Text Box Display

Text Box Display

The text boxes will be themed after specific map designs to keep consistency within the game. Each set of dialogue from another NPC will also include their image to clearly define who is responsible for the message. The position of the text boxes will also depend on who is instead of containing a static text box that is shared between the characters. This allows the separation between main character dialogue and NPC dialogue to be more clearly defined.

Required Information

The display will need to query the TextBox instance it has stored about the current message. Information stored in the current message will decide which character is talking, main character or NPC as well as the the message to be displayed. Since the message is loaded in slowly, this does not affect the display since the sub message is set within the TextBox class and TextBoxDisplay does not need to know about the internals of that, just the message itself.

Private Attributes

The attributes have been separated into main character and any other NPC, this allows for the position of the images and text to be set without the need to constantly change the position with each swap between the speakers.

• enemyText : String: The message of the NPC.
• enemyBox : Image: The text box image that is used to surround the NPCs message.
• enemyImage : Image: The image of the NPC character.
• mainCharacterText : String: The message of the main character.
• mainCharacterBox : Image: The text box image that is used to surround the main character's message.
• mainCharacterImage : Image: The image of the main character.

The images of the enemy text box and image uses a switch statement checking for the different NPCs talking to change the image accordingly. This will be done by querying the text box to determine if the main character is talking or not. If the main character is talking, then all display Actors relating to the main character will be set to visible and when the NPC is talking, their Actors will be set to visible.

Below are images of dialogue between the prisoner NPC that is met during the tutorial. The NPC can be seen standing behind the text box as well as the text box alternates positions between the main character and the other speaker.

Currently these text boxes are test designs that will be later refined. Improvements that are to be made are boxes to display the names as well as further iterations of the design.

User Testing

Functionality

Throughout the game, the text boxes will change the display to suit the NPC talking, due to the visual aspect of this, it was difficult to determine if the image change was correct so this has been user tested. Things that were specifically looked at were:

• The text box display would alternate positions, depending on the character talking.
• The text correctly matched with the speaker when displayed.
• The display of the NPC would correctly change depending on the dialogue set the message was retrieved from.
• All the items were placed correctly, tested at different view sizes.
• The loading of the text has been adjusted to a suitable speed.

Display

The cutscenes and the display were tested by other users who were both familiar with games as well as unfamiliar. This allowed feedback from a diverse range of users however feedback from those who were familiar games were favoured as this would be the target audience. Some feedback provided were:

• Users didn't know the characters names. Since there is no audio and images, the player did not know the names of who was speaking.
• It was difficult to distinguish when a cutscene begins and ends.
• Some of the designs of the text box did not suit both the map design as well as the NPC.
• Due to the health UI and other buttons, the cutscene felt cluttered and was never really in focus.

Other aspects of the design that the users were happy about were:

• The image of NPC and character made the cutscene feel more involved and provided the user a better view of the character since most of the sprites are very small.
• The swapping between the images, positions and text box designs made it obvious when the speaker changed
• Using keyboard and touch input to progress through the dialogue felt smooth and easy to use.

From the feedback, the changes that have been made were the addition of name tags on the text box, black bars that would slowly fade in and out when a cutscene occurred and changes in the text boxes for different characters. The addition of the black bars and change of aspect ratio provides emphasis on the dialogue and removes extra UI. The fading in and out made it obvious when the player was in a cutscene.