(Near Infinity) Easily identify interlocutors

[Jazira]

Hello,

I wish to know if there is a way to easily identify interlocutors within a .D/DLG? file ?

Lately I'm working toward an updated French translation for the Ascension mod, and I have a hard time dealing with the .D files of the mod. They are a bit more complicated than usual, this is often snippets of texts that adds up to already existing banters of the original game. Making it sometime really difficult to know who is talking to whom, and the context is often missing, too.

I heard Near Infinity is capable of doing so, providing some kind of "dialog tree" with different colors for each interlocutor, but I'm a complete beginner with it. Well, all I've been using this program for was to export some dialog.tlk, but that's it (and people had to explain to me how to like I was 5, just to let you know how I'm bad with it).

Can someone provide me a little step-by-step guide, ahem... ELI5, I'll be grateful.

Edited May 9, 2021 by Jazira

[Jarno Mikkola]

Well, you first of all download the latest Near Infinity version by Jazz. Yes, I call him that.

After you have installed the mod into the game to see the .dlg files the .d files are compiled to... this is a process on it's own.

Then you just start the Near Infinity in any location of your desires. Then you get to the Near Infinity window... if you have Java Runtime... this too is a process... let's skip that, ask if you need more. But the screen looks basically like:

Then you go to Game -> Open Game -> And you then use the folder browser to find the games own "chitin.key" file. This will locate all the needed files to actually run Near Infinity correctly in the said game until you change this setting. There's also the DLC merger thing you need to do to the BG1EE+SoD, but let's skip that too, again ask if you don't know it and you need to use the BG1EE to...

Then you can select the DLG folder in the window by going down, or if the window is larger, you can see and select it to open it, then you need to find the file you want to edit. Then click that and the right side switches to the content of that file, it has 3 view modes, one of which is the Tree -wiev. And the content can be double clicked and it shows first the possible states, that then the responses that can have other states or not.

Edited May 10, 2021 by Jarno Mikkola

[Jazira]

Hi, thanks for answering me !

So, if I want to know who is talking to whom, for example, @422 of this file : https://github.com/InfinityMods/Ascension/blob/master/ascension/lang/english/dream_mel.tra

The D of the TRA : https://github.com/InfinityMods/Ascension/blob/master/ascension/balthazar/d/dream_mel.d

I know this is Melissan talking, but I do not know to whom, CHARNAME, Balthazar ?

How do I find the DLG, and the exact stringref I'm looking for ? There is no dream_mel.DLG, I've found a MELISS01.DLG, as written in the D, I've looked for "state 14", as written in the D, and found one but it's "No such Index".

screenshot : https://ibb.co/r24H4rZ

What am I doing wrong ?

Edited May 10, 2021 by Jazira

[jastey]

The REPLACE_SAY means the state 14 of MELISS01.dlg is replaced by the new line. The "no such index" is because the mod attached new lines to the dialog.tlk but NI can't read them because of some default range of strings, this can be adjusted but I forgot how. Tagging @argent77..

[argent77]

"No such index" indicates that the strref doesn't exist in the dialog.tlk.

The most likely cause is that the language set in NI is not the same as the game language used for installing the mod.

The file "weidu.conf" (found in the game installation folder) contains the language code used for mod installation. The same language should be set in NI (via menu Options > TLK Language).

[Jazira]

Yeah, French installation, that must be the reason. Converted NI in French fixed the "no such index", but there is still some "no text" around, why that ?

On the left side, where there is all the DLG listed, the one written in bold is all the mod-edited DLG I guess ? Because it's only main ToB characters DLG that are written in bold locally, with only Ascension installed.

Another question, with this example it's seem obvious that Melissan is talking to CHARNAME, with the number of response available. I don't have any example right now but, what if not ? What with just a sentence taken out of context, without an explicit dialog name file, how to know who is talking to whom just by looking at the "dialog tree" ?

Edited May 10, 2021 by Jazira