[RESOLVED] A working advanced message box/system

I have used both Ccoa's UMS as well as Dubleaux's AMS, but both have some inherent problems.  When I use the UMS, and I have a face graphic, the lines just do not wrap correctly in the message box, and text gets cut off.  In the AMS, there are text wrapping problems too, but not that text is cut off, but it wraps too soon, so the text is displayed very poorly.

Is there anyone that has a message script that allows for a face graphic, a name in a window above the main window, that wraps and displays correctly?  And turns off the one letter at a time display... Gah, I hate that...

Of the two, I prefer the amount of control given via the UMS over AMS, and the increased level of functionality (shortcuts... sweet), but because of these wrapping issues I'm using AMS instead.  At least that one actually displays all the text, even tho it's formatted poorly.

On Ccoa's UMS, if you add the script "$game_system.ums_mode = FIT_WINDOW_TO_TEXT" in an event, the text box will automatically fit itself to the text, so nothing gets cut off.

I attempted that, but if a window had a face graphic in it, I got an error, something about width was nil

I've never had this problem
and in fact, the 'cutting off' of text can be solved by pressing the 'enter' key a little earlier in the show message command dialogue.

I have had them cut off, every time... The first two attached images show the cut off text, the third attachment shows the error I get when I attempt to use FIT_WINDOW_TO_TEXT... ANd pressing the enter key is not the answer, because I have turned off the letter by letter display...

[EDIT] Oh, and one last thing... if you try out the demo that came with UMS, there's even cut off text in there.  Not as badly as I show here, but it's there...

Just in case anyone doubts me, here is a screenshot of the UMS Demo app, which also shows text cutoff...

But, in the event editor, just don't put as much text. Obviously, you can't use the black arrow as a correct marker because you're filling half the window with a face. So, don't type as much on each line of the message box.

This is pretty rough, and you will probably need to adjust it, but it might give an idea of how far to go:

Your suggestion is a valid one, but in a dialog intensive game, monitoring this text box and watching my line lengths distracts from the more enjoyable aspects of creating the game.  Editing the dialog later becomes much a more  tedious chore.  In all reality, I'd rather have a working script that calculated the word wrap correctly, taking into consideration the graphic's width.  That's kinda why I'm posting in this specific forum, where people make requests.


I'm not putting these scripts down, they're both great pieces of work, I certainly could not have written them myself, but I'd rather that they worked correctly.

Your suggestion is a valid one, but in a dialog intensive game, monitoring this text box and watching my line lengths distracts from the more enjoyable aspects of creating the game.  Editing the dialog later becomes much a more  tedious chore.  In all reality, I'd rather have a working script that calculated the word wrap correctly, taking into consideration the graphic's width.  That's kinda why I'm posting in this specific forum, where people make requests.


I'm not putting these scripts down, they're both great pieces of work, I certainly could not have written them myself, but I'd rather that they worked correctly.

put some effort into your game.
There will always be something tedious to do.
Instead of expecting someone to solve every little tedious problem, try using an easy fix to solve it yourself.

Your reasoning for wanting someone to script a word wrapper is pure laziness.
If you're going to make a game, then be ready to put effort into it.
</rant>

Your suggestion is a valid one, but in a dialog intensive game, monitoring this text box and watching my line lengths distracts from the more enjoyable aspects of creating the game.  Editing the dialog later becomes much a more  tedious chore.  In all reality, I'd rather have a working script that calculated the word wrap correctly, taking into consideration the graphic's width.  That's kinda why I'm posting in this specific forum, where people make requests.


I'm not putting these scripts down, they're both great pieces of work, I certainly could not have written them myself, but I'd rather that they worked correctly.

put some effort into your game.
There will always be something tedious to do.
Instead of expecting someone to solve every little tedious problem, try using an easy fix to solve it yourself.

Your reasoning for wanting someone to script a word wrapper is pure laziness.
If you're going to make a game, then be ready to put effort into it.
</rant>

Again, valid points.  So I suppose all people who request a script should just stop requesting, and put some effort into their own games.  Tediousness is never considered lazy, if those efforts could have been better spent on other things.  Such as advanced events, and graphics art work, storyline, the actual creation of characters, items, weapons, etc...  My efforts are much better spent watching my word wrap when any modern program does word wrap.

To  merely assume I'm lazy because I've requested a script to do this does me a disservice.

the problem exists in the way the gui of rpgmaker is made the box you input text into cannot change. scripters can modify the back processes to make things look different but at the end of the day if too much text goes on one line then its going to do that.

Again, valid points.  So I suppose all people who request a script should just stop requesting, and put some effort into their own games.  Tediousness is never considered lazy, if those efforts could have been better spent on other things.  Such as advanced events, and graphics art work, storyline, the actual creation of characters, items, weapons, etc...  My efforts are much better spent watching my word wrap when any modern program does word wrap.

To  merely assume I'm lazy because I've requested a script to do this does me a disservice.

no, I'm saying you're lazy because you want someone else to do your word wrap for you, when you could -easily- fix the problem yourself, simply becase it's "tedious".  THAT is lazy.

Please read what I write next time.

In case anyone is interested, I found and corrected the error in the script when using FIT_WINDOW_TO_TEXT, and a face graphic was being used and it resulted in a error about the graphics width being nil.  So I can use auto-fitting boxes and the wrap now appears to be corrected. It still cuts off a couple of pixels, but that's easily corrected.   I still have an issue where the box resizing itself with every statement appears sloppy, so I'll continue working on getting the text to wrap correctly in NORMAL window mode.

I don't really know why I'm continuing to add to this thread, but just in case anyone is curious, I've found and corrected the wrapping issue.  Of course, to make it work for my specific needs, I've made a few assumptions.  First I changed the window size to a fixed size (using the setting variable provided by the script).  That by itself still cut off a bit on the right hand side, so a few more tweaks were necessary.

I assume all my face graphic widths (for the face graphics themselves) will by 96px wide.  By changing some of the padding variables and one calculation in the get_x_value method, everything now draws out correctly.  Again, as far as my specific needs are concerned.  I still have to test to see how this affects all the different justification settings for text as well as face graphics though.

Using this new found knowledge, I may very well attempt writing my own custom message handler, but for now UMS works fine for me.

One more update to my SHOW MESSAGE dilema, just so there's some closure. 

Using the shortcut concept utilized by Ccoa in the UMS scripts, I've managed to create my own SHOW MESSAGE script, that does exactly as I needed.  Text displays nearly 100% accurately, and still allows for a name box, and a face graphic with very little work.  So thanx to everyone who either assited in answering my questions or pissed me off enough to inspire me to tackle creating the script myself. I do feel good about it, as if I accomplished something pretty major and didn't use something somebody else wrote (except for inspiration).

http://rmrk.net/index.php/topic,16921.0.html
Strike 1, don't keep bumping your topic, we have the edit button.

http://rmrk.net/index.php/topic,16921.0.html
Strike 1, don't keep bumping your topic, we have the edit button.

It really wasn't a bump in the normal sense of the word, more like a closing statement with a resolution, hence the topic title modified to RESOLVED... But whatever, you're the boss...

If I see people double posting more than once a week, there will be consequences.

Since the problem is resolved, I may as well lock this so we don't have a debate on rule 7.