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, Auto Rebuild (recompile the bundle as you edit, see below), 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, and an actor. Expand a row (▸) for Grammatical gender - free text (blank = not specified) with auto-suggest for the everyday values (male / female / neuter) and any others already used in the cast, sent to translators so a gendered language can inflect that character’s lines (see Localisation) - and free-text Notes on casting, voice, or intent. 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.

Auto Rebuild

Turn on Auto Rebuild (the Publish menu’s checkbox, or Project Settings ▸ General) and Patterpad recompiles the bundle for you a moment after you stop editing, so the .patterc on disk stays current without you pressing Publish Bundle. Handy when your game reads the bundle straight from disk and you want to see changes without a manual build.

It’s careful about it: the rebuild only writes when the compiled bundle actually changed (so it won’t churn the file on cosmetic edits), and if the project is momentarily invalid mid-edit (a half-written condition, say) it quietly keeps the last good build rather than failing. The existing stale-bundle check still flags a bundle that has fallen behind.

It’s off by default, and best left off if you commit the .patterc to a lock-based version control system (Perforce or Plastic): rebuilding on every change would keep checking the file out. With git (or none), and the default gitignored patter-dist/ output, it’s free of side effects.

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.