Umm, I'm not sure you understand what linyive meant.
Linyive suggested that you write the story in word and then copy-paste the sections to the foundry dialog boxes.
Not something that exports the mission you currently play to word with all the dialog branches linked and visible. As I understand, that is what you are looking for. This is not possible. However, you can ask the author to send you the raw mission export. Afterward, using the app mentioned in the OP or the word macro on the 2nd page, you can do that.
Or you can ask the authors to create missions using Linyive's method to produce the word file you need for review. I kinda asked the guy to present his method for us.
And no, not derailing the thread.
The thread is about something, that parses and formats the export, which is available only during mission creation.
Linyive said that such tool is unnecessary. You just need to write the stories in a different manner.
I said the tool is still needed because you can end up with dialogs so complex, handling in word can go out of hand. However, I'm very open for a presentation of his method. I couldn't find an example online (ie mission), so I asked for such example. Who knows, he may know a simple method to create stuff in word, that can help all the authors.
That's quite the paradox, how could you nerf nerf when the nerf is nerfed. But how would the nerf be nerfed when the nerf is nerfed? This allows the nerf not to be nerfed since the nerf is nerfed? But if the nerf isn't nerfed, it could still nerf nerfs. But as soon as the nerf is nerfed, the nerf power is lost. So paradoxally it the nerf nerf lost its nerf, while it's still nerfed, which cannot be because the nerf was unable to nerf.
As the OP and author of the tool that is nearing completion, (well, at least the bare-bones version is nearing completion), I'd ask that we step back for a second to consider WHY I'm doing this in the first place.
Stoutes actually covered it, but I'm going to reiterate it because it explains my motivation for creating the tool.
I'm not writing it as a pre-authoring tool, but as a post-authoring too. Guess what? I DO outline my missions in Word. Not for grammar and spelling, but because that's how I'm used to puttting together stories. I normally write out my stories in screenplay format to get the story down. I normally put placeholders in the document for threaded dialog rather than working them out in Word.
But that's not what this tool is for. I wrote it for reviewing other peoples work -- and my own. With it I can read through all the dialog and edit the errors and other things. With missions that have lots of branching dialog I can EASILY see all of the text and help the author (whether that be me or someone else) develop better prose for the entire story, not just the path I took.
I would love it if there was a way to directly push dialog changes back into a Foundry mission, but there isn't. I would have approached the problem very differently if there was. For now, though, this will give us an easier medium for doing editorial content reviews.
And my vision for the 2.0 product is to be able to do checking/editing in the tool and then provide a convenient way to "autopaste" dialogs back into the Foundry. But this initial stab is just to give us something that is easy to read and review.
I do VERY detailed editorial reviews for people. A typical mission takes between 6 and 20 hours to prepare under the current method. This tool will cut that time in half and let me concentrate on gameplay, continuity and map designs when I play the mission. I can totally ignore (for the most part) grammar and spelling issues on the playthrough, because I know I'll pick those up when I do the "paper" review of the text.
And even better, others will be able to use it for the same purpose, or to review their own work.
And no, not derailing the thread.
The thread is about something, that parses and formats the export, which is available only during mission creation.
Linyive said that such tool is unnecessary. You just need to write the stories in a different manner.
I said the tool is still needed because you can end up with dialogs so complex, handling in word can go out of hand. However, I'm very open for a presentation of his method. I couldn't find an example online (ie mission), so I asked for such example. Who knows, he may know a simple method to create stuff in word, that can help all the authors.
You're absolutely correct about this. It's possible to end up with absolutely monstrous branching dialogues and a word processor is not designed to properly display that sort of branching. I've come up with methods to "simulate" this in text in order to copy over dialogues but it is far from ideal.
Just writing up everything in a word processor is not realistic, nor does it help when you already have an entire mission entered into the Foundry editor.
I find a good way to chart out really complicated branching dialogs is to use a piece of flowchart software. I found a free one on CNET and added it to the useful links thread. It was really helpful for the first really big conversation I wrote in "Bait and Switch II".
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
I find a good way to chart out really complicated branching dialogs is to use a piece of flowchart software. I found a free one on CNET and added it to the useful links thread. It was really helpful for the first really big conversation I wrote in "Bait and Switch II".
Would you mind sharing the title of that piece of software with us?
That's quite the paradox, how could you nerf nerf when the nerf is nerfed. But how would the nerf be nerfed when the nerf is nerfed? This allows the nerf not to be nerfed since the nerf is nerfed? But if the nerf isn't nerfed, it could still nerf nerfs. But as soon as the nerf is nerfed, the nerf power is lost. So paradoxally it the nerf nerf lost its nerf, while it's still nerfed, which cannot be because the nerf was unable to nerf.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
The tool I'm working on uses the "Create your own adventure" technique for representing dialog trees. It's not great, but it works. Basically, each button choice has a "Next prompt" indicator that tells you the number of the dialog that you would read next. It's not a great method for creating dialog trees, but it's not bad for review.
Note that I just use the numbers assigned in the Foundry dump file, so they repeat for each dialogue tree.
Using a flowcharting tool to map the flow is a great idea, since dialog trees are n-tier decision trees.
I decided to take most of the weekend off from this project, but I did make some progress yesterday evening. We now have fully-styled HTML output and any dialogue that uses a user-created costume now displays the name of the costume given by the user rather than the Foundry's (unintelligible) internal key. The HTML is really easy to read through now and is perfect for doing editorial reviews. It doesn't look quite as nice after being imported into M$ Word, but it's still very readable.
stoutes has suggested that I provide the map name for each dialog tree, so I'll be looking into that tonight (US-CST).
Here are the items outstanding before I release this to the general population:
Refine the regular expression that extracts the list of maps to reduce back-referencing -- it's really inefficient as it stands currently.
See if I can add the associated map name to each dialog tree.
Detailed review of output against the Foundry dump file to see if anything is missing.
Add a simple XAML user interface.
I'd like to get a few beta testers. We all have different Foundry habits and those habits affect the dump files produced. Please send me a PM if you are interested in participating. The beta will be in two parts:
Initially, I just want people to send me their mission dumps and I'll send back the output for review and comments. For the second round, I'll send you the Zipped executable and you can use the UI to format your own mission dumps.
Just writing up everything in a word processor is not realistic, nor does it help when you already have an entire mission entered into the Foundry editor.
Yeah, I've tried this many times. It certainly helps to find typos, but it can mess up the format quite easily. For example, if I'm writing in word, my brain is trained to put quotation marks around something a character says. In the Foundry I have to then go through each dialogue obsessively and find the quotation marks.
Trying to writer a really complex branching dialogue in word is a nightmare.
I'm still looking for beta testers... the more missions I can get this thing to crunch on, the more bulletproof I can make it.
Speaking of beta, the engine is now DONE. I just need to run it against more people's missions to find the holes. (Holes, in this case, being unexpected things cropping up in the dump file.) I've sent stoutes the latest output for his missions "Collectiveness Strikes Gold I & II" and he should be able to comment on it.
I'll likely be adding a simple Windows UI tomorrow to finish this thing off.
But... I NEED MORE FOUNDRY EXPORT FILES TO TEST WITH! So please PM me if you'd like me to run your mission through the formatter. Once I verify that there aren't any problems, you'll get a copy of the HTML output from the formatter for your mission.
I'm still looking for beta testers... the more missions I can get this thing to crunch on, the more bulletproof I can make it.
Speaking of beta, the engine is now DONE. I just need to run it against more people's missions to find the holes. (Holes, in this case, being unexpected things cropping up in the dump file.) I've sent stoutes the latest output for his missions "Collectiveness Strikes Gold I & II" and he should be able to comment on it.
I'll likely be adding a simple Windows UI tomorrow to finish this thing off.
But... I NEED MORE FOUNDRY EXPORT FILES TO TEST WITH! So please PM me if you'd like me to run your mission through the formatter. Once I verify that there aren't any problems, you'll get a copy of the HTML output from the formatter for your mission.
I don't mind helping you, but my missions are in French. Your call.
I don't mind helping you, but my missions are in French. Your call.
Actually that might be a very good thing to run a test with, to see how it deals with special characters and such. Granted the output might be less well formatted initially, but I of course encourage this, and any other language submissions anyone wants to put forward
I think that testing a french mission will be a very good case to test... Special characters tend to be wonky when transfered to html, and le French has lots of wonky characters...
That's quite the paradox, how could you nerf nerf when the nerf is nerfed. But how would the nerf be nerfed when the nerf is nerfed? This allows the nerf not to be nerfed since the nerf is nerfed? But if the nerf isn't nerfed, it could still nerf nerfs. But as soon as the nerf is nerfed, the nerf power is lost. So paradoxally it the nerf nerf lost its nerf, while it's still nerfed, which cannot be because the nerf was unable to nerf.
Mine's in English but I've got one name that uses Slavic diacritics (offscreen Federation ambassador who's supposed to be Slovak, because humans in Star Trek should be from more places on Earth than just America, Western Europe, and East Asia), and a case where I wrote "nee" with the accent mark (Starfleet dossier of a joined Trill).
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
I tried to get the dump of my mission by typing /ugcEditorExportProject BaitAndSwitch1.txt into chat but it didn't work. All that happened was my character said the line aloud.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
You need to issue the command from the Foundry editor and make sure the / is the very first character on the line. As zorbane hinted, if it's not the first character then your command will be sent to the selected chat channel instead.
And yes, I welcome non-English missions! In fact, I want to localize the output to match the Foundry-supported languages. The Engine was built from the ground up to support Unicode, so non-ASCII characters are already supported.
I'm still looking for beta testers! Castmodean/Castsbugc took the plunge with "Purity IV: Of Vision" and it helped me find a problem with chat bubbles that I hadn't encountered before. And he got a mission report back.
I'd like to get about ten more people's missions run through before I make this thing public. Any takers? I turn these things around fast when there are no issues (and even when there are) and I don't bite my beta testers.
That's quite the paradox, how could you nerf nerf when the nerf is nerfed. But how would the nerf be nerfed when the nerf is nerfed? This allows the nerf not to be nerfed since the nerf is nerfed? But if the nerf isn't nerfed, it could still nerf nerfs. But as soon as the nerf is nerfed, the nerf power is lost. So paradoxally it the nerf nerf lost its nerf, while it's still nerfed, which cannot be because the nerf was unable to nerf.
Worked that time. Y'all were probably right: I must've caught a space or a carriage return when I copied the command off the forum.
But here's something you probably something you want to add to the OP. I'm running the Steam version of STO. For me the file landed in Steam/SteamApps/common/Star Trek Online/Star Trek Online/Live/Data.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
But here's something you probably something you want to add to the OP. I'm running the Steam version of STO. For me the file landed in Steam/SteamApps/common/Star Trek Online/Star Trek Online/Live/Data.
And thanks for submitting your mission! starswordc's mission "Bait and Switch 1" found another problem with chat bubbles. (What's up with all the chat bubble issues?)
By the way, you don't have to send just one mission. If you've got six or seven, I'll run all of them! The more missions I can run through it, the more confidence I'll have to release the final tool.
I'll go ahead and export my missions. I need to try to fix any remaining typos before I consider submitting them to be spotlit, or at least Dereliction Duty.
I wouldn't be surprised if my missions have some of the largest and most convoluted branching dialogues in the game, so if there's a bug they will probably expose it.
My missions also have some vestigial maps and dialogues that are never actually used since they were once part of a single mission. So, I'll be interested in seeing if that causes any problems.
Umm, I'm not sure you understand what linyive meant.
Linyive suggested that you write the story in word and then copy-paste the sections to the foundry dialog boxes.
Not something that exports the mission you currently play to word with all the dialog branches linked and visible. As I understand, that is what you are looking for. This is not possible. However, you can ask the author to send you the raw mission export. Afterward, using the app mentioned in the OP or the word macro on the 2nd page, you can do that.
Or you can ask the authors to create missions using Linyive's method to produce the word file you need for review. I kinda asked the guy to present his method for us.
And no, not derailing the thread.
The thread is about something, that parses and formats the export, which is available only during mission creation.
Linyive said that such tool is unnecessary. You just need to write the stories in a different manner.
I said the tool is still needed because you can end up with dialogs so complex, handling in word can go out of hand. However, I'm very open for a presentation of his method. I couldn't find an example online (ie mission), so I asked for such example. Who knows, he may know a simple method to create stuff in word, that can help all the authors.
Without giving away too much information, I have approximately seven years experience in modding. I use to work on everything from textures, item customization, level layouts, and dialogue. I use to layout extensive layers of dialogue in Microsoft Word, and then I would copy and paste it into a dialogue program. In order for me to keep track of everything, I would use a system based upon a typographical hierarchy. Color, size, font, etc... Its really easy to do. When it became time for editing, I hired another modder to work on story changes. My team use to pass a Microsoft Word document back and forth, so we can make changes to item descriptions, dialogue trees, and character backgrounds. You just need a system.
Great argument, too bad it is irrelevant in our context. A more compelling argument would be to present the dialog tree I asked earlier in word. From that, we may be able to learn one thing or two.
I think the key is there's a difference between something being possible and it being ideal. I'm sure it's possible to come up with a Foundry dialogue tree in a text editor, in fact I've done it, but it's far from the most efficient way of working.
In the same way, it's possible to track income and expenses for your business in a spreadsheet, and if that were all that was available I suppose it would be fine, but it is still more convenient to use dedicated accounting software that is tailored for the job.
Great argument, too bad it is irrelevant in our context. A more compelling argument would be to present the dialog tree I asked earlier in word. From that, we may be able to learn one thing or two.
If you read through my posts carefully, you would have noticed I told you my method.
...I use to layout extensive layers of dialogue in Microsoft Word, and then I would copy and paste it into a dialogue program. In order for me to keep track of everything, I would use a system based upon a typographical hierarchy. Color, size, font, etc...
Do you know anything about organizing information using a typographical hierarchy? Color, size, style, etc...
Second, I did build three to four foundry missions. Since they just got lost in the sea of missions, I ended up deleting the missions from the Foundry. I will shift through my files.
Yeah, altering story elements based on player feedback is unimaginable for people who create perfection on the first pass. I tried to check your missions to see how your method fares in practice. I couldn't.
And now we return to our regularly scheduled programming.
Many thanks to erei and the irrepressible nagorak for submitting their missions. I've been able to identify a few more issues thanks to their submissions.
And, thanks to inspiration from erei, I've internationalized the formatter. It now supports English, French (well, erei will tell me how well it's supported), Spanish and I've even taken a stab at supporting German. The formatter uses the Language specified in the project to determine the localization. There's no support for Italian, yet, because I don't have anyone lined up to proof the Italian translations.
I'm still looking for a few more volunteers to submit their mission projects for testing. You'll join the elite group of brave pioneers that includes stoutes, starswordc, Castmodean (castsbugc), erei and Nagorak!
Comments
Linyive suggested that you write the story in word and then copy-paste the sections to the foundry dialog boxes.
Not something that exports the mission you currently play to word with all the dialog branches linked and visible. As I understand, that is what you are looking for. This is not possible. However, you can ask the author to send you the raw mission export. Afterward, using the app mentioned in the OP or the word macro on the 2nd page, you can do that.
Or you can ask the authors to create missions using Linyive's method to produce the word file you need for review. I kinda asked the guy to present his method for us.
And no, not derailing the thread.
The thread is about something, that parses and formats the export, which is available only during mission creation.
Linyive said that such tool is unnecessary. You just need to write the stories in a different manner.
I said the tool is still needed because you can end up with dialogs so complex, handling in word can go out of hand. However, I'm very open for a presentation of his method. I couldn't find an example online (ie mission), so I asked for such example. Who knows, he may know a simple method to create stuff in word, that can help all the authors.
I call it, the Stoutes paradox.
Stoutes actually covered it, but I'm going to reiterate it because it explains my motivation for creating the tool.
I'm not writing it as a pre-authoring tool, but as a post-authoring too. Guess what? I DO outline my missions in Word. Not for grammar and spelling, but because that's how I'm used to puttting together stories. I normally write out my stories in screenplay format to get the story down. I normally put placeholders in the document for threaded dialog rather than working them out in Word.
But that's not what this tool is for. I wrote it for reviewing other peoples work -- and my own. With it I can read through all the dialog and edit the errors and other things. With missions that have lots of branching dialog I can EASILY see all of the text and help the author (whether that be me or someone else) develop better prose for the entire story, not just the path I took.
I would love it if there was a way to directly push dialog changes back into a Foundry mission, but there isn't. I would have approached the problem very differently if there was. For now, though, this will give us an easier medium for doing editorial content reviews.
And my vision for the 2.0 product is to be able to do checking/editing in the tool and then provide a convenient way to "autopaste" dialogs back into the Foundry. But this initial stab is just to give us something that is easy to read and review.
I do VERY detailed editorial reviews for people. A typical mission takes between 6 and 20 hours to prepare under the current method. This tool will cut that time in half and let me concentrate on gameplay, continuity and map designs when I play the mission. I can totally ignore (for the most part) grammar and spelling issues on the playthrough, because I know I'll pick those up when I do the "paper" review of the text.
And even better, others will be able to use it for the same purpose, or to review their own work.
You're absolutely correct about this. It's possible to end up with absolutely monstrous branching dialogues and a word processor is not designed to properly display that sort of branching. I've come up with methods to "simulate" this in text in order to copy over dialogues but it is far from ideal.
Just writing up everything in a word processor is not realistic, nor does it help when you already have an entire mission entered into the Foundry editor.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Would you mind sharing the title of that piece of software with us?
I call it, the Stoutes paradox.
Oops. It's called Diagram Designer.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Note that I just use the numbers assigned in the Foundry dump file, so they repeat for each dialogue tree.
Using a flowcharting tool to map the flow is a great idea, since dialog trees are n-tier decision trees.
I decided to take most of the weekend off from this project, but I did make some progress yesterday evening. We now have fully-styled HTML output and any dialogue that uses a user-created costume now displays the name of the costume given by the user rather than the Foundry's (unintelligible) internal key. The HTML is really easy to read through now and is perfect for doing editorial reviews. It doesn't look quite as nice after being imported into M$ Word, but it's still very readable.
stoutes has suggested that I provide the map name for each dialog tree, so I'll be looking into that tonight (US-CST).
Here are the items outstanding before I release this to the general population:
I'd like to get a few beta testers. We all have different Foundry habits and those habits affect the dump files produced. Please send me a PM if you are interested in participating. The beta will be in two parts:
Initially, I just want people to send me their mission dumps and I'll send back the output for review and comments. For the second round, I'll send you the Zipped executable and you can use the UI to format your own mission dumps.
Yeah, I've tried this many times. It certainly helps to find typos, but it can mess up the format quite easily. For example, if I'm writing in word, my brain is trained to put quotation marks around something a character says. In the Foundry I have to then go through each dialogue obsessively and find the quotation marks.
Trying to writer a really complex branching dialogue in word is a nightmare.
Speaking of beta, the engine is now DONE. I just need to run it against more people's missions to find the holes. (Holes, in this case, being unexpected things cropping up in the dump file.) I've sent stoutes the latest output for his missions "Collectiveness Strikes Gold I & II" and he should be able to comment on it.
I'll likely be adding a simple Windows UI tomorrow to finish this thing off.
But... I NEED MORE FOUNDRY EXPORT FILES TO TEST WITH! So please PM me if you'd like me to run your mission through the formatter. Once I verify that there aren't any problems, you'll get a copy of the HTML output from the formatter for your mission.
Actually that might be a very good thing to run a test with, to see how it deals with special characters and such. Granted the output might be less well formatted initially, but I of course encourage this, and any other language submissions anyone wants to put forward
I call it, the Stoutes paradox.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Foundry Mission Database
Check out my Foundry missions:
Standalone - The Great Escape - The Galaxy's Fair - Purity I: Of Denial - Return to Oblivion
Untitled Series - Duritanium Man - The Improbable Bulk - Commander Rihan
And yes, I welcome non-English missions! In fact, I want to localize the output to match the Foundry-supported languages. The Engine was built from the ground up to support Unicode, so non-ASCII characters are already supported.
I'd like to get about ten more people's missions run through before I make this thing public. Any takers? I turn these things around fast when there are no issues (and even when there are) and I don't bite my beta testers.
I call it, the Stoutes paradox.
But here's something you probably something you want to add to the OP. I'm running the Steam version of STO. For me the file landed in Steam/SteamApps/common/Star Trek Online/Star Trek Online/Live/Data.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Done!
And thanks for submitting your mission! starswordc's mission "Bait and Switch 1" found another problem with chat bubbles. (What's up with all the chat bubble issues?)
By the way, you don't have to send just one mission. If you've got six or seven, I'll run all of them! The more missions I can run through it, the more confidence I'll have to release the final tool.
So... who's next? :cool:
I wouldn't be surprised if my missions have some of the largest and most convoluted branching dialogues in the game, so if there's a bug they will probably expose it.
Here's an example: Atlas Affair Computer Dialogue (although that one is actually pretty straightforward, hehe)
My missions also have some vestigial maps and dialogues that are never actually used since they were once part of a single mission. So, I'll be interested in seeing if that causes any problems.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
In the same way, it's possible to track income and expenses for your business in a spreadsheet, and if that were all that was available I suppose it would be fine, but it is still more convenient to use dedicated accounting software that is tailored for the job.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
Second, I did build three to four foundry missions. Since they just got lost in the sea of missions, I ended up deleting the missions from the Foundry. I will shift through my files.
---edit added---
I could not find my original documents.
Here is proof that I did work on Foundry missions:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=507621
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=585561
Many thanks to erei and the irrepressible nagorak for submitting their missions. I've been able to identify a few more issues thanks to their submissions.
And, thanks to inspiration from erei, I've internationalized the formatter. It now supports English, French (well, erei will tell me how well it's supported), Spanish and I've even taken a stab at supporting German. The formatter uses the Language specified in the project to determine the localization. There's no support for Italian, yet, because I don't have anyone lined up to proof the Italian translations.
I'm still looking for a few more volunteers to submit their mission projects for testing. You'll join the elite group of brave pioneers that includes stoutes, starswordc, Castmodean (castsbugc), erei and Nagorak!
Foundry Mission Database
Check out my Foundry missions:
Standalone - The Great Escape - The Galaxy's Fair - Purity I: Of Denial - Return to Oblivion
Untitled Series - Duritanium Man - The Improbable Bulk - Commander Rihan