Dialog: add text commands for pausing text

[Rebusmind]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. Currently the only way to add dramatic pauses (or otherwise control the flow of dialog during one text) is to set the text speed to slow after a word, let the space between words play out slowly and then set it back to normal dialog speed.

Describe the solution you'd like Bloody Lizard suggested this on Discord, but I've been wanting this myself for some time now. Two additional text commands would be great to have:

• One to pause the dialog for a set amount of time. There could be different preset wait amounts to choose from (0.25s, 0.5s, 1s, 2s)
• One to pause the dialog until A is pushed

[chrismaltby]

Hi @Rebusmind, Good idea!

So the second suggestion was technically possible already with (quite hidden in documentation) GBVM escape sequences https://www.gbstudio.dev/docs/scripting/gbvm/gbvm-operations#escape-sequences

Using the text BEFORE \006\020 AFTER would write before then wait for the A button before continuing, and changing 020 for other values (it's an octal representation of an 8-bit mask) would change which buttons the dialogue would wait for.

But yeah, not very well documented and requires quite a bit more technical knowledge than I'd prefer so I've instead just implemented a new text code typing !wait will let you choose "Wait Until Button Pressed" which then lets you select the buttons

For your first suggestion, we don't have support for waiting for a certain amount of time just yet in GBVM, I'll have a think about that

[Rebusmind]

Hey Chris, that looks like a great way to implement this. Thanks! I hope you find a way to implement the other suggestion as well, as I would use that quite often (I love dramatic pauses 😆). Timers don't work during dialog, right?