I'm posting this here because I've been getting a lot of PMs since I've been here for help, I'm seeing people ask it a lot, and the Wiki is broken to where I can't make a new cookbook code.
You're welcome to ask me questions here, or correct me, or give me something to add.I'll cover:
- Using frames
- Using pre-fitted images
- Making character-specific textboxes
- Styling Text
- Styling the Names
- Click to Continue icon
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Before we can explain how to customize your dialogue box, you need to design it first. The easiest way to do this is to render a mock of a dialogue box in your photo editor. Get it to look exactly how you want, text included. Even if it takes a little bit more work, it's possible to recreate most mock-ups.
There are two ways you can save your design to be incorporated into Ren'Py. You can either create a box that will be chopped up by the Frame code, or you can plug in the dialogue box image directly by cropping it to be the width of your game engine.
Using framesDialogue boxes that use
Frame look for the corners of the image, and then stretch whatever's in between to fit the proportions you give it in the code.
Code:
style.window.background = Frame("PinkBox.png", 25, 25)
This line of code is already in your
options.rpy file, except with a filler file. Replace the name and size of your corners with your image's info. Be sure to uncomment the code by removing the # mark before it.
Of course, Ren'Py didn't automatically fix my margins or text for me! Straight out of a new game, your new framed dialogue box will need a lot of tweaking. Most everything you need is already there for you, but it is commented out.
Go to your
options.rpy file. Find these lines of code:
Code:
## Margin is space surrounding the window, where the background
## is not drawn.
# style.window.left_margin = 6
# style.window.right_margin = 6
# style.window.top_margin = 6
# style.window.bottom_margin = 6
## Padding is space inside the window, where the background is
## drawn.
# style.window.left_padding = 6
# style.window.right_padding = 6
# style.window.top_padding = 6
# style.window.bottom_padding = 6
## This is the minimum height of the window, including the margins
## and padding.
# style.window.yminimum = 250
Again, uncomment what you use by deleting the # marks.
The
Margin of the box is for how far away the dialogue box is from the edges of the screen. This is what our PinkBox looks like with large margins (padding untouched):
Padding of the box is how far away the text is from the edges of the dialogue box. Here is what is looks like with large padding (margin back to default):
yminimum forces the box to be a certain amount of pixels high. Use it to define how tall the box must be at all times (but it can get taller if it needs to be). This is an important property for the pre-fitted image dialogue boxes next.
With your new frame box in Ren'Py, it is up to you to play around with padding and margin until it looks exactly how you want it to. Trial and error is sometimes the only path here. To make your life easier, you can take advantage of the refresh feature by hitting SHIFT+R to reload the game to see your changes immediately.
Using pre-fitted imagesThe other type is easier to implement because you have already placed it how you want it to look in your photo editor. The downside is that this isn't flexible and you will need to make new images for every alteration you want. The upside is that it's quick, easy, and you get the exact look you want.
To make this easy on you, do NOT crop your image to just the dialogue box in your editor. Instead, include the spaces around the edge (up to the top of the box) so that you don't have to alter margins within Ren'Py. This means that your resulting image should be as wide as your game (default: 800px).
Just insert your file name into the
style.window.background property already in your
options.rpy.
You'll need to make sure your
yminimum is set to be the exact height of your image, and that your
padding is altered so that it fights into your box (again, trial and error might be the only way). Set all your
margins to 0. When you start your game, you should see your box! That was easy, wasn't it?
Attachment:
dialoguebox_yminimum.jpg [ 61.05 KiB | Viewed 17770 times ]
In this example, you can see the box already has its margins in the image itself. The height of the image is 155 pixels, so that's what I'll set my
yminimum. I also want to make sure that the text starts 35 pixels from the left, so the
left_padding would be 35, and do the same amount to the
right_padding for symmetry, and make sure the text never falls out of the box, so the
bottom_padding of 35, too. If you want. You can just make sure you never write that much!
If you want a separate window for your character names, you can either save a namebox as a separate file (recommended) or include it in your dialogue box as one big image. The problem with the latter is that you will need to make two versions of the same image: one with the character box, and one without. Because the narrator (when no character is speaking) will look weird with an empty name box lying around.
Making character-specific textboxesTo make two (or more) different versions of your text box, put the one you're going to use the most as the default:
Code:
style.window.background = "dialoguebox.png"
And then, for the characters you want to have a different box (in this case, the narrator because it's not a character that has a name). You can use the Frame function with this, too. Just copy whatever you did with the window.background code and put it after
window_background in your character name (changing the filename):
Code:
$ narrator = Character(None, window_background="dialoguebox_noname.png")
It should retain all of the other properties you defined for the default window.
If you find you need to make specific adjustments for each character's text, you have to put properties like these into your character calls:
Code:
$ a = Character('Name', window_top_padding=15)
$ b = Character('Name', what_xpos=50)
$ c = Character('Name', who_yalign=0.5)
The important parts of those code are the "
window_", "
what_" and "
who_" prefixes. You can use about any property you want, but you have to tell the character what you're editing. "
window_" is a property that edits the whole window, similar to what you did for
style.window. "
what_" edits the text (what's being said) and "
who_" edits the character's name (who's saying it).
To save you keystrokes, you should format the default text style so you don't have to copy/paste your adjustments to every character.
Styling TextTo edit how your text looks, look a little further down in your
options.rpy for these lines of code:
Code:
## The file containing the default font.
# style.default.font = "DejaVuSans.ttf"
## The default size of text.
# style.default.size = 22
Uncomment those lines to change the font or size of the text. Even though it is not included in your file, you can also change just about any aspect of the styles that you want. You can change the color, add a drop_shadow, or an outline if you wanted. Here's an example of each:
Code:
style.default.color = "#000000" #Makes text black
style.default.drop_shadow = [(1, 1)] #Adds a shadow one pixel to the right and one pixel down
style.default.outlines = [(4, "#ff0000", 0, 0), (2, "#fff", 0, 0)] #Adds a white outline 4 pixels thick, and then a black outline, 2 pixels thick
style.default.xalign = 1.0 #aligned the text completely to the right
In addition to those, you can use all of the text properties
seen here.
Style Inspector:To edit specific text, like the name of the character, you need to find out what that text's style is called. An easy way to find styles is to launch your game and then hover your mouse over the text you want to change. Hit the keys SHIFT+I and a black screen will come up with all the styles and parent styles that object is using. The one that you want is
the last style listed. If you see this:
Then you want
say_label. For styles you can't hover on, you can try to find in the Style Hierarchy by hitting SHIFT+D.
Now that you have the style's name, you can plug it into this forumla:
Code:
style.STYLE_NAME.PROPERTY = VALUE
STYLE_NAME: This would be the name you found with the style inspector, like
say_label.
PROPERTY: What you want to change about that style. Again, you can find all the kinds of properties
here.
VALUE: Whatever you're setting the style property to. Numbers for sizes, strings (things in quotes) for filenames, Hex values for colors, etc.
So if we wanted to edit
say_label to be a different font, I would put this at the bottom of my
options.rpy:
Code:
style.say_label.font = "myfont.tff"
Making sure my font is in the top level of my folder.
Styling the NamesUsing everything we learned on this page, we can now put each of the elements where we want and make them look how we want, with some respect to Ren'Py's limitations. There are two ways to show your character names: embedded into one dialogue window, or to have the name in a separate window from the dialogue box. By default, the name is embedded into one window. To change this, you need to insert a piece of code into your character definitions called
show_two_window. Set it to True, and do this for every character you want to have a separate window. By default, it will inherit the same background as your dialogue box.
The styles for the name and window are:
say_label
say_who_window
(only if show_two_window is True)To change the background of your namebox, you would do it exactly like how you did it for the dialogue window, except you replace the style name with say_who_window:
Code:
style.say_who_window.background = Frame("namebox.png", 15, 15)
Again, replace with your image and corner size, or don't even use a Frame at all!
Use positional properties like xalign or xpos and xanchor to place the name within the box you have made.
Click to Continue iconA fun feature is to show an icon to the player when they need to click in order to advance the story. To add this to your boxes, you need to add it to the characters you want to use it, like show_two_window.
Just link to the image's call name in quotes. If you want to animate it, build the animation first, and then link to the animations call name. Also, you can have the CTC indicator embedded into the text, placed right after the last word on the screen, or you can place it in a fixed location on the screen. Here is an example of an animated CTC icon that is placed in the corner of the screen (fixed):
Code:
image ctc_animation = Animation("ctc01.png", 0.2, "ctc02.png", 0.2, xpos=0.99, ypos=0.99, xanchor=1.0, yanchor=1.0)
$ a = Character('Name', ctc="ctc_animation", ctc_position="fixed")
You can use the new ATL language to make CTC animations, too. Just plug in the name in the quotes. Make sure to put position properties into the image if you want it to be fixed on the screen somewhere.
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Putting all of this together, we can make a new text box like this:
Attachment:
new_textbox.jpg [ 205.61 KiB | Viewed 17770 times ]
To see exactly how I made the above screen, you can download the attached sample project. You're allowed to use the graphics, except the BG. Not mine. ^^;
~~~
Files I used in this tutorial plus a sample game with it in action for those who learn that way:
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