So question. Can this be used to change character names? Because I have a very specific mod in mind that I've been ITCHING to do for MONTHS, but I'm not sure if this is the way I'd go around changing that.
Yes it can! Although I believe it'll only apply on new saves? There's quite a few examples of people doing this if you check the mods that use my base .loca files as a requirement, though, so it is absolutely possible!
I am seriously so impressed that you figured this out. I've had the idea for a copy edit mod that fixes a lot of spelling/grammar errors in the game text, so knowing I can do it slightly easier is great.
Do you know how to add choice options? I've wanted to make a mod to give a meaner third option at the end of the Kagha scene and link it to her saying "Get out. We have no more business."
Thank you so much!!! Oh gosh thank you so much for doing that; some of the typos have really been bothering me, especially the ones that make voice line captions inaccurate... It's a huge accessibility issue and I've been wanting to do something to fix it too!
As for adding choice options, I've been working on fixing up the kiss Wyll's supposed to have in the epilogue, that was never actually finished (it looks like it was meant to use one of the kiss animations added in Patch 6, but wasn't finished in time for the release of the epilogue.) And that meant adding new dialogue nodes to finish it! And I got it working for a bit, but something I changed broke it again, and I've not been able to figure out what I did or how to undo it for the life of me 😭 (I overwrote the file I was working on without realizing it, and then closed the file, so I can't roll back whatever I changed anymore...) But I can try to explain what I've figured out so far! Even though I need to do some more experimenting to figure out what went wrong.
I believe adding a new dialogue choice should should be easier than adding, say, a custom cinematic though! There's quite a few files that go into dialogue, but adding a new player response only seems to require two of them. You'll need to look for the file name of the scene you're trying to edit (the datamined dialogue files are SUPER helpful for this), and look for the .lsj and .lsf files that match that file name. The ones you're looking for should be in the //Mods/Gustav/Story/Dialogs// and the //Mods/Gustav/Story/DialogsBinary// folders. There will be other folders for specific areas of the game within Dialogs and DialogsBinary, that will contain the files you're looking for! But you most likely will not need any dialogue timeline files to add a player response; they don't seem to be incorporated into the timelines for scenes at all. The timeline files are found in the //Public/GustavDev/Timeline/Generated// folders, and you very much need them for voice lines and cinematics, but I don't think you need them for this.
One you have the files you need, you'll be looking for dialogue nodes in the .lsj file that are labeled as questions, like so:
Which you can try and clone to create a new option! Any changes/additions to the .lsj file will need to be copied over to the .lsf file. Not every variable in the .lsj files is present in the .lsx files, but you do need to make sure the ones they share, like UUIDs, string handles, and flags the game tests for line up! You'll also need to change the UUID for the new node, and make sure your new dialogue choice is referenced as a "child" of the previous node you want to add your response to. You can cross reference text handles from the localization files to find the nodes you're looking for! You can then add the node you want to link to as a child of the one you made (although you may need to add an intermediate node, like the alias or jump nodes to get it to link up properly? Hm... will have to test that out.)
...I hope that makes sense, and is at least enough to get you started! If I'm able to figure out how to get my edits working again, I'll definitely let you know. And definitely let me know if you're able to get your mod working too! Good luck!!!!! 🍀🍀🍀
UPDATE: it literally wasn't working because I accidentally left an earlier version of the mod in my loose files and it was overriding my PAK file 😭 But, yes, this method works! I'll probably make a more detailed guide on this soon, but I may not have time to work on it during the week. Keep an eye out for that, though!!
thank you for the detailed explanation! I'll dive into this once I finish up my upcoming mod. hopefully you can get your mod working again -- definitely looking forward to a guide (and new wyll smooches!!!). :)
hold on, the filename dictates precedence?? I was never able to override strings without overriding the entire loca, so I'll try this in the future. I'm not getting my hopes up but thanks for the tip!
I was surprised by it too!!! I actually only figured it out because my overrides suddenly stopped working when I was testing with Spanish, and I could not figure out for the life of me why. After trying a bunch of other things to get it to function again, I ended up getting desperate enough to put a Z at the start of the file name, just, to see if alphabetical order mattered at all. And everything started working again!! It feels like such a silly solution, but it's been working for me so far. Definitely let me know how it goes when you try it out, and good luck 🍀!!!
Oh this is SO interesting. I tried overriding single strings when first making Slithering Wet Malice Restored because I didn't want it to mess with other mods, but it REFUSED to work so I thought it was impossible. With patch 7 coming up I'm not gonna delve into trying this out just yet, but once it drops I'm definitely gonna try to give this a go! This is some grade A investigative work and a great resource you've made here, thank you!!
Thank you so much!!! I love your Slithering Wet Malice Restored mod actually oh my gosh. I'm still trying to figure out why some text overrides are compatible with this method and others aren't, I think it might be an issue with PAK files and loose files not overriding each other in the same way? I'll have to do some more experimenting! Definitely let me know how it goes when you're able to try it out, I'd love to have a compatible version of Slithering Wet Malice Restored that works with my overrides 🎶
12 comments
Do you know how to add choice options? I've wanted to make a mod to give a meaner third option at the end of the Kagha scene and link it to her saying "Get out. We have no more business."
As for adding choice options, I've been working on fixing up the kiss Wyll's supposed to have in the epilogue, that was never actually finished (it looks like it was meant to use one of the kiss animations added in Patch 6, but wasn't finished in time for the release of the epilogue.) And that meant adding new dialogue nodes to finish it! And I got it working for a bit, but something I changed broke it again, and I've not been able to figure out what I did or how to undo it for the life of me 😭 (I overwrote the file I was working on without realizing it, and then closed the file, so I can't roll back whatever I changed anymore...) But I can try to explain what I've figured out so far! Even though I need to do some more experimenting to figure out what went wrong.
I believe adding a new dialogue choice should should be easier than adding, say, a custom cinematic though! There's quite a few files that go into dialogue, but adding a new player response only seems to require two of them. You'll need to look for the file name of the scene you're trying to edit (the datamined dialogue files are SUPER helpful for this), and look for the .lsj and .lsf files that match that file name. The ones you're looking for should be in the //Mods/Gustav/Story/Dialogs// and the //Mods/Gustav/Story/DialogsBinary// folders. There will be other folders for specific areas of the game within Dialogs and DialogsBinary, that will contain the files you're looking for! But you most likely will not need any dialogue timeline files to add a player response; they don't seem to be incorporated into the timelines for scenes at all. The timeline files are found in the //Public/GustavDev/Timeline/Generated// folders, and you very much need them for voice lines and cinematics, but I don't think you need them for this.
One you have the files you need, you'll be looking for dialogue nodes in the .lsj file that are labeled as questions, like so:
"key" : {"type" : "FixedString", "value" : "logicalname"},
"val" : {"type" : "LSString", "value" : "Question"}
Which you can try and clone to create a new option! Any changes/additions to the .lsj file will need to be copied over to the .lsf file. Not every variable in the .lsj files is present in the .lsx files, but you do need to make sure the ones they share, like UUIDs, string handles, and flags the game tests for line up! You'll also need to change the UUID for the new node, and make sure your new dialogue choice is referenced as a "child" of the previous node you want to add your response to. You can cross reference text handles from the localization files to find the nodes you're looking for! You can then add the node you want to link to as a child of the one you made (although you may need to add an intermediate node, like the alias or jump nodes to get it to link up properly? Hm... will have to test that out.)
...I hope that makes sense, and is at least enough to get you started! If I'm able to figure out how to get my edits working again, I'll definitely let you know. And definitely let me know if you're able to get your mod working too! Good luck!!!!! 🍀🍀🍀