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Hey all. I'm having to come to the realization that all I've done so far for my game is concept stuff, map design and graphics. I decided I was going to start making some NPC dialogue. I opened the text box editor and was like "...man, I don't even know how to start on this."
First question, how many of you write out dialogue and stuff in a word program and then transfer it to text boxes? Or do most people just go right into the text box editor and get started there?
Second, what sort of text do you like to start on first? Story related stuff or just townfolk and shopkeeper type NPCs?
Any other advice would be much appreciated.
Need tips for writing text
Sun Oct 12, 2014 3:32 am 
Sun Oct 12, 2014 3:53 am
Oh I love writing! I do it both ways. Sometimes I write out dialogue in a word document if I already know how the conversation is kind of going to go. Other times I'll just slap in an NPC somewhere and give him a name and a purpose, he tells the character something, and then he's a character.
There's no real right way to do it. It depends on how structured your basic plot line is. If you have at least a general storyline, just find out who the main characters are. Then figure out how the game starts. Is your character waking up to someone knocking at the door? Are you in the middle of a mission with your team? Are you just coming home from work to discover your house has exploded?
What I most often do is put in placeholder text boxes for people, and then use those as guidelines to rework them later. If you give me more info about the game's story and atmosphere, I'd love to give you any advice I can!
My pronouns are they/them
Ps. I love my wife
There's no real right way to do it. It depends on how structured your basic plot line is. If you have at least a general storyline, just find out who the main characters are. Then figure out how the game starts. Is your character waking up to someone knocking at the door? Are you in the middle of a mission with your team? Are you just coming home from work to discover your house has exploded?
What I most often do is put in placeholder text boxes for people, and then use those as guidelines to rework them later. If you give me more info about the game's story and atmosphere, I'd love to give you any advice I can!
My pronouns are they/them
Ps. I love my wife
Sun Oct 12, 2014 5:58 pm
I think it's a good idea to work in custom. For one thing, you will see clearly where lines will be cut off, and how much text you will want to fit on a screen at a given time.
More importantly, if you start writing plot-related dialogue, I think it helps to be working with everything at once. If you are writing for a cutscene, you are writing a screenplay, not a piece of dialogue. So having the map in front of you, and the plotscript that will control character movement, is important I think. Some people can think about all of this and envision it while writing the dialogue, so maybe for these people it's more helpful to begin the writing process in the abstract text file setting. But in my opinion, it's easier if you can actually see actual npcs on an actual map, continuously testing an actual plotscript as necessary.
I am Srime
More importantly, if you start writing plot-related dialogue, I think it helps to be working with everything at once. If you are writing for a cutscene, you are writing a screenplay, not a piece of dialogue. So having the map in front of you, and the plotscript that will control character movement, is important I think. Some people can think about all of this and envision it while writing the dialogue, so maybe for these people it's more helpful to begin the writing process in the abstract text file setting. But in my opinion, it's easier if you can actually see actual npcs on an actual map, continuously testing an actual plotscript as necessary.
I am Srime