May I ask why the bits of descriptive text in square brackets were removed from the dialogue files? I rather liked them. I think that when it comes to stylistic changes like that, we should stick to what's in vanilla ToEE rather than impose our personal views. (same goes for the controversial hair mesh change, btw)
I've removed some of the bracketed descriptions from some of the dialogue files I've edited, but to my knowledge there has been no universal application of such a thing. The reasons I removed them in my cases were: They seemed to describe something that the voice actor was already portraying, or sometimes contradicted what the voice actor was portraying. e.g., Rufus: [excitedly] I am very excited! -or- Rufus: [excitedly] I am not at all excited. They sometimes extended the text beyond the boundaries of the text box. I suspect that much if not all of the original dialogue was written with the notion of there being no accompanying voice actors in mind, because recording voices was one of the last things Troika did before release. Hence the verbal descriptions of how the characters were supposed to sound. While I acknowledge that some expository stuff can be helpful, such as [you see a dark hallway covered with cobwebs], some of the other descriptive stuff is just plain silly or unnecesary when read while the audio files are playing. I suppose this doesn't account for people with hearing disabilities though. Never thought of that. :shrug:
I've also been unilaterally changing those, just adding punctuation: Before: [you see a dark hallway covered with cobwebs] After: [You see a dark hallway covered with cobwebs.] Just in the files I've worked on - sorry if that makes it inconsistent.
Ok, I've a look-see in the dialogue files, I definitely think some of the changes should be reverted. For instance: {400}{[wandering back and forth and quite animated] Tubal and Antonio are dead! This is most alarming! Heads will roll for this! [stops and stares through you with fire red eyes] Are YOU the one responsible for this tragedy?!} vs. {400}{Tubal and Antonio are dead! This is most alarming! Heads will roll for this! Are YOU the one responsible for this tragedy?!} I can imagine there's no sound or animation for him walking back and forth, and maybe you can infer that he's "quite animated" from the sound file/text itself, but I still think those little descriptions add a lot, and that it's a shame they're gone. There are many other such instances where I think the removal was unwarranted. So unless it's something extreme, like {[excitedly] Yeah, whatever}, or the text spills over the box, I'd prefer the description be left in.
Well ... I disagree. In the example above, is Alrrem actually wandering back and forth on screen? If not, the bracketed description is contradictory to what's really happening. As to the 'fire red eyes' part, that seems superfluous to me, given that the voice actor is already describing Alrrem's feelings through his acting. Also bear in mind that having these sometimes lengthy text descriptions in the dialogue files offsets the voice audio. For example, while we hear Alrrem saying "Tubal and Antonio are dead," we're still reading about how he's wandering back and forth. To me, that's cludgy. I suppose you could argue that if there's any doubt we should leave it as it is, but personally I don't have any qualms with taking the liberty of changing such a trifling thing. The same case could be made for almost any custom work we do here. For example, your signposts mod was obviously not something Troika intended, and it pretty well scuttles the walking around town experience. Why are we at liberty to do that but not remove bracketed descriptions from dialogue files?
I guess in the end it's a difference of opinion. But if it's minor issue in your eyes, would you mind if it were restored to the original state?
Actually, upon reflection, I wouldn't. Give me a day or two to find the older versions and I'll reintegrate and post them as an update in the CMF. [edit] We should probably come up with some sort of standard for this kind of thing, because I suspect that there have already been a lot of revisions of revisions for dialogue files. It seems to depend on who had them last, e.g., I think Zebedee did his spellcheck and grammar fixes on some stuff that I had already spell and grammar checked, and I very likely changed them back to whatever I thought they should be to some extent. Not out of malicious intent, but because I didn't know what had been done before, specifically. To cite Ted's example above, let's say that he gets a hold of a dialogue file and changes bracketed descriptions so that they're fully punctuated. Then I get a hold of it later and change them back to being punctuationless. Then you get a hold of it and change it to all caps or something like that (generic example). That's a lot of pointless effort and wasted time, ultimately, and it would probably lead to a non-uniform application across the board. But how do we determine when a file is under 'text lock'?
