Line Presenter

The Line Presenter (YarnLinePresenter) shows your dialogue one line at a time. It puts the speaker’s name in one label and the line’s text in another, types the text out, and waits for the player to continue before handing control back to the Dialogue Runner.

If you followed Adding Presenters, you already have one.

The labels it uses

A Line Presenter needs somewhere to put the text. In the scene from the previous page, that’s three labels inside a panel:

When the scene starts, the Line Presenter looks through the nodes under it and uses:

• the first RichTextLabel it finds for the line’s text,
• a Label with “character” in its name for the speaker’s name,
• a node with “continue” or “indicator” in its name for the continue prompt.

TextLabel

CharacterLabel

ContinueIndicator

To use labels with other names, or labels that aren’t under the Line Presenter, assign them in its Text Label, Character Label and Continue Indicator properties, in the Inspector or from code. Anything you assign takes priority over what the Line Presenter finds.

@onready var line_presenter: YarnLinePresenter = $CanvasLayer/YarnLinePresenter

func _ready():
	line_presenter.text_label = $CanvasLayer/DialogueBox/Body
	line_presenter.character_label = $CanvasLayer/DialogueBox/NamePlate/Name
	line_presenter.character_container = $CanvasLayer/DialogueBox/NamePlate
	line_presenter.continue_indicator = $CanvasLayer/DialogueBox/NextArrow

When you set the character label from code, set Character Container too. The Line Presenter only fills that in when the scene starts.

The Line Presenter shows and hides the nodes under it, so there’s no need to hide the panel when the scene starts.

Character names

Most lines in Yarn start with the speaker’s name, like Rosa: Are you here about the lamp?.

When the Line Presenter has a character label, it puts Rosa in the character label and Are you here about the lamp? in the text label. If a line has no speaker, the character label is hidden. To hide something bigger than the label itself, such as a name plate with a background, set Character Container to that node, and the whole node is hidden.

If there’s no character label at all, Show Character Name in Line decides whether the name stays at the start of the text. It’s on by default, so the player sees Rosa: Are you here about the lamp?.

How text appears

By default, the text types out one letter at a time. Typewriter Mode changes that:

With Use Markup on, which is the default, markup in your lines, such as [b]bold[/b], is shown as formatting. Turn it off to show every line as plain text. See Markup.

Justify Text stretches each line of text to fill the full width of the label. It’s off by default.

Use Fade Effect fades the panel in when a line starts and out when it ends. It’s on by default. Fade Up Duration and Fade Down Duration set how long each fade takes, in seconds.

Continuing to the next line

The continue prompt is shown while a line is on screen. When the player presses the Continue Action, ui_accept by default, which is Enter, Space or a gamepad’s bottom face button:

• If the line is still typing out, it finishes immediately.
• If the line is already complete, the Line Presenter moves on to the next one.

With Click Anywhere to Continue on, which is the default, a left click anywhere does the same. Clicking a link inside the line’s text doesn’t count. Turn this off if your game has other buttons the player can click during dialogue.

While options are showing, the Line Presenter ignores both, so the player’s clicks and key presses go to the option buttons.

To move on without the player pressing anything, turn on Auto Advance. Once a line has finished typing out, the Line Presenter waits Auto Advance Delay seconds, 1 by default, and then moves on.

Using a Line Advancer for input

If you want different controls, such as separate buttons for finishing a line and skipping it, or a button that ends the whole conversation, add a Line Advancer (YarnLineAdvancer) to your scene. It finds the Dialogue Runner by itself when they’re close together in the scene tree, or you can set its Dialogue Runner property.

Once a Line Advancer is in the scene, the Line Presenter stops handling input and leaves it to the Line Advancer. Its main settings:

In Key Code mode, it uses Hurry Key, Advance Key and the other key settings in place of input actions.

Signals

Settings