Community support ideas

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This article contains links to the BioWare Social Network (BSN), which is now closed.

These links should be replaced with working links where possible, and tutorials edited to remove reliance on BSN.

Unfortunately the team at BioWare that prepared the toolset for public use doesn't have enough resources to address every request or suggestion for improvement. The following is a collection of ideas for improvements that BioWare couldn't get to but that could quite possibly be done by community contributions instead.

Better, more consistent camera control settings
At BioWare the various different editors of the toolset are used by various different specialists, each focused on their own area of expertise. This has led to different camera controls schemes being used in the area and level editors, for example. The camera control schemes are set in the DefaultSettings.xml file. Community-contributed versions of DefaultSettings with more consistent control schemes would be most welcome, or perhaps even a third-party application to make it easier to edit camera controls without XML expertise.
Voice over management tools 
BioWare was unable to release their voice over and localization software. The information needed for managing voice over work can be extracted from module talk tables; it would likely be very useful if there were some sort of application available to make recording VO for dialogue lines easier.
String ID migration tools 
One of the knottier problems that the toolset has with builder to builder export and import is keeping string ID numbers from colliding. It frequently has to renumber string IDs as a result. The toolset is able to find and correct all of the string ID references used internally when it does this, but it is unable to automatically find and correct the filenames of voice over wav files and FaceFX files (these files include the string ID number in their filenames as a way of associating them with their respective lines). A log file is generated during the builder to builder process that records what string ID changes were done, an application that uses this log to rename files could be quite useful.
Other text tools 
the ability to search and replace text in a module's talk table or in its scripts could be useful, especially if there are scripts that refer to specific string IDs (see string ID migration, above).
Model import tools 
Due to legal constraints BioWare was unable to release the export scripts they used to turn 3DSMax models into the format the game uses. Third-party converters and plugins for 3DSMax or for other 3D modeling programs will be essential for full-blown content creation. See MMH and MSH for model file specifications.
Conflict detector 
It should be relatively straightforward to extract a list of all the string IDs and resrefs used by any given module. Given that, it should be possible to create an application to automatically compare a set of modules and determine if there are any conflicts between them.
Variable 2DA management 
One of the major differences in how scripting functions between NWN and DA is that you need to pre-define local variables in a variable 2DA before they can be used. Changing this would require a major overhaul of how the engine works and so isn't really an option, but perhaps applications could be written to ease local variable management if it proves to be a long-term hassle. In theory one could perhaps scan through all the scripts in a module looking for local variable assignment functions and then try to automatically add the local variables used to local variable 2DAs.(One alternative to local variables can be found in the unlimited variable storage project[1]. With a single include file and a simple function call in your module script, you can have unlimited variable and array storage with no need to declare anything in a 2da.)