This project started off as many do: someone in a chatroom asking a question about how to do something. Someone asked about how to make text scroll in AGS for a parser game, and something about the question got me thinking about how I might do it.
(https://codeberg.org/deadsuperhero/Promptly/raw/branch/main/example.gif)
Four days later, I've managed to hack together a working prototype of the module, dusted it off, and named it Promptly.
Promptly can do a couple of unique things, and it's all based on hacks on top of hacks. This text parser can:
- Print out and parse dialog options, and then run them.
- Check inventory items, and interact with them.
- Provides context fallbacks, so that you don't get gummed up switching from, say, working with items, to talking to people.
- Lets you show and hide images for things like dialogue and inspecting items
- Provides scrollback, but lets you take it away in moments that the player needs to focus on just one thing.
There are still a few things I'd like to do with this (https://codeberg.org/deadsuperhero/Promptly/issues), such as theme customization / palette swap support for 8-bit projects. Some of the code is a bit messy and requires clean-up, but I'm really happy with what I've managed to accomplish so far. Big shout out to CrimsonWizard for helping me figure out how to split up strings from the parser!
> SOURCE CODE (https://codeberg.org/deadsuperhero/Promptly)
> DOCUMENTATION (https://codeberg.org/deadsuperhero/Promptly/wiki/Special-Functions)