Since I seem to be getting in some edit wars, rather than continue with that, I wanna make my position clear.
Walls of text are ugly. They are a pain to look at, they are difficult to read, and they totally break up the flow of the story.
So please. When you're dealing with a block of text that takes up more than 1/3rd of the screen, don't use the "extend" modifier; break it up into paragraphs. It's much more appealing to the reader.
Buuuut...
QuoteThe text should be adapted 100% as is, no matter how minor or superficial the change.
^_________________________________^
Still, as this goes directly against one hated principle, I am totally in support of Oroboro's position. Besides, we are doing text-on-top-half-of-a-screen-positioned ADV, so anything approaching the faces of our heroes should be cut up anyway.
I think what's quoted there, though it is what was posted in the guidelines thread, overstates what was actually agreed on; I believe the wording should be preserved unchanged, but textual aesthetics that work in prose text files just don't in a VN.
And I agree. Paragraph breaks and nvl clear should be used rather liberally to break things up.
I get the feeling is directed more towards me. I've been using extend to add sound effects and change expressions mid paragraph a lot in the later chapters. I'll start breaking up the longer paragraphs then.
I've also been adding a few extends mid sentence for sound effects. Is that okay to continue putting them there, so long as the paragraph isn't long?
While using extend to insert expression changes and sound effects mid sentence is nice, from my experience showing the VN to people, everyone just clicks to skip the text scrolling, even if they don't read fast, and tend to miss stuff like that anyway.
But other than that, it's fine. I just wouldn't rely on it too much.
The use of the extend modifier is precisely to insert Ren'py code (image transitions, sound effects, whatever) in the middle of a line. If that's not what you're doing, then you're better served by either running your two strings together into one line or (if you just want a pause in mid-line) by using the relevant pseudo-HTML tag. None of this is relevant to the question of text spacing; that's entirely a matter of choosing your paragraph breaks and nvl clears properly.