HPL3/Amnesia: Rebirth/Tutorials/Tablets

This tutorial will detail how to make a custom Dark World tablet. They are the dark-grey tablets that have hieroglyphic text on them which gets translated after a moment. The tutorial assumes you can set up your mod and have basic skills in scripting etc.

If you are already familiar with how the readables system works, the way the tablets work will be largely familiar to you. The tablets only require a few simple steps more than e.g. a note, but this tutorial will cover their creation from scratch.

Tutorial

To get a custom readable tablet in Rebirth:

1. In readables.cfg:
   1. Set up a new category for your map.
   2. Create a new entry. Set the note ID and FrontEntry to whatever you want. They don't have to be the same, although that's what FG usually did.
2. In english.lang:
   1. Place a category in with the same name as the category ID from readables.cfg
   2. In that category, set up an entry with the same name as the FrontEntry name previously set for the tablet in readables.cfg
   3. Add an entry called <FrontEntry Name>_En. This is the blue text that will appear on the tablet itself (you probably want to set the same text as previously).
   4. Add an entry called <FrontEntry Name>_Name. This is the name of the entry in the sketchbook.
   5. Add a category called "Levels" and inside add an entry which is called the same as the "Name" parameter in the readables.cfg category. This will be the sketchbook category.
3. In your map:
   1. Place the dw_tablet_readable.ent entity somewhere in a level
   2. Set the Readable/ID parameter of the entity to the ID from readables.cfg
   3. Set the GUI func to OnGuiDWNote and set text scale as wanted
4. In the map script:
   1. Add this to your include list in your map script: #include "helpers/custom/helper_props_custom.hps"
   2. Place this function somewhere in your script:

void OnGuiDWNote(const tString&in asEntityName, float afTimeStep)
{
    DWNote_RenderGUI(asEntityName, afTimeStep);
}

If you want to make a tablet unreadable (orange gibberish), leave the Readable/ID parameter of the tablet empty. This means that it doesn't need lang and readables entries.

Warning: You can add a BackEntry to a tablet, but the blue text won't render so it will be easily missed - and therefore is not recommended.

Good practices:

• Name your tablet in game as Readable_<ID HERE>
• If the tablet isn't going to be readable, name the entity like this: Readable_DWNote_MiscXX, where XX are numbers

Config file examples

English.lang:

<LANGUAGE>
  <CATEGORY Name="sample_map">
		<Entry Name="TestTablet_FrontEntry">My first tablet bla bla bla bla bla</Entry>
		<Entry Name="TestTablet_FrontEntry_Name">This is the entry name in the sketchbook</Entry>
        <Entry Name="TestTablet_FrontEntry_En">This is what will appear on the tablet in blue text</Entry>
  </CATEGORY>
  
   <CATEGORY Name="Levels">
		<Entry Name="sample_map_sketchbook_category">This is the category name in the sketchbook</Entry>
  </CATEGORY>
  
</LANGUAGE>

Readables.cfg:

<Readables>
	<Categories>
	
		<Category ID="sample_map" Name="sample_map_sketchbook_category">
			<Notes>
				<Note ID="TestTablet" VoiceSubject="" FrontEntry="TestTablet_FrontEntry" BackEntry="" ImageEntry="" />
			</Notes>
		</Category>
				
	</Categories>
</Readables>

Results