Maximum strings length ?

[Gwendolyne]

Very often, too long strings used in kits or spells descriptions result in a CTD when creating a new character.

 

Does anyone know which maximum length the Engine accepts? For kits, it seems to be around 4 000...

 

thanks.

[Avenger]

This is the first time i hear about this. Is this a problem in all engines?

[Gwendolyne]

BG2 for sure.

It happened many times with mod translations into foreign languages (kits mods - the last one in date is Kit Revisions - and the BG2 Fixpack Find Familiar spell).

[CamDawg]

Yeah, I was about to mention that. Fixpack had a crash because the German translation of the Find Familiar spell description was too long.

[Avenger]

I just tried this in the EE, the kit description string was longer than 6000. No crash in chargen.

[CamDawg]

Taimon claims the limit is 4112 here:

http://gibberlings3.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=15391

[Cahir]

Yeah, Argent77 and I have encountered this issue when I translated his Improved Archer Kit to Polish. I've had to shorten vanilla BG2 description to avoid those crashes. I remember Argent managed to calculate exactly how many characters can I use to escape CTD's (but I dont't remember the numbers, I'm afraid). This issue is not present in EE's cause the character limit is high enough for even longer descriptions.

[lynx]

Happened all the time during development of Kit revisions too.

[Gwendolyne]

Taimon claims the limit is 4112 here:

http://gibberlings3.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=15391

 

Thanks for the spell description limit.

 

Yeah, Argent77 and I have encountered this issue when I translated his Improved Archer Kit to Polish. I've had to shorten vanilla BG2 description to avoid those crashes. I remember Argent managed to calculate exactly how many characters can I use to escape CTD's (but I dont't remember the numbers, I'm afraid). This issue is not present in EE's cause the character limit is high enough for even longer descriptions.

 

That would be cool Argent77 released this kit length limit.

[Jarno Mikkola]

I would also advice that people would try to keep the max description limit to 4000 characters, this is because any REPLACE_TEXTUALLY is likely going to take about that 112 characters in addition to the original. Now of course how one actually exceeds 4000 characters in desribing a kit is ... lets say, a little lunatic to say the least.

[Gwendolyne]

I can understand the first part of your message (REPLACE_TEXTUALLY), but you should learn foreign languages (French or German for example) to understand than translating a simple sentence from English may cause what we are talking about.

 

"Don't blame me!" (15) --> "Ne me rends pas responsable !" (29) : double length for a simple string.

[Jarno Mikkola]

but you should learn foreign languages

Yeah, too bad I mostly use Finnish ... it's not like that's a Foreign language to me, and I can't use English, so. And I suck at Swedish. Notice the hint of irony in that.

And are you so sure that's not more like: "Don't make me the responsible !"(31), cause that's what it looks very much alike. There's a complete difference in the meaning, though.

Cause "blame" is generally translate as: blâmer. Not that I am going to teach how to speak your own language, but there's a difference in where we look at the language, and I am pretty sure the English, German and French have far more in common that say Finnish. "Äl myä' syy-ä!".

 

But back to your point, I do understand that it might take nearly twice the string length to convey the same meaning. But there's also skill in saying what is actually meant vs how it's exactly produced.

Aka, a kit description is the KITs description, not the spells it comes associated with, how it's alike but not exactly same as a cat, and how that cat looks cute with its toe in the water.

Edited January 22, 2018 by Jarno Mikkola

[Gwendolyne]

I used this example on purpose. In French, to blame can be translated into many ways, according to the context : blâmer, accuser, réprimer, rendre responsable...!

 

And it is the same with many english words because English is an easier language. And I won't mention grammatical rules, or IE tokens that don't work in French (<HIMHER>, <HISHER>, <LADYLORD>, <RACE>...) and need to be translated differently, increasing the length strings... Fortunately, dialogues strings are not that long.

 

The problem for translators appears mostly when it comes to translate new or modified kits [undead Hunter (13) --> Chasseur de morts-vivants (25)]. I asked for the limit because the French translation for Kits Revision can't be installed and we need to shorten a few kits and classes descriptions, therefore, decide which parts must be shortened, or worst, deleted. Which is not the best choice, but...

Edited January 22, 2018 by Gwendolyne

[Cahir]

Gwendolyne, I have searched for our PM conversation with Argent77 regarding our issues with Improved Archer kit and it seems that he was able to estimate the total length of a kit description for BG2 vanilla as 4150 bytes. Hope it helps.

[Roxanne]

Gwendolyne, I have searched for our PM conversation with Argent77 regarding our issues with Improved Archer kit and it seems that he was able to estimate the total length of a kit description for BG2 vanilla as 4150 bytes. Hope it helps.

I am no programmer but 4096 is one of those magic numbers, right?