Visual-novel portraits over the dialogue window — two characters at once, the speaker lit.

Dialogue Busts

A bust is portrait art that stands over the dialogue window while a character talks — the visual-novel look. Each NPC keeps a small bust library (one entry per expression: calm, angry, crying…), and each page of a conversation can direct the stage: who stands on the left, who on the right, how they arrive, and who is talking. The speaker is lit; the listener is dimmed.

You author busts in two places:

The library: Database → NPCs → (your NPC) → 🎭 Dialogue Busts.
The direction: under every page in 🗨️ Conversation (the 🎭 Busts row), and under every line in Database → Quests → (your quest) → Dialogue.

Quick start — a portrait in one step#

Open Database → NPCs, pick an NPC, and find the 🎭 Dialogue Busts card.
Click + Add a bust from the media library… and pick an image. Square faces (like the RPG Maker faces imported into /rmmz-faces) and tall painted busts both work.
That's it. The first bust you add becomes the default, and every conversation page with no stage direction shows it on the left, talking — so every existing conversation gains a portrait without you touching a single page.

Build a two-character scene#

In the 🎭 Dialogue Busts card, add one bust per expression and give each an Expression name (e.g. neutral, angry). Do the same on the other character's NPC.
Open 🗨️ Conversation, pick a node, and expand 🎭 Busts under page 1.
Click + Add cue. Set Side to Left, leave the character as this NPC, pick an expression, and tick Speaking.
Click + Add cue again. Set Side to Right, pick the other character from the Character dropdown (only NPCs that have busts are listed), and pick an Entrance such as Slide in.
Under page 2, add a cue for the right side with Speaking ticked — the other character now talks and your NPC dims. Type their name in Speaker name for this page so the window title changes too.
Use the preview under each page (switch it to Phone size to check small screens) and save. Busts stay on stage from page to page until a cue replaces or clears them.

Bust library fields#

Field	What it does
Image	The art, picked from the media library. The save is refused if the image is not in the media library.
Bust id	Read-only. What a page cue points at when it names this exact bust.
Label	Editor-only name, e.g. "Mira — furious".
Expression	A mood name. Cues can ask for a character's angry bust by name, which keeps working when you re-draw the art. Matching ignores upper/lower case.
Stands at	Which edge is pinned: Bottom stands on the window (default), Center floats mid-stage, Top hangs from the top.
Mirror	Flip the art horizontally — one drawing can face either way.
Default bust	The bust shown when a page gives no direction, and when a cue asks for "Default bust". Without one, the first bust in the list is the default.
Nudge left/right, up/down	Move the art by a percentage of its own size.
Size	Scale the art up or down from its default fit.

An NPC can hold up to 32 busts.

Page cue fields#

Each page (and each quest line) can carry up to 4 cues — two sides, and a page may clear one while staging the other.

Field	What it does
Side	Left or Right. Each side holds one bust at a time.
What happens	Show (keep if unchanged) stages the bust and only replays the entrance if the art changed. Show (always replay entrance) replays it even for the same art — a character reacting. Clear this side empties the side.
Character	Whose bust library to use: this NPC, or any other NPC that has busts. Borrowing is how a scene shows two people — each character's art is authored once, on that character.
Which bust	Default bust, an expression from that character's library, or an exact bust.
Entrance	How the bust arrives — see the effects below.
Name plate	Optional label under the bust. Blank uses the character's own name.
Speaking	This side is talking on this page: lit, and every other bust dims. A page with no speaker ticked keeps whoever was already talking.
Speaker name for this page	Changes the dialogue window's title for this page only — for a line spoken by someone other than the NPC.

Entrance effects#

Effect	Looks like
No effect	The bust is simply there.
Fade in	A soft fade (the default).
Slide in	Slides in from its own edge of the screen.
Shake	A short shudder — shock, anger, a hit.
Bounce	Pops up with a small bounce — surprise, delight.

Players who turn on reduce motion in their device settings see every bust appear instantly, with no entrance animation.

Quest dialogue#

Every line in a quest's Dialogue tab has the same 🎭 Busts row. When a line has no cues, the line's existing pickers stage it for you:

Speaker — a line said by another NPC puts them on the right, talking, with the quest NPC dimmed on the left. A Player or Narrator line dims everyone.
Mood — picks the speaker's bust with that expression name, when they have one. A mood with no matching bust keeps the default bust.

What players see#

Two busts at once, left and right, standing on the top edge of the dialogue window. The window header shows a small crop of whoever is talking.
Small faces (up to 160 pixels) are drawn in a portrait frame; tall art stands full height and fades into the window.
On phones the stage is shorter, name plates are hidden (the window title names the speaker), and busts scale to fit the screen.
No bust? A character with no art shows the letter icon in the window header, exactly as before busts existed. A bust whose image fails to load is dropped the same way.
Art for the rest of a conversation is fetched ahead of time, so busts do not pop in late.

Gotchas#

A map event bound to this NPC bypasses conversations entirely — and busts with them. If an event is placed on the map with this NPC as its binding, that event runs instead and neither the conversation nor its busts ever appear. Unbind the event to use them.
Deleting a bust a cue uses blocks the save. A page cue naming a bust (or expression) that this NPC no longer has is refused, with the node and page named. Cues that ask for Default bust never break.
The stage belongs to a node. Busts carry across the pages of one node; a choice that jumps to another node starts that node with an empty stage (or the default bust, if the node gives no direction). Re-state who is on stage on the first page of each node.
A borrowed character must have busts. If the other NPC has no bust library, their cue shows nothing — the side stays as it was.
Blank pages are skipped, and so are their cues.
Feature flag: Dialogue Busts (World → Features, on by default). Off hides every bust and the window shows the letter icon; your libraries and cues are kept, so turning it back on restores everything.

Authoring with AI#

The \npc-dialogue-author\ tool accepts an optional busts list and defaultBustId alongside the conversation, and each node may carry a pageDirection list lined up with its pages (use null for a page with no direction). The same rules apply as in the editor: images must exist in the media library, and cues must name busts the NPC owns.