Scenes, Characters and Sound

A visual novel scene has a background, characters on stage, dialogue, and often music or sound. In FlowBoard you define these once in the Library and then choose them for each scene in the Story Inspector. Both are panels in Story Map, which is available on Mac, iPad and iPhone.

Write dialogue and narration

Write a scene’s text in the card itself. Play Mode shows each non-empty line as a step of its own, or the whole scene at once if you prefer:

The lantern room is quiet.
Mara: I didn't expect you so early.
Alice: I couldn't sleep.

A line that starts with a character’s name followed by a colon is dialogue, spoken by that character. The name can be the character’s display name or its ID. Any other line is narration. A line starting with a name you haven’t defined as a character stays narration.

Bold, italic, underlined and struck-through text is shown in Play Mode and carried over into the Ren’Py export.

Define characters, images and sound in the Library

Open Library from Panels in the Story Map toolbar, or press Cmd+Option+4. Its sections list everything already defined, with a search field at the top.

To add	Use	You provide
A character	Add character	The display name
A background	Add background	A name and an image file
An expression	Add expression image	The character, the expression’s name (such as happy), and an image
Sound or music	Import audio	An audio file. It then appears in the Inspector’s Music, Sound and Voice pickers.
A variable	Add variable	A name, its type (Number, True / false or Text) and its starting value

Add assets to board at the top chooses which board stores the definitions. They go into that board’s Reference column, created as Story library if the board doesn’t have one, and they can be used on every board. FlowBoard copies imported image and audio files into the document’s assets folder.

Expand an entry to change it, for example a character’s display name or a background’s image, without breaking the scenes that use it. Show source card selects the card that holds the definition.

Set up a scene

Select a scene card. In the Story Inspector:

Scene

• Background: choose one of the defined backgrounds. A preview shows the image.
• Characters: for each character, choose an Expression and a Position (Left, Center or Right). Flip mirrors the character’s image: Horizontal turns them to face the other way, Vertical turns them upside down, and Both does both. Hide character takes a character off stage.
• Keep inherited state removes this scene’s own setting, so the scene shows whatever was on stage before.

Flipping saves you a second image for a character who faces the other way. The image is mirrored where it stands, so its position doesn’t change. Each scene shows the character the way that scene says: if the next scene shows the same character without Flip, they face their usual way again.

Audio

• Choose Music, Sound or Voice, then an Audio file, or Import file for a new one. Preview it with the player.
• Set Loop, Volume and Fade in (seconds), then Apply.
• Stop ends a channel’s playback in this scene. Clear override removes the scene’s own audio setting.

Music keeps playing from scene to scene until a scene changes or stops it. Sound and voice play once.

To give several scenes the same background or cast, select them together. The Inspector then edits all of them, and shows Mixed where their values differ.

What’s on stage in a given scene

A scene that sets its own background starts with an empty stage, just as a new scene does in Ren’Py: only the characters it shows itself appear. A scene without its own background keeps the background and the characters from the scenes before it. Music carries on in both cases until a scene changes or stops it.

Because different paths can lead to the same scene, what’s on stage can depend on the path. To see it for one particular path, choose Story path in Linear view and select a visit. The Inspector then shows the Effective scene state.

Story cues

Story cues are notes in the text for yourself or for production, such as sound or background ideas while you draft. Start a line with a cue name in capitals:

@BG A dim lantern room.
@SND Paper rustling. Mara is writing.

• @BG and @SND are built in. Add your own types, for example @CAM, under Settings → Appearance → Story cues. Add @NOTE adds a ready-made note type.
• @TK word marks a placeholder word to fill in later, and @TK{several words} marks a phrase.
• @GRP Title … @END folds a part of a card under a heading that you can open and close. The outline lists these groups too.

Cues are shown as labeled, colored lines. They’re notes only: @BG doesn’t change the scene’s background. The Cues panel in Story Map lists every cue and @GRP group in the document. Select one to select its card; while Linear view is open, it scrolls there. In Play Mode, Show story cues shows or hides them. When you export, Export cues decides whether they become comments, visible text, or are left out.

Next

• Variables and conditions makes scenes depend on what happened before.
• Play Mode shows the scene as the reader will see it.