Story & NPC messages

Missions narrate through messages — an Admiral briefing the crew, a station replying. The reusable pattern (straight from Secret Meeting) sends one message to the server screen, every main screen, and every player's comms.

The "admiral message" helper

=== send_admiral_message
    default the_message = "You forgot to set the_message"
    face = get_face(admiral.id)

    # server screen
    sbs.send_story_dialog(0, admiral.name, the_message, face, "#444")

    # every main screen
    for c in to_object_list(role("mainscreen") & role("console")):
        sbs.send_story_dialog(c.client_id, admiral.name, the_message, face, "#444")

    # every player's comms
    comms_message(the_message, to_object_list(role("__player__") & role("tsn")), admiral.id)
    ->END

Call it from anywhere, passing the line as task data:

await task_schedule(send_admiral_message, {"the_message": "The Praetor of Peace has arrived. Escort it to the starbase."})

default the_message = ... guards against forgetting the data (see gotchas). send_story_dialog(client_id, name, text, face, color) shows the pause-screen dialog; comms_message(text, players, from_id) pushes it into comms.

Targeting a subset

Combine roles to aim precisely — e.g. only the consoles linked to one ship:

for c in to_object_list(linked_to(ship_id, "consoles") & role("comms")):
    sbs.send_story_dialog(c.client_id, name, text, face, "#444")

Audio & voice

Play a sound or voice line from your mission's media/ folder. Resolve the path with get_mission_audio_file, and let players opt out with a shared flag:

shared AUDIO_ENABLED = True     # top-level default

# later, at a story beat:
if AUDIO_ENABLED:
    sbs.play_audio_file(0, get_mission_audio_file("audio/distress_call"), 1.0, 1.0)

For music, sbs.play_music_file(0, "music/default/victory"). See the media API.

Chatter / info panels

For ambient, non-blocking narrative (universe chatter, lore), prefer the info panel over the text waterfall. See the comms API.

Put reusable senders in Python

A message helper like the above is a good candidate for a .py helper function you call from MAST — see Sharing reusable Python.