Template talk:Dialogue

Template Creation and Adoption
Basically, after doing a whole bunch of dialogue boxes, I figured it's about time to make them look a little more organized. So, this template is the solution I present. Not the most elegant thing I've ever coded, but it's okay for a first draft. In the documentation, I provided an example of how the whole thing works. I do plan to implement new features in this template if it's going to be used... the first will be rewriting DialogueBox to allow different types of messages, such as the battle notification in the example. So, this is what I submit to the Wiki community. I plan to start adding this template to Wiki pages unless I hear otherwise, so I write this message to look for feedback or reasons why it shouldn't be used. --Ujuidar 05:38, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Line Breaks in story dialog
While the example dialog given on this page doesn't do it, I've seen some examples on the wiki where the someone has inserted extra html breaks to try to reflect the line breaks displayed when viewing the story in game. (For example, see the Friendship Sword quest, that I've just been updating.) I'm not convinced this is worth the effort, since I don't think it can be done accurately. Some dialogs include the player character's name, and the length of the name effects where the line breaks happen. Even when the dialog does not contain any variable items like the character's name, the line breaks I'm seeing in game occasionally don't match what's recorded in the wiki. This makes me suspect the line breaks might also be affected by other settings, perhaps the selected window size or resolution. Further, if someone is viewing this wiki in a narrow window, their browser is going to be adding in extra line breaks anyway, and the extra line breaks we've hard-coded can break the flow. And for those of us who view the wiki on a separate screen to the game, so we've got the wiki displayed in a wide window, the hard-coded line breaks mean we end up with a lot of blank screen space and the dialog takes up an unnecessarily amount of vertical space.

So, I suggest we just record each block of dialog as continuous text with no forced line breaks, as done in the example on this page. --Scribe100 (talk) 12:51, 29 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Most dialogue line breaks are preset in the game's text files and not dependent on resolution and etc. (Which is quite interesting actually, as some lines contain breaks where none should be placed. Probably a result of a change.) Many stories have gone through dialogue updates in the past, with added and removed lines, corrected typos, and added line breaks. Much of the story information on the wiki is heavily outdated and may reflect past game versions. Also, there has been quite an inconsistency with how editors create the dialogue boxes, with some adding the line breaks, and others not adding it. Personally I've added the line breaks since I directly add the dialogue lines straight from the game files which automatically include the line breaks. But I do agree that the blank screen space is unnecessarily. However, the line breaks between dialogue do help make the text much easier on the eyes, as opposed to a wall a text from an NPC's monologue. Odd line breaks also provide an interesting food for thought for those who like to pay attention to weird little quirks left by the developers. --Sanitee (talk) 18:56, 29 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks Sanitea. Sounds like I've been doing this the hard way. Had a quick search through my Vindictus directory and couldn't find these game text files you refer to. Do they still exist? If so, could you please advise which subdirectory they are in? --Scribe100 (talk) 12:55, 30 December 2015 (UTC)