TOOL:DLG Editor

[Fair Strides 509]

DLG Editor

View File

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DLGEditor is a GUI based dialog viewer and editor for Star Wars: Knights of the
Old Republic and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords.
The editor is divided into two panes. The upper pane contains the treeview
portrayal of the dialog with NPCs speaking in red (Entries) and PC replying in
blue (Replies). Upon highlighting the nodes of the tree, detail widgets appear
in the lower pane containing node-specific information which can be edited.

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• Submitter
  Fair Strides
• Submitted
  11/07/2015
• Category
  Modding Tools

 

[Hassat Hunter 571]

What's the difference with the DLG Editor I currently love and use?

[LiliArch 115]

2.3.4... maybe that's the one with auto-save feature?

[Salk 374]

I am wondering the same.

 

What is the difference? Unfortunately this version does not work with my Windows XP.

[Fair Strides 509]

Only difference is the auto-save feature, yes.

Sorry I never responded. I never realized there were posts here...

[Salk 374]

Since we have a support topic for DLG Editor, I thought I could ask my questions here.

At this moment I am trying to figure how to make party members face each other when they interject in dialogues, rather than look at the protagonist. 

At first I thought it was a simple matter of having their name in the Speaker and Listener fields but it doesn't seem to be enough.

Any advice?

Thanks!

 

[DarthParametric 3,783]

You have to script it. There are examples in vanilla dialogues. I'll see if I can dig one up.

Edit: I believe this is the command you need:

// 143: Cause the caller to face vTarget
void SetFacingPoint(vector vTarget);

Perhaps something like:

ActionDoCommand(SetFacingPoint(GetPosition(GetObjectByTag("CREATURE_TAG"))));

Or a full example from TSL:

// a_turnpcatton
// This script turns the PC to face Atton.
void main()
{

    // Turn PC towards Atton.
    vector vAtton = GetPosition( OBJECT_SELF );
    AssignCommand( GetPCSpeaker(), SetFacingPoint( vAtton ) );
}

 

[JCarter426 1,214]

4 hours ago, Salk said:

At this moment I am trying to figure how to make party members face each other when they interject in dialogues, rather than look at the protagonist. 

At first I thought it was a simple matter of having their name in the Speaker and Listener fields but it doesn't seem to be enough. 

That should be enough in most situations, but it depends on which dialogue and it's even slightly different in each game. In general, though, the speaker will face the listener if that is set, and if not, will face the speaker of the previous node instead. In K1 at least, as far as I recall, a party member will attempt to turn to face the previous speaker in interjections, so you technically don''t need to set anything other than the speakers for each node. I recall one working instance of this on Korriban; if you have HK-47 and Jolee in the party, HK suggests doing something murdery and Jolee turns to him and retorts. But I find speaker/listener to be unreliable overall. It results in some dumb stuff like Vrook teleporting in one of the Council scenes, facing one person and then immediately facing another rather than turning like a person would.

So I would suggest scripting it as well. I would add, though, that you should also use SetLockOrientationInDialog to turn off the usual speaker/listener behavior before you start issuing SetFacingPoint commands. Something like

void main() {

object oPM1 = GetObjectByTag("whatever1", 0);

SetLockOrientationInDialog(oPM1, TRUE);
}

at the start of the scene, then

void main() {

object oPM2 = GetObjectByTag("whatever2", 0);

AssignCommand(OBJECT_SELF, SetFacingPoint(GetPosition(oPM2));

}

for the node you want them to turn on. And you'll want to SetLockOrientationInDialog back to false at the end of the scene.

You might also need to add a delay, but I forget if you do. I remember adding a delay of 0.1 seconds when scripting animations in K1, but I don't remember if it applies here too.

[Salk 374]

Thank you, DarthParametric and JC!

Very precious advice, as usual. I was very confused because, like you, I do remember situations where the Speaker/Listener combo works as it should.

Having to resort to scripts for the many party interjections seems a bit too much even for me though. Since there is no quick reliable solution using the DLG Editor and the problem is so wide spread, I will tolerate this minor issues.

Thanks for providing a possible solution, I may be tempted, one day, to go for it even if it means checking hundreds of files.

Cheers!

[bead-v 251]

How this whole Speaker/Listener business works isn't simple, I once did extensive testing and wrote a guide about it. A lot depends on the exact syntax of how the conversation was started in the script. This was for TSL only though, K1 may be and probably is a little different.

If you give me a specific example I may be able to tell you why it's not working.

[Salk 374]

Hello, bead-V.

Thanks for your answer.

I read your very interesting guide and indeed it may be possible that most of your finds also apply to KotOR. About giving an example, I was just talking of the file dan14_mdroid.dlg found in the danm14_ab module. There is a banter there that should happen between Cart and Bastila (E47 and E48) but they don't seem to be facing each other at all there and I was trying to figure out how things work.

Cheers!

[bead-v 251]

Ah, I see what you mean. In any case, this doesn't seem like an issue with the Speaker/Listener functionality, but an issue with the party members trying to reorient on the PC even during dialog. If you turn on solo mode for example, the issue goes away. I also removed the function that makes the PC move, but that made no difference. I'm gonna do some more tests, because it seems like sometimes it does work.

However, you could probably use the solo mode trick to fix the issue. You'd make two scripts:

a_disablesolo:

void main(){
	SetLocalBoolean(GetArea(OBJECT_SELF), 10, GetSoloMode());
	SetSoloMode(TRUE);
}

a_reenablesolo:

void main(){
	SetSoloMode(GetLocalBoolean(GetArea(OBJECT_SELF), 10));
}

Then you'd just need to add these two scripts to all the dialogs where it happens. And just a disclaimer, I'm not 100% sure this would work, but it could.

EDIT:

Well, I checked the script that fires the banter dialog, and all it seems to do is ClearAllActions() on all the party members. I checked that with the Matale cutscene and it worked. So you can package this up as a script like this:

a_clearactparty:

void main(){
    int n = 0;
    for(n = 0; n < 3; n++){
        AssignCommand(GetPartyMemberByIndex(n), ClearAllActions());
    }
}

And just make sure it fires somewhere in the dialog before the lines with the party members.

[Salk 374]

Thanks a lot, bead-v!

I am wondering if a simple ClearAllActions() could be forced at higher level so that it wouldn't need to be used for each separate dialogue.

[bead-v 251]

You could do it for the main onDialog script, but that wouldn't eliminate all the cases. Whenever the dialog is fired from any other script, you'd need to either edit the dialog to add the ClearAllActions() script as suggested above or edit the script that fires it.

EDIT:
But here's another thing that seems to work. I modified the party member heartbeat script to do this:

if(GetIsConversationActive() && GetCurrentAction() == ACTION_FOLLOWLEADER) ClearAllActions();

The heartbeat script only fires every 4s or so, so it may not always work immediately, but it is a pretty general solution.

k_hen_heartbt01-DialogOrientationFix.zip

[Salk 374]

Thanks again!

I think that solution may be even more desirable.

I will test this and see if it is reliable enough.

By the way, I noticed that something similar was already present in the original k_hen_heartbt01.nss but that it was commented out together with many other lines:

    else if(GetSoloMode() && GetCurrentAction(OBJECT_SELF) == ACTION_FOLLOWLEADER)
    {
        ClearAllActions();
    }

I hope it was not cut because it'd cause problems.

Cheers!

[bead-v 251]

44 minutes ago, Salk said:

By the way, I noticed that something similar was already present in the original k_hen_heartbt01.nss but that it was commented out together with many other lines:

So that's a bit different, because it clears the action if the party member happens to be in Solo mode, not in dialog as in our case. But the reason why that part of the code's commented out is because that's probably the old code for the script before it was all moved to k_ai_master and run from there.

Fingers crossed!

[Salk 374]

bead-v,

would you know if it is possible to make a small addition to your code so that we may also make the party members face the current speaker? 

I attempted this:

 

  if(GetIsConversationActive()) {
    SetFacingPoint(GetPosition(GetLastSpeaker()));
        if (GetCurrentAction() == ACTION_FOLLOWLEADER) {
            ClearAllActions();
        }
    }    

but I failed because GetLastSpeaker() doesn't really do what I hoped  (the party members face PLAYER, rather than the current speaker). I would need to address what you in your guide define SPEAKER.

[bead-v 251]

Yeah, GetLastSpeaker() works in a weird way that's not obvious to me from a few tests. In any case, I don't think it can be used in this way. And even if it could, there's no way of checking whether this an actual speaking node or just a cutscene node, so you'd likely get partymembers turning weird directions during cutscenes. You'd also want a few more checks in there, like Solo mode, distance, etc... But I'd say with the functions we have at our disposal, this isn't doable at a decent level.

[Salk 374]

A shame.

Thanks for all your help with this!

[Salk 374]

bead-v,

while testing this method I noticed how sometimes the party members seem to turn away but I could not make it happen consistently so I was tentatively trying to remedy this by adding the following after ClearAllActions():

        SetFacingPoint(GetPosition(GetPCSpeaker()));

so that the new k_hen_heartbt01.nss is:

void resetorientation();

void resetorientation() {
        SetFacingPoint(GetPosition(GetPCSpeaker()));
        ExecuteScript("k_ai_master", OBJECT_SELF, KOTOR_HENCH_EVENT_ON_HEARTBEAT);
}

void main()
{
    if(GetIsConversationActive() && GetCurrentAction() == ACTION_FOLLOWLEADER) {
        ClearAllActions();
        resetorientation();
    }
    else {
        ExecuteScript("k_ai_master", OBJECT_SELF, KOTOR_HENCH_EVENT_ON_HEARTBEAT);
    }
}

Do you see a glaring problem with this? 

I wouldn't want to break anything although I doubt there could be any critical negative consequences.

Cheers!

[bead-v 251]

Naah, you can't break anything. It should be fine, I think. It only fires once per dialog... but the best way to find out is to test it.

[DeltaDragon59 0]

How do I install properly?

[DeltaDragon59 0]

I need help.

Whenever I make an edit from dialogue, it seems that the dialogue crashes. What I am trying to do is on Korriban, when you meet Uthar and the rest of the academy, he asks you what you know of the sith. There are two dialogue options that say you don't know anything about the sith, but they are gone post-revan. I understand the reasoning for this, but the dialogue option that replaces them is just dumber in my opinion.

In other words, I am trying to bring back those two dialogue options. There is a script that prevents the two from being present post-revan. I figure taking out the script is what does that. Problem is, when i do that, when i am asked what i know about the sith, i'm back at freeroam. I can click uthar again, but i just run into the same issue.

Note that i don't know anything about scripting. I probably should, except i am only doing it for dialogue purposes.

EDIT: Also, during the dialogue, i have to click to progress to the next line, otherwise it will just stay. It won't freeze, but i do have to click.

Please help.

Edited January 4, 2021 by DeltaDragon59

[DarthParametric 3,783]

If you are getting dumped out of the conversation then your DLG tree is broken. Whatever nodes you added or changed are likely not linked back to the rest of the tree, so they just exit.

You have to manually click to advance when there is no voice over for the line.

[DeltaDragon59 0]

O.K. But all i am doing is taking out a script that prevents me from selecting two dialogue options. How does that dump me out of the conversation? How does that break the tree?

EDIT: I am not deleting the voiceover either.

Edited January 5, 2021 by DeltaDragon59