USER GUIDE

VER 2.0.0

CREDITS:
Project Author: Rem
Coders: Cynware || Rem
Musicians: NoOneDoesStuff || Partways

CONTRIBUTORS:
PonPrairie

SPECIAL THANKS:
PMDCollab
Skytemple
ShinxHijinx
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1 - Program Shortcuts​ 3

Chapter 2 - The Dialogue Tab​ 4
2.1 - The Input Field​ 4
2.2 - The Prefix Field​ 5
2.3 - Text Alignment​ 5
2.5 - Option Box Settings​ 6
2.6 - The Portrait​ 6
Chapter 3 - The Portrait Tab​ 7
3.1 - LOADING A LOCAL PORTRAIT​ 7
3.2 - LOADING A PMDCOLLAB PORTRAIT​ 9
Chapter 4 - The Themes Tab​ 10
4.1 - LOADING A BOX SKIN​ 10
Chapter 5 - The Presets Tab​ 11
Chapter 6 - What to do if PMDDC doesn’t boot?​ 12
5.1 - “Unable to initialize Vulkan video driver” or Fully Black Screen​ 12
Chapter 7 - Known Bugs​ 13

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Chapter 1 - Program Shortcuts

EDITOR SHORTCUTS
SAVING
-​ F12 || CTRL + S
TOGGLE EDITOR
-​ Tab
QUICK-EXIT OUT OF SUB-MENUS
-​ Esc

PORTRAIT SELECTION SHORTCUTS

MOVING THE PORTRAIT
-​ Arrow Keys
QUICK-MOVING THE PORTRAIT
-​ Shift + Arrow Keys

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Chapter 2 - The Dialogue Tab

When you open the program for the first time, you’ll be met with the Dialogue Tab.
This is where you spend your time actually writing the dialogue for your characters.

1.​ Input Field

2.​ Prefix Field
3.​ Text Alignment
4.​ Symbols/Glyphs
5.​ Option Box Settings
6.​ The Portrait

2.1 - The Input Field

The input field is relatively self-explanatory.

It’s where you write in the dialogue you want
to be displayed on the Dialogue Box. You can
use the “COLOR” box at the top to change
the color of your current text. You can also
highlight text and change the color from
there. The Color Picker displays several
built-in colors under the “Swatches”
dropdown, showing several colors that are
used for dialogue in PMD: Explorers of Sky.

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2.2 - The Prefix Field

The Prefix Field displays the name for your character. You can toggle it on and off with the checkbox below
the Color Picker.

2.3 - Text Alignment

This dropdown lets you choose how to align your text.

You can choose for it to be aligned to the left, the
center, and the right.

2.4 - Symbols / Glyphs

This is the symbol menu. The symbols on the left-hand

side are all symbols that are used in PMD’s UI. On the
right-hand side, you’ll find custom-made emojis for
more silly shenanigans.
You can press the “CLOSE” button to exit out of the
menu.

This is the Glyph menu. You can select a couple preset

ones by clicking them, or you can go to the full
character map made by ShinxHijinx on DaFont. The
“Unown Keys” toggle changes the standard alphabet to
Unown symbols corresponding to the right symbol.

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2.5 - Option Box Settings

Clicking on the green icon at the top of the Dialogue Tab brings you here! A screen where you can enable
the “Option Box”! Or, well, I’d guess a more professional name would be a Dialogue Prompt. These can be
used for the obvious: Answers to questions or prompts! You can use the marked out arrows to decide
where the arrow in the UI ends up, and you can enable highlighting to highlight the currently selected
option. For more customisation, you can add padding to the box and offset the text horizontally.
(I’ve discovered that padding and offsets are needed to recreate some of the jank in certain PMD2
Dialogue Prompts.)

2.6 - The Portrait

For lack of a better place to put this- The portrait! You’re able to drag the portrait around by holding down
left-click, or you’re able to click it once to select it and move it around with the arrow keys. You can hold
down SHIFT to move the portrait around faster with the arrow keys!

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Chapter 3 - The Portrait Tab

The Portrait Tab’s main screen gives you two main

options, alongside three settings you can apply to
the portrait.
You can either choose to load the portrait from
PMDCollab or your Local Files.
The three options at the bottom allow you to
change the alignment of your portrait, the
direction your portrait is facing, and if your
portrait is visible or not.

3.1 - LOADING A LOCAL PORTRAIT

If you’d like to load a custom Portrait for your character, click on the yellow folder icon on the top right of
the “LOCAL FILE DIRECTORY” submenu. This will open your OS’ file explorer in the path
\AppData\Roaming\Godot\app_userdata\Pokemon Mystery Dungeon- Dialog Creator\Portraits. From here,
you’ll see a single folder named “template”.

Create a folder with the name of your character, then drag all of the images corresponding to their
emotions inside. They will automatically be resized within the program. It’s preferred if you use PNG files
for upscaled portraits, as .webp files don’t scale correctly.

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 Once you’re back in the program, press the
“Refresh” button next to the folder. Your
character should be available in the
dropdown! you can change the emotion on
the dropdown beside it.
Your characters and portraits will be
shown in alphabetical order. I’d
recommend adding an “AA_” prefix to your
default portrait, so that it’s fixed to the top
of the list.

If you wish to create a custom “flipped” variant of your portrait

for something like an asymmetrical character design, you’ll
want to copy the name of the normal portrait and add an “^” at
the end of the file’s name. It will not appear in your portrait
selection, but choosing “Flip” in the main portraits screen will
change your sprite to the flipped variant!

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3.2 - LOADING A PMDCOLLAB PORTRAIT

Upon first opening the program and navigating to the “Portraits” tab, you’ll be prompted to download the
portraits from the internet onto your PC. After the download is complete, you’ll be able to access all of the
portraits made by the PMD community! These include the official Chunsoft sprites, as well as fan-made
portraits for Pokémon that have not appeared after Gen 4.

The Pokémon can be chosen by typing in its

National Dex number or its name.

From there, you can choose the emotion, as well

as the form of the Pokémon in the two dropdowns
below.

You can click the “OPEN” button to open the

directory of the current Pokémon, so you can copy
them and make your own!

If there is a Pokémon that appears on the PMDCollab website but not on the program, you should
re-download the files to make sure you’re up-to-date.

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Chapter 4 - The Themes Tab

The “Themes” Tab has everything you need to

customize the background, portrait and
dialogue box.

The Background section allows you to load in

images to display as your background, or you
can change the color of it. There are also
several built-in backgrounds for you to choose
from, originating from the Explorers titles.

4.1 - LOADING A BOX SKIN

When you click “LOAD BOX SKIN” in the

Themes Tab, you’ll be brought to this
submenu. Here you can choose the color of
the border through three genders: Male,
Female, and Neither. These are tied to the
colors Blue, Pink and Green respectively.
On the top you’ll have a dropdown between
the five main dialogue box skins in Explorers
of Sky. When you click on the folder, you’ll be
brought to
\AppData\Roaming\Godot\app_userdata\Pokemon Mystery Dungeon- Dialog Creator\BoxSkins. From here,
you can use the Template folder to customize the dialogue box to your preference. You can make as many
custom skins as you want, given they follow the same format.

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Chapter 5 - The Presets Tab

In the presets tab, you’re able to save your

current setup as a character. It will save your
Box Skin, gender, name, color and portrait to
a .json file you can select from the dropdown.
The trash can icon will delete the currently
selected preset from the list.

Presets will save:

-​ The Pokémon Portrait
-​ Portrait Visibility
-​ Textbox Border & Gender
-​ Character Name & Color

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Chapter 6 - What to do if PMDDC doesn’t boot?

5.1 - “Unable to initialize Vulkan video driver” or Fully Black Screen

If you’re greeted with this error, consider following these steps to run the program instead.
1.​ Right Click [Link] and create a
shortcut (under “show more options” if
you’re using Win11).
2.​ Right Click the newly created shortcut,
and click on properties.
3.​ In the properties, you’ll see a field called
“Target”. At the end of the path name, add
a space and type “--rendering-driver
opengl3”. It should look like “\[Link]
--rendering-driver opengl3”.
4.​ Click “Apply”, “OK”, and boot the program
through the shortcut.

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Chapter 7 - Known Bugs

-​ None, All should be working as intended!

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