FolioTier 1
pause
Pacing beat — hide the textbox and wait for a click (or auto-advance after N seconds).
Parameters
| Parameter | Kind | Required | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| seconds | number | no | — | Optional positive number. With no argument, the player waits for a click to advance. With a number (integer or decimal), the player auto-advances after that many seconds. Mirrors Ren'Py's `pause` / `$ renpy.pause(N)`. |
Canonical example
show rezehandjob7
pause
music stop fade=1
say "Reze": "That caught me off guard."show rezehandjob7
window hide
$ renpy.pause()
window show
stop music fadeout 1
r "That caught me off guard."pause is a pacing beat. The player hides the dialogue textbox and
waits — either for a click (bare pause) or for a timer to elapse
(pause 1.5). Use it when the previous step changed the visible
scene (a new sprite, a backdrop swap, a stinger SFX) and you want
the player to look before the next dialogue line covers it back up.
Notes
The textbox auto-hides whenever the current step isn't a say or
narrate line — pause exists so you can sit on that "no textbox,
nothing happening" state deliberately rather than skipping past it.
Authors used to reach for the Ren'Py triplet
window hide; $ renpy.pause(); window show to get this. The importer
collapses both window lines (Folio handles textbox visibility
implicitly) and lifts the $ renpy.pause() (or bare pause /
pause N / $ renpy.pause(N)) to this verb in one step.
For atmosphere shots without dialogue, prefer pause over narrate ""
— a narrate with empty text still renders the textbox briefly.