Basics
This page aims to give a basic overview of all the components that work together to create a character for SPNATI.Use the navigation pane on the left to dig into particular topics.
Each character has a dedicated folder inside the opponents directory, which contains all the data to make a character work.
Additionally, each character has an entry in listing.xml found in the opponents directory. This is how the game actually recognizes a character is available for play. You do not need to worry about this file. When you are ready to submit your character, a mod will take care of it for you. In the meantime, the editor will handle adding your character for testing purposes.
The sections below describe the various files found within your character's folder in the opponents directory.
Character Folder Composition
All the information to make your character work is located in their folder. When you first create a character, you will be asked what folder to create. This is where all information about your character will be stored.
There are several types of files located in this folder, most of which will be generated by the editor automatically.
- meta.xml This contains basic information about your character used by the game's character selection screen: their name, authorship, epilogue availability, etc. This file exists so that the game does not need to load a character's entire dialogue file until they are actually selected for playing, speeding up initial load times.
- behaviour.xml This is meat of your character, containing all of their dialogue, the order they remove their clothing, what poses to use for each line, when to use certain dialogue, etc. Basically everything after the game has begun.
- collectibles.xml This contains information about the unlockable collectibles associated with your character. See the Collectibles section for more information.
- editor.xml This contains special information used by the Character Editor related to your character. The game does not use this file.
- styles.cs This is created automatically when adding custom text formatting in the Advanced tab. Your character's custom styles are stored in this file.
- Images Images will comprise the bulk of your files. These come in three main flavors:
- Game poses: Usually in the format <number>-<emotion>.png, these are images directly associated with dialogue lines in game.
- Pose Maker assets: Raw images used for sprites when creating custom poses with the Pose Maker. These have no special naming convention.
- Epilogue assets: Raw images used for sprites and backgrounds used in epilogues. These have no special naming convention.
- Miscellaneous Other files may appear depending on which editor features you use. None of these are used by the game itself.
- edit-dialogue.txt: Used if you export your character to a text file for editing outside the editor.
- Pose data (ex. poses.txt): Files containing pose lists of exported Kisekae codes with image names. These are used to generate images from Kisekae models.
Screen Layout
The screen is divided into tabbed workspaces allowing for having multiple characters open at once within the same window. Following is an overview of all the basic components that comprise the Character Editor:
- 1. Main toolbar: Contains system level actions and access to various workspaces.
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File: Options for creating, saving, importing and exporting characters.
- Edit: Options for bringing up Find & Replace. This is only functional while in the Dialogue tab.
- Characters...: This brings up a search prompt for opening a character's workspace.
Why isn't my character showing up?
If your character isn't in the list, one of their xml files is likely invalid. Check errorlog.txt for more details. You should never run into this issue when editing characters exclusively in the editor, but this can happen if people manually edit the xml. - Costumes...: This brings up a search prompt for opening a reskin (alternate costume)'s workspace.
- Validate: Opens the validator for validating all characters in the game. Most users are going to find more value in the character-specific validator found in the character workspace over this.
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Tools: Various various tools for reporting and editor preferences:
- Charts: Provides several graphs for reporting on various aspects across the entire character roster.
- Marker Report: Provides a report for seeing how and where each character uses markers.
- Data Analyzer: Provides high level reporting for sifting through the roster based on one or more criteria (ex. reporting which characters have an epilogue but fewer than 1000 lines of dialogue)
- Configure Game: Provides settings for the offline game, such as enabling cheat mode, unlocking all epilogues, etc.
- Manage Macros: Allows creating, editing, or deleting user macros. Refer to the Macros section for more information.
- Manage Dictionary: Allows for modifying your user dictionary used with Spell Check.
- Manage Recipes: Allows for creating, editing, or deleting user recipes. Refer to the Recipes section for more information.
- Data Recovery: If the editor has auto-backups enabled, this tool will let you jump back in time, but only within the last few days. Regular commits to Git branch are the preferred tool for backing up your information.
- Fix Kisekae: Some complicated KKL codes can cause the import mechanism to choke. This tool might help fix it if imports stop working.
- Help: Where you found this resource. You can also look at editor change logs or identify your editor version number here.
- 2. Action toolbar: Quick menus for opening setup, changing your theme, or quitting the application.
- 3. Workspace tabs: When opening a character, a tab for that character will be created here. Other things like tools will also create tabs. These tabs are the access point to a character's "workspace", the working area specifically related to that character. Everything beneath this tab strip composes the active tab's workspace.
- 4. Activity tabs: Workspaces are split into one or more "activities" that serve as a way to organize the different parts of a workspace. For instance, the character workspace has tabs for writing dialogue, making epilogues, importing poses, and so on.
- 5. Main pane: The active activity appears in this area.
- 6. Sidebar This part of the workspace is not tied to the activity tabs and persists when switching between them. Generally this contains a preview image pertinent to whatever data you're looking at in the main pane, such as the pose attached to a line of dialogue you're writing.
- 7. Status bar Messages appear down here from time to time reporting on the completion of tasks where a popup would be annoying, such as a report when an auto-save occurs.