Creating A Massive Dialogue Mod, Need Technical Help Please!

Discussion in 'Mods' started by TheElectricKazoo, Nov 3, 2017.

  1. TheElectricKazoo

    TheElectricKazoo Void-Bound Voyager

    Hello there!

    I'm currently working on rewriting dialogue for all of the games' characters. In my mod, each character will have a unique line for each day of the week, each heart level (0-10), and each season. This will also include dialogue that references the players' spouse and expanded marriage dialogue as well. I'm having a great time working on it, but I'm having a problem getting my dialogue to "repack" back into XNB form...but only with certain characters. Others are working just fine.

    I'm using XNB node and it's worked out great for several characters, but there are some .yaml files that just won't save when I repack them. I have diligently combed through the dialogue multiple times and have found no syntax errors; no unnecessary spacing, no unfinished/incorrect coding, nothing that shouldn't make this work out. Perhaps I'm overlooking something, but I've spent many hours trying to figure this out on my own to no avail. I'm using Notepad++ for editing; I've tried using Sublime Text, but I'm not technically savvy enough to really use any of its more advanced features. I was curious about using a linter to find syntax errors for me (although I haven't found any myself...), but I'm not sure how to go about doing that. I found instructions that suggest using a program called Ruby, but again, I am not a technically savvy individual. ;(

    I would upload screenshots, but I'm not sure what I'd even upload pictures of at this point. I've gotten several characters' dialogue repacked and working just fine, but some folks just don't want to say anything new! I'm sorry if this description isn't good enough; if someone has any questions to help clarify, I will gladly oblige. I've put in a lot of time and effort into making an immersive dialogue experience for this game, and it's quite frustrating to not be able to to finish this project. Although my exposure to C# is very limited, I've read several peoples' tutorials on dialogue modding and haven't had any trouble up until this point.

    Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for taking the time to read all of this. I hope to upload a huge, immersive (and functional) dialogue mod soon!
     
      lannihamm likes this.
    • MysticTempest

      MysticTempest Spaceman Spiff

      When checking over syntax errors in dialogue files for other users.
      A quick way I like to check is to use your preferred editor to search, & mark all the code for certain strings.


      1. Beginning tag - search for the correct syntax between the ID for the dialogue, and the actual dialogue.
      Code:
      : "
      
      2. Ending tag - search for the closing syntax at the end of a line of dialogue.
      Code:
      " #!String
      

      Using 'Alex.yaml' as an example.
      The dialogue code starts on Line 19, and ends at 100. So, searching the code for the aforementioned search parameters should show 82 instances of those snippets of code.
      So, it's easy to count for discrepancies when you add new dialogue. Say you add 10 more lines, but only 4 more show up in the search. You'll know 6 of those new lines are causing issues.


      Another thing, that also has an example in 'Alex.yaml' is the need to escape extra quotation marks. That way the game doesn't think it's the end of the line when it sees the first quotation mark after the start of the line.
      You escape new quotation marks within the dialogue through the use of backslashes. As shown below.

      Code:
      my first \"fan\".
      

      But, feel free to upload the files causing issues if you want some fresh eyes on it.
       
        TheElectricKazoo likes this.
      • RTGOAT

        RTGOAT Cosmic Narwhal

        Could I tempt you to join the DNPCD team?
        PM me if you're interested at all.
         
        • TheElectricKazoo

          TheElectricKazoo Void-Bound Voyager

          MysticTempest,

          Thank you so much for your response! Your advice worked perfectly; I had already done that with "#!String" but it didn't occur to me to do the same search/counting with the characters : and "...turns out I was missing a couple quotation marks. I still have one dialogue that's not working (all the syntax is adding up), but I'm going to try working on that today before I ask for more assistance. Perhaps I'm overlooking something else again. My entire dialogue mod isn't complete yet, so I'm going to wait to upload it. It should be finished by the end of the year. I sincerely thank you for taking the time to respond to me with advice that seemed to solve my problems. :) The fact that your response was so quick was fantastic as well. THANK YOU!
           
          • NanabaQuests

            NanabaQuests Void-Bound Voyager

            I can't wait to see the end results :)
             
              TheElectricKazoo likes this.
            • TheElectricKazoo

              TheElectricKazoo Void-Bound Voyager

              NanabaQuests, thank you! I can't wait to share it with everyone. I think it's going really well so far. :)

              If someone is reading this thread to get help on their own dialogue mod, I wanted to include this bit of information: if you're using Notepad++, the search feature doesn't take caps/no caps into consideration. When I searched for "#!String," it showed me all of the results but it didn't show any capitalization errors. One of the problems I had with getting my dialogue to work was caused by a lowercase "s" in the end #!String. It MUST be capitalized for it to pack back into an XNB file. Anyway, that's it for now! Thanks again to everyone for their help and responses!
               
                user224525252 and NanabaQuests like this.

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