separate narration and characters

[Quilford]

I was wondering if it were possible to achieve a 999-y style effect for narration:

http://www.siliconera.com/postgallery/?p_gal=89188|14

As you can see in the above screenshot, characters' "voices" ("Junpei: [5]...?") go in a small textbox in the upper half of the window, whilst 3rd person narration ("The first thing Junpei noticed...") takes up the lower half.

Could anyone direct me as to how this effect can be achieved? I'm intending to use it extensively.

[Camille]

1. Make another screen for the narration/style it/etc
2. Have it always display text from a variable
3. Change that variable and have that screen show up whenever you have narration text you want to show alongside the dialogue text

It's not elegant, but that's how I would do it. Even if you make a separate textbox for the narration, you won't be able to have all the text show up at once, so your best bet is to make an entirely different screen with another variable determining its content.

Though I'm honestly not sure how great this would look... This layout works for 999 because it's on the DS, which has two screens, but trying to put two textboxes on one computer game screen seems kinda cluttered to me (and would cover up a lot of the visuals).