Custom Item Description

[Roelandt]

I've managed to successfully make my first custom greatsword in the game and it works as intended, appears in inventory, only one item even when zoning, cool icons....I'm happy.

 

However, I entered a description in Comments in the Item Editing Palette, and ingame, examining showed only the basic game text ("Frequently used by knights, these swords are huge and used with both hands").

 

I went back to the palette and entered the text in the Description field. However, I was unable to save it, getting an error every time. No amount of tinkering with the Description field enabled me to save it. In fact, I was even unable to save when I deleted everything from the Description field...tampering with it once breaks it so I have to cancel my checkout.

 

What am I doing wrong? I want the following text to appear in the item description when examined by a character in game:

 

"Crafted millennia ago in another reality by powerful Celestials, Runeweaver was the faithful sword of the Sons of Syrus. It is told in old lore that Runeweaver was drawn to this reality shortly before the first Blight. Though its history in this world is shrouded in mystery, Runeweaver has recently emerged in what seems to be the most unlikely of places."

 

Any advice how to stick that on the item?

 

 

Thanks.

[hdhd]

You could try creating a new item with the same description or make a screenshot because I can't really imagine what your problem is. If I want to edit a description it is never a problem http://img696.imageshack.us/i/itemhj.jpg/

[nezroy]

The in-game description goes in the Description field, not the Comments field.

[Roelandt]

hdhd, here are some screenshots showing my problem:

 

1) Enter the text into the popup using the "..." in the Description line:

http://yfrog.com/jatoolset1j

 

2) Selecting OK, I can see part of the text shown on the Description Line:

http://yfrog.com/0vtoolset2j

 

3) I click the save icon in the top left to save my work and get this error message:

http://yfrog.com/1qtoolset3j

 

 

I've no idea why this is happening. I hope I don't have to start over from scratch for some reason. This was a lot of work getting to this point. Hehe.

[nezroy]

Pretty sure those strings are stored in your talk table. Maybe there's something borked about that string in particular. If you go to your mod properties you can see the "StringId Begin" and "StringId Last Used" fields. Write these down and then go to your talk table (Tools->String Editor), and start entering String IDs in this range until you find the one from the item description. You could then edit it from there and see if that frees up whatever problem the item editor is having.

 

Also you'll need to export your talk table to get strings like custom descriptions into your game (Tools->Export->Export Talk Table). If you haven't exported your talk table that's probably why it doesn't show up in game at all. When you export the talk table it also erroneously exports the global talk table to the global override location; packages/core/override/toolsetexport. Basically the same as what happens whenever you export a custom script as well. So don't forget to delete any files from that location after your export (should be something like core_en-us.tlk or something similar, I don't remember exactly).

[nezroy]

Oh and if you have *never* been able to put anything into the description field (and not just that you did put something in once, and now can't change it), then it's possible the StringId Begin and StringId Last Used ranges for your mod are conflicting with IDs in core/single player. You should set this to a unique range when you first create your mod, before adding any strings, but this of course is not mentioned in any of the tutorials :/ Using a 3-letter author prefix is pretty common for mod naming, etc. (i.e. I prefix all my mod names/unique IDs with "nez" to avoid collisions). You can take your 3-letter unique prefix, convert it to a number (so if you used "roe", that would map to 181505), tack on 4 0s, and use that as the base for any unique IDs you need in your mods (so your first mod might use 1,815,050,000 as a StringId Begin and 1,815,050,999 as a StringId End, your next mod would go from 1,815,051,000 to 1,815,051,999, and so on). This minimizes the change of collisions with your unique IDs and any other mods, and guarantees you won't conflict with anything from BioWare, which uses IDs all below 100,000 or so.

 

It's a pain to convert a mod after the fact though, as any strings you've added will have the wrong IDs and there's no easy way to change them "in place" that I know of. You can try a builder-to-builder export of your mod, create a new mod where you set those values up front, and then do a builder-to-builder load and tell it to create your own StringIds, which should then map any of your strings into the new range you setup when you created your new mod. You'll also need to create strings with the string editor for your mod name, author name, and the other metadata that shows up in the DA:O DLC content menu.

 

Hopefully that makes sense.

[Roelandt]

Oh and if you have *never* been able to put anything into the description field (and not just that you did put something in once, and now can't change it), then it's possible the StringId Begin and StringId Last Used ranges for your mod are conflicting with IDs in core/single player. You should set this to a unique range when you first create your mod, before adding any strings, but this of course is not mentioned in any of the tutorials :/ Using a 3-letter author prefix is pretty common for mod naming, etc. (i.e. I prefix all my mod names/unique IDs with "nez" to avoid collisions). You can take your 3-letter unique prefix, convert it to a number (so if you used "roe", that would map to 181505), tack on 4 0s, and use that as the base for any unique IDs you need in your mods (so your first mod might use 1,815,050,000 as a StringId Begin and 1,815,050,999 as a StringId End, your next mod would go from 1,815,051,000 to 1,815,051,999, and so on). This minimizes the change of collisions with your unique IDs and any other mods, and guarantees you won't conflict with anything from BioWare, which uses IDs all below 100,000 or so.

 

It's a pain to convert a mod after the fact though, as any strings you've added will have the wrong IDs and there's no easy way to change them "in place" that I know of. You can try a builder-to-builder export of your mod, create a new mod where you set those values up front, and then do a builder-to-builder load and tell it to create your own StringIds, which should then map any of your strings into the new range you setup when you created your new mod. You'll also need to create strings with the string editor for your mod name, author name, and the other metadata that shows up in the DA:O DLC content menu.

 

Hopefully that makes sense.

 

My string starts at 1916328733 to 1916628736. I can't imagine a conflict. The strings I am looking at is the item description found in the Downloadable Content section. 1916628733 is the item name, ...734 is the item description (again found in the downloadable content section, not ingame), and ...735 is my name. ...736 is empty. Maybe I need to create a new string for 736?

 

Also, I appear to even be unable to make changes in the string editor. I found a typo in my description field there and changed it, exported the talk table, and the change does not appear when I view it in Downloadable Content. Seems I can't change anything in this. Frustrated.

[nezroy]

My string starts at 1916328733 to 1916628736. I can't imagine a conflict. The strings I am looking at is the item description found in the Downloadable Content section. 1916628733 is the item name, ...734 is the item description (again found in the downloadable content section, not ingame), and ...735 is my name. ...736 is empty. Maybe I need to create a new string for 736?

 

Also, I appear to even be unable to make changes in the string editor. I found a typo in my description field there and changed it, exported the talk table, and the change does not appear when I view it in Downloadable Content. Seems I can't change anything in this. Frustrated.

 

After changing it in the string editor, if you close/re-open the toolset, does the change still appear in the string editor? Or does it revert to the old version? ...736 is probably where it's trying to put the item description string, but it seems like your toolset is unable to update the strings DB properly. Have you tried creating a new mod and seeing if you can edit strings there? It could just be something borked in that mod somehow.

 

Also, have you looked at the toolset logs in <my docs>\BioWare\Dragon Age\Toolset\logs\ to see if it has a more detailed error about what's going wrong?

 

EDIT: Also, if you're changing the string that shows up in the DLC menu in game, I believe you have to re-generate your module and manifest XML from the Tools->Export menu. I'm pretty sure that the strings that are used for your module metadata (author, URL, mod description, etc. - basically any strings you set in the module properties screen) are read straight from those XML files and not from the talk table.