How to best bulk-patch a large number of strings.

Hey, I'm looking for the best way to alter a large amount of strings directly in the dialogue.tlk file.

(The strings come from multiple .dlg files so I figure it is easier to simply patch the .tlk file. This way I also avoid patching any triggers by default.)

The strings that need to be altered are currently sitting in a master file and still need to be modified.

I know that there is probably a good way to have WeiDU loop through an extern file and patch the strings with modified versions from another file but being the WeiDU noob I am, I have really no clue how to get there.

The best way I could do it right now is to simply put each string in a "REPLACE_TEXTUALLY" line but that seems like a terrible way to do it..

ALTER_TLK BEGIN
REPLACE_TEXTUALLY CASE_SENSITIVE ~string1a~ ~string1b~
…
REPLACE_TEXTUALLY CASE_SENSITIVE ~stringXa~ ~stringXb~
END

I guess I'm not clear on what exactly you're looking to do. What you're proposing would work if, say, you wanted to change every reference to a name to something else, e.g. from "Nizidramanii'yt" to "Bob". If it's just changing the contents of individual strings, then this:

STRING_SET 
1234 ~new #1234 string~
5678 ~new #5678 string~

is more what you want.

Hey, thanks for the answers.

I was under the impression EET was now patching strings from BG1EE dynamically? So using STRING_SET would not work?

Besides, I already have all the strings in a file now and I didn't save the string numbers in that file. So, unless there is a major draw back to using REPLACE_TEXTUALLY I'd rather not go through all the files again to note down the string numbers. (I am aware that some generic phrases might be present in multiple strings. I have those phrases marked separately and plan to patch them in their corresponding .dlg files, so that should not be an issue.)

Oh yeah, and I also patch strings that are added by mods...

In any case, I'm more looking for a way to tell WeiDU to look for all strings in file A and then replace them with the corresponding string from file B instead of adding 100 odd lines of REPLACE_TEXTUALLY..

Hey, thanks for the answers.

 

I was under the impression EET was now patching strings from BG1EE dynamically? So using STRING_SET would not work?

EET just adds 200000 to the BG1 strings so e.g. 70019 in BG1/SoD becomes 270019 in EET. So you can patch strings with that.

Ahh, okay..

Still, I see no need to go through the extra work of doing that.

I had written a small macro that patched my stuff to use either the straight string numbers for IWD or add the +79000 for ones for IWD-in-BG2. I'll see if I can find it, as you could probably use it to the same effect here.

I am not sure I understand what your macro does, will it help me with patching the strings from a file or simply help me to move over to SET_STRING instead of REPLACE_TEXTUALLY (which I would rather not do)?

Thank you in any case..