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Placement[]
Within the dialogues section, each cutscene with text gets its own subsection. There is another subsection for things that are said outside of cutscenes, and it goes at the start of the section. The cutscenes go in chronological order in which they are played.
Mission-entry cutscenes are usually primary quest-ending cutscenes. While they can be replayed in the mission outpost, they go on the primary quest page instead. The only exception in the campaigns is Abaddon's Gate, which has no primary quest leading to the mission. As such, the only way to see the mission-entry cutscene is to ask an NPC in the mission outpost to replay it. In this case, it goes at the start of the dialogues section, and you put the text inside the mission after it.
Formatting[]
As for formatting the text itself, there is special css code for dialogues. You can start a subsection with <div class="dialogue">, and end it with </div>, and it will figure out to display any normal text as bolded, any italicized text as italicized but not bolded, and to indent the second and subsequent lines of a message. You can see the missions of Prophecies or the first 3/4 of Nightfall for examples. Factions and the last 1/4 of Nightfall have not been put into the new format yet.
You have to leave a blank line between consecutive lines of text to get the wiki to format it properly. If you wish to leave more space, three consecutive blank lines will do so. In cutscenes, I leave additional space when there is a change of scene, such that the game is essentially playing two different cutscenes consecutively. A lot of Nightfall missions do this, where it starts by showing your party in the immediate aftermath of a mission, and then changes scene to show Varesh or her allies discussing things. Outside of cutscenes, I leave space between messages that are triggered separately, such that several minutes could pass between when a player sees them.
Example:[]
Intermediate Cutscene 1[]
Style Guide: See how this text is automatically formatted?
Editor: Why do I have to use the double ' and not a " like in normal writing?
Style Guide: You have to "mark up" the spoken text so your browser will recognize it. The double ' create an italics section in the page HTML. Did you know that the M in "HTML" stands for "Markup"?
Editor: No, I didn't.
Style Guide: I just left three blank lines to make a little space.
Editor: Cool! Got more tips?
Style Guide: Don't forget to close the div tag. I'll do it for you in this example, just see below this line.
=== Intermediate Cutscene 1 === <div class="dialogue"> Style Guide: ''See how this text is automatically formatted?'' Editor: ''Why do I have to use the double ' and not a " like in normal writing?'' Style Guide: ''You have to "mark up" the spoken text so your browser will recognize it. The double ' create an italics section in the page HTML. Did you know that the M in "HTML" stands for "Markup"?'' Editor: ''No, I didn't.'' Style Guide: ''I just left three blank lines to make a little space.'' Editor: ''Cool! Got more tips?'' Style Guide: ''Don't forget to close the div tag. I'll do it for you in this example, just see below this line.'' </div>
If speakers have consecutive pieces of dialog, you can avoid repeating their name by using a <br /> tag:
Messenger Vetaura: We are the Envoys to the next world.
The shepherds who guide the newly departed to Eternal Paradise within the Mists.
We were sent here to show you the path to the afterlife.
Messenger Vetaura: ''We are the Envoys to the next world.'' <br /> ''The shepherds who guide the newly departed to Eternal Paradise within the Mists.'' <br /> ''We were sent here to show you the path to the afterlife.''
Dialogue text[]
In the non-cutscene dialogues, you should include anything that appears the chat box. You can skip things that appear only over some NPC's head. This means you can just record these by finishing the mission, and then scrolling up in the chat box to find what was said and record it.
To record cutscenes, some people open Notepad and type things as the characters say them. You probably can't type as fast as the characters talk, so try to at least get the names of what is said for each line the first time, as well as as much of the text as you can (which often isn't that much). You can add to it on subsequent runs. You probably have to watch a cutscene at least three times to pick up everything.
It's also possible to screenshot each line of text as it appears, so that you can perhaps get them all in one pass. You then have the screenshots to review as you transcribe the dialogue. When characters talk fast and kind of talk over each other, you may miss a message on a screenshot entirely, though. It's kind of obvious when this happens, but you'll have to go back to catch the missed line(s).
See also[]
- IrfanView is free for noncommercial use and lets you browse through your screenshots with the arrow buttons on the toolbar.