Creation Kit

Text: Replacement Tags

The Text Replacement game system parses value tokens and formatting tags. This is used on a several forms like Books and Terminals.

Tokens

Quest-associated books can contain tokens used for Text Replacement if you add a book alias to the quest and set “Uses Stored Text” flag on this alias.

HTML Markup Tags

Some Creation Kit object text fields support a variety of Markup tags used with formatting. This is a limited and customized variation of HTML syntax used by the game.

An Adobe Flash TextField will normally apply the font, color, size, and other properties to the entire text by default. Scaleform supports HTML text that be used to apply formatting to specific parts of the text by using tags.

Example

<!-- This is the example for text markup -->
<font face='$HandwrittenFont' size='35'>Hello World!</font>
<b><i><u>This is bold, italic, and underlined.</u></i></b>
<BR>These are some colors I like.
<ul>
    <li>Black</li>
    <li>White</li>
    <li>Red</li>
    <li>Green</li>
    <li>Blue</li>
</ul>
[pagebreak]
<!-- A new page has starts here -->
<p align='center'>My center aligned text.
<p align='left'>My left aligned text.

Example

<P ALIGN="LEFT">
<FONT FACE="Normal" SIZE="12" COLOR="#000000" LETTERSPACING="0" KERNING="0">
    <i>Lorem ipsum</i>
</FONT>
<FONT FACE="Title" SIZE="14" COLOR="#2010ff" LETTERSPACING="0" KERNING="0">dolor sit amet.</FONT>
</P>

Comment Tag

Comments tell the renderer not display the text wrapped within the tags while still retaining the text in the editor.

<!-- Comment text -->

Line-Break Tag

Breaks the text to the next line. Strictly speaking, this tag isn’t necessary. You can just as easily add blank lines to the book text.

<br>

Page-Break Tag

Breaks to the next page. Must be on its own line. Text automatically breaks to the next page once it reaches the end.

Images do not automatically break to the next page, so if you notice your images running off the edge of the page, manually place a page-break or reduce the size of your image.

[pagebreak]

Bold Tag

The  tag is used to render bolded text. This is used by surrounding text with an opening  tag and a closing  tag.

A bold typeface must be available for the font used. It means that particular font must have "style" : "Bold" mapping entry.

<b>This is bold text.</b>

Italic Tag

The  tag is used to render italicized text. This is used by surrounding text with an opening  tag and a closing  tag.

An italic typeface must be available for the font used. It means that particular font must have "style" : "Italic" mapping entry.

<i>This is italic text.</i>

Underline Tag

The  tag is used to render underlined text. This is used by surrounding text with an opening  tag and a closing  tag.

<u>This is underlined text.</u>

Paragraph Tag

Aligns and delineates a block of text as a paragraph.

The  tag creates a new paragraph.

The text field must be set to be a multiline text field to use this tag. The  tag supports the 'align' attribute, that specifies alignment of text within the paragraph.

The valid 'align' values are left, right, justify, and center.

<p>This text represents a paragraph.</p>

Alignment

Aligns the surrounded text. Valid values are left, right, justify, center.

If you want to place an image within some text so that it wraps around it, the text containing the image needs to be within paragraph tags.

<p align='center'>This text represents a centered paragraph.</p>

Creates an unordered list of items with an empty square for the bullet icon. Each list item is indented and separated by an empty line.

The <ul> tag is an unordered list container used to group list items. This is used by surrounding <li> items with an opening <ul> tag and a closing </ul> tag. The <li> tag is used to render the list item text. List items are used by surrounding text with an opening <li> tag and a closing </li> tag.

<ul>
    <li>Item 1</li>
    <li>Item 2</li>
    <li>Item 3</li>
</ul>

<ul>
    <li>Red</li>
    <li>Green</li>
    <li>Blue</li>
</ul>

Font Tags

Changes the font attributes of the surrounded text.

The  tag specifies a font or list of fonts to display the text.

The font tag supports the following attributes:

color: Only hexadecimal color (#FFFFFF) values are supported.
face: Specifies the name of the font to use.
size: Specifies the size of the font. You can use absolute pixel sizes, such as 16 or 18, or relative point sizes, such as +2 or -4.

<font>

Color

Changes the font’s color.

<font color='#FFFFFF'></font>

Face

Changes the typeface of the font. See the fonts section for valid typeface names.

<font face='$HandwrittenFont'></font>

Point Size

Changes the font size. See below for the line lengths you can accommodate using different font sizes.

<font size='20'></font>

Alpha

Changes the font’s transparency. Two-digit hexadecimal values from '#00' (fully transparent) through '#FF' (fully opaque) are supported.

<font alpha='#FF'></font>

Image Tags

Places an image on the page.

<img>

Source Filename

This attribute specifies the filename of the image you want to show up. You need to use the texture path to an image. Make sure the filename begins with img://.

<img src='img://example.dds'>

Height and Width Sets the height and width of the image in pixels.

<img src='example.dds' height='40' width='40'>

Illuminated Letters Used for adding special illuminated letters at the beginning of books. Replace the “X” with any letter or number.

<img src='img://Textures/Interface/Books/Illuminated_Letters/X_letter.png'>

Papyrus Strings

In practice, Papyrus strings are case-insensitive due to the way the game engine’s string pool operates for efficiency reasons. Most strings in the engine come from this same case-insensitive string pool, with a few exceptions. The pool works by caching a unique occurrence of a string whenever one is encountered by the game engine for the first time. The pool will reuse the cached version of a string for any following occurrences. This means the distinction between uppercase and lowercase may not exist.

For example, the strings “MyString” and “mYsTrInG” are technically equivalent. Which string is used depends on which version of the string is encountered by the game engine first. The game’s load order has an influence on this, among other things. Following the example, if “mYsTrInG” is cached first then any following occurrence of “mystring” will always be “mYsTrInG”.

This is potentially a problem for some game systems which require a case-sensitive string.

Workarounds

In general the workaround to creating a string with any preferred casing would be to use a pseudo uniqueness. For example the string “raider” is cached but you want “Raider”. You can use a pseudo uniqueness by prefixing or suffixing the string with a space character (“ “).

Sticking with the example, the user would be none the wiser if you used “Raider “ for UI purposes. This is not a suitable workaround for all cases. For other cases you should make your strings more unique if possible.

Notes

The game engine internally uses a data structure called BSFixedString for handling string data.
Localized strings, internally BGSLocalizedString, are also vulnerable to string pool limitations.
UI Script function calls to Scaleform are affected by this string casing limitation.
Initialization File related function calls are affected by this string casing limitation.

Sample Book Text

Sample Book text with tag replacement.

<font face='$MAIN_Font' size='24'>
    <p align='center'>
        <b>The Treasures of Jamaica Plain</b>
    </p>
</font>

<font face='$MAIN_Font' size='18'>
    <p align='center'>October 17-23nd, 2077 8am-5pm Daily</p>
</font>

<font face='$MAIN_Font' size='18'>
Come and see the fabulous Treasures of Jamaica Plain!
This stunning exhibit will be on display for one week only before these priceless items are sealed away, never to be seen again!
Bring the entire family to this once-in-a-lifetime event!
</font>

<font size='18'>Tash - I've been thinking about going after the Treasure. Jesse's game. You in?</font>

<p align='right'>
    <img src='img://Textures/Interface/Note/JamaicaPlain_Seal_d.DDS' height='100' width='100'>
</p>

Sample Book Text

<font face='$MAIN_Font' size='24'><p align='center'><b>The Treasures of Jamaica Plain</b></p></font>

<font face='$MAIN_Font' size='18'>
<p align='center'>October 17-23nd, 2077 8am-5pm Daily</p>
</font>

<font face='$MAIN_Font' size='18'>
Come see the fabulous Treasures of Jamaica Plain!
This stunning exhibit will be on display for one week only before these priceless items are sealed away, never to be seen again!
Bring the entire family to this once-in-a-lifetime event!
</font>

<p align='right'>
    <img src='img://Textures/Interface/Note/JamaicaPlain_Seal_d.DDS' height='100' width='100'>
</p>

See Also

Creation Kit

Text: Replacement Tags

Tokens

HTML Markup Tags

Example

Example

Comment Tag

Line-Break Tag

Page-Break Tag

Bold Tag

Italic Tag

Underline Tag

Paragraph Tag

Alignment

List Tag

Font Tags

Color

Face

Point Size

Alpha

Image Tags

Papyrus Strings

Workarounds

Notes

Sample Book Text

Sample Book Text