Scripts[G5]

[Uberdhizon]

Has anyone ever considered going through the scripts and publishing them in an organized fashion and putting them on the strategy central? I might try it. But first I need someone to help me figure out how they're ordered.

[Mea Tulpa]

What, exactly, would the point be?

[Lilith]

1) That's easier said than done.

2) It's possible that Jeff would object to somebody posting all the text in one of his games en bloc on a publicly accessible forum.

[Randomizer]

Most of the texts are useless to most players. The only parts that are relevant are the sdf codes for quests, reputation changes, and the mechanics or leadership numbers for getting dialog options.

 

Jeff will probably shift more of them out of the scripts if they are posted and just have calls to compiled files that aren't accessible.

[Ohtar]

Which would be no fun at all. I myself like to make the G4 and G5 geneforges have the same effects as the G1 geneforge.

[Alorael at Large]

What would be the point? The scripts are all available with the game They're fairly easy to find, as they're titled after the areas to which the belong (or sometimes other things, but they're all well-titled). On a Mac, at least, you can use Spotlight to search the contents.

 

—Alorael, who thinks for everthing more complicated the unfamiliar might a well turn to the expertise of the boards.

[Lilith]

I assumed that by "in an organised fashion", UU meant something other than posting all the raw scripts. I can imagine ways of organising them that would be more useful (at least for some purposes) than just copy-pasting the text.

 

Also, having all the scripts together in one thread would make it easier to look for things like reputation changes and leadership checks across multiple zones.

 

Really, my main concern with this would be the copyright issue. Even with all the dialogue removed, though, there would be uses for a big database of all the code for every zone in the game.

[Alorael at Large]

Any organizational scheme would have to be planned in advance, and I can't think of any that really merit the work they would require. On the other hand, the database problem seems like a non-issue, since Spotlight makes searching easy already and the scripts are all easily available to anyone who has the game.

 

—Alorael, who actually thinks it's probably easier to search individual files than to deal with a massive thread full of scripts. Maybe not for PC users, but they don't count (yet).

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Proud Resident of Übersürdistan

On the other hand, the database problem seems like a non-issue, since Spotlight makes searching easy already

Some of us are still using 10.3.9.

[Alorael at Large]

I suppose that would be a problem, and I also suppose it will be true for a fair number of Spiderwebbers. So yes, it's a conceivably useful project. On the other hand, it seems more useful to just put all the scripts in one file that can be searched and upload it somewhere like Slarty's text dumps. And that still seems rather unobjectionable, though of course I'm not Jeff.

 

—Alorael, who thinks anyone who decides to enjoy the game via scripts is much like someone enjoying songs by reading the music. They're either Lord Vetinari or they're missing out and probably aware of it.

[Mea Tulpa]

TextWrangler, which is free, offers very flexible batch find with grep.

[Lilith]

I think I actually downloaded TextWrangler once while on one of my occasional freeware binges. I should take a look at it sometime.

[Uberdhizon]

By organized fashion I mean something like this:

 

The shapers want to recruit you.

 

1.I would like to join the Shapers.

2. I don't want to join the shapers.

 

 

Each of the replies would be a link that sends you to the text it would activate in the game. See?

[Sleeping Dragon]

That sounds like a bit much, Uber Unbound. I do believe, however, that people have posted what they called text dumps on these boards in the past. It wasn't very organized, but did provide a way to quickly search the scripts all at once for information.

[Mea Tulpa]

Or, you could just play the game, which does that itself.

 

The "text dumps" being referred to are, I think, the dump of Exile and Avernum 1-3 that I made for Encyclopedia Ermariana, which was never posted on the boards here, only on EE. That was a rather different circumstance as the game text was not easily accessible -- it was mostly stored in various formats in the application data and resource forks, not in text files that are clearly legible with any text editor and easily batch-searchable.

[Alorael at Large]

Actually, it really might be easier to provide an absurdly modified script for early areas that gives dialogue from all the other scripts. I have better things to do with my time, though, especially since the scripts are reasonably legible on their own.

 

—Alorael, who recommends taking a look. Even if you can't figure out the exact correspondence of dialogue choices and responses, you can usually get the general flow of things.