Updating Item Descriptions Dynamically

[DavidW]

No, the patch is just to the string; you don’t need to (indeed, would be mad to) put it into the tlk as an intermediate step).

afaik there’s no meaningful difference in resource or time cost.

[Jarno Mikkola]

17 minutes ago, DavidW said:

afaik there’s no meaningful difference in resource or time cost.

So you are sure about this ?

Take a case, we patch EVERY axe unidentified description to now include a new added line. We do this via patch to the string of each AXE, incase it's an axe, not to the dialog.tlk itself.

Yes, technicall you could just get the first file and all the rest would find it out later as they use the same string... but we want to roll around cause it could matter/make a difference.

[DavidW]

Again, I don’t think it makes a difference. Either way you’re doing a regexp through all items, reading in a string for each item, and then doing a substitution on the string. In one case you’re overwriting a tlk string, in the other you’re appending one and changing the item reference. It’ll be about the same time (and in either case, not much time).

[Luke]

16 hours ago, DavidW said:

- use STRING_SET_EVALUATE to set the new string.

But I cannot use that command inside a COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP or a patch..... In other words: how should I edit the aforementioned macro in order to use STRING_SET_EVALUATE in place of SAY_EVALUATED?

[Gwendolyne]

Always avoided to change dialog.tlk existing stringrefs (except in French correct packs ), but did you try INNER_ACTION BEGIN STRING_SET... END?

Edited September 24, 2019 by Gwendolyne

[Luke]

4 hours ago, Gwendolyne said:

Always avoided to change dialog.tlk existing stringrefs...

Even when editing existing resources?

I mean, in this case I basically intend to edit just a couple of things regarding the existing descriptions.... And I'd like to avoid generating a new string for such a small change... But I'll probably reconsider this idea since many people are suggesting to create new strings...

Edited September 24, 2019 by Luke

[Jarno Mikkola]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Even when editing existing resources?

Yeah... the original BG2EE dialog.tlk has about 100 000+ strings. So a few more or less doesn't take you far.

[DavidW]

On 9/24/2019 at 1:11 AM, Luke said:

But I cannot use that command inside a COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP or a patch..... In other words: how should I edit the aforementioned macro in order to use STRING_SET_EVALUATE in place of SAY_EVALUATED?

You can always use INNER_ACTION if you want to run an action command inside a patch.

I don’t have strong opinions as to whether it’s better to do it that way rather than generate a new string.