Change scale of text printer in script?

Posted: 02 Dec 2020 22:26
by gradstein

Printers are supposed to behave like actors, so at times I'd like to scale them down for better framing. Is there a way to do so?

tried this: @printer Bubble.Right pos:53,63 scale:0.64 but has no effect/error. Is this possible, Elringus? Thanks!


Re: Change scale of text printer in script?

Posted: 03 Dec 2020 02:19
by Elringus

Hi, Thanks for the suggestion!

That's not possible at the moment, so I've moved the topic to the feedback forum.

Can you please clarify the case where you would want to dynamically scale a text printer? If it's something about layout (eg, making it fit more text), then it's already handled by default in all the built-in printers. And in case you want to change the appearance, that's also possible (see bubble right-left appearances for example). Dynamically changing (animating) scale of a UI with a revealing text inside seems a bit weird to me, but maybe I'm missing something.


Re: Change scale of text printer in script?

Posted: 03 Dec 2020 18:50
by gradstein

Hey Elringus, thanks for the reply. We are making an interactive fiction product, with full-body animating characters. Cinematic style, meaning they can walk and talk and we zoom in and out and have different numbers of characters in-frame at any given time. A good example of this would be the Episode app. Sometimes, aside from needing a bubble that points down instead of up (which we made as a custom printer), we also need to shrink the bubble, text and all, for better framing of the shot. For example, if we have a wide shot with 3+ characters in frame, the default bubble size just feels too large and the shot doesn't look great. In this case, we want a smaller bubble overall so it blocks less of the characters. Our backup plan is just make a custom printer at 80% of the included bubble, but was wondering if this was a param I was missing. Basically, often when zooming in or out on the shot, we want to scale the bubble and everything inside it appropriately to make the best looking frame.


Re: Change scale of text printer in script?

Posted: 03 Dec 2020 19:07
by Elringus

I see, thanks for the details! I'll look into adding this feature for the next release.


Re: Change scale of text printer in script?

Posted: 04 Dec 2020 01:12
by Elringus

I've added scale parameter to the @printer command, allowing to scale the text printers. Updated v1.15 pre-release package is available in #download channel on our Discord. Thank you for the suggestion!


Re: Change scale of text printer in script?

Posted: 21 Dec 2020 21:59
by gradstein

Ahh, you rock, thank you! You should add that downward pointing bubble as well so speechbubbles can be overhead