Projects & settings

Project Settings

File ▸ Project Settings… (⌘,) opens a tabbed dialog:

Project settings, with tabs grouped down the left (Project / Story data / Writing & audio / Localisation). The Audio Status tab is shown here, mapping each recording stage to a folder on disk.

• General: project name, the Start scene (where the story begins, used by Play ▸ Play from Start and the coverage test), your version-control system, the voiced flag, the formatting (bold/italic) toggle, autosave, the Build output path, and how strings are handled (localisation mode: Embedded or IDs-only, with a source-debug option).
• Language: the languages your project supports and which one is the source.
• Game Data: the fields each kind of beat can carry (see Conditions, effects & data).
• Properties: the @patter properties your story remembers.
• World Properties: the @world values your game owns and your story reads (declaring them is covered in Properties & Game Data), plus the coverage drivers that stand in for them during a coverage test.
• Cast: your characters: script name, an optional display name for translation, notes, and an actor. Each character’s colour is shown but chosen for you.
• Writing Status / Audio Status: the status ladders, each stage with its own colour. Audio Status is opt-in (a Track Audio Status? switch) and needs the project to be Voiced; see Recording status & audio.
• Estimating: size still-unwritten scenes by a guess instead of their placeholder lines, so the report shows the work ahead. See Estimating.
• Closed Captions: the brackets (default [ / ]) and the caption character (default SFX) your game uses to strip non-spoken cues from dialogue when a player turns captions off. Avoid ( as the opener: parentheses open a performer direction at the start of a line. See Closed captions.
• Dictionary: spell-check setup (below).

The tabs are grouped down the left (Project / Story data / Writing & audio / Localisation) so the list stays easy to read as it grows.

Version control

Choose your VCS (git, Perforce, Plastic, SVN, or none) when you create the project or in Project Settings ▸ General. Patterpad is lock- and merge-aware: a scene locked by someone else goes read-only, your own edits check out when you save, and per-scene badges show each file’s state. The full picture, what needs the VCS tool installed and how Patter merges changes, is on its own page: Version control.

Localisation export / import

Production ▸ Export / Import Localisation… hands your text out for translation and folds it back in (also reachable from the Language settings tab):

• Export the text for a language, or a blank template for the source, as JSON, Excel (.xlsx), or PO/POT.
• Import a translated file back; the language comes from the file (or you set it), and Patterpad tells you how many lines it updated.

Patterpad only ever shows and edits the source language; the translations live off to the side and round-trip through this dialog. The full story is under Localisation.

Building a bundle

Publish ▸ Publish Bundle (⇧⌘B) compiles your project into the .patterc file your game loads (a toast confirms where it landed). This is what you ship to a Patterplay runtime.

The same build runs from the terminal with patter export, so you can compile it in a script or a CI pipeline without opening the app. See Automation: the CLI.

Spell-check

Patterpad checks your spelling as you write: a red wavy underline appears under words it doesn’t know in dialogue and narration (character names and your project word list are left alone). Right-click a flagged word for up to five suggestions, Add to dictionary (it saves to the project word list), or Ignore for the session. Set it up under Project Settings ▸ Dictionary: pick a built-in dictionary (en-US / en-GB) or import your own, and manage your project words. The Spell-check page has the details.

Updates

Patterpad keeps itself up to date: Help ▸ Check for Updates… downloads the next version in the background, then asks to relaunch, taking care not to lose unsaved work.