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How to Edit .dlg Files?

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Hey guys, I have a hopefully straight-forward question this time. Simply put, how do you edit the text of .dlg files? Specifically, I'm just trying to fix a couple typos in tar02_bendak021.dlg and tar02_duelorg021.dlg. I've tried playing around with them in KotOR Tool without much success. Thanks for any help you can provide.

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For the most part, the DLG files don't contain text. Each node in a dialogue file has a string reference that points to a line in the dialog.tlk file and all the text is there. I believe they did this for localization purposes so they could hand off just the one file to the translators. If you want to edit any of the game's text, there are two options.

  1. Edit dialog.tlk directly with TalkEd. The TLK file is massive and difficult to navigate, but the DLG file will at least tell you the line numbers. That should be simple enough for personal use, but I wouldn't recommend releasing it as a mod because dialog.tlk has all the text in the game so that presents a compatibility issue. It's possible to patch it with TSLPatcher, though.
  2. Edit the DLG files instead. DLG files can have their own text, they just don't normally. To edit the text, you have to set the string reference to -1. That gets rid of the TLK line reference so you can type your own text instead. I would recommend using DLGEditor rather than KOTOR Tool's dialogue editor. This might not be the proper way to do it, but it's less of a compatibility issue because you only have to deal with other mods that alter those same specific DLG files.
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43 minutes ago, JCarter426 said:

For the most part, the DLG files don't contain text. Each node in a dialogue file has a string reference that points to a line in the dialog.tlk file and all the text is there. I believe they did this for localization purposes so they could hand off just the one file to the translators. If you want to edit any of the game's text, there are two options.

  1. Edit dialog.tlk directly with TalkEd. The TLK file is massive and difficult to navigate, but the DLG file will at least tell you the line members. That should be simple enough for personal use, but I wouldn't recommend releasing it as a mod because dialog.tlk has all the text in the game so that presents a compatibility issue. It's possible to patch it with TSLPatcher, though.
  2. Edit the DLG files instead. DLG files can have their own text, they just don't normally. To edit the text, you have to set the string reference to -1. That gets rid of the TLK line reference so you can type your own text instead. I would recommend using DLGEditor rather than KOTOR Tool's dialogue editor. This might not be the proper way to do it, but it's less of a compatibility issue because you only have to deal with other mods that alter those same specific DLG files.

Okay, thank you very much. The mod I'm working on only changes those two files and not the tlk file so I think I'll have to try the second option.

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