Dara Amarie's Official Help Thread! [closed]

Characters will stay in an animation until you make them do another animation or until you change backgrounds.

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Use the narrator box for texting scenes with the phone background, not the overlay. If you want to have them open a text message, you can use a 1 option choice like this:

NARRATOR
You have received a new text!
choice
“Read text” {
}

It would be really tricky to try and match the skin phone overlay with whatever the readers chose as their skin color. That’s why you should use the simple phone background and not the phone overlay.

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Hi, Dara!

Okay, so I think I have a Directing question… In the scene, the MC is in a Flashback so the MC is a kid. I use the SPOT scale for this, but… I was wondering, can a character walk into a scene with a diff. size? Does that make sense? If so, how do you do that? Oh… And the style is INK.

:slight_smile:

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Yeah characters can walk on/off screen in smaller sizes, you just have to use this code:

@CHARACTER walks to spot % x y in T

% is scale size, x y are the x and y coordinates, and T is time in seconds

You have to first spot place your character offscreen with the size you want them to be before you have to walk onto the screen.

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Oh YEAH!!! That’s how you do it! I forgot. That’s helpful, thanks a bunchies!! :slight_smile:

Hey, sunshine, let’s break this down for you.

You don’t HAVE to use advance choices.
Let’s start with that. I’ve written stories without them before and it’s been fine. But they are there in case we want to create complex choices that have a bigger impact in the storyline. And they keep everything cleaner and better oraganized in the script.
I will be using the following example provided by the very helpful @Dara.Amarie to explain to you how to use some of these features.

Now if you notice we’re using both labels and gains here.
-The label helps section out parts of the story. It does this so we can use the goto command to navigate through this sections. In this example, it splits the storyline into two sections, one section will bring about romance with a male and in the other section it will bring up romance with a female. See, it keeps the script organized and clean. You mentioned that we can all just use the choice with brackets and just write the different versions under the choice, which is true. But it makes it a bit more messy and less compact. But that again, is completely your decision to make.
-The gains help when using the if/elif/else. Used together they push the story forward in the direction of the previous choice. And let’s say the reader made the decision of dating women. Well then in the next chapter you simply write The code again:

if (dateboys) {

goto dateboys_branch

} else {

goto dategirls_branch

}

label dateboys_branch

[story line for boy love interest goes here]

goto end_story

label dategirls_branch

[story line for girl love interest goes here]

goto end_story

label end_story

And the choice will be remembered and the MC can keep dating women since that’s her preference. If you were to just use “bracket choices” then you’d have to ask the reader to make the choice again at the beginning of every chapter. Using the gains and if/elif/else make your life a bit easier and again, keep scripts neater.

But again! You have a right to choose what coding you feel more comfortable with.

I know I went very minimalistic with this but I’m hoping the well-written example would fill in some holes. Hopefully I was helpful.

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Yay!

image

I was worried I hadn’t explained enough… glad I could be of some help :blue_heart:

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I know that you were helping someone else, but you help me in a major way without knowing it, I have had the same issue for at least a week and no matter how many things I changed it just wouldn’t work, so thank you so much because now I can finally move on with my story.

:hugs: :hugs: so glad I could help, hun

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Hi

Please can someone advise;

  1. If my character has changed her outfit at the end of an episode (the reader selects the outfit), at the start of the new episode will she be in the same outfit or do I need to use the gain function? The outfit chosen at the end of the episode is for a party, the next episode is where she is at the party.

  2. The character uses a disguise of wigs and contact lenses, again the reader selects the disguise. Will this be remembered in future episodes going forward? I have used every selection of hair style and hair colour available so I don’t want to use gain for every single option. However I would like to have scenes where my character reverts back to her “natural self” - what is the easiest way to do this?

Thank you in advance :smiley:

  1. Your characters will stay in outfits until you change them into something else. So if you didn’t have your character change into something else, then yes your character will still be in the same outfit in the next episode.

  2. Just like with outfits, characters won’t change appearance until you change it to something else. The best way to go about this is to have a duplicate character, and use that duplicate character to change into the disguise, then to revert back to the “natural self” you can just switch back to the original character.

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That is perfect and absolutely what I wanted to hear :wink:

Thank you so much lovely!

No problem! :relaxed:

Something along the lines of this:

choice
“Nice choice” {
gain be_nice
[scene goes here]

} “Mean choice” {
gain be_mean
[scene goes here]
}

if (be_nice) {

NARR
You have unlocked the bonus scene because you were nice!
choice
“UNLOCK!” {
[scene goes here]
}

} else {

NARR
Sorry you were mean so you do not get the bonus scene…
}

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The “else” takes care of the be_mean branch. You don’t need to add the be_mean gain if the above code is all you’re going to do. But if you want to reference that be_mean branch in the future, it’s always good to have that gain.

Yep gains work through out the whole story and can be used in any future episode.

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Hey how do you transition from one scene to another with the characters already in the next scene?

You have to place your characters in the scene first, and all your cuts and zoom, before the transition using the & symbol (not @).

INT. BACKGROUND NAME - DAY
&CHAR1 stands screen position in zone # AND CHAR1 faces left AND CHAR1 is animation
&CHAR2 stands screen position in zone # AND CHAR2 faces left AND CHAR2 is animation
&cut to zone #
@transition fade in black
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I’m so happy Dara that you’re here, because you’re the person I learn from …, while reading your threads… :blush:

I have different question.

How many lines is possible per chapter?

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You can have up to 10,000 - 12,000 lines. If you go past that you’ll get an error message saying your chapter is too long.

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