StarEdit Tutorial - Formatting Transmission Text

More than anything else, this is going to be a rant on map aesthetics. You will not learn anything new here, but I do believe that the issue adressed is very, very important. The problem at hand: why don't you people spend the freakin' five extra seconds to format your f---ing text in map dialog?!... O.K., I am exaggerating the frustration a little (for most people that is), but in truth, unformated text is one of biggest turn-offs of maps. Of course, if you have voiced dialog to go along, then it's not that big of a problem, but if you expect people to read what your characters say, for God's sake, make it, at the very least, pleasant.

Cardinal Rules:

• NEVER let long dialog run on without carriage returns. NEVER! [This means, press ENTER when you get to the end of a line. Don't just keep typing.]
• Stick to a single format. Be creative if you wish, but make sure the reader can keep up with your creative stylings.
• Spell Check. It's not that hard. I only spent half-an-hour checking over 15 pages of text. Just do it. [With Microsoft Word, it's easy; you can just copy/paste the text and see quickly if any words are underlined in red, and thus need to be corrected.]

If you just follow those three simple rules, I guarantee you that you will step up entire stories in the eyes of perfectionists like me. For more intricate text design here are a few pointers. Default Blizzard style:

I personally like to stretch A and B five more spaces (making them 15-20), but that's just to leave a little more breathing room that most people probably wouldn't need. The size of C is your call. I like to just stretch the text all the way to the right-edge, since its easy to tell when to stop that way. There is not much of an appreciable difference. However, do not ever allow your line to cross the right-edge without a carriage return (Cardinal Rule # 1). I also like to put two carriage returns at the end of the text. Then, if two transmissions run together, there will be a line break between them.

It is usually nice to somehow distinguish the speaker from the dialog. Don't only use a dash (-) or colon (:), since those can be confused with the dialog often. Capitalization works well and giving the title a seperate line is great. In accordance with the Blizzard style, indentation of the either the text or the title almost absolutely seperates the two distinguishably.

Tricks:

Ever wanted to make some of those cool text effects like centered or scrolling lines? Well, you probably have an idea about how to do it (it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out =P), but here's a little fact that will help: There are 11 lines of text that can be displayed at a single time. Anything more will begin cutting off the top lines. That means, if you want to clear the screen of text just display a message with 11 (or more) blank carriage returns.

For text to overlay perfectly (and delete the previous text) you simply need the amount of carriage returns under the message to be the same. You might also want to put a couple carriage returns above the message so the old text actually gets pushed off the screen. It really doesn't matter how many empty lines you put on top (but you want a grand total of at least 11), because any extra will just be pushed off any ways. Putting six or seven carriage returns at the bottom will effectively place the message line on the center of the screen (vertically).

When trying to center text horizontally, there is absolutely no substitute for trial and error. All the characters (text) have a different horizontal length so there is no formula you can follow to center it. You just have to keep shifting it back and forth until it's right. Its a tedious job, but if you decide you want text centered, you have to do it. The only thing uglier than run-on dialog is slightly off-centered text (especially if there are several lines that are all aligned differently). My advise, is push it about three-fourths the way across in the Staredit dialog box and work backward/forward from there.

I hope that wasn't too presumtuous. =)

DI
April 26, 1999