of the game (Diamond/Dreamscape) instead of default? That'd go a long way towards making it match the rest of the game and not look like poo.


Incidentally, I should probably open another thread asking for tips on organizing my code, especially the initial stuff (character declarations, variables, etc). I don't know what goes in an init block, what goes after label start and what just kinda hangs out there. :/

[fluxus]

I haven't really learned how to do things with styles as yet.
One way to costumize the textbox, though, is to draw a graphical frame (with pretty borders) and make the textbox use that as a background. There's a guide on how to do that here.

As for code organization, init sections are generally where you prepare your data and variables, making them ready to be used by the rest of the game.

Labels are generally code that describes a scene. It's not always true that one scene equals one label, but it's a good way to organize things for the most part.

All code organization is about making the code understandable. For the interpreter (Ren'Py, Python), for yourself, and for others.
If you have a long, complicated section and can see a way to divide it into smaller, more understandable bits, it's a good idea to do so.