Markup¶

Markup is a mechanism for annotating fragments of a dialogue line. They are somewhat similar to HTML tags, or you can imagine them as comments in a google document. Importantly, markup tags only annotate the text, but do not alter its content or display in the game. It is up to the developer to actually use the markup information in their game.

Syntax¶

Markup tags are denoted with the name of the tag, placed in square brackets: [tag_name]. The corresponding closing tag would be [/tag_name]. Every markup tag must have a corresponding closing tag:

Hello, [wavy]world[/wavy]!

Markup tags may nest within each other, though they must nest properly, in the sense that one markup range must be fully inside or fully outside another:

Lorem [S]ipsum dolor [A]sit[/A] amet[/S], consectetur [B]adipiscing[/B] elit

The special close-all markup tag [/] closes all currently opened markup ranges. It is also handy in situations where the name of the markup tag is long and you don’t want to repeat it:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, [Incididunt]consectetur adipiscing elit[/]

The self-closing markup tags have the form [tag_name/]. These tags mark a single location within the text. In addition, if such tag is surrounded by spaces on both sides, then a single space after the tag will be removed from the resulting text. If this is undesired, then simply add an extra space after the markup tag:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, [carramba/] consectetur adipiscing elit.

Markup tags also accept parameters, which are similar to HTML tag attributes. The names of these parameters can be arbitrary IDs, and the values are expressions that will be evaluated each time the line is executed. Thus, the values of attributes can be dynamic:

Lorem ipsum [color name=$color]dolor sit amet[/color]

Markup tags can surround dynamic text (interpolated expressions), which will cause the length of the marked up span to be different every time the line is run. At the same time, markup cannot be generated dynamically – in the sense that the interpolated expressions will always be inserted as-is, even if they contain some text in square brackets.

Hello, [b]{$player}[/b]!

Lastly, it should be noted that if you want to have an actual text in square brackets within a line, then in order to prevent it from being parsed as markup you can escape the square brackets with a backslash \:

Hello, \[world\]!

Examples¶

Mark a piece of text with a different style¶

In this example the word “Voldemort” is rendered with a special “cursed” markup, indicating that the word itself is cursed (it is up to you how to actually render this in a game). Similarly, the word “stupid” in the second line has an emphasis, which may be rendered as italic text.

title: Scene117_Harry_MrMalfoy
---
Harry: I'm not afraid of [cursed]Voldemort[/cursed]!
MrMalfoy: You must be really brave... or really [i]stupid[/i]?
===

Provide additional information about a text fragment¶

In this example the word “Llewellyn” has a tooltip information associated with it. A game might render this with a special style suggesting that the user may hover over that word to see a tooltip with a minimap for where to find this NPC.

title: MonkDialogue
---
Monk: Visit [tooltip place="TS" x=23 y=-74]Llewellyn[/] in Thunderstorm, \
      he will be able to help you.
===

Indicate where special non-text tokens may be inserted¶

The [item/] markup tag will be replaced by the item’s name, which will also be interactive: tapping this name would bring up the item’s description card.

title: BlacksmithQuest
---
<<local $reward = if($chapter==1, "A0325", "A1018")>>
Smith: Find me my lost ring, and I'll give you this [item id=$reward/].
===