WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT TEXT PAUSES IN GAME DIALOG?

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Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
the point is games being an interactive and versatile medium
I definitely think that this is a tool made possible only in games, and thus has power to enhance any game. But definitely not EVERY game, or MOST of ANY game.

I have no preference for it. The way I write is functional without these engine-based pauses, so I won't be using them. But if having them increases the quality of the experience, obviously they should be used.
slash
APATHY IS FOR COWARDS
4158
I remember ages ago I made a huge deal out of perfectly timing all the dialogue letters in my boxes... but honestly, if you want realistic dialogue on that level, just use voice! Pauses get reaaaallly annoying to players and the effect doesn't hit as hard as it you may think.

That said, text pauses and slow letter displays can be a fun effect when used sparingly

l i k e f o r f i n a l b o s s d i a l o g u e
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
author=Ratty524
In a static book, yes, but in an interactive medium, why not have both?


Because by forcing the reader to be unable to continue reading, you are removing the interactivity and taking them out of the flow of the moment.

There are effective ways to communicate the pause without forcing someone to stop reading mid-dialog. It's just a silly and inelegant method.

author=slash
I remember ages ago I made a huge deal out of perfectly timing all the dialogue letters in my boxes... but honestly, if you want realistic dialogue on that level, just use voice! Pauses get reaaaallly annoying to players and the effect doesn't hit as hard as it you may think.


Basically this. The player is capable of reading an ellipsis and envisioning a pause. It works perfectly already; why gild the lily?

I'll just add as an aside that I always have a tacit assumption that well-made exceptions can exist; I'm speaking to the vast majority of bog-standard writing.
I agree there are more elegant ways for the same effect.
The best use I have seen so far of snail-like letter appearances was in Densetsu no Kusoge by our beloved Ratty. Mainly because the whole point was to piss you off and then submit to the game's experience.

It CAN be okay, but it will always be disrupting your flow.
I'm disappointed there was no Final Fantasy Tactics jokes in here.
As for my opinion depends on how detailed the characters faces graphics/models/whatever are.
Don't overdo it.

Personally I use pauses only when the character dialogue demands it. So something like:
Dissention in the ranks? Who allowed that to occur?! \|
It was Jacob, wasn't it?

I'll only ever use the \| for end of sentence pauses, \. for ellipses and \! in the place of \|. Actually, \! is a good way of doing - it allows the player to proceed when they're ready, instead of forcing them to wait, but still adds a pause.
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
author=Chilly-Pheese-Steak
I'm disappointed there was no Final Fantasy Tactics jokes in here.


You mean other than on the first page?

As for my opinion depends on how detailed the characters faces graphics/models/whatever are.


whaaaaa?
No, pauses in dialogue should never be implemented. You, as a writer, should be able to convey those "pause emotions" through normal dialogue, without any stops. Commas are often used for short pauses and you can use ellipses for longer pauses. Make sure that the ellipses are written correctly though: "...". Ellipses always consist of three consecutive periods. No more, no less.

Most importantly; let your players read at their own pace. My first game had these pauses at first and there were literally NO ONE that didn't find those pauses annoying. Trust me, pauses are evil.
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
author=luiishu535
Make sure that the ellipses are written correctly though: "...". Ellipses always consist of three consecutive periods. No more, no less.


I'm inclined to allow rule bending for the sake of emphasis, especially if the tone's more comedic, or there's otherwise a need to differentiate one pause as longer than another. Granted, this is an extremely rare exception, since for like 95% of cases a regular ellipsis will work perfectly.

(Also to be a nitpicky butt, ellipses don't ALWAYS consist of three periods- four period ellipses are correct in their originally intended use to indicate that more than a few sentences' worth of text has been removed from a quotation. :V )

Most importantly; let your players read at their own pace. My first game had these pauses at first and there were literally NO ONE that didn't find those pauses annoying. Trust me, pauses are evil.


It's kind of interesting how there's this idea of giving players all this control in gameplay, but not in reading.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
why are you promoting the continued abuse of ellipses, lui. videogames are in ellipses debt. suikoden 2 owes the most but like, pretty much every jrpg has about 100 too many ellipses

also literally nobody has complained about the text pauses in V&V so...
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
My general conclusion is "If you can do them right, then they are just fine and can add to the experience. If done wrong, they can be irritating." Not a surprising or mind-blowing conclusion, but hey XD;
It's okay if I do them, but I find them annoying if anyone else does them.
Ratty524
The 524 is for 524 Stone Crabs
12986
author=Sooz
Most importantly; let your players read at their own pace. My first game had these pauses at first and there were literally NO ONE that didn't find those pauses annoying. Trust me, pauses are evil.


It's kind of interesting how there's this idea of giving players all this control in gameplay, but not in reading.
... They can get control in reading when the entire text box ends and they have to press a button to continue! :D

author=Craze
why are you promoting the continued abuse of ellipses, lui. videogames are in ellipses debt. suikoden 2 owes the most but like, pretty much every jrpg has about 100 too many ellipses

indeed
I didn't know that more than three consecutive periods could form a grammatically correct ellipsis.
I still don't like it though, since it looks like the writer accidentally fell asleep on the period key for a short burst....
It looks very ugly to me.
author=luiishu535
I didn't know that more than three consecutive periods could form a grammatically correct ellipsis.
I still don't like it though, since it looks like the writer accidentally fell asleep on the period key for a short burst....
It looks very ugly to me.

They're definitely ugly.

But it's interesting to think how their overuse came around. Unlike real audio or text narration from books, games started (generalization for brevity) with written text where there are already pauses between things. The pause is natural for the medium.

So, like, they couldn't just leave some time in between phrases for the text to breathe or it might feel like the scene was cut off completely. That would be jarring. They weren't going to narrate every instance or else the visuals would become meaningless and they'd bog down certain types of games ("Devon took a sharp breathe as Master Reynold's words sank in."). And they couldn't make empty text bubbles because then it'd look like there as a glitch.

So now we have hyper-compensation as devs tried to figure out how to modify lengths of pauses without the use of actual time and without the aid of narration.

I guess that links to the tool RM and other games have provided and used, where they insert time "artificially" into the active text. I think it was a natural evolution, even if I don't care for it. And the battle between ellipses and text pauses forever rages on inside us all.
author=Sooz
author=Chilly-Pheese-Steak
I'm disappointed there was no Final Fantasy Tactics jokes in here.
You mean other than on the first page?


Ha. Thanks what I get for searching via text instead of using my eyes.

As for my own use of text pauses, on my current thing I'm using a blend of battle styles with side-view battlers accompanied by your typical front-view message box that describe the action. So I tend to throw an \| at the end of most battle messages sometimes a \. in front of it if I need to extend the time bit.

As for regular text messages I put a \. at the end of each line of text except the last one.
I'm surprised that so many people have such strong feelings about it! I definitely respect that. As for me? I don't care either way at all. As long as the general text speed is relatively fast, I'm all coolbeans.
I always set the text speed to the fastest setting when the option is given. I don't really care as long as it's not too slow--pauses included. I find it impossible to replay Xenogears, for example.
Xenogears is an infamous one, yeah.

Am I the only one who isn't bothered by the text speed in that game, though? I know that its slower than most, but eh? I guess I'm weird!
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