Import dialogue into NWN Toolset?

Neverwinter Nights 1 Toolset, Scripting, NWNX
1

Hi everyone, I’m just getting started experimenting with building a module in NWN EE, and wondering about the conversation editor.

As I understand it, there are methods for exporting the dialogue from Aurora and bringing it into Unity, but is there a way to do the reverse? ie, reformat an xml into whatever Aurora reads for conversations? I’ve messed around a little with Articy and was just wondering if (by some miracle) such a tool existed.

I’m assuming the answer is ‘haha, no’, but if anyone would have the answer I figure it’s here. Thanks!

2

For my “Crown of Creation” module, I exported the conversations from Dragon Age: Origins to NWN.

The method I used was

  • Export DAO to XML
  • Load XML to Excel
  • In Excel, generate Letoscript
  • Run the Letoscript in moneo to load NWN

This required a fair amount of knowledge and manual intervention, but became easier with familiarity, almost a factory process in the end.

If no one else has a better method, I can share the detail, though documentation (and my memory) probably leaves a lot to be desired.

3

There’s a few ways to interact with the base game conversation files (which are “GFF” files). You can convert them to JSON with nim tools and moneo scripts can also alter them.

It does depend what format Articy deals with, and how it formats things. I’d try taking some conversations and converting them to JSON and seeing how it looks.

4

Since you’ll inevitably still be bound by any limitations of the game itself when it comes to dialog logic, I assume this is all done because the alternative editors are more pleasant to write in?

@Proleric / @plushronin can you give a brief overview of what features or UX advantage they offer over the toolset? And over any text editor and editing XML/JSON/YAML/etc directly?

If there is something gamechanging that’s missing, then that’s an opportunity for a new tool that works with NWN DLG files directly.

5

Not in my case. I made a module for DA:O which I then migrated to NWN to share with a wider audience.

DA:O dialogue trees are somewhat similar to NWN, but not identical. The DA:O editor exports them as XML, so that was the obvious starting point.

1 Like
6

In my case it’s a combination of lack of experience and attractive/intuitive features. I started out dabbling with Inklewriter and Twine before discovering Articy. In addition to the ‘Flow’ mind-map style planning tool, it also has a map designer, entity database, and text editor… Basically it’s very close to becoming my primary outlining and drafting software, second only to good ol’ Google Docs.

@Proleric, @Jasperre my programming knowledge is probably too rudimentary for me to follow your advice just yet, but I appreciate the recommendations for where to start. I’m pretty sure Articy can export to XML, so I’ll look into that!

7

I can’t speak for anyone else, but with the screen resolutions that are typical now, I can hardly read the font in the toolset conversation editor anymore. So I’d be very interested in any alternatives, just for that reason alone.