Final Fantasy Hacktics

Example of that method.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmzYUODUH1E

As you can see, Wild ARMs 2 has dialogue and actions in different text boxes, never in the same text box.  To make certain players are aware of which is which, action text boxes start with an asterisk and dialogue has the name of the speaker and those L shaped things I don't know the name of for normal speaking and parenthesis for whispering.

The cleanest look you can get is to place actions into their own text boxes when possible, and leaving the identifying names and portraits off of those so it looks quite different from speaking.  Too much spread out action with this method and it gets tedious however as it creates several more text boxes to read through.  Most games I've played keep action texts short and sweet and try to convey the smaller actions in different ways than just telling the player the actions are performed.  You will either want to consolidate the different bits of action into one text box or just use less action overall.  It's probably best to keep actions made by different characters separate to avoid confusion too.  Though if I were you, I would make an exception for actions like sighing, growling, grumbling, or anything else of the sort.  Such actions are best dealt with by placing them in-between two asterisks before or after the speaking text (not in the middle).  Something like *Sigh* before or after the spoken part in a text box.

Choosing distinct symbols for each kind of text is the most important thing you can do.  By no means do you have to use the symbols the Wild ARMs series uses, but you should have a set you use.  Quotation marks should work fine so long as other text types have their own distinct symbols.  Actions almost always use asterisks.  Parenthesis are most often used for either whispering or to show what a character is thinking.  I think I've seen some things that use them for both, but that just causes confusion.  Other possibilities are of course brackets [ ], or those greater/less than signs I don't know the technical names for.  I've even seen hyphens for certain kinds of speech.  Players use these symbols as cues for knowing what it is they are reading and when it stops for some other form of text.  Any text you use that does NOT have any such symbols initially carries the impression that it is the same type of text as what the player was just reading, and this can cause confusion.  It's best to just make sure each text type has its own distinct cue.  The important thing is to stay consistent with which symbols you use for what.

Remember that games are primarily a picture medium (unless you're playing MUDs or ancient games like Zork or something), so actions conveyed in text are going to be clutter no matter what you do.  Making them short and concise is a far better route than making them detailed and/or flowery.

Well ... I can try and think of a symbol for actions, but I refuse to use asterisks [li] ... I decided this a long time ago when I was role-playing on the interest because if you mix "speech" with *actions* it looks messy and unprofessional. It's possible I may start getting rid of quotes, but I'd rather not.

Edit: A bunch of the new changes are uploaded as the new demo. Feel free to try it out, if you'd like.

Minor glitch in the new demo; When talking to the weapons/armor clerk, the first time you're not able to buy anything, but just go ahead and exit the shop and talk to him again and everything will be normal.

Edit: Also, I'd like to hear opinions on what people would like to see in their home-tower ... if you ever played Suikoden, you know what I'm getting at. It's sort of like a mini0game in a way, that you search the world looking for people to recruit and do sidequests to invite them into your tower, then either they provide services of some kind (like an inn, blacksmith) or just offer XP and someone to talk to and give your tower atmosphere.

Have them offer sidequests. Think the goug side quests involving mustadio.

I'm not following ... are you saying recruit NPC [1] and get XP, then have NPC [1] offer a sidequest?

Sure.

Just a note for future reference, I will be changing the 'knight' next to Olan to another character for story purposes.