A room text can become a sequence of replies: the player clicks to move the conversation forward, with a speaker, a portrait, a frame and a background.

Everything is optional. A sequence without portrait or background is simply a series of replies shown one after another.

rooms:
  - id: tavern
    text:
      type: sequence
      replies:
        - speaker: Mara
          text: "You are late. Was the road bad?"
        - speaker: You
          text: "Let us say I did not choose it."

The player reads the first reply, clicks, then reads the second one. By default, the room's choices remain visible during the sequence. To hide the controls until it ends, add hide-controls: true to the sequence.

Use replies: and text: in an English scenario. The French aliases repliques: and texte: are accepted too.

A reply can specify type: dialogue (the default), narration, thought, system, journal, message or sent-message. These types distinguish the presentation of speech, narration, thoughts, notices, journal entries and phone messages. They also work as single blocks outside a sequence.

In ui: phone with screen: conversation, message is a received bubble and sent-message is a sent bubble. Earlier replies remain visible as conversation history.

Instead of repeating the name and portrait on every reply, declare your characters once for the whole scenario.

characters:
  mara:
    name: Mara
    portrait: /scenarios/images/my-game/mara.png
  guard:
    name: The guard
    portrait: /scenarios/images/my-game/guard.png
    portrait-position: right

rooms:
  - id: checkpoint
    text:
      type: sequence
      replies:
        - character: mara
          text: "Let us through."
        - character: guard
          text: "Nobody passes tonight."

A reply that only sets character: inherits the stored name, portrait and presentation. Any property can be overridden on the reply itself, and then takes precedence over the registry.

        - character: guard
          text: "Fine... get inside, quickly."
          portrait: /scenarios/images/my-game/guard-smiling.png

A reply that redefines nothing keeps the character, portrait and background of the previous one. This is what lets you write a long speech without repeating the speaker.

      replies:
        - character: mara
          text: "I knew this town before the fire."
        - text: "People came here for the spice market."
        - text: "Nothing of it is left."

An explicit character: rebuilds the presentation in this order: scenario defaults → character registry → sequence properties → reply properties. Later values take precedence; local overrides from the previous reply are not automatically carried over. Changing only speaker: does not remove the portrait: use portrait: null when needed.

To remove an element explicitly, use null.

        - text: "The voice comes from nowhere."
          portrait: null

dialogue-default: sets the presentation of every sequence in the scenario. Each sequence, then each reply, may depart from it.

dialogue-default:
  speaker-position: top-left
  portrait-position: left
  portrait-size: 30

• portrait: image displayed next to the text.
• portrait-position: left or right.
• portrait-size: percentage of the height of the narrative area.
• portrait-offset-x: and portrait-offset-y: move the portrait.
• portrait-overlap: lets the portrait overlap the dialogue frame.

        - character: mara
          text: "Come closer, I do not bite."
          portrait-size: 43
          portrait-offset-y: 18
          portrait-overlap: 24

A portrait can also use one cell from a spritesheet: portrait: portraits.png:4×2:1:0 selects column 1, row 0 from a sheet with 4 columns and 2 rows. Coordinates start at 0, at the top left. Use the image reference directly, without [[…]].

portrait-frame: adds a frame around the portrait. It accepts the same image or generated frame forms as frame: (see below):

        - character: mara
          text: "Come closer."
          portrait-frame:
            image: /scenarios/images/my-game/frames.png:4x2:1:0
            slice: 24
            corners: rounded
            radius: 12

The spritesheet suffix also works for dialogue and speaker frame images. The cell is selected first, then its frame is sliced into nine zones.

speaker: displays a name without using the registry.

        - speaker: Mara
          text: "You are late."

To give it its own typography, write speaker: as a block:

        - speaker:
            name: Mara
            color: "#d8c9a3"
            font: Georgia
          text: "You are late."

Two keys complete the presentation, on the reply or in dialogue-default::

• speaker-position: top-left, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-right.
• speaker-frame: a frame for the name label itself.

With no colour set by the author, the engine picks black or white automatically, based on the background actually displayed, so the name stays readable. A colour written by the author is always kept.

background-image: places an image behind the scene. It can be set on a reply, on the sequence, or directly on the room, even without any dialogue.

rooms:
  - id: laboratory
    background-image: /scenarios/images/my-game/lab.png
    background-mode: cover
    text: "The tanks hum in the half-light."

The background stays active in the following rooms until it is replaced or removed with background-image: null.

background-mode: selects the framing:

Without background-mode:, the whole image is shown while keeping its proportions. An animated image behaves like a still one.

With background-mode: center, background-size: sets the image width as a percentage of the background area (50 by default), keeping its proportions. For example:

    background-mode: center
    background-size: 70

The last background actually displayed by a reply is kept when moving to another room, including another interface mode. A room can change only its mode or size without replacing the image.

A frame surrounds the dialogue box. There are two ways to get one.

From an image, sliced into nine zones so it stretches without distorting the corners:

      frame: /scenarios/images/my-game/frame.png
      frame-slice: 24

Without any file, by describing the stroke:

      frame:
        thickness: 2
        color: "#d8c9a3"
        background: "#1b1a17"
        corners: rounded
        radius: 12
        style: solid

• corners: square or rounded (with radius:).
• style: solid, dashed, dotted or double.

By default a reply appears immediately. Animation is a choice, not a requirement.

        - character: mara
          text: "Each letter arrives in turn."
          animation:
            type: character
            speed: 20

type: is character (letter by letter) or fragment (word by word). speed: is the delay in milliseconds.

A first click completes the running animation, the next one moves to the following reply. Links, interactive words, buttons and drag and drop never advance the sequence by accident: the player can use them freely.

The background, the portrait and the dialogue box each have their own transition.

        - character: guard
          text: "Who goes there?"
          transition:
            portrait:
              type: slide
              duration: 300
              direction: right
            dialogue:
              type: fade
              duration: 220

A single value applies to all of them:

          transition: fade

To set a shared duration, use a block:

          transition:
            type: fade
            duration: 700

type: is slide (the element glides in) or fade (a soft appearance, the default behaviour). duration: is in milliseconds, and direction: only makes sense for a slide.

hide-controls: true hides the buttons during a sequence, for a scene that must play without interruption. They come back at the end.

    text:
      type: sequence
      hide-controls: true
      replies:
        - text: "The door closes behind you."

A text: field accepts a list: plain texts and sequences follow one another in the order written.

    text:
      - "You push the office door open."
      - type: sequence
        replies:
          - character: mara
            text: "I was expecting you."
      - "She closes the file lying in front of her."

Text placed after a sequence only appears once that sequence is over. This also works inside an event, an action or a HUD box.

[[ROOM:n]] inserts the narrative content of room number n. Useful for a recurring reply written only once.

        - character: guard
          text: "Always the same answer.[[ROOM:12]]"

The French form is [[SALLE:n]]. Circular references are detected and stopped. Inside an existing reply, an inserted sequence is flattened into text; it does not create a nested clickable sequence.

Sequences are displayed in every web and desktop interface: classic, cards, deck, phone, fullscreen, and inside a HUD box.

Discord, the Terminal and the PDF export have no dialogue box: they produce a linear Speaker: text reading, in the order of the replies. The scenario stays playable everywhere.

• Text and formatting
• Images, sounds and videos
• HUD boxes
• Interface modes