COMBINING TWO TEXT STRINGS
 

GUYS

GUYS

MIND = BLOWN

I WAS PLAYING AROUND IN WEBJCS AND MAKING FULL USE OF THE 512 CHARACTER LIMIT AND...

...deep breaths, Sean.

So I somehow with pure idiocy managed to put together a perfect 512 character text string. I think I stuck that into Text ID 10. Then I proceeded to make another extremely long winded message in Text ID 11, and when it came to run, I walked into Text ID 10, only to realize that it was displaying Text ID 10 AND 11 at the same time! After mulling it over I moved the 512 character message over to Text ID 14 on a hunch. Text ID 15 contained credits to the tileset's creator and such. So I changed the Text event parameters and ran the level again.

Once again it displayed ID 14 and 15 together.

So it just seems that filling up a Text ID to its fullest makes it display the next one at the same time. Talk about the possibilities for character dialogue.

Here's a sample level containing the same effect.

This isn't nearly as revolutionary as the nested animations that Violet discovered, but it's still pretty neat.

I also don't know yet if it's possible to display three text strings at the same time, and I haven't tested it, but if someone could write home that would be great.

Viewing the effect under the hood requires a program that allows 512 characters, obviously.

EDIT: Tested the level in all conceivable versions of Jazz, and surprise surprise, they all work.

Huh, I thought I mentioned that in the Reworder readme, but I guess not. It's still here, though.

Neobeo's Firetruck contains 13 text strings with more than 800 characters each. There shouldn't be anything stopping it from displaying an arbitrarily long text string though.

Zero, because text still disappears at the same speed. Use a tileset with words in it for long messages.

The best use for extremely long text strings is to do special things with formatting that take up a lot of characters. Eg long coloured messages.

Time for a formatted text string art contest, I reckon.

Actually, that's still kind of the point. Different characters can be distinguished with different formatting, so even small amounts of actual dialogue can take up plenty of space.

That's only 504 characters by my count.

So, could someone explain to me, in layman's terms, what this exactly does, and how having two Text Strings shown at the same time helps(Does it make it so you can have text strings that are 1024 Chars long, or something?)?

It basically means that you can have a text string that is 8192 characters long, or several text strings of lengths smaller than 8192 but potentially longer than 512. Or longer in 1.23, but then you run the risk of messing up other stuff. JJ2, when displaying a text string, starts from a character specified by the text parameter and then keeps reading characters until it hits a blank (00) character. If a text string is three characters long, then it will be followed by five hundred and nine blank characters, and JJ2 will notice the very first one of them and so only display those first three characters. However, if a text string contains 512 characters uninterrupted by blank characters, then JJ2 will keep on reading characters into what is typically considered the following text string.

If you're not sure how this works, you can download the level from the first post.

Interesting. Thanks. :)