Longer, wider message boxes with scroll bars?

[EPDGaffney]

My message box is too powerful for Gamebryo. It crashes. However, there are some messages in the GECK already that are much longer, often help and tutorial stuff. And I vaguely recall being able to read through some tutorials in-game that were quite long and had scroll bars. It's possible that I selected them from the pause menu but I don't remember. Is my concept of longer messages feasible?

 

I've tried 'pages' but with what I have in mind for the puzzle I'm working on, it's just too cumbersome. I'm going to shorten them for now and move on, but if anyone knows anything about this, I'd appreciate it.

[Mktavish]

So are you saying the message box accepts up to 1024 characters by default ... at least from within the geck anyways ? When you mentioned that in your other thread ... I was assuming you had gone into the .ini file to adjust that. Like the fix to make it so you can have longer dialogue responses.

 

This one explained here ... https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/30423/?

 

And for NV you would go to your GeckCustom.ini looking for the same ...

 

[Localization]

iExtendedResponseLength=255

iExtendedTopicLength=50

bAllowExtendedText=0

~~~~~~~~~~

And change them. Although I found the limit to be 511 for those with the NV geck. Even though you can input higher numbers. Also ... you have to set both those numbers the same ... otherwise the response , no matter what it was ... was getting limited by the length on the topic. At least for just making a response under the "GREETING" topic. Maybe had the "Topic Text" been something actually typed in ... it would then initiate the higher response length ?

So knowing those are there for dialogue ... maybe there is some settings for the message box ... maybe even in the Game settings ?

[Mktavish]

Hmmm ... I can't seem to find anything on extending messages. And ya it crashes my game too.

 

But I have seen the dialogue response extension work in game ... Aleast for FO3 ... but that was at a limit of 500.

Which would scroll , and display choice options.

 

Might the dialogue editor work for this ... being able to pick next page , previous page & close/goodbye in the choice field ?

And your inventory note item , places an invisible talking activator in front of player with a force greeting.

 

And maybe make the item a consumable , that places another one of it's self back in inventory ?

[EPDGaffney]

I need to have a think. I like the image idea best, I suppose. I really don't like having to point the player to Aid. Misc seems somewhat appropriate, and the Notes would be best. I may be able to use Misc with an event handler script. The problem with using that for Notes is that nothing reports back to XML which note is in that spot, and Notes don't get an inventory reference or any of the other stuff you can use with an event handler for stuff like this. Far as I've been able to tell anyway.

 

For now, I'm still translating the Latin text into an English that I think will be good for players solving a puzzle rather than people that just like reading, so I have a bit of time for more ideas to come to me or anyone else that would like to suggest them here.

 

I tried a message box that was exactly 1022 characters I think (if Word counted the same way Gamebryo does at least) and it was too long vertically to select the buttons, but maybe splitting that into two pages for each language isn't the end of the world. Just frustrating knowing that this would work fine with a wider message box or with scroll bars, and knowing that that can be edited via script for some other stuff.

[Mktavish]

The wider message box is using the dialogue .

 

The guy I was working with same thing ... messages didn't work out ... but dialogue did.

 

You have to trim it down though from more than 1200 chars with one screen.

 

The dialogue screen works pretty smooth ... if the message screen aint ?

 

It just takes some trickery to make it seem the same.

[EPDGaffney]

It just seems a little messy, though, as I want it to be accessed quickly via the Pip-Boy. I'm going to pursue the menu method and see where's that go for me. If it doesn't work out, I'll look at the dialogue method a bit closer.

 

Also, 1200 isn't much more than 1023. I'd like scrollbars ideally, but the menu method could either use XML for that, or it could have a background image that fits it on the one page.

[Mktavish]

I just threw out a 1200 number ... which would need to be 3 dialogue response pages.

 

So how many character spaces do you need for this ?

 

But you do know you can have an inventory item launch a dialogue conversation ?

 

And with XML ... are you inferring to add another menu option to the pip boy ? A GUI click button ? err atleast a hot key from after hitting "Tab"

[EPDGaffney]

Turns out the XML method will conflict with other mods unless users have UIO, so I may be looking at this dialogue method after all.

[Mktavish]

There is one side effect I can't remember if it is definitely the case or problem.

 

And that is since you are making this change in the GeckCustom.ini ... that it will change and cause the dialogue field to always cover any speakers face through out the game. But might only be with dialogue boxes you cracked the default limit on. Can't remember ... and that was only on Fo3 with my experience. But it's easy enough to test out ... and I would suggest making a test .esp , before you go changing dialogue boxes beyond the default limit in your current mod file.

Edited January 24, 2018 by Mktavish

[EPDGaffney]

I'm going to attempt using this function:

https://geckwiki.com/index.php/SetTerminalUIModel

 

I'm making the new model right now, so we'll see what happens.