Features
Everything Candy Dialogue Creator 1.2 can do, by topic. Each section ends with links to the pages that explain it in full.
Candy Dialogue Creator is the application Dialogues are written with, for Candy Dialogue Engine 1.2, the dialogue system for Godot. It runs as a program of its own, or as a Godot project to customize, or to ship with your game as a modding tool.
The Basics
A Dialogue is a file containing Conversations. Each Conversation is split into Blocks, and each Block is a list of Lines, which your game runs one after the other.
Each Line runs a Command: a Spoken Line displays what someone says, and other Commands play music, display choices, move the camera, jump to another Block, and so on. In Candy Dialogue Creator, a Line is added by clicking its Command's button, then its fields are filled in.
A Spoken Line contains several versions of its text, called Variations: one per language, versions for different situations, random alternatives, and versions written for text-to-speech.
The window consists of Panels, such as the list of your Dialogue's Lines and the form of the Line being edited. Panels are arranged freely.
The Dialogue Navigator
The list of your whole Dialogue: its Conversations, Blocks and Lines.
- Readable at a glance: Spoken Lines read
Speaker (Portrait): Text, Comments display their text, and Conditions are described in plain words. - Display modes: Full (the Command and a summary of its data), Short (only what the Line does), Meta (the label assigned to each Line), or a mix chosen per Command.
- Colors for each kind of Line, and folding Conversations and Blocks.
- Selection and editing: select with the mouse (Ctrl and Shift for several) or the keyboard; drag and drop; cut, copy, paste, duplicate, delete, rename and move Lines from the right-click menu.
- Fast, even on very large Dialogues.
- Two places at once: open a second Navigator to work on another part of the Dialogue, each Navigator with its own Editor.
- Adding Lines: click a Command's button to add a Line after the selection (Ctrl+click: before), already filled with default values.
- Cut, copy, paste and duplicate Lines, Blocks or Conversations. Pasted Blocks and Conversations are renamed so that names never clash.
- Undo and redo every change, several steps at once, each restoring the selection it was made from.
- Conditions and loops (If, For, While...) contain the Commands they run, edited like any other Line.
- A form for every Command, with tabs. Every type of Line has its own layout, which can be rearranged: add, rename and reorder tabs, and choose what each part of a tab displays.
- Filters: buttons on a tab that show or hide parts of the form, such as rarely used fields. They apply to every Line of that type, and a hidden part frees its space without resizing the rest of the form.
- Several Editors edit several Lines at once, or display the same Line in different ways.
- Help on every field: a ? button explains what the field does and which values it accepts.
- Dropdowns that help without limiting: they list what fits, and any value can still be typed. Picking an item can fill the fields beside it too.
- Your game in the dropdowns: your characters, Conversations, Blocks, choices, portraits, voice files, music, videos, scenes, animations, languages and more.
- Previews: hover a media file in a dropdown to see or hear it.
- Live checks: a message beside a field reports an incorrect or unusual value, as you type.
- Fields that don't apply are hidden, such as a Duration on a loop that never ends. Hiding never changes your data.
- Lists: add, move and remove entries, such as the players of a Media Line or the choices of a menu.
- Your own notes and data on every Line, for yourself or for your game's code.
- Speech Editor: write the text, saved as you type.
- Advanced Speech Editor: edit formatted text as in a word processor: the formatting is displayed, and the BBCode tags remain hidden.
- Variation Selector: pick the Variation to write: a language, a version for a situation, a random alternative...
- Variation Editor: write several Variations at once: every random alternative, each Variation with its text-to-speech version, or two languages side by side to translate.
- Counters: word and character counts, checked against a length limit, or compared between a translation and its original.
- Speech drop-downs: type your project's Text Event markers and Lexicon keywords into the text, from lists that match the Variation being written.
- Portrait and Voice Previews: display the Line's portrait and play its voice file, as they play in your game, with a dropdown to pick the file and a pop-up of all their fields.
- Text Event Editor: edit the Commands that run when the writing reaches a marker in the text.
- Your project's Variations, set once for the profile: its languages, its tags (such as
S=Ffor a female speaker), random alternatives, and text-to-speech versions. - For translators: languages they don't work on can be hidden, and the original text is displayed beside the translation.
- Unused combinations (a language with a tag, say) can be disabled, so they are never offered.
- Names repaired on load: badly written Variation names are repaired.
- Dialogue Buttons: a button for each Command and Preset, arranged as you choose.
- Presets: save any group of Lines as a Preset, then insert it in one click, already filled in. Presets are stored for one project or for all of them.
- Inserts: buttons that type text into the focused field: formatting, colors, links, images, Candy Dialogue Engine's symbols, or your own text. With text selected, an insert wraps around it.
- Color Selector: pick a color and type its code into the focused field.
- Saves: Save, Save As, and Save Incremental (a new dated copy each time); auto saves while you work; and quick saves (F5 to save, F9 to load).
- Export: write the file Candy Dialogue Engine reads in your game, all of it or only the Conversations and Blocks you pick.
- Import: merge Conversations and Blocks from another file into yours, with a preview of the changes before anything is written.
- Test (F6): run the Dialogue in the Godot editor in one click, from the Line of your choice. Test Here (Shift+F6) starts from the selected Line.
- Converter: converts Dialogues, saves and Presets from version 1.1 to 1.2, with backups and a report.
- Symbol Updater: when your project's symbols change, rewrite your Dialogues, saves and Presets with the new ones, with backups and a report. Files written with other symbols are never mixed with yours.
- Folders: every Candy Dialogue Engine folder, read from your project with one button.
- Data: your characters, Roles, Flags and dispositions, read from your scripts (read only, never run). The lists can be adjusted by hand.
- Files and scenes: portraits, voice files, music, videos, backgrounds, effects and your dialogue UI scenes.
- Your symbols: when Candy Dialogue Engine's symbols were customized, help, inserts and checks apply yours.
- Refresh (Ctrl+R) lists the files added since the last scan.
- Arrange the window freely: it is split into Areas, each displaying a Panel. Split, resize, swap and close Areas, place Panels in tabs, or open one in a separate window.
- Edit Layout mode (Ctrl+L) displays every Area's outline and menu. Drag an Area to move, copy or swap it.
- Right-click any Panel or part of a form for its options.
- Several windows, for several screens (Ctrl+Shift+N).
- Saved layouts: save a whole window, an Area, or the form of a type of Line, for one project or for all of them. Layouts are files that can be shared.
- Quick layouts: switch between your preferred layouts with a shortcut. Reset Layout restores the built-in one.
- Users and profiles: each user can have a profile per game project, with its own settings, saves, Presets and layouts.
- The start screen lists your profiles, with the last one used already selected.
- News: the latest Candy Arts news, also readable offline.
- Version 1.1 profiles open directly, retaining their data.
- Settings: naming patterns, text length limits, save folders, project folders and data, languages, previews, colors and more.
- Shortcuts: every action accepts keys of your own, two per action, including one for every Command, Preset and insert.
- The interface in your language: translate the interface into any language with a translation file, created from a template in any translation tool and placed in a folder.
- Command names in English or translated: in a translated interface, Commands can retain the English names of Candy Dialogue Engine's documentation.
- Fonts for every script: text in nearly every living script is displayed on every computer, with no font to install: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, Thai, the scripts of India, and many more. Fonts for other scripts are added by placing them in a folder.
- 149 themes included, in 13 categories.
- Adjust anything: colors, text sizes, corners, borders and spacing, stored per theme.
- Your own fonts: choose any font for the interface, and your game's font for the text you write.
- Add your own themes by dropping them into a folder.
- This documentation, inside the application (Help > Documentation), downloaded from GitHub and updated on request.
- Reading: search, a folding page list, two pages side by side (Ctrl+click), back and forward, and text size.
- The right version: the window opens the documentation of the Candy Dialogue Engine version your project uses.
- Add documentation for anything, by dropping in a folder in Candy Database's format.
- Forms for your own Commands, with their dropdowns, help and checks, without writing code.
- Mods: add or replace Command forms, dropdowns, field checks and themes, and add translations and fonts.
- Open to programmers: add Panels, settings pages and shortcuts of your own.