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Clicking "Open Game" can be used to open and edit previously saved Click to Speak game files, such as our sample game.

Choose "New Game" for now.

"New Game" Starting a new game will first prompt you to name your characters.

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Let's assign names for our characters. I'm going to use the names from our sample game, which we recommend that you use for this tutorial, since its audio files will be useful for later onyou are free to open in the editor to explore its features on your own:

Editor Basics

After you choose your character names, you will be presented with the editor interface. Don't worry about the tabs and menus at the top just yet, first we're going to explore the basic operation of the "Main Script" tab, which will contain all the dialogue paths for your game.

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Now, type something in the box that you want your character to say! You'll have to provide an a corresponding audio file later to hear it spoken in the player, but this way by typing it out first, you can plan out the dialogue paths before recording.

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You'll notice, however, that the NPC node that was created for a response to the PC node has an asterisk with a colored background in the text box. Since you (the player character) can interrupt the NPC at different points in their dialogue, NPCs can have multiple child nodes. Let's see how this works.

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By interrupting the NPC character while he says "Now that I have you at my mercy, Agent 008", the player character will respond "The crocodile pit? Again? Really? Couldn't you at least come up with anything new?" But if you interrupt the NPC character while he's saying "nothing can stop my diabolical plan!", the player character will respond "At your mercy? Come on, Doctor Nefarious, you know I always escape from these things. Why don't you make it easier on all of us and surrender now?" You'll notice that the character initially responds to the situation, and then responds to the previous piece of dialogue - that's because you're interrupting the following phrase, which hasn't finished being spoken yet. It wouldn't make much sense for Agent 008 to respond to being at Dr. Nefarious' assertion of being at his mercy, if Dr. Nefarious hasn't finished speaking this line yet.!

By typing more asterisks and adding more dialogue, you can create a complex tree of dialogue based on what NPC dialogue the player chooses to respond to:

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Other Information about Nodes

• Typing text in a new PC node will create a new NPC node as its child.
  
  
• Typing an asterisk into an NPC node will create a new child PC node beneath it, based on where you type the asterisk.
  
  
• Pasting in multiple asterisks will create multiple new PC nodes.
  
  
• If you type an asterisk between two existing asterisks, the new child node will be inserted in between the two corresponding nodes.
  
  
• If you delete an asterisk or select and delete multiple asterisks, the nodes will be removed and sent to the Orphan Tab. (more on this later)
  
  
• Asterisks can be dragged around the text box to change their position.
  
  
• You can manually set PC nodes as the child of another PC node, or an NPC node as the child of another NPC node, if this works for the game you are building.
  
  

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Pretty simple! You can click the "Play" button to preview the sound. There are a few more options, however, for NPC nodes.

Setting Breakpoints

Find an NPC node that has a few children, and load an audio file for this node:

Setting Breakpoints

You'll see a series of red dividers with text next to them, along with colored highlighting of the sound between the dividers. These highlighted regions represent the parts of the sound that correspond to the text you've typed. So, if your text says "*Now that I have you at my mercy, Agent 008, *Nothing can...", you'll want to play the sound until you reach the end of that portion of text, and drag the dividers so that part of the sound is highlighted with the same color:

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Click "Load Game", navigate to the xml file that contains the save data for your game, open it, and click "Start Game". You can click the red button when it is activated to respond to a particular piece of NPC dialogue. Try responding at various points, and see where it takes you in the dialogue tree. You might only have a few levels of dialogue for what you've created so far, but you can add many more layers and more.:

Orphan Tab

Now we're going to learn about some of the more advanced features of the editor. You've probably deleted a node or two, or at least deleted some asterisks in the course of this tutorial. Find a node that has a few children, and click "Delete Node".

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