Fallout 2 utility Fallout Dialogue Creator 0.29.0-beta released

[DjUnique]

Hey there,

been a long time since I last posted here, that was back in 2018 when I resurrected the dialogue tool. I've been working on the project again and decided to upgrade the code to work with a more modern Delphi IDE (12). Feedback is appreciated as always. If critical bugs are found, I'll be able to implement a quick bugfix release. This project is definitely far from dead. This year marks a 20 year anniversary of the project as well, I started working on it back in 2005 as an internal tool for the FMF team.
There is still a lot that can be done for extending the functionality of this tool, such as importing existing SSL scripts (I'm trying to come up with a solution that can parse complex SSL scripts with more ease). Other suggestions are always welcome as well.

Changelog:

- Added VCL styles for the both plugins and the main program.
Crashing issues related to the VCL style manager have been fixed by
using the newer IDE. In Delphi 10.3 Rio there was an exception thrown
at program exit that was probably due to a bug in the style manager.

- VCL Style selector implemented. The new style is applied after pressing
OK in the preferences dialog.

- Added a Delphi project group for easier recompiling of all plugins
with the latest interface version.
- Created a new application icon for the program, with ChatGPT's
image generation capabilities (Dall-E 3)

- Installer: fixed invalid program icon link in the installer that
pointed to the old fmfdlg.exe

- Installer: fixed problem with file access in default location
Thanks to ChatGPT for providing the solution.

- New app icon for DialogueConverter.exe, courtesy of ChatGPT

- Source code for the tool now included in the installer.
To compile you need the following components:

-JCL
-JVCL
-DelphiWebScript
-Synedit
-Graphics32

- Ported code to compile with Delphi 12 which is a more
modern IDE. All previous functionality is preserved successfully.
This source code is located in src\Source D12 (if source code is installed).

- Removed plugin Utility_RenameNodes.dll, you can now use the
helper script Rename Nodes to NodeXXX instead. This was due to
access violations of the host application occurring on exit.

Link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/grm9...znk4mzo6zomohrogtl356chb&e=1&st=ddechqy0&dl=0

edited link because I was getting a warning about violating Google Drive terms & conditions, the installer is now inside a zip file.

 

[DjUnique]

I'm already working on an SSL parser that should be able to import any SSL file with ease. It ended up becoming more complicated than I initially thought but it's getting there. First I'll make a simple command line SSL2FMF program and evntually create the import plugin once all features are implemented. Some of the code was generated with the Deepseek R1 AI but I filled in the blanks manually. Currently it does not parse conditional statements but it'll get there eventually.

 

[Stevie_D]

This is great news, I shall bookmark this thread. I had a great time 20 years ago (holy shit!) working with you during the FMF days, sending suggestions and bug fixes for the tool. I picked it up again as I'm part of the Fallout Yesterday crew now.

- Do you have a bug / suggestion reporting page?
- I'm running 0.27.2 beta. Should I update to the version for which you provided a link in this thread's first post? I suppose the question should read: will my current dialogue files work in the newer version of the editor?

 

[hexer]

Hi DJUnique!

Thank you for creating this editor, it helped a LOT with dialogues over the years!
This new version is like an early Christmas present for me

I'll test it and report back how it's working.

P.S. If you could add a feature to increase the font size, that would be really great!
Over the years, monitors and resolutions became bigger, we became older, and the text inside the editor is quite tiny now.

Also, I recently discovered a bug. If a single node contains more than 21 replies, dialogue converter will crash without any meaningful error.

 

[DjUnique]

This is great news, I shall bookmark this thread. I had a great time 20 years ago (holy shit!) working with you during the FMF days, sending suggestions and bug fixes for the tool. I picked it up again as I'm part of the Fallout Yesterday crew now.

- Do you have a bug / suggestion reporting page?
- I'm running 0.27.2 beta. Should I update to the version for which you provided a link in this thread's first post? I suppose the question should read: will my current dialogue files work in the newer version of the editor?

Your current dialogues should work with the new version, I didn't make changes to the .fmf dialogue format so they should load in just fine. So an update is recommended.
I currently don't have a bug tracker since i don't have a web host and domain at the moment, these seem pretty expensive but I'll try to get something up and running at some point, it would be awesome to start making more improvements to the tool based on user suggestions like in the old days. But I'll follow this thread to see what people have suggested and implement them. (Now with the AI being around, things are much easier as I can just ask AI for implementation of functions etc.)

 

[DjUnique]

Hi DJUnique!

Thank you for creating this editor, it helped a LOT with dialogues over the years!
This new version is like an early Christmas present for me

I'll test it and report back how it's working.

P.S. If you could add a feature to increase the font size, that would be really great!
Over the years, monitors and resolutions became bigger, we became older, and the text inside the editor is quite tiny now.

Also, I recently discovered a bug. If a single node contains more than 21 replies, dialogue converter will crash without any meaningful error.

I'm going to investigate this crash, thanks for reporting. It's been ages since I touched some of the code but I'll figure out what needs to be done.

 

[hexer]

Thank you! So far the latest editor is performing great. It used to hang on shutdown, but now that’s not the case anymore.

I am wondering is the LVAR, MVAR and GVAR functionality working? I only tried setting it up once, but couldn’t so I thought it wasn’t completed.

 

[Stevie_D]

Your current dialogues should work with the new version, I didn't make changes to the .fmf dialogue format so they should load in just fine. So an update is recommended.
I currently don't have a bug tracker since i don't have a web host and domain at the moment, these seem pretty expensive but I'll try to get something up and running at some point, it would be awesome to start making more improvements to the tool based on user suggestions like in the old days. But I'll follow this thread to see what people have suggested and implement them. (Now with the AI being around, things are much easier as I can just ask AI for implementation of functions etc.)

Thanks chief. Can confirm dialogue files made in 0.27.2 work in 0.29.0.

Couple of thoughts for the to-do list, if I may:

1. Copy what PJ said re: the font size.

2. This would be all the more useful if font-scaling was introduced - any chance you could please make it so we can re-scale the Dialogue Editor window (below)?

3. If you clone the same node more than once, you end up with two (or more) nodes with the same name. Might it be an idea to have the suffixes go CLONE, CLONE2, CLONE3 … CLONE[N]?

Appreciate your on-going efforts.

 

[DjUnique]

Thanks chief. Can confirm dialogue files made in 0.27.2 work in 0.29.0.

Couple of thoughts for the to-do list, if I may:

1. Copy what PJ said re: the font size.

2. This would be all the more useful if font-scaling was introduced - any chance you could please make it so we can re-scale the Dialogue Editor window (below)?

3. If you clone the same node more than once, you end up with two (or more) nodes with the same name. Might it be an idea to have the suffixes go CLONE, CLONE2, CLONE3 … CLONE[N]?

Appreciate your on-going efforts.


View attachment 36076

I implemented a font size setting but for sizes above 11 the button sizes need adjustment. I also added the ability to select a different font to be used.

Made the dialogue editor window sizeable and increased the size of the node editor and player editor windows.

As for the node clone idea, I'll add that too.

 

[DjUnique]

I'm going to investigate this crash, thanks for reporting. It's been ages since I touched some of the code but I'll figure out what needs to be done.

I created a test dialogue with a node that contains 21 player options, but I couldn't get Dialogue Converter to crash, it exported the script just fine.

 

[Stevie_D]

I implemented a font size setting but for sizes above 11 the button sizes need adjustment. I also added the ability to select a different font to be used.

Made the dialogue editor window sizeable and increased the size of the node editor and player editor windows.

As for the node clone idea, I'll add that too.

Blimey, that was quick! Will that be in the next update, or is it already available via the link in the first post?

 

[Stevie_D]

Getting quite a few of these errors when I save the attached dialogue.

Gut feeling says it's something to do with skill checks in the dialogue that were added in version 0.27.0 and are causing problems with 0.29.0. That could be bullshit, though. The blank nodes in branch Lacey07[…] were added after these error messages started occurring, so I think it's safe to say they're not to blame.

 

[DjUnique]

Blimey, that was quick! Will that be in the next update, or is it already available via the link in the first post?

I'll upload an updated EXE later, probably some time today, a new installer will be created also once I have locked down the updates to be done. I'll fix the dialogue you uploaded as well. There were some unlinked conditions in the player options of some nodes and also links to skill checks that were not flagged as skil check links.

 

[DjUnique]

Here's the new build, 0.29.1-beta. The SSL2FMF converter is still under construction so it is not yet included. It still has some issues with code conversion so I need to work on it some more. But the requested font size changing and dialogue editor resizing features have been added.

Full changelog:

- Added splash screen, image generated with Leonardo.ai

- Added new custom code editor for player option conditions. This
was done for the upcoming SSL2FMF converter which is still under
construction.

- NodeTreeView plugin caused a crash on exit, should be fixed now
since I moved the memory deallocation code to the RunPlugin
procedure.

- Added global font size to preferences for setting different font
sizes, a preview of the changed font is also displayed.

- Increased size of the dialogue editor window, also making it scalable.

- Increased size of the node editor and player option editor windows

Download link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5dsx...ey=zroy0lzdpbhbbyqvuwmm56ea2&st=w4t9uths&dl=0

 

[Stevie_D]

Great stuff! Thanks for that. No need to tweak the .fmf file uploaded on my behalf. It's enough to know what's causing the errors.

 

[Stevie_D]

Shoulda asked before, but would it be a nuisance to add the same window-scaling functionality to the 'edit node' window as well? Thanks in advance if yes, and no worries if not.

 

[hexer]

Thank you for the quick update! I am happily installing it now

I created a test dialogue with a node that contains 21 player options, but I couldn't get Dialogue Converter to crash, it exported the script just fine.

Oh, 21 player options work for me too during the export. It's on the 22nd or more that it crashes.

P.S. The new loading screen is epic!

 

[hexer]

Getting quite a few of these errors when I save the attached dialogue.

View attachment 36080


Gut feeling says it's something to do with skill checks in the dialogue that were added in version 0.27.0 and are causing problems with 0.29.0. That could be bullshit, though. The blank nodes in branch Lacey07[…] were added after these error messages started occurring, so I think it's safe to say they're not to blame.

Stevie, I think that these warnings are harmless. They have something to do with incorrect or empty option links. Once you hook up everything correctly, they'll disappear. I used to get those in 0.27 too

 

[DjUnique]

Thank you for the quick update! I am happily installing it now



Oh, 21 player options work for me too during the export. It's on the 22nd or more that it crashes.

P.S. The new loading screen is epic!

Okay, after adding two more player options I got the crash too. Went to check the code and sure enough the player options array had only 20 max elements so that's the reason it crashes. I increased the limit to 100.

 

[hexer]

Okay, after adding two more player options I got the crash too. Went to check the code and sure enough the player options array had only 20 max elements so that's the reason it crashes. I increased the limit to 100.

Excellent! That should be enough for any aspiring writer