bamalf wrote:made use of a technique I found to make line breaks in some descriptions, both for weapons and drones
Can you write more about this?

RAD-82 wrote:I don't know what mr_easy_money did, but 2 years ago, I noticed in misc.xml the use of \n\n in the file. My attempt to use it in a ship description failed, but I don't remember if i tried \n or \n\n. I didn't investigate this further.
oh right, forgot I didn't share how I did it. so as RAD-82 pointed out, using the \n character doesn't work, it just writes \n in the description, and doing any variation on that leads nowhere either, \\n, etc.
so I chanced upon the solution when I tried inputting many lines of text inside the flavorType element of a weaponBlueprint (the almost entirety of the bee movie script,
http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scri ... nfeld.html, initially just for laughs). it ended up with this (lol there's text at the top-right of the screen, all bunched up),

jokes aside about how silly this is, you might notice that the last word before a forced line break (that is, a line break in the code, not the "\n" character) gets cut off. I confirmed this with more testing, and eventually found that adding an extra word right before a forced line break made paragraphs appear seamless -- an example. the following code,
Code: Select all
<weaponBlueprint name="LASER_BURST_3">
...
<flavorType>These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. a
Her five-year mission, to explore, strange new worlds. a
To seek out new life and new civilizations. a
To boldy go where no man has gone before. a
a
Double new line!</flavorType>
...
</weaponBlueprint>
resulted in this,

note that there's this annoying "Type:" at the beginning, but you can find the text called "type_header" in misc.xml that sets this and make it blank, resulting in this,

with the "paragraph" structure

right... so then I figured that I could probably do the same thing for weapon description (<desc>), and so I was right, as follows

Code: Select all
<weaponBlueprint name="SHIPRADAR">
<type>BOMB</type>
<flavorType>Scanning Device</flavorType>
<title>Directional Scanner</title>
<short>Direct. Scanner</short>
<locked>1</locked><!-- Doesn't require any power, but instead requires an active weapon to function. -->
<desc>Dedicated scanning device able to reveal an image of any room, even in the absence of working sensors on the ship. a
Can scan rooms on your ship. a
Some other weapon must be powered in order for it to work.</desc>
<!-- trimmed -->
</weaponBlueprint>
--------
so in general, adding an extra word before a forced line break (I used 'a' because it is literally the simplest thing) should let you use line breaks in flavorType and desc for both weapons and drones. of course, the space in desc is much more limited, so keep that in mind, and it should also work for augments, but there isn't really enough space there. I don't know, but I have a strong feeling this will work for text elements for events, but I haven't tested it so I can't be sure.
--------Last but not least, I created a Python program that generates Slipstream tags to add the description of a weapon into the weapon's flavorType element, for all weapons in a given file, making use of this "paragraph" technique for each sentence. You can find the program here, on GitHub: perhaps someone will find this useful
https://github.com/blizzarchon/FTL-See- ... ion-on-HUDthat's how I ended up with this image

remember, just set type_header blank to get rid of the "Type:" thing, or, you can change it to something else like "Description:\n"