The Foundry editor is booting dialogue. How do I stop this?

galactickiri

When using NPC chat balloons on maps, the map editor is randomly chopping large blocks of text out of my dialogue.

I will admit to being new the Foundry- I'm working on my first mission, and am willing to entertain the possibility I'm doing something wrong, but when I enter something into a program and save it, I...

EXPECT IT TO DAMN WELL STAY PUT!

Currently, I'm debating on whether or not I should scrap my work and move on. This has to stop. I've used mission editors in other games without this problem. Is there a way to recover what appears to be randomly clipped?

duncanidaho11

A little more information would help. How are you entering text into the editor? If you're copying and pasting text in remember that there is a character limit per text box. If you try to paste more than that in the excess will be cut.

zionus0

What kind of dialouge opener are you using? If its a popup on a map you may be going over the character limit- Most of the time you'll have 1000 characters per box, but those will only give you 100.

paxfederatica

zionus0 wrote: »

What kind of dialouge opener are you using? If its a popup on a map you may be going over the character limit- Most of the time you'll have 1000 characters per box, but those will only give you 100.

That's only partly correct. If you try to enter the text into the field on the dialog object's General tab, you can only go up to 100 characters. However if you click "Advanced Dialog Editor" (just below that text field) the normal dialog editor opens and you can go up to the full 1000 per box. (Note that once you leave the dialog editor, the General tab's text field still shows only the first 100 characters, but all the text after that is still there; you just have to open the normal dialog editor in order to view it.)

galactickiri

duncanidaho11 wrote: »

A little more information would help. How are you entering text into the editor? If you're copying and pasting text in remember that there is a character limit per text box. If you try to paste more than that in the excess will be cut.

The main NPC text window has a 1000 character limit; I'm staying well within that. Also, sometimes I copy paste, but only for purposes of correcting spelling. Despite all that, I am finding issues when I save the mission and text just gets clipped off. Usually, what remains is the beginning of the text block- that you will see until you open the advanced text editor. After that, everything else gets dropped. It's very random- last night it happened right after I added text, but it can occur days after adding a dialogue window, and through multiple saves.

wombat140

Ah, I know this one (I think). Unless they've fixed it since I last saw it, the Advanced Dialogue Editor has a 1000 character limit, BUT when accessed directly from the Story tab some dialogue boxes only have a 100 character limit. That means that if you enter a long piece of text (over 100, but under 1000) in the Advanced editor, it works, but if you then alter that text at all in the Story tab, it will get chopped down to 100.

Or I could be completely wrong and they've fixed that bug by now and this is something else. Check what character limit is displayed (X/100 or X/1000) when you look at your dialogue in the Story tab, and if it's 100, then that's still happening.

wombat140

Hmm, just checked, and it now is a 1000 character limit in all places. Must be a new bug. Moderators, any comment?
In the meantime, I can only suggest that you copy and paste all large chunks of dialogue into a text file on your computer. That way, if it eats any, you at least have a backup and don't have to retype.

theyredeadjim

I can confirm bug. I've seen two dialogues just disappear.

**edit** When I checked the missing dialogues again, I noticed that both of the missing dialogues were attached to either a contact or an object as a default prompt. If I remember correctly, I edited both in the advanced dialogue editor. I wonder if it could be something to do with default prompts that has just recently popped up.

galactickiri

wombat140 wrote: »

Ah, I know this one (I think). Unless they've fixed it since I last saw it, the Advanced Dialogue Editor has a 1000 character limit, BUT when accessed directly from the Story tab some dialogue boxes only have a 100 character limit. That means that if you enter a long piece of text (over 100, but under 1000) in the Advanced editor, it works, but if you then alter that text at all in the Story tab, it will get chopped down to 100.

Or I could be completely wrong and they've fixed that bug by now and this is something else. Check what character limit is displayed (X/100 or X/1000) when you look at your dialogue in the Story tab, and if it's 100, then that's still happening.

I think you may be on to something there.

This doesn't happen to me all the time, but it's darned inconvenient when it does, as it wipes out 800+ characters in a long text block. I'm going to remember to use the advanced editor from here in; it's always the first sentence or so that remains in my text, so I think this is my issue. Thank you so much.

johnnysnowball

I noticed when i first started out in Foundry, that if i have, say, 500 characters pasted into the advanced editor window of a default dialogue with a contact NPC, if i then happen to click inside the dialogue area of the non-advanced 100-limited box, everything after that 100 is gone. I learned quickly to avoid ever clicking inside tbat small box, only ever using the advanced editor.

I dunno if it still does that today. Maybe test?

captpfdennis

What johnny said. Always click the "Advanced Dialog Editor" button before doing anything in the text window. You have to do it anyway if you are writing a conversation. It's the only place you can add more dialog boxes(besides putting pop ups in the Story tab). After text is entered and needs to be edited, using the dialog tab to open the list of mission dialogs is another option.