Theming Default Presenters

The default Dialogue Presenters that come with Yarn Spinner have their own specific look, but they're designed to be re-themed without requiring any custom code.

The Theming Default Presenters sample and guide demonstrates how to modify the built-in line and options presenters to use a sliced sprite and different font for a complete visual overhaul—all without writing any code.

What we'll be covering

• Modifying existing dialogue presenters

• Slicing sprites via the sprite editor

• Importing custom fonts into TextMeshPro

• The nightmare hellscape that is Unity UI

This guide walks you through the creation of a project we provide, completed, as a sample.

Building the scene

If you haven't already installed Yarn Spinner, follow the instructions at Installation for Unity. Once installed, we'll start by building out a basic scene:

1. Make a new scene in Unity.

2. From Samples/Shared Assets/Prefabs drag the Basic Arena into the scene

3. From Samples/Shared Assets/Prefabs add a Camera Rig into the scene

4. From Samples/Shared Assets/Prefabs drag a Player prefab into the scene

5. From Samples/Shared Assets/Prefabs drag an NPC prefab into the scene and rename it to be Alice

6. Add a default dialogue system to the scene, in the Hierarchy right click Yarn Spinner -> Dialogue Runner

7. Create a new Yarn Spinner project Assets -> Create -> Yarn Spinner -> Yarn Project and name it Rethemed Dialogue

8. Create a new Yarn script Assets -> Create -> Yarn Spinner -> Yarn Script and name it Alice

9. Delete the previous camera called Main Camera

The Dialogue

Replace the contents of the Alice Yarn script with the following:

title: Alice
---
Player: Hello
Alice: Hello, this is a sample showing off retheming the base dialogue presenters

-> Neat
    Alice: right?
-> Dull
    Alice: rude!
===

This is a very simple node with just a few lines of dialogue and a single option. All we need is to show off the main features of lines and options, so feel free to change it, but for now this is sufficient.

Configuring the scene

1. Select the Camera Rig and in the inspector drag the Player into the target field

2. Select Alice and in the Inspector set the Dialogue field to use the new Rethemed Dialogue project

3. Select Alice and in the Inspector select the Alice node in the dropdown

4. Select Alice and in the Dialogue Runner field drag in the Dialogue System object from the hierarchy

5. Select the Dialogue System and in the Inspector set the Yarn Project to use the Rethemed Dialogue project

The Font

Arguably the easiest but most impactful change you can make is to use a different font. This will immediately make the UI look different with minimal effort. Selecting a font is a very important stylistic choice for your game, as it will influence everything about how you design the rest of your UI.

For this sample, we've chosen a pixel font that works well with our desired aesthetic. At this stage, we're just adding the font to the project; we'll connect it to the various presenters later.

1. Grab the PixelifySans font from LINK TO FONT

2. Add the font into the Project assets

3. Go to Window -> TextMeshPro -> Font Asset Creator

4. Drag the PixelifySans-Bold font into the Source Font field

5. Click Generate Font Asset

6. Click Save and save the TMP version of the font into your project

7. Repeat these steps for the PixelifySans-Regular font

With this done, our fonts are ready to be used. We'll return to them when we start making layout changes, but first we also need some sprites.

The Sprites

Our retheming will rely on a sprite sheet that we'll slice. Let's set that up now. We'll need the Sprite Editor for slicing, which you might already have installed.

1. Open the Package Manager by going to Window -> Package Manager

2. In the side bar select the Unity Registry option

3. Wait for Unity to populate the manager

4. Find the package called 2D Sprite

5. Install it

1. Add the sprite sheet into the project from link to sprite sheet

2. Select the sprite sheet and in the Inspector change it's Texture Type to be Sprite (2D and UI)

3. Set the sprite mode to be Multiple

4. Set the Pixels per Unit to be 20

5. Set the Filter Mode to be Point (no filter)

6. Click Apply

7. Select the sprite sheet and in the Inspector click on the Open Sprite Editor button

Now we need to slice the sprite sheet into individual sprites and define the regions. Without doing this, the sprites would stretch in undesirable ways and look distorted. We need to identify and slice eight different sprites, which is somewhat tedious to describe, but thankfully the Sprite Editor makes the process relatively straightforward.

1. In the top bar of the editor, in the Slice dropdown configure it to be an Automatic slice with a Center pivot and click the Slice button

This does most of the work for us, using the transparent space in the sprite sheet to identify the eight different sprites. Now that we have the individual sprites identified, we need to define which regions can stretch and which cannot. Without this step, the sprites will scale oddly.

1. Select the left-topmost sprite

2. Name it Button-Filled-Up

3. Set it's L, R, T, and B to all be 7

4. Select the sprite on the right of the Button-Filled-Up sprite

5. Name it Button-Empty-Up

6. Set it's L, R, T, and B to all be 7

7. Select the sprite on the right of the Button-Empty-Up sprite

8. Name it Button-Continue-Up

9. Set it's L, R, T, and B to all be 7

10. Select the sprite on the right of the Button-Continue-Up sprite

11. Name it Option-Selected

12. Select the sprite below the Button-Filled-Up sprite

13. Name it Button-Filled-Down

14. Set it's L, R, T, and B to all be 7

15. Select the sprite on the right of the Button-Filled-Down sprite

16. Name it Button-Empty-Down

17. Set it's L, R, T, and B to all be 7

18. Select the sprite on the right of the Button-Empty-Down sprite

19. Name it Button-Continue-Down

20. Select the bottom-leftmost sprite

21. Name it Background

22. Set it's L, R, T, and B to all be 16

23. Click the Apply button

Now all our sprites are neatly sliced and ready to use. This was quite a bit of slicing, but fortunately most sprites use the same slice settings. If you don't want to do all this work or made a mistake, you can grab the pre-sliced version from the Sample folder. What we've accomplished here is defining which parts of each sprite can stretch and which parts should remain fixed.

The Line Presenter

Next, we'll modify the Line Presenter to use our custom sprites instead of the default visuals.

1. Select the Dialogue System prefab in the Hierarchy

2. Expand out the Canvas -> Line View and select the Background gameobject

3. In the Image component of the Inspector change the Source Image to be our freshly sliced Background sprite

4. In the Image component of the Inspector change the Color to be fully opaque white

5. In the Image component of the Inspector change the Image Type dropdown to be Sliced

6. In the Hierarchy select the Line View game object

7. In the Vertical Layout Group component set the Left and Right padding to be 40, the Top to be 24, The bottom to be 115 and set the Spacing to be 20

Now we need to make the line presenter use our custom font.

1. Select the Text Mesh Pro field inside of Dialogue System -> Canvas -> Line View -> Character Name

2. In the Inspector on the Text Mesh Pro component change the Font Asset field to point to the Pixelify-Sans font

3. Set the font size to be 48

4. Select the Text Mesh Pro field inside of Dialogue System -> Canvas -> Line View -> Text

5. In the Inspector on the Text Mesh Pro component change the Font Asset field to point to the Pixelify-Sans font

6. Set the font size to be 50

7. Expand the Extra Settings section and find the Margins

8. Set the margins to be Left 20, Top 0, Right 20, and Bottom 0

With that, our line presenter is finished! We can test it to see how it looks in action.

The Options Presenter

We're halfway there! Now we need to apply similar changes to our options presenter. This has a slight additional step—we'll need to make a prefab for our option items—but otherwise the process is similar to what we did for the line presenter. Let's start by creating the options item prefab, which requires the most work.

1. Right click on the Options Presenter Dialogue Systemm -> Canvas -> Options View and add a new UI -> Text - TextMeshPro child game object

2. Rename it to be Option Item

3. Select the Option Item and in the Inspector find the Text Mesh Pro component

4. Change the Font Asset to point to Pixelify-Sans font

5. Set the Font Size to be 50

6. Expand out the Extra Settings

7. Set the margins to be Left 30, and Top, Right and Bottom to all be 0

8. Add a new Image child game object to the Option Item

9. Rename it to be called Selection Indicator

10. Make it so it is a full height stretch but with a fixed width of 20

11. Select the Options Item in the Hierarchy

12. Add an Options Item component onto the game object

13. In the Text field drag the Option Item game object in

14. In the Selection Image field drag in the Selection Indicator game object

15. Expand out the Selected section of the inspector

16. Set the Selected sprite to be the Option-Selected sprite

17. Drag the Option Item game object out of the Hierarchy into the Assets to make it a prefab

18. Delete the existing Option Item game object, it has served it's purpose

With that done, our final steps are to modify the Options Presenter to use our new Option Item.

1. Select the Options View game object in the Hierarchy

2. In the Inspector find the Options View Prefab field inside the Options Presenter component

3. Replace the existing prefab with our Option Item prefab we made above

4. Select the Background child game object of the option presenter

5. In the Inspector find the Image component

6. Set the Source Image to be our Background sprite

7. Set the Color to be fully opaque white

8. Set the Image Type to be Sliced

9. Select the Last Line child game object

10. In the Inspector on the Text Mesh Pro component change the Font Asset field to point to the Pixelify-Sans font

11. Change the Font Size to be 48

12. Set the Font to be using Bold

13. Expand the Extra Settings and change the Margins to be Left, Right and Top to be 0, and set Bottom to be 14

And with that, our Options Presenter is also rethemed!

Congrats!

With these straightforward changes, we've completely transformed the look of the default dialogue presenters without writing any code. Hopefully, you now feel confident in your ability to customize the visuals of built-in presenters. Take your newly styled dialogue system for a spin and see how it enhances your game's visual identity!