What exactly is the Magic Mouth text limit?

[Conall-Star]

has anyone taken the time to actually count how many text characters a magic mouth can hold? would anyone be willing to do this? i could easily do it myself but i'm at work right now and would like to work on some dialogue in my down time but need to know what my limitations are. thanks.

[TheCrestfallen]

I have no clue about the limit, but there must be a glitch to increase the character limits on the magic mouth. I remember there was one on Tony hawk American Wasteland for ps2.

[mistervista]

I just checked and it is indeed 96. I just typed in letters with no spaces and it stopped at 40 for some reason. When putting normal text in with spaces and punctuation it goes up to 96 which may sound a lot but actually allows for very few words.

If i've added it up correctly the part in bold is your allotted 96 which as you see is very little when you have a lot of information to convey or a story to tell.

It really is time they increased that. It can't be difficult because they already exist in story mode ( with coloured text aswell ) so I can't see the problem. Why don't they just make them available to us and make storytelling much easier.

[dcf]

I counted it a while ago. It was around 96 characters or something along those lines.

If you plan out your dialog in microsoft word, you should limit yourself to 1 line. Anything that causes the text to wrap to the next line might cause a problem. This is in the default times new roman, regular style size 12.

[rtm223]

Definately 96.

If you are going to plan stuff out on your computer like that, why not use courier (or other monospaced font) in a basic text editor? Times varies so much between characters.

[Conall-Star]

thanks much guys. although my productivity at work does not thank you :)

and yes, agreed... this should be a really simple fix for them i would think.

[Leather-Monkey]

There's a specific amount you can write!?!
I thought it just stops when you're about to finish a sentance. :p

[Cpt_Sainsburys]

LOL, that made me sneeze coke all over my keyboard!
SP

[TheCrestfallen]

If you could use colored text mistervista. You could hax it by codes, and MM doesn't want you to do that cause with these codes, you can add more glitchy stuff. Like invisible letters.

[rtm223]

If they just gave us bold, italic and selected colours, with a basic interface, then not really. Also, invisible text wouldn't actually achieve anything. You can't select to make it visible and you anything profane (along with lots of not-profane stuff) will be censored.

I'd love to see coloured text.

[NinjaMicWZ]

It really is time they increased that. It can't be difficult because they already exist in story mode ( with coloured text aswell ) so I can't see the problem. Why don't they just make them available to us and make storytelling much easier.

lolz cuz we iz 2 dum 4 werdz, it waist 4 U 2 uz dem wen nobod gun red dem if werdz on dis gam it go 2 gamsotp 4 gam dat say werd an no spel dem foo!

[rtm223]

Ninja does make a very good point here. I take back what I said before :)

[BSprague]

I think it is silly to not give us access to those basic additions. After all, it does detract from the statement, "We used the same tools in Story Mode that you have in Create Mode." In reality, we don't have them all because if we did, we'd be able to have red text that was also of an extended length. I don't understand why they would exclude us from a simple feature such as that.

[RangerZero]

*sight*

I would just like to be able to do what they do in story mode. Never thought this was too much to ask in a game marketed as "we did the story mode levels with the same tools".

.

[Gilgamesh]

I know that the text limit sure forces one to get to the point. Can't use hyperbole/symbolism or big words much. Have to use the smallest and fewest words possible to describe what you want to say with the simplest phrase structure imaginable. I don't like using more than one mouth to say something, so I live with it. But we sure could use triple the text buffer... at the very least! :p

[RickRock_777]

Good point Gilgamesh...less text pretty much forces the issue to be as brief as possible.

There is a level I'm currently working on for a project, and one segment will require 9 magic mouths, which I heard presents another issue as well, which is a magic mouth limit of 8 appearing at one time. Easy enough to deal with...but a larger text buffer would be a better solution IMO.

Rick

[Leather-Monkey]

Go into create mode, pull out a story mode character that has a magic mouth, tweak the magic mouth and you'll find a code, not writing. Hmm...

[rtm223]

The thing about the limitation is that it does help creators get to the point, so players get an easier ride, but that seems to be a little restrictive on creativity - we should be allowed to make long boring text-based adventures, should we want. I know we have limitations already, but most are for engine / processing reasons.

@leather-monkeys: how cryptic is this code? I think we need a team on this trying to hax it :)

[OmegaSlayer]

I understood why they're jealous of their tools, because they're realizing that there's a lot of people who could do levels way bettere than them.
(I'm serious)

[RickRock_777]

I understood why they're jealous of their tools, because they're realizing that there's a lot of people who could do levels way bettere than them.
(I'm serious)

OmegaSlayer, David Smith of Mm made a statement in a recent interview that they are working on new levels to "outdo" the community levels. Sounds like they are taking the "competition" seriously.


And GREAT FIND Leather-Monkeys! I'll play with this, and see what I can come up with.

Rick

[rtm223]

And GREAT FIND Leather-Monkeys! I'll play with this, and see what I can come up with.

Rick: I'm not as hopeful as I was before :( most have had their speech stripped out, at least in the ones I have (still don't have 100%), but what I did find:

JAPAN_ZEN_MAIN_1_1358747_SPEECH Looks like it's an ID rather than something that could be used. Not only that, it doesn't seem to do anything in a user level, even when I change the text. :(

Let me know if you find anything though :)