About dialogues

[Henrymou]

Ok I am posting a new thread here for everyone to post whatever they know about dialogues. Since dialogues are the only trouble most people run into when ceating maps, I thought this would be important.

all the lugaru wiki data on dialogues can be found here: http://wiki.wolfire.com/index.php/Dialogues

You can write your dialogue following the patterns of the dialogue files found in "Dialogues", inside the "Data" folder located within your Lugaru folder. There are plenty of examples.

Try opening "Example.txt", for instance. You'll get:

Dialogue boxes: 7

Box 1:
Location: 1
Color: 0.0 0.0 0.0
Name: Turner
Text: Hi, Skipper!
Sound: 7

Box 2:
Location: 2
Color: 0.0 0.0 0.2
Name: Skipper
Text: Hey, Turner!
Sound: 7

Box 3:
Location: 2
Color: 0.0 0.0 0.2
Name: Skipper
Text: What's all this talk about hiring guards?
Sound: 1

Box 4:
Location: 2
Color: 0.0 0.0 0.2
Name: Skipper
Text: There's never been any trouble here while I've been in\charge!
Sound: 4

Box 5:
Location: 1
Color: 0.0 0.0 0.0
Name: Turner
Text: The raiders are getting more confident... you never\know.
Sound: 1

Box 6:
Location: 2
Color: 0.0 0.0 0.2
Name: Skipper
Text: I've seen you when you get mad; I think you could\take care of yourself.
Sound: 6

Box 7:
Location: 1
Color: 0.0 0.0 0.0
Name: Turner
Text: It's not me that I'm worried about.
Sound: 4
Just write your own dialogue using the precise same format. Here is a description of the different attributes:

Dialogue boxes: n- number of panes in your dialogue.
Box n:- pane number n.
Location: n"- 1 = on top of screen, 2 = on bottom.
Color: r g b- each number r, g, b corresponds to the amount of red, green, and blue. It should be a number between 0.0 and 1.0, written in the format of 0.2, for example.
Name: Whatever- Name of the speaker.
Text: Whatever- The text itself. Must never be longer than 128 characters, and should include a "\" (backslash) every 50 or so characters to create a line break.
Sound: n- Quote David: "I think 1-2 are chitter sounds, 3-4 are pain, 5-8 are attack, or something along those lines".
Here's a kind of guide:

-0 Silence
-1 chitchat, mountingdescending
-2 Very similar to above
-3 Scroosh, plain and short
-4 Screech! pain!
-5 truhu, short chatter
-6 Creetsh, attack!
-7 aha, short banter
-8 Scroosh, short, affirmative tone
-9 Wolf growl
-D Wolf casual bark
-F Wolf bark
-10 Wolf chitchat bark

BUG!: 'Text' fields that are either 10 or 13 characters long make the map crash. For example:

Text: You knew him?
won't work because 'You knew him?' is 13 characters. To solve the problem, add a '#' at the end of the string, like this:

Text: You knew him?#
The '#' won't appear in the actual dialogue.


Then, save your dialogue as, say, "YourDialogue.txt" in the aforementioned Dialogues folder.

there is lots of data that show how to make and save dialogues, yet opening and rendering dialogues seems to be out of focus in the wiki.

[Silb]

What do you mean by "opening and rendering"? There's a section about "adding a new dialogue" right below the part you quoted. I think it contains all relevant information.

[Henrymou]

what I mean to say is that editing and creating dialouges is easy, yet actually getting them to work in the game without deleting your level, and making you reboot your computer, is hard.

[Henrymou]

Haha Silb, I hope you don't thing I am annoying, because I neeeed your help and Jendraz's for my campaign. You guys are the Dialogue MASTERS.

[Jendraz]

What exactly is the problem? Does the map crash? If so make sure there are:

-no lines of 10 or 13 characters (including spaces), add line breaks
-not 10 or 13 dialogue boxes
-make sure the type of dialogue is correct

There has been a lot of discussion about dialogue already on this forum. We're here to help, but I feel it's unfair to make us (mainly Silb) repeat information. It gives me a headache to think about. Also, the wiki has pretty much everything covered. I think SIlb wrote it. Maybe.

Goodluck, I hope you figure it out.

[Henrymou]

Ok one of the problems is that after I align everyones heads toward the screen and run the dialogue, you get one dialogue box that seems to state some random code like "2@ght56" or something, then when your dialogue saves, the screen goes red, and you have to restart your computer. The Lugaru wiki offers a link to a Hex Editor that fixes the problem, but the program has been discontinued.

[Jendraz]

Ok one of the problems is that after I align everyones heads toward the screen and run the dialogue, you get one dialogue box that seems to state some random code like "2@ght56" or something, then when your dialogue saves, the screen goes red, and you have to restart your computer. The Lugaru wiki offers a link to a Hex Editor that fixes the problem, but the program has been discontinued.

The screen going red is normal if I remember right. Just save it, restart Lugaru and it should work. About "2@ght56", all I can guess is that something is wrong with the format of your text file, make sure it matches up to the ones David wrote.

[Count Roland]

dialogues aren't the only problem, xagor had trouble with hotspots. and I think a few people have had a few other troubles but I don't remember them

[Henrymou]

heh I wish I knew about hotspots...
you will notice that the wiki hardlyhas any data on THAT

[Jendraz]

Hotspots
hs (floating point) (integer) (string) creates a hotspot underneath you. The three arguments correspond to the size, type, and text of the hotspot, respectively. See below for the explanations of each type integer.
type 0 = static, display text
type 1-10 = attached to player 1-10, display text
type 11-20 = attached to player 1-10, must kill to win
type -1 = win if approached
dhs deletes the last hotspot.
An example is "hs 15.0 0 sdf". Note that hotspots are very buggy, especially those not of type 0. Quitting and restarting Lugaru, then creating a hotspot in a simple map first, can help. You may have to fiddle around with this. Some strings may be randomly rejected, but if you know how to hex-edit, you can change them directly in the map file (make sure to change the byte before the string to the number of its characters).Hotspots
hs (floating point) (integer) (string) creates a hotspot underneath you. The three arguments correspond to the size, type, and text of the hotspot, respectively. See below for the explanations of each type integer.
type 0 = static, display text
type 1-10 = attached to player 1-10, display text
type 11-20 = attached to player 1-10, must kill to win
type -1 = win if approached
dhs deletes the last hotspot.
An example is "hs 15.0 0 sdf". Note that hotspots are very buggy, especially those not of type 0. Quitting and restarting Lugaru, then creating a hotspot in a simple map first, can help. You may have to fiddle around with this. Some strings may be randomly rejected, but if you know how to hex-edit, you can change them directly in the map file (make sure to change the byte before the string to the number of its characters).

http://wiki.wolfire.com/index.php/Conso ... e#Hotspots

That contains the relevant data. I used hotspots in Empire to end levels without having to kill everyone (or anyone). That's the extent of my wisdom.

[Henrymou]

well heres a question Jendraz:
OK so I opened up my dialogue, used the number keys and number pad to successfully position the dialogue boxes, (although no text appeared in the boxes) and then saved the map, quit and restarted lugaru, just as the wiki says. When I come back to my lvl, everything is gone that I built. Nothing except Turner and a snowy wasteland. Has this happened to you before Jendraz? In the meantime, I will try to built a level using hotspots, and see if I have trouble with that.
thanks
-Henry

oh here is my dialouge file I can't seem to find anthing wrong with it though:

Dialogue boxes: 7

Box 1:
Location: 1
Color: 0.0 0.0 0.0
Name: Brock
Text: What's this?############################
Sound: 7

Box 2:
Location: 2
Color: 0.0 0.0 0.2
Name: Powder
Text: Ahem, sir we regret to inform you that you are no longer welcome.##
Sound: 5

Box 3:
Location: 1
Color: 0.0 0.0 0.0
Name: Brock
Text: What?!##################
Sound: 4

Box 4:
Location: 2
Color: 0.0 0.0 0.2
Name: Fog
Text: Your allegiance to the Prime Minister has made you an enemy of the state.
Sound: 7

Box 5:
Location: 2
Color: 0.0 0.0 0.2
Name: Powder
Text: Politicians who bask in wealth and grass are not tolerated by those who eat worms.
Sound: 8

Box 6:
Location: 2
Color: 0.0 0.0 0.2
Name: Fog
Text: So, you can give up your land and join us, or else die fighting. What is it going to be comrade?
Sound: 6

Box 7:
Location: 1
Color: 0.0 0.0 0.0
Name: Brock
Text: Grrr...###############
Sound: 9

[Jendraz]

well heres a question Jendraz:
OK so I opened up my dialogue, used the number keys and number pad to successfully position the dialogue boxes, (although no text appeared in the boxes) and then saved the map, quit and restarted lugaru, just as the wiki says. When I come back to my lvl, everything is gone that I built. Nothing except Turner and a snowy wasteland. Has this happened to you before Jendraz? In the meantime, I will try to built a level using hotspots, and see if I have trouble with that.

No, that has never happened to me. Make sure you make backups.

For you dialogue I don't see anything wrong, except maybe the amount of #'s. They're unnecessary. Also some of your lines seem a little long. If they run off the page you'll want to break them with a backwards "/". My keyboard doesn't have one

[Henrymou]

does the txt. files have to be in rich text format???
because i can't convert them

[Silb]

No it doesn't need to be in rich text format.

I think Jendraz is right: if you get garbage displayed instead of text, there's probably something wrong with the formatting of your text file. Maybe you should post it here? What happens if you use a dialogue file from the original campaign?

[Jendraz]

does the txt. files have to be in rich text format???
because i can't convert them

They shouldn't be in rich text format. They won't work.