Downloadable sample code: yay or nay?

[theacefes]

I'll go back to lurking now.

 

It has always puzzled me as to why people, after stating their opinon, always go "Crawling back under their rock/into their hole/ etc."

 

If you have something to say, say it with confidence! No one here will eat you.

[Guest re:]

It has always puzzled me as to why people, after stating their opinon, always go "Crawling back under their rock/into their hole/ etc."

 

If you have something to say, say it with confidence! No one here will eat you.

 

Well, I thought the confidence of my post as a whole was pretty solid and the lurking comment was just meant to acknowledge that I've never posted here before. Please tell me it wasn't the only part of my post worth commenting on?

[cmorgan]

nope - it is all good - it was a welcoming comment that says "yo, post away with opinions, because we are an open community of adults who like working on this stuff!"

[theacefes]

Indeed, otherwise we wouldn't be having this thread now would we?

[Kitana]

Just a question from someone who's interested in modding but unsure how to start... Some people have said to look at existing mods and read how they coded.

 

How, exactly, would one go about doing that? As in, which files would I look at? Is there a specific program I need to open these files?

[berelinde]

You need WeiDU to view the files. If it were me, and it was only a couple months ago, I would start looking at dialog files with a .dlg extension.

 

When you open your override folder, you will see a bunch of extensions after the names. The one marked .dlg are the dialog files. A lot of the important stuff is in there.

 

Download WeiDU and unpack it. It is most useful for converting .dlg to .d if you have a copy of one of the programs inside, called WeiDU.exe in the same game folder, for example BaldursGateTutu or BG2 - SoA.

 

From the start menu, select the run option and type cmd. Hit enter. A DOS window will open. From there, you will get a command prompt. Type cd c:\Path to Game.

 

For my own installation, I would type

cd c:\Program Files\Black Isle\BG2 - SoA

 

That will give me a command prompt in the appropriate directory, which might look like this

c:\Program Files\Black Isle\BG2 - SoA:

 

after that, type

weidu filename.dlg

 

The file will decompile into a .d file.

 

Then, type in

notepad filename.d

[Kitana]

Thank you! This helps a lot.

[Grim Squeaker]

I'd strongly recommend not doing that. If you want to read in game dialogue files download Infinity Explorer (just google it). However, decompiling game files will not give you an amazing idea of how to write your own .d files (because the state it is left in is basically the lowest level .d structure you could imagine).

 

You'd be better off downloading one of the various One-Day NPCs (e.g. Hessa and Gareth - again google) and looking at their code. It should give you a much better idea of how to write your own material.

[berelinde]

Grim Squeaker is right. You will not really get a sense of how that code got there that way. But don't throw the instructions away, since you are going to need them when it comes time to do interjections.

 

Downloading and examining one-day NPCs is good, and probably the best place to start, but eventually, you might want to think about looking at full-scale ones, too, like Auren, Xan, BG1 NPC, Amber, or something with a larger scale, to get a better idea of what is possible.

[Grim Squeaker]

Grim Squeaker is right. You will not really get a sense of how that code got there that way. But don't throw the instructions away, since you are going to need them when it comes time to do interjections.

 

Not wanting to keep shooting your posts down, but I'd still recommend using Infinity Explorer over decompiling files for the purposes of writing interjections (as you get explorer-style dialogue browsing and it tells you the state number). But I guess that's personal taste.

[berelinde]

Yes, that one probably is. For me, it's easier to follow something I can print out and read. If it's possible to do it with NI, I haven't figured out how.

[Grim Squeaker]

Yes, that one probably is. For me, it's easier to follow something I can print out and read. If it's possible to do it with NI, I haven't figured out how.

 

Possible, yes. But entirely horrible.

[theacefes]

But remember to use other mod .d files as a TEMPLATE, not as what your final project should be.

 

IMO, it's cheap and wrong to just use other modders' work and fill in with your own "creative" dialogue.