Editing Basics of Module Creation (section)

=== Conversations ===
Remember those icons in the top-left? You want to select the next one along from the NPCs icon, to get to the conversations section. You'll notice that you start each module with one speaker ('narrator') and nothing else. Where are the NPCs you created?

==== Speakers ====
Well, they're not on this tab. You have to add them. Click 'new speaker' and give the speaker a character ID. This can be the same as the NPC's ID or different, but you want to be able to glance at this and know who's speaking. You'll see why in a bit. Then you click the 'unit' drop-down and you can select one of five options.

* '''Lancer''' lets you specify whichever character is in that Lancer seat at the time the conversation plays. For example, I like to have the main character of my stories in the first seat (which is Lancer 0) so I create a speaker with the ID 'pc' and select Lancer here and 0 in the number selector which appears.
* '''Module NPC (mech)''' is basically useless for these module-level conversations so you can ignore it. I think it might do something if you select it for combat-level conversations but I don't actually know.
* '''Origin Character''' lets you specify an origin character for this speaker from a dropdown. Whenever they speak, that origin character's portrait will be displayed. If you've got pre-set origin characters in lancer seats, I find this a much easier way to specify them than Lancer 1, Lancer 3, etc.
* '''Lancer With Reserve'''... I don't know what this does.
* '''Module NPC.''' Basically for anyone who isn't a player character or origin character. When you select this you get a drop-down list of all the NPCs you've made at the module level -- not any in combats, only ones from the module -- and can select which speaker to attach to the speaker ID.

You can also use the nametag dropdown to select what name appears above your NPCs' chat boxes when they speak. I think first name and last name are automatically generated from the name field by parsing where spaces appear, but I don't know that for sure.

I don't know how the 'get equipped NHP' option works and I've never used it, so you're going to have to work that one out yourself.

==== Conversations 2 ====
'''An Important Note:''' The narrator speaker is ''special''. Everything I'm about to explain is for your ordinary speakers, and I'll get to the narrator in a bit.

Okay, now you should have (or be able to create) two new speakers to have your conversations. Next, you'll need to write a conversation. Click the 'new conversation' button.

First, give your conversation a name/ID. You can change this later, but if you do it'll break everything that points to it, so pick something that makes sense. Also be aware that in large modules the list of conversations can get very, ''very'' long, so you want these IDs to be informative for you down the line; 'chat_1' may be easy now, but it'll cause you pain later on. ''Ask me how I know''.

The big box below the conversation ID is a dropdown that lets you select the layout of people speaking in the conversation. If you select one, you can see boxes to the right which let you specify which speaker goes in which position. When the conversation is first displayed, these pictures are loaded in, in those positions, even if the speaker has no lines in the conversation and are 'just there' or whatever. If one of those boxes is left empty, any new speaker will be slotted right into it in first-come-first-served order.

What's even better is that the game handles a lot of these dynamics automatically -- if you don't select a conversation 'shape' then it defaults to Monologue. If you add e.g. a third speaker to a two-person chat the shape automatically changes to make room for them. You don't have to engage with this stuff at all if you don't want to, which makes writing conversations in Lancer Tactics so easy Olive deserves an award for that alone.

'''One Caveat:''' Conversations max out at five participants. If you add a sixth they'll overwrite someone already in the chat. Probably easiest to keep your number of talking heads down.

But what will these people say?

Click the 'line' button at the bottom of the conversation window. You'll see a drop-down with 'narrator' in it, an empty space where words will go, and a whole bunch of icons which I'll not be covering in this beginner tutorial, with one exception: the little orange sixpack on the left shows the currently-selected line. When you add new lines they get added beneath the active one, then they become the active one. You can also click it and drag it around to move the position of lines in your chats, which you will need to do frequently.

The dropdown selects who's speaking. Choose one of your NPCs. Then click in the text box next to it and give them something to say. It doesn't matter what. When I need placeholder text I usually use 'butts', but 'lorem ipsum sic dolor sit amet' is available for the classicists.

Do that again, with the other NPC. You can tap return when you're finished with a line and it'll automatically add a new one.

Maybe do it a couple more times. Try to have the same character speaking twice in succession at least once.

Now, if you go over to the left of the screen and select the conversation again you should see a button light up at the bottom-left of the screen labelled 'from start'. Click that and you can see the conversation play out. This button is magic for testing conversations as you write them, seeing how they look, how they flow, making sure people are popping in where they should, all that good stuff. Use it a lot. You can also click back into the conversation and see the button next to it light up ('from line X'). This lets you fast-forward a conversation to that line so you can test longer conversations without clicking through the whole thing every time. The best way to see how it works is to select a line in your conversation that's near the end and test it.

Those are the basics of conversations.

===== Directions =====
You can do all sorts of cool things with directions (think 'stage directions') in a conversation. They take effect at the point in the conversation they're added. I recommend experimenting with them and the play from start button to see what they do. In fact, see that 'neutral face emoji' on the end of the text lines? Noodle around with that as well. It's pretty self-explanatory and you can always test to see exactly what it does. You can even try the 'chorus with previous' option next to it, which ''mostly'' works how you'd think it would but not always.

===== Choices and Indents =====
Keeping things basic: When Lancer Tactics reads a conversation, it reads everything at a particular indent level as a block. You don't need to care about this at all unless you're putting choices in your chats. When you put a choice in your chat (by clicking 'choice' instead of line) you put it in as a series of sequential lines at the same indent -- they look just like lines in the editor but they've got a choice icon next to them instead of a speech bubble -- and choose a speaker and some text for each option. Only the first speaker in any given sequence of choices is read by the game, but I like to keep them all the same anyway. Just in case.

Following each choice line you can add a series of other lines and you'll see the option on the right to indent them one level. When a choice is selected, the game will then play every indented line following that choice, skip over every other choice line in the original sequence and every indented line following them, then keep playing the conversation from after the choice block.

So if you have something like:

* It's a breakfast chat.
* What's your favourite breakfast?
* CHOICE: Pancakes.
** Pancakes are pretty delicious.
* CHOICE: Waffles.
** I don't like foods with double-f sounds in them.
* CHOICE: I'm good with whatever.
* I'm a full English person myself.

The choice block is at indent 0. If you select pancakes then the game will display "Pancakes are pretty delicious." at indent 1, drop back to indent 0 when it runs out of indent 1 things to say, skip the rest of the choice block, and pick up the indent 0 lines again from "I'm a full English person myself." If you choose "I'm good with whatever." then the game will find no indent 1 lines to play, drop back to indent 0, and jump straight to the full English line.

I hope that's clear because it feels really simple to hold in my head when I'm writing these things and now I'm trying to explain it I feel sorely tested. The 'run from start' conversation tester is extremely your friend.

===== Jumps =====
A jump lets you jump to a completely different conversation and, optionally, come back again. There are about a hundred finicky bits going on here and this is supposed to be for beginners so I'm not going into it.

===== Narrator =====
The 'narrator' speaker has a special text-box appearance which strongly resembles the exposition text boxes, never displays a talking head, and cannot be subject to most stage directions. Other than that it functions like other speakers. You ''can'' give it a choice box to make, which doesn't look like any other choice box you'll see in the game and is basically very cool.

==== Conversations 3 ====
Now you've written a conversation you can go back to your module dialogue moment and select it from the drop-down. When that moment plays, it will play the selected conversation on the selected backdrop, then move on to whatever the conversation's output is connected to -- or back to the beat, if nothing.