Blanking soundsets (and any strRefs)

[Baronius]

I thought I would mention it to you guys, that in the current version you use SAY #-1 to blank strRefs (such as the Hobgoblin Mindflayers). Not sure you read my bug report on WeiDU forum (25 August), but I suggest using WRITE_LONG (BNOT 0x0) instead. To my knowledge, it hasn't been fixed yet in weidu, I may be wrong though.

 

If you've already been aware of this, just ignore my post.

[cmorgan]

The annoying thing about this is this causes is in DLTCEP; it continues to give an "invalid sttref" message with a little *ding* each time you load a .cre with a strref out of range. Since Tutu sets up all ofthe .cres this way, if you are modding Tutu you get *ding* *ding*

*ding*

*ding* *ding* *ding*

*ding* *ding* *ding* *ding* *ding* *ding*

*ding*

 

 

 

*ding*

 

 

[the bigg]

The annoying thing about this is this causes is in DLTCEP; it continues to give an "invalid sttref" message with a little *ding* each time you load a .cre with a strref out of range. Since Tutu sets up all ofthe .cres this way, if you are modding Tutu you get *ding* *ding*

*ding*

*ding* *ding* *ding*

*ding* *ding* *ding* *ding* *ding* *ding*

*ding*

 

 

 

*ding*

 

 

Then DLTCEP is the cause of the bug, neither WeiDU nor the BG2FixPack. That tool has the bad habit of reporting hundreds of perfectly fine things as warnings/errors, in true Windows style (IE, you have to click each of them).

[Smoketest]

That's why I prefer NI for everything but graphical area editing. It has no trouble editing strrefs like -1 or some other large out of bounds value, just as the Infinity Engine has no trouble. Bioware's editors often use values of -1 (dword) or 999999 to indicate an invalid string that shouldn't be displayed. Why some tools decide to be different is beyond me.

 

WeiDU used to set a 0 strref value by default for empty strings, until I asked Weimer to change it to Bioware's usual -1.

 

 

(Edit: after-coffee typo fixing and odd sentence structure correction.)

[devSin]

It's a simple search/replace from SAY here #-1 to WRITE_LONG here `0x0, and BNOT so needs the love. LOVE IT!

[Baronius]

Net result of this ancient WeiDU bug (in case any readers are worried about their own mods) is that the game will go looking for strref 2,147,483,647 in dialog.tlk rather than the intended 4,294,967,295 - find no string anyway, and display a blank. So as long as other mods aren't filling in this range with words, you'll be quite safe

Yeah I didn't want to imply it's a critical bug, it's practically meaningless. On the other hand, I mentioned it for two reasons:

• Fixpack seems to fix many cosmetic things & inconsistencies, if the change is logical. If you're striving for such a perfectness, it sounds reasonable to provide correct signed values for StrRefs. Especially because it's just the question of replacing a few lines.
  
• You say you're trying to follow original developer intent everywhere. Which is -1 value for no strRefs (9999999 occurs rarely, mostly in case of spells only).
  

Then DLTCEP is the cause of the bug, neither WeiDU nor the BG2FixPack. That tool has the bad habit of reporting hundreds of perfectly fine things as warnings/errors, in true Windows style (IE, you have to click each of them).

DLTCEP isn't responsible for WeiDU's problem. If WeiDU is ported to Win32, it shouldn't interpret 32-bit signed long integers as 31-bit OCaml integers. (At PPG, you said it's hiding somewhere in the weidu code.)

 

As for DLTCEP, I agree with cmorgan. I think that just because many modders don't use it, there are others who do. Don't forget, for modders with weaker (slower) computers, DLTCEP is (was) the only reasonable complex editor. (No fun to run NI's Swing on such.)