Character

A character is the named entity that dialogue events fire from and that the host game identifies as a speaker. You create characters in the editor’s Characters panel, then reference them on dialogue nodes and events through the Speaker field.

For conventions shared by all entity types, see Entities.

Character inspector for Anne showing the Name field, NPC checkbox, and Appears-in-N-nodes reverse-lookup. — The Character inspector, opened from the Characters tab of the Data View.

Fields

ID

The renameable, expression-namespace identifier for the character. You’ll type this in expressions that reference the character and pick from it in the editor’s character picker. Renaming the ID updates expressions that mention the old name; it doesn’t break the character’s binding to dialogue nodes and events.

Convention: character IDs are prefixed char_. Existing characters aren’t renamed when the prefix convention shifts; consistency is enforced at create-time only.

NPC

When true, the character is treated as a non-player character: an engine-driven speaker whose dialogue is authored and resolved by the story runtime. When false, the character is treated as a player character whose input comes from the host game’s controls. Drives dialogue routing: the runtime and host use this flag to decide whether to present choices to the player or auto-resolve the character’s lines.

Default is false.

Name

The human-readable display name shown in the editor’s characters table, on dialogue nodes that carry the character, and in any debugging UI. Free-form string, author-typed. This is the visible label (not the expression-namespace ID), and it’s what the host game renders as the speaker’s name in dialogue boxes.

Translator notes

Name can carry a translator note: see Entities for more information.

Player ID

Which input slot this character is controlled by. In single-player runs this is always 1; in multiplayer scenarios, different player characters can be mapped to different slots so the host game knows who controls whom. Default is 1.

When to reach for characters

Create a character the first time a node needs a named speaker. The flow is: author a node, assign a Speaker, write the caption text. Renaming the character later updates every caption that references it. Player ID stays hidden in the inspector when the project has a single player; it appears once you raise the player count in project settings, and then needs setting for any character whose NPC flag is off.

Beyond dialogue, characters double as world-layer encounter triggers. When the host UI surfaces a character somewhere in the game world, clicking them starts whichever encounter is currently available at the player’s location. The runtime tracks the available set and tells the host which encounter the click starts.