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slidge:getting_started_-_first_steps [2018/12/22 21:14] journeyman |
slidge:getting_started_-_first_steps [2019/03/02 03:45] (current) journeyman |
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| *Head up to your Marketplace Menu and view your Library. There should be an option to update/add to your game! | *Head up to your Marketplace Menu and view your Library. There should be an option to update/add to your game! | ||
| *I have a YYMP Package file from itch.io, Patreon, etc | *I have a YYMP Package file from itch.io, Patreon, etc | ||
| - | * If updating, [[#Removing the Engine|remove]] existing engine first. **(see link)** | + | * If updating, [[Slidge:Removing the Engine|remove]] existing engine first. **(see link)** |
| * Click and drag the YYMP package file onto your game. | * Click and drag the YYMP package file onto your game. | ||
| * When prompted, confirm that you want to import the package instead of adding as an included file. | * When prompted, confirm that you want to import the package instead of adding as an included file. | ||
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| After styles and characters are set up, you'll be able to design and develop your dialog game! | After styles and characters are set up, you'll be able to design and develop your dialog game! | ||
| - | ==== Invoking the playback object ==== | + | ==== Add dialog, characters, and choices ==== |
| - | While you are editing, you can always preview the current scene in playback mode by simply pressing **F6** (the same keyboard shortcut as GameMaker's "run in debug mode"). | + | === Dialog === |
| + | Use the +Text button to add styled text boxes to the moment. You can set the style, override the style's default alignment setting, the Avatar, Label text, and whether the text should "typewrite" or appear all at once. Whether there's an Avatar and Label will depend upon how you've set up your style. Hold the Ctrl Key while left-clicking and dragging to move the text boxes. | ||
| - | When you are ready to ship your game, you will replace instances of obj_editDialog with obj_showDialog. If you've used GML code to create instances of the obj_editDialog, swap those for obj_showDialog! | + | The default text for Labels is pretty strange-looking; it's [r:markedName]. Check out [[slidge:the_register|The Register]] for more details, but basically, whenever you set a character as "marked" in the Characters tab, its name will automatically be stored in a variable, which will automatically be displayed in the Label area. In this way, character names will automatically appear in text box labels when you park them. You can change this to regular text, or anything else, as you please. |
| - | ==== Importing SLIDGE files into your final game ==== | + | |
| - | As you use the engine, a set of files are produced with all of your content. These files are placed in the working directory of the game that you're editing. This is a GameMaker thing, so see [[http://docs2.yoyogames.com/index.html?page=source%2F_build%2F1_overview%2F3_additional_information%2Ffile_system.html|File System]] for more information. Usually, though, the files are in your %localappdata% folder. | + | |
| - | **Import all of the files into your game as "included files" before exporting your final game!!** Otherwise, the dialog will just live in your computer's appdata folder. | + | === Characters === |
| + | You can add characters to your scene, change which character to displayed, and change the expression for each character. Characters can be flipped horizontally, darkened, and "marked." Marking a character causes the engine to store the character's name in a special variable, which has various uses in the label area and outside the engine. Hold the Ctrl Key while left-clicking and dragging to move characters. | ||
| - | The files to include are listed below. If you changed the filenames in the create_common_data() script, then use find whatever you've created! | + | === Choices === |
| - | *_index.txt | + | Use the +Choice button to add styled choice boxes to the moment. Hold the **ALT** key on your keyboard to add choices horizontally instead of vertically. |
| - | *_characters.txt | + | |
| - | *_styles.txt | + | |
| - | *scenes.txt | + | |
| - | ==== Removing the Engine ==== | + | See the table below for Choice Button customization: |
| - | You can remove asset folders from your game if you need to re-import or update SLIDGE. Assets for the engine are generally stored in SLIDGE Scripts, SLIDGE Fonts, and SLIDGE Objects. Avoid adding your own game stuff to these folders in order to make it easier to keep the engine clearly defined and easy to remove or update. | + | ^ ^ ^ |
| + | | Set Link | The name of a Scene to link to when this button is activated. | | ||
| + | | Register | Set or modify stored data. See [[slidge:the_register|The Register]] for details. | | ||
| + | | Key | A keyboard key that can activate this button (Mouse and "continue" key also work) | | ||
| + | | Show If | Set a condition based on Register data, which shows or hides this choice | | ||
| + | | Ripple | Include this button in the "ripple set." When a button is hidden because of a condition, other choice buttons "ripple" to the previous button's position to fill the gap. If you have clickable choices that should *not* move when a choice is hidden, remove those choices from the ripple set. | | ||
| - | !!!!!Remember to make a copy of any changes you've made to the engine before updating!!!!! | + | **Button States** |
| - | Also, recall that you can define [[slidge:customizable_engine_scripts|start and end scripts]], which allow you to modify the engine's behavior without losing your changes every time you import an update. | + | |
| + | You can swap the button between the Normal and Hover states, in order to set styles and avatar images for each state separately. You can establish separate Choice Styles for the normal and "selected" states of buttons, then use the State button to choose the appropriate style for each. | ||
| + | ==== Testing and publishing ==== | ||
| + | * Testing as you edit: Pressing **F6** while editing will launch the current Scene in Test mode. A red button will appear over the top of Test Mode, to switch back to editing. Test Mode launches at the same internal depth as the editing object, so there's a chance that the preview isn't //exactly// as it'll appear in your game, if you've got code that plays with depth. Otherwise, though, it should look fine. | ||
| + | * [[slidge:Publishing|Backing up/sharing your saved project and Publishing]] : When you're ready to build the game to distribute, there's a few steps you'll need to complete. | ||
| + | ==== Advanced features ==== | ||
| + | Check out [[slidge:advanced_features]] when you're ready to move on to some of the engine's trickier bits! | ||
| {{ slidge:the_leech.png?100 }} | {{ slidge:the_leech.png?100 }} | ||