Optimising gui.nvl for different sized text entries

[willanik]

Hi everyone,

Newbie here, excited to be learning how to use Ren’py but a bit frustrated by a particular issue.

I am setting up a visual novel and am using nvl mode. My novel contains dialogue and also contains narrative. While the dialogue will be single sentences, I would like the narrative to be as long as several sentences at a time. I am not refreshing the nvl box after each entry and I am finding it impossible to set gui.nvl height to accommodate both large and small text entries. If I set it at a small amount, the narrative is cut off. If I set it at a large number the narrative is not cut off but the spaces between each subsequent entries of dialogue are too big.

I could refresh the nvl box after each entry but I would rather not to do this, preferring to have the narration/dialogue progressively take up the page.

I could have each sentence of my narrative as a discrete sentence, using “ ” marks to start each new sentence. But I would really prefer to avoid this too, so I can have several sentences capable of being presented and read in a single entry, as it makes the narrative flow better.

Can anyone help be with this? For example, is there a way to change gui.nvl height in the script?

Thanks in anticipation.
W

[jdlang]

Several lines of text should easily fit in an nvl window. You could try writing an example part, see how many entries you can have before you need a clear, and then adjust config.nvl_list_length accordingly. One advantage of using list length instead of manual clears is that it scrolls text up (though you can't scroll back to things that are off screen).

[willanik]

Several lines of text should easily fit in an nvl window. You could try writing an example part, see how many entries you can have before you need a clear, and then adjust config.nvl_list_length accordingly. One advantage of using list length instead of manual clears is that it scrolls text up (though you can't scroll back to things that are off screen).

Thanks jd, I will play around with that. I still have an issue with gui.nvl_height. If I set it around 100 it is great for dialogue but too shallow for any extended narrative. But if I set it at 200 for the narrative I get big gaps between each part of the dialogue.

[Ocelot]

Set nvl_height to None. This will make height of nvl entry dynamic: just enough to accomodate size of text.

[willanik]

Set nvl_height to None. This will make height of nvl entry dynamic: just enough to accomodate size of text.

Thanks Ocelot – I tried that, for example by setting gui.nvl_height = 0 and gui.nvl_spacing = 60. My font size is 30. And this is great for single or double line entries. But if a text entry runs beyond two lines, the next entry appears over the top of it. If I set gui.nvl_spacing at a higher level, say = 200 then the multi-line text entries are not overwritten but the gap between the one or two line text entries is unacceptably large.

Is it possible to change gui.nvl_spacing within the script.rpy to accommodate different sized blocks of text?

W

[Ocelot]

I tried that, for example by setting gui.nvl_height = 0

Not to 0. You should set it to None. None is not 0, they are different.

[willanik]

I tried that, for example by setting gui.nvl_height = 0

Not to 0. You should set it to None. None is not 0, they are different.

Brilliant Much better now, I did not appreciate the difference between None and 0.

Thanks Ocelot.