Difference between revisions of "Text Boxes"

Revision as of 02:48, 4 April 2012

All multi-line text boxes within ADRIFT are completely flexible as to how and what they display. They are designed to look simple at first glance, with the user typing in basic descriptions. They all support Syntax Highlighting to show functions, references, keys, comments and variables. Alternate Descriptions can be used to append extra text, or completely change the displayed message, based on Restrictions.

Drag and Drop

As well as being able to drag and drop pieces of text into the text boxes, you can also drag items from the main ADRIFT window into the boxes too. This provides a quick way of creating functions. So for example, if you drag a character from a list into a text window it will pop up a menu asking what you wish to display from:

Character Name
Character Description
List objects held by
List objects worn by
Location of

By selecting one of these entries, the corresponding function for your selection will be inserted into the textbox.

Similar menus are offered for the other item types.

Preview

This section has still to be completed. I am hoping that it will provide a preview of the text as it would be displayed in Runner. It may also be possible to apply formatting directly to the text.

Graphics

You can insert graphics into a piece of text by selecting the Graphics tab on the right hand side. This provides a handy preview and URL. You can enter a filename, or a URL from the Internet here. Internet images will be downloaded on the fly, which can minimize the size of your adventure. By default, this will display the graphic at the start of the section of text.

It is also possible to insert multiple images in any piece of text by using <img> tags. The format is <img src="filename or url">. Using the <img> tags also allows you to customise exactly where in the text it will appear. This is useful if, for example, you have <waitkey> or <wait X> tags in your text. Also, you may want different images to appear for different alternate descriptions

Sound

As with Graphics, you can insert an audio clip by selecting the Audio tab on the right hand side. This provides three main buttons, a channel selector, and a loop checkbox.

To play a sound, click the Play button. This will bring up the file dialog box, where you can select a WAV, MP3 or MID file. There are plans to allow OGG files in a later release. Once selected, you can preview the sound by right-clicking on the Play button. You can have the audio loop indefinitely by selecting the Loop checkbox.

ADRIFT has 8 sound channels. This means you can have background music on a particular channel, and overlay different audio clips on other channels. By default, everything will be on channel 1.

To pause a sound file (for example, you might want to pause a piece of music when a particular piece of text is displayed), select the Pause button. This will pause any piece of audio on the selected channel. When you next select to play sound on this channel, assuming it is the same audio clip then it will resume where it left off.

To stop a sound file, select the Stop button. If this piece of music is played again, it will start from the beginning.

As with the Play button, you can right-click on the pause/stop buttons to stop a piece of audio from being previewed.

As with graphics, you can control exactly when the sound will be played using tags. This is useful in case you want to play multiple sound effects in the same text box, or wish to play the sound after a wait command. The syntax is:

<audio [play src="filename or url"|pause|stop] {channel=X} {loop=[Y/N]}>

So for example: <audio play src="myfile.mp3" channel=2 loop=Y> or <audio pause channel=2>

Special Characters

The following symbol characters are used for special purposes, so cant be used freely in text.

<!-- This is a comment -->

You have <# IF(Player.Held.Count > 1, "more than one", "zero or one") #> items.

The following special symbols are used inside embedded functions delimited by % symbols:

HTML markup tags

Many standard HTML markup tags, and some unique Adrift tags, can be inserted into the text to control the formatting of the output.