Dialog/script fields in ARE

[Miloch]

What purpose to the dialog/script fields serve in the area files (actors section)? Do they override the same fields in the CRE or what?

[igi]

Yes. Basically, they allow you to use 1 CRE file, with different dialog/scripts - so you could e.g. have 15 Kobolds in an area (with the same cre) but give just 1 of them a dialog. Or something.

[devSin]

Except for the SPECIFIC field (which runs always on the actor but doesn't actually modify the actor), all the others replace the respective slots in the CRE file when it gets injected into the ARE (the value overwrites the original value, and the fields in the actor header here are cleared).

 

Note that any non-NUL value will cause the engine to replace that script slot for the CRE (so even if you enter junk values that don't match any existing script, like BITCHES, the engine will still stick that junk into the CREs script or dialogue field, overwriting the probably-working value that was previously there).

 

These script and dialogue overrides work all the way back to BG (and IWD uses it as the primary method of giving scripts to actors, instead of having them already assigned in the CRE file, but I don't know if the particulars are all the same). Note that older versions of IESDP and NI didn't have these slots in the correct order (they don't follow the script level order for whatever reason).