Re: NPC creation with WeiDU (or other tools?)

[adam]

i just downloaded a teamBG tool ( i think ) which allows me to create .dlg files directly, how do i add these .dlg files into my custom npc?

A good way to explain it would be to tell me how and where this tutorial would change if i had my dialogue typed up in .dlg directly rather than canverted .txt

[jcompton]

i just downloaded a teamBG tool ( i think ) which allows me to create .dlg files directly, how do i add these .dlg files into my custom npc?

A good way to explain it would be to tell me how and where this tutorial would change if i had my dialogue typed up in .dlg directly rather than canverted .txt

It would change by our eyes starting to bleed and us shrieking "Dear God, stop now while you still have your sanity!"

Both of the "TeamBG dialogue editors", IDU and IDW, are broken. Furthermore, dialogues created even in GUI editors that will do it reliably (NI or DLTCEP and maybe the aerie.ru one, not sure) are vastly inferior for purposes of mod distribution as well as for speed of creation.

Start over. If you want to preserve the content you created, use WeiDU to decompile your dialogues to .d format (weidu xxxx.dlg) and then remap the content to the style described in this tutorial.

[adam]

regardless of the blood loss due to eye bleeding (sorry about that, here's a tissue) i am not particuarly keen on distrubuting my mod right about now, i just want to create some dialogue for a personal purpose (i'm an apsiring author, would be nice to play scenes out RPG style) when you say it is broken, how so? so broken that a .dlg file created by the teamBG tool is somehow different to a .dlg file located in a custom made NPC?

[adam]

also, what are these other GUI programs you mention? Would use of these at least be more acceptable to your sophisticated palette (would they work) ? I only ask because all of these .txt manual creation seems a bit tiresome as well as a little intimidating for somebody who's entire modding experience can be summed up in a single word: "non-existant"

[jcompton]

regardless of the blood loss due to eye bleeding (sorry about that, here's a tissue) i am not particuarly keen on distrubuting my mod right about now

Fine, but it's still slower.

i just want to create some dialogue for a personal purpose (i'm an apsiring author, would be nice to play scenes out RPG style) when you say it is broken, how so? so broken that a .dlg file created by the teamBG tool is somehow different to a .dlg file located in a custom made NPC?

IDU: Subject to crashes which will destroy dialog.tlk. Does not support any re-sorting of state triggers, and will discard custom state trigger lists (WEIGHT) in existing DLGs.

IDW: Mangles trigger/action text, making DLGs function incorrectly.

also, what are these other GUI programs you mention? Would use of these at least be more acceptable to your sophisticated palette (would they work) ?

Near Infinity and DLTCEP. They work in that they are not fundamentally broken, but their capabilities are substantially limited compared to WeiDU's. I do not recommend them for work of greater complexity than a single state of DLG.

I only ask because all of these .txt manual creation seems a bit tiresome as well as a little intimidating for somebody who's entire modding experience can be summed up in a single word: "non-existant"

So was everybody else's when they learned it. You can put a nail in the wall with a hammer, or you can put it in the wall with your shoe. Your choice.

[adam]

thanks for your authoritive and firm advice, that's exactly what i needed! Somebody to kick me into shape and show me how it's done!

[SimDing0™]

Mod distribution isn't the sole motivation to use WeiDU instead of the GUI dialogue editors. It's faster and more reliable even if you're just making something for your own enjoyment.

Let's say you want to have your NPC bantering with another in IDW. You have to constantly be switching between two DLG files as you write. With WeiDU, you simply type out your banter in tildes, add some CHAIN syntax, which can be picked up from the readme and tutorials, compile, and you're good to go.

Incidentally, WeiDU is also a closer representation to how the DLG format actually works ingame than the visual trees provided by GUI editors.

[adam]

i understand the WeiDU is going to be a more effective system, it's newer, i just wish there were a way of typing in long dialogues without having to be constantly whacking in tidles ETC. Is there perhaps a way of converting the dodgey .dlg files the GUI programs create into txt. then using WeiDU for them?

[jcompton]

A colleague has gently informed me that I appear to be "beating up newbies for the good of modding." Perhaps I should explain.

In the deep distant past, everybody used IDU. Everybody suffered with IDU, including us. We struggled for months and months with Kelsey and kinda-sorta-barely got it working. Then when we finally found out what Wes was up to with WeiDU, things got a whole whole whole WHOLE lot easier.

So when, years later, people are in jeopardy of putting themselves in exactly the same trouble we had--when it's really not necessary now that people like Ghrey have gone ahead and written tutorials about it--I get edgy. It's like watching somebody get beat up when all they'd have to do is put their arms up in defense, or blow a whistle for help.

[adam]

so the sad and simple (if drastically improved from ye olden days) truth, is that i will have to learn to use .txt files and WeiDU.. ah well Cheers for the help

[jcompton]

The short answer is that yes, you can inefficiently create DLGs in a visual editor, then decompile them and package them with WeiDU. Parts of Kelsey were developed in this fashion (because we started with IDU), and WeiDU-Ascension was created in this fashion because it, too, was originally produced in IDU.

The long answer is that this is a terrible waste of your time, because it will take you much longer to write out 6 states of dialogue in 3 different DLG files than it will take you to do this properly in WeiDU:

CHAIN IF ~Global("HadThisTalk","LOCALS",0)
See("NPC2")
See("NPC3")~ THEN NPC1
~Heya.~ DO ~SetGlobal("HadThisTalk","LOCALS",1)~
== NPC2 ~Hi there!~
== NPC3 ~Ho there!~
== NPC1 ~What's up?~
== NPC2 ~Nothing.~
== NPC3 ~Same old, same old.~
EXIT

[SimDing0™]

i understand the WeiDU is going to be a more effective system, it's newer, i just wish there were a way of typing in long dialogues without having to be constantly whacking in tidles ETC.

There seems to be a fairly widespread aversion to WeiDU's tildes, which I can't really understand. For starters, pressing shift and a key is way easier than right clicking to create a new state, moving the cursor into the right box, blah blah blah. And on top of that, WeiDU accepts quotes instead of tildes anyway.

[philipe]

i think his point was he didn't like embedding his text in all the ~,/ and # s.. he just wanted to write it like he was writing a book

[SimDing0™]

In which case, typing it all out in a text file is distinctly more book-like than using any type of tree-view GUI.

[Ashara]

A colleague has gently informed me that I appear to be "beating up newbies for the good of modding."

Perhaps, but I must say that these rare nowadays occasions of the necessity to convince someone of WeiDU's advantages, do bring out the most eloquent side of you

[jcompton]

I see that on the Studios version of this thread, it has been encouraged to do serious DLG development with DLTCEP and use WeiDU for distribution. I also see that further discussion on the matter has been referred here, which I suppose is laudable in its way.

I continue to discourage this method for creation of more than the most trivial of DLGs (seriously, at about the 2-state mark is where you start to get time savings with WeiDU) on grounds of both convenience and power.

Specifically, I would like to see a proponent of that development method explain how to create and distribute this sequence.

CHAIN
IF ~Global("HadThisTalk","LOCALS",0)
See("NPC2")
See("NPC3")~
THEN NPC1
~Heya.~
DO ~SetGlobal("HadThisTalk","LOCALS",1)~
== NPC2 ~Hi there!~
== NPC3 ~Ho there!~
== JAHEIRAJ IF ~IsValidForPartyDialogue("Jaheira")~ THEN ~Enough.~
== NPC1 ~What's up?~
== NPC2 ~Nothing.~
== JANJ IF ~IsValidForPartyDialogue("Jan")~ THEN ~Nothing? Why (rattle on for a while here.)~
== NPC3 ~Same old, same old.~
EXIT

... hopefully, I'm making my point here. Either that, or it's back to graphic imagery.

[CoM_Solaufein]

In the deep distant past, everybody used IDU. Everybody suffered with IDU, including us. We struggled for months and months with Kelsey and kinda-sorta-barely got it working. Then when we finally found out what Wes was up to with WeiDU, things got a whole whole whole WHOLE lot easier.

The dreaded IDU? That scared me away from dialogues.

Weidu is great, it's fun and it's easy. 

[hlidskialf]

I see that on the Studios version of this thread, it has been encouraged to do serious DLG development with DLTCEP and use WeiDU for distribution.

Actually I only recommended DLTCEP for dialog building if he was insistant on creating a dialog with the old tree style format. I wouldn't recommend using anything but weidu for dialogs, it'd be far more pain than it's worth. We had already recommended weidu to him on the other threads he'd started on the topic.

[SimDing0™]

It did seem to imply that DLTCEP had all the trump cards, and modding dicussion was banned before anyone could mention that DLTCEP only provides a fraction of WeiDU's true versatility.

[hlidskialf]

That was not the intent, I was just giving an option. He'd already gotten the weidu rundown on another thread, I was trying to not be redundant. 
And the modding discussion was *not* banned, Seif just didn't want another tool debate with so many already available for review.
Enough off-topic-ness (new word alert) and let's just be glad that someone new has seen the weidu light.