The Click to Speak Editor, TextEditor3, provides an array features and options that you can use to build your own Click to Speak stories and adventures! In order to familiarize yourself with the editor's features, we recommend that you review this guide.
The first thing you'll see when you open the editor is this dialog box:
(((NEWOPENGAMEBOX)))
Clicking "Open Game" can be used to open and edit previously saved Click to Speak game files, such as our sample game.
"New Game" will first prompt you to name your characters.
*PC, the player character, will be used for the player's responses. The Player Character will not be interacted with during a game, this character will speak responses to the...
*NPC, the Non-Player Character, is the character that the player character will be interacting with (and interrupting!) throughout the course of the game. If you wish to have the Player Character interact with multiple NPCs, you may want to name this something that indicates that an NPC is talking, but that doesn't name the character. Don't worry about this too much for now, you can always change this later from the "Edit" menu!
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.
When you start a new game, all you see is a single "Node" at the top. This will represent the first piece of dialogue in your game. By default, it's set to the player character, but you can use the drop down menu with the character names to have the non-player character speak first. Let's leave it as the PC character for now.
Now, type something in the box that you want your character to say! You'll have to provide an audio file later to hear it spoken in the player, but this way you can plan out the dialogue paths before recording.
Since your character now has something to say, the NPC should now say something in response. See the button labeled ">" at the left of this node? Click on it!
You'll notice that that a new node has appeared beneath this one. It's a "child" of this node, meaning that it represents a possible dialogue path for the game to take. You'll also see that it's indented a little bit from the first node, so that you can tell that it's a child of this node. Player character nodes can only have one child, which is the NPC's response to their dialogue.
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. 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.
Go ahead and type something in the NPC box that represents their response to the PC, and click the ">" button on the NPC node to expand it. Just like the PC node, a new node has appeared, but this time it's a player character node.
Now, type another asterisk, followed by some more text, inside the NPC node. A second child to the NPC node now appears! Since the player will be interacting with the NPC character, the colored text following each asterisk (and the following node labeled with the corresponding color) represents the different paths that the dialogue can take. For instance:
By interrupting the NPC character while he says XXXXXXXXX, the player character will respond XXXXXXXXXXX. But if you interrupt the NPC character while he's saying XXXXXXX, the player character will respond XXXXXXXXXXXXX. 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.