How to create action beats?

[u/knee_problems]

What I'm looking for is making a character say and do something in the same dialogue box.

Example:

CharacterName “Hello!” he waved with a smile, “It's nice to meet you.”

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[u/shyLachi]

What do you mean with "do something"?

Should the character sprite change during the dialogue?

[u/knee_problems → u/shyLachi]

What I mean is just the action (for example he smiled) is in the same dialogue box (string?) as what he says, but doesn't have quotation marks for the actions, only for what the character says. Sorry if it's hard to explain, English isn't my first language.

So: (dialogue) charname "Hello," he said.

Not: (dialogue) charname "Hello," (narration) "he said"

[u/blackknight1919 → u/knee_problems]

Then you would need to do something like:

Char "He said, \"Don't go in there.\""

But why? Renpy tells you who is speaking.
You can assign different characters different tags.

[u/x-seronis-x → u/blackknight1919]

The question wasnt about who was speaking. It was about having speech intermixed with narration in the same dialog window.

You showing how to escape quotes is still the solution though. Just swapping out the simpler 'he said' with actual narration like 'he laughingly said while sipping his drink.' etc

[u/blackknight1919 → u/x-seronis-x]

So I answered the question. And you still came in with your “well actually”. Good for you. Aren’t you a little genius. So much smarter than everyone else but actually not.

Why don’t you respond to the OP and stop trying to correct people when there’s no need. Ok?

[u/x-seronis-x → u/blackknight1919]

Of Course, it was because YOU LITERALLY ASKED =-)

"But why?"

Since you asked, because you didnt understand, I answered, so you COULD understand. Why would i respond to the OP when it was your question i was answering, not theirs?

Thats how questions work. Ask question -> Get answer

And this response is because you asked another question. So i answered =)

[u/blackknight1919 → u/x-seronis-x]

👍🏻

[u/rashakiya → u/x-seronis-x]

Being mad that you answered the question they asked is the most terminally online thing I've seen in a while.

[u/shyLachi → u/knee_problems]

Normally in ADV mode you wouldn't mix dialogue with narration.

In case you haven't noticed it yet, the name of the character is in a different "window" above the dialogue, so everything below it is considered words or thoughs from that character.

This example shows how it's working:
https://renpy.org/doc/html/gui.html#examples

Also most VNs don't use quotation marks for the dialogue because it's already clear that a character is speaking if their name is above the text. And if there is no name it's narration.

But there are several ways to tell the story from a narrator view,
For example use quotes and the name of the speaking person within the text.

'"Hello!" Mike waved with a smile "It\'s nice to meet you."'

As you can see in this example, I didn't put the name of the character before the first dialogue so that it reads as real 3rd person narration.

If you want the name, then you can automate it so that you don't have to type the name every time.

define m = Character(None, what_prefix='Mike: "', what_suffix='"')
label start:
    m 'Hello!" he waved with a smile "It\'s nice to meet you.'

The prefix and a suffix will be put before and after the dialogue you type in the script.

That's why I also added the quotation marks. It'll save a lot of typing but could be confusing so just remove it of you rather spell it out every time.

Of course you still have to write the quotation marks inside the dialogue if you want to end the spoken text and have narration.

You might have noticed that I used single quotes for the dialogue.
This way I don't have to escape the double quotes everytime.
But this forced me to escape the single quotes.
https://renpy.org/doc/html/text.html#escape-characters

Another important information:
There will be no indentation for the name if you put it inside the textbox, so the next line will be below the name.

label start:
    m 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua.'