That AoM Guy
(id: aom expert) |
Posted on 04/30/19 @ 09:04 PM
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Age of Kings 1.0 |
So, a few years ago I was quite awestruck when I found out that one of my favorite games, Age of Mythology, had a list created for it that contained every single dialogue for the game typed out in clear text. That list got alot of use as I constantly referred back to it when I needed dialogues for some of my scenarios. Recently I started thinking... why can't Age of Empires 2 have something like this? So one day I decided to make one myself.
I got about halfway through, listening and typing out each one. That was when I came across quite an interesting file that I had overlooked in the begining...
I don't know how well known this may be, but the fact is, there is already a text file within the game's folders that contain each of the dialogues. From what I understand, what AoE2HD did was take the language file from the original game and put it in a clear text format, so it could easily be edited and saved. Now this file itself contains all of the dialogues of the game in text. It seems the reason the devs did this was so that they could easily translate the text to other languages without having to go through each scenario - they would simply quote it using a string in the triggers.
So after getting half the list done, and then seeing this... you can imagine my reaction. However it did need some cleaning up before it could be called an actual list...
So that's exactly what I did. I removed all of the miscellaneous references that the game makes using this file, such as names and objectives, and kept only the dialogs, and even then cleaned it up some more - what I wanted to have was a clear-cut path from the titles of the sound files straight to the text which tells you what they say. Originally, it was unclear, as the titles of the files were different from the strings that were used to quote them. I combined them together.
When you open the file, the string of numbers that you see is what you can use in the "Display Instructions" trigger effect to easily insert the proper text in the trigger. The letters next to it quote the exact name of the sound file that goes with it. This was the most important feature I wanted to have. One of the things you'll run into by using the string, as opposed to typing it out yourself, is that the text will have some color, based on what color it had in the campaign. Another thing is that it will display the original name of the unit that spoke the dialog. I kept these names to preserve the authenticity but I'm sure most of you will more than likely be using them for other units.
When referencing sound files, there will be some that are out of order compared to the strings that they are attached to. This was seemingly just the way it was in the original file, and if I was going to keep something in order, it would be the strings.
I did my best to space them out based on their scenarios/campaigns. There were some duplicate and unused texts I came across, so I made sure that the only lines I had as texts were ones that existed as sound files.
This project was likely going to be at least a few months of on and off work, and when I found the text file, I completed it in 2 days (lol).
Enjoy this list, and use dialogues in scenarios! There may be a number that are only fit for the scenarios they're used for, but there are still plenty of multifunctional excerpts that can be used for any kind of scenario.
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