Dialogue limits?

[ashtonlp101]

Hello all,

 

I have noticed some mods like Salt Lake stories are somehow able to surpass the character limit in NV. Is there some kind of NVSE plug-in/GECK edit that has to be made in order to do this? That would save me so much time instead of editing my dialogue down to 100 characters for player and 149 per response box.

[Radioactivelad]

I swear I remember seeing a mod just recently that credited someone/something else for showing them how to use FNVEdit to get around the Geck character limit, but I have no recollection of what it was, or what you would do with FNVEdit. My guess is you can make a "placeholder" in the geck then write the actual lines in FNVEdit, which won't have a character limit.

[madmongo]

You are aware that you can have multiple lines of dialog in a single response, right? Just enter the multiple lines in the middle part of the form where it says Response Text instead of up at the top where it says Info. The NPC will say each line one after the other until the NPC runs out of lines to say.

 

Each line is limited to 149 characters, but you can string as many of these together as you'd like in one response.

 

I don't know how to exceed the 149 character limit for a single line. If there is a way, I would recommend that you don't use it. The 149 character limit keeps the text to a reasonable length at the bottom of the screen for the subtitles. I personally would rather see multiple lines of dialog that cycle through for the response so that each line is readable at the bottom of the screen than one big response that has the subtitles as one big jumbled mess.

[ashtonlp101]

Yes, I know you can do multiple responds boxes. It's more for the player responses. I've noticed even Obsidian has surpassed 100/149 character per box in the vanilla game/DLCs. Someone had mentioned XEdit? But I don't think they're referring to FNVEdit.

[ashtonlp101]

I swear I remember seeing a mod just recently that credited someone/something else for showing them how to use FNVEdit to get around the Geck character limit, but I have no recollection of what it was, or what you would do with FNVEdit. My guess is you can make a "placeholder" in the geck then write the actual lines in FNVEdit, which won't have a character limit.

Perhaps this is it. Maybe I'll message Yossarian to find out. Thank you.

[madmongo]

Yes, I know you can do multiple responds boxes. It's more for the player responses. I've noticed even Obsidian has surpassed 100/149 character per box in the vanilla game/DLCs. Someone had mentioned XEdit? But I don't think they're referring to FNVEdit.

I read somewhere that Obsidian had some sort of dialog generation tool that converted some custom thing that Obsidian created into something that the GECK could understand. Seemed a bit silly to me since the GECK's dialog system isn't that bad once you get used to it. Might explain how Obsidian got past the GECK's character limits though. I think it might also explain why the dialog for some NPCs (like Cass) is a convoluted mess that makes it very difficult to mod.

[ashtonlp101]

The only issue I really have with the base dialogue system is when it gets time to VA you mod. Then the dialogue in longer sections can start to become fragmented and have awkward pauses in the middle of stories. I'd also like to do Singer NPCs properly with lip sync instead of the awkward way Obsidian did it in the tops. I also hate when you're trying to make good player responses and you're limited to Clint Eastwood level one liners. Makes me miss that classic FO1-2 wall of text. If Yossarian responds I'll be sure to make a separate post detailing what he says, because I'm sure I'm not the only one who likes lots of dialogue.

Edited February 3, 2021 by ashtonlp101

[dubiousintent]

FYI: xEdit, TES5Edit, and FNVEdit are the same tool. You rename the generic "xEdit" to the name expected for a particular game or purpose (i.e. TES4Edit, FO3Edit, FNVEdit, TES5Edit, EnderalEdit, SSEEdit, FO4Edit, FO76Edit), which then causes it to load a set of ".dat" resource files dealing with the record structure of that Bethesda game. The "already renamed to match the game" versions are placed on the various Nexus pages, but the generic named version can be downloaded from GitHub and manually renamed as required as well.

 

-Dubious-

[ashtonlp101]

Update: Thanks to ElPascal who'd also found a workaround, here is what he informed me:

 

"You'll want to open your GECKCustom.ini and look for:

[Localization]

iExtendedResponseLength=x

iExtendedTopicLength=x

bAllowExtendedText=0

Just set bAllowExtendedText to 1 and set reponse and topic length to something of your liking. (Personally I'm going with 255 and 150 respectively rn, not sure where the hard limit is)."

So it appears as though this limit is soft coded, at least to an extent. I'm guessing you can modify the limits up until your dialogue UI breaks. Might test it out and see.

Edited February 5, 2021 by ashtonlp101

[dubiousintent]

Nice. Added as "TIP Topic and response line limits" to the "Dialog" section of the wiki "Getting started creating mods using GECK" article.

 

-Dubious-