Chapter 40: Text Editing with fEditor Adv

The reason why this chapter is called ‘Text Editing with FEditor Adv’ and not just ‘Text Editing’ is because there ARE other ways to edit text, but they are kind of inferior and obsolete. So much so that I am not even going to cover it in this tutorial, because there is no point in teaching old methods if the old methods are inferior in almost all ways.

Anyway, open up FEditor Adv. The first thing I see is a Memory and Free Space Manager that I have no idea how to use. Sounds pretty bad, right? Well, I’ve gotten along without it just fine… That’s probably the only major thing you won’t find in this tutorial, unless someone else submits a chapter on how to work it.

Go to Tools-> Text Editor. Bam, text editor loaded. It should look like this:

It starts at text entry 1. It goes as far as text entry 133D. The input index is what text entry is being loaded at the moment. The max index is as far as it goes-you can change it if you want to, but you shouldn’t have to change it unless your game is like 40 chapters long and text-heavy.

The find and replace boxes should be simple. You can find some text in the script or you can find AND replace some text in the scrip. Just type in the text and hit “find”, and hit “find next” to find every other occurrence after that (find previous obviously just goes back an instance). It works like a hex editor, except it’s a tex-t editor. “Replace all” replaces all occurrences of something.

I don’t know what the “Use Reg ex?” does. It’s probably not too important.

Now, actually editing text is easy. There are some control codes you should know and stuff but mainly it’s just loading portraits, typing text, and pauses. I’ll get into the details later, but when you make changes to text, you have to hit ‘apply’-you have to do this after EVERY ENTRY, not after you’re all done with text. Wait to press it, you’ll regret it. :P

The ‘revert’ button just undoes applying something. I think. The ‘dump…’ button dumps the script to a text file (and it asks you where to save it/what to call it). The insert is the opposite, it lets you insert a dump script. The idea is that you dump a script, edit it, and then re-insert it. And when you’re done with the text editor, you press ‘Quit’.

Now, about actually making text. You have to load portraits, and to do that, you use the following code:

[LoadFace][0xPP][0xVV]

0xPP is the portrait value. You can find a portrait list in the folder with the character and class editor modules, and probably some other folders too. 0xVV is almost always 0x01, except for when you’re in a village, house, or other type of scene. To have a portrait be the portrait of the current character in use, use [0xFF][0xFF]. So in a village you’d just use that and whatever character is used to visit the village will show up with their portrait.

However, there’s one more aspect to loading Portraits. Positioning. There are various positions. You just put the positions right before the [LoadFace].

[OpenFarLeft]

[OpenMidLeft]

[OpenLeft]

[OpenRight]

[OpenMidRight]

[OpenFarRight]

[OpenFarFarLeft]

[OpenFarFarRight]

To move a portrait from one position to another, just change the ‘Open’ to ‘Move. So to move to the Far Right, you’d do [MoveFarRight]. However, note that when a portrait moves, the way they are facing does not change, so you have to clear a portrait and then reload it to change position. To clear a portrait, use the code [ClearFace]. [ClearFace] is also commonly used in special battle conversations; after every line one character says, their portrait is cleared, because during a battle there is only room for one person to be talking (lol).

When typing your text, you can’t just type straight through. After about a max of 30-35 text characters (it depends on how big the characters are), you should make a new line.

01234567890123456789012345

About that long. That’s actually only 26 numbers, but trust me here. However, sometimes if you do this you’ll have one line that has reached its max length and another line that only has one word. It looks odd, and so I suggest evening out the length when ‘formatting’ text.

Text text text text text text text

text.

Should become

Text text text text

text text text text.

It’s better for reading and professionality. Another thing that helps a lot with reading is pauses where you have to press the “A” button to continue the text. To make one of these “blue-arrow pauses” (a blue arrow appears in the corner when it happens), use [A]. This is best used every two lines, but once in a while you may make it 3 lines. The original game sometimes has pauses in the middle of sentences, which is kind of odd and unprofessional, but it means that if you don’t care so much, use [A] every two lines and whoever plays your game shouldn’t miss any text.

[.] is a very quick pause. Sometimes you’ll see it randomly but it’s not random—just don’t worry about it. […..] is a slightly longer pause. [ToggleSmile] makes a character smile, [ToggleMouthMove] makes their mouth stop moving (used for ellipses), [Yes] asks a Yes/No question with “Yes” selected to start (No does the same but with “No” to start), [CloseEyes], [OpenEyes], and [HalfEyes] are obvious, and for all the other interesting codes, just look in FEditor Adv’s ‘doc’ folder-there is a folder called “Text Control Codes” with codes to use. (Note that the ‘NL’ code is redundant as FEditor Adv automatically converts the invisible linebreaks into codes for the game to interpret).

Remember all those “text pointers” and “convo values” we’ve seen in Nightmare Modules and the such? Just type in the values there into the “Input Index” to go right to that text. By the way, Lyn’s mode text starts at index 813. 

With all that knowledge you’re on your way to making an awesome script. Just make sure to apply after every change to an entry, and save often just in case. Also, experimenting is the best way to learn!