[done-ish]Question to ALTER_TRANS

[jastey]

I want to change the transition from a reply options to another dlg state. I am trying to achieve this with ALTER_TRANS using the following syntax:

ALTER_TRANS bdff1709
	BEGIN 2 END
	BEGIN 1 END
	BEGIN ~EPILOGUE~ ~EXTERN bdff1709 0~ END

ALTER_TRANS bdff1709
	BEGIN 4 END
	BEGIN 0 END
	BEGIN ~EPILOGUE~ ~EXTERN bdff1709 0~ END

My problem: it doesn't get done, but without any error or warning. The transition just doesn't get changed. Worse: if I put this into a d-file with other changes to the dlg (like APPEND bdff1709; ADD_STATE_TRIGGER), none of it gets patched to bdff1709.dlg. The bdff1709.dlg gets moved to the override, that's it. If I remove the ALTER_TRANS syntax, everything else gets patched into the dlg. If I include only the ALTER_TRANS, nothing is changed. The installer gives no errors or warnings.

If someone could point out the obvious, I'd be grateful.

[argent77]

EXTERN shouldn't be needed since you're referencing a state in the same dialog. Try this instead:

ALTER_TRANS bdff1709
  BEGIN 2 END
  BEGIN 1 END
  BEGIN ~EPILOGUE~ ~GOTO 0~ END

 

[jastey]

@argent77 thank you, that's exactly what I just tried and logged in to report that with this it works. I don't see why using EXTERN would let it choke that much but since it's working with "~GOTO 0~" I won't dig deeper into this.

[DavidW]

Bizarrely, ALTER_TRANS appears to be case-sensitive.

If I do

<<<<<<<< .../stratagems-inline/test.d
ALTER_TRANS bdff1709
BEGIN 2 END
BEGIN 1 END
BEGIN
	"EPILOGUE" "EXTERN bdff1709 0"
END

ALTER_TRANS bdff1709
BEGIN 4 END
BEGIN 0 END
BEGIN
	"EPILOGUE" "EXTERN bdff1709 7"
END

>>>>>>>>

COMPILE ".../stratagems-inline/test.d"

then I can reproduce Jastey's bug.

If I do

<<<<<<<< .../stratagems-inline/test.d
ALTER_TRANS bdff1709
BEGIN 2 END
BEGIN 1 END
BEGIN
	"EPILOGUE" "EXTERN BDFF1709 0"
END

ALTER_TRANS bdff1709
BEGIN 4 END
BEGIN 0 END
BEGIN
	"EPILOGUE" "EXTERN BDFF1709 7"
END

>>>>>>>>

COMPILE ".../stratagems-inline/test.d"

it works fine.

Probably worth reporting to Wisp - it's undocumented as far as I can see.

[jastey]

@DavidW Thanks for trying this out! This would have been one of my next steps if changing it to "GOTO" wouldn't have worked.

Tagging @Wisp fwiw.

[DavidW]

I guess GOTO doesn't require you to put the name of a dialog file at all, so case-sensitivity doesn't apply.

[jastey]

Just now, DavidW said:

I guess GOTO doesn't require you to put the name of a dialog file at all, so case-sensitivity doesn't apply.

Yes, I edited my post and removed the sentence you are referring to because it didn't make sense.

[Wisp]

So where (game? version?) would I need to run this code in order to reproduce the problem?

[DavidW]

Siege of Dragonspear, unmodded, I think any recent version. (But actually I reproduced it on a different dialog - AEEXTORT in BG2 - so I think you can try it on any dialog you like.

[Wisp]

So this is a about hash-table lookups. WeiDU does not normalise case when interring or looking up symbols, so it can store different case-variations of the same filename as they were different files. The "file" loaded by the EXTERN is written to disk after the file loaded by the main ALTER_TRANS action, but since it was loaded before ALTER_TRANS made any changes, it ends up overwriting the changes to the first file.