Support multiple characters on screen at once

[notexplosive]

Description

Writers want the ability to display two characters on screen simultaneously. This is slightly more complex than just "showing 2 characters at once" since we'd need to adjust their positions so they're taking up the left/right of the screen, rather than both sitting centered.

Acceptance Criteria

This story will be finished when we can achieve an effect similar to shown in this Mockup.

This includes a way for writers to invoke this behavior via a Narrative Script.

[ViMaSter]

Think it'd be best to chat with art/design on which exact scenarios they have in mind for Case 2.

There are a few things that come to mind that might warrant a "new" solution over the existing slot system:

• one slot being occupied by a rotating cast of actors
• a need to dynamically show "between X - Y actors" on screen, rather than a fixed amount

However, if there's only one scene with two characters sharing a screen exactly once, I'd probably just create a scene with offsets that fits both characters by hand and call it a day. 👀

[PhoebeMitchell]

As discussed on discord this is already possible , albeit a bit verbosely as the jump to position action needs to be called as well at the speak action to switch the speaker. A minimum fix might just be to remove the need for jump to position and make the speak action set the speaking animation as well as the text box name/colour.

Has there been any further communication how the writers/artists want this feature implemented with the new scripts? I.e. is it actually used at all

[ViMaSter]

Heeeeeey, guess who created a redundant issue? 🫠

Plenty of usage planned. I'd be fine with closing this in favor of #443, since that has a clear design based on the meeting on August 5th. Or you can just copy over the details to this one and close the new one; whatever you prefer!