USDF branch question

[Nash]

Hey I've been a little left behind with this new USDF stuff. Is the work being done to the USDF branch for the purpose of eventually allowing modders to create Strife conversations without having to precompile anything?

[Gez]

Exactly.

Well, that, and extending the capabilities of conversations greatly.

[Nash]

Cool. Will it be able to reference ACS variables/global variables, like SBARINFO can? The whole "use dummy quest items to check for conditions" system has always bothered me.

How about expressions? For example, a dialog that displays something to the effect of

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"You have ", $gold, " coins. What would you like to buy?"

Bad example of syntax, but what $gold is - for example - a variable/global variable, or maybe the amount of a certain inventory item... or something.

And how about dynamic strings?

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"Hello ", $name, ". How are you?"

[Graf Zahl]

Cool. Will it be able to reference ACS variables/global variables, like SBARINFO can? The whole "use dummy quest items to check for conditions" system has always bothered me.

No. The condition stuff is mostly unchanged. The reason for this is that I added a Thing_SetConversation action special that allows moving the condition checking to a place that's better suited for it, namely the ACS scripts themselves.

And how about dynamic strings?

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"Hello ", $name, ". How are you?"

Not yet, maybe later.

[Nash]

So this has been merged into the main trunk now which means it's already usable, correct? Any documentation?

[Blzut3]

Here's the base spec, and here's the spec for ZDoom's enhancements.

[Nash]

Not sure if I'm still getting it... so all I have to do is create a text lump named DIALOG01 for MAP01, DIALOG02 for MAP02... etc?

EDIT: Another question. What is include meant to be used for? Would it allow - for example - the same conversations to be reused across several maps? For example, let's say I want to reuse all of the conversations of MAP01 in MAP02 as well. Instead of creating the same copy for MAP02, I can just include MAP01's conversations in MAP02. If I edit the conversations in MAP01, MAP02 will be affected as well. Is this the intended usage?

[Blzut3]

Yes you can use the include parameter for that. The binary format automatically included SCRIPT00, USDF only does it if you explicitly tell it to.

USDF should be placed in DIALOGxy if you are using Hexen or Doom format maps, otherwise it should go into the DIALOGUE lump for a UDMF map.

[CodeImp]

I think I'm going to make a plugin for DB to support this as soon as ZDoom has this. Maybe even sooner

[Nash]

Thanks for your response, Blzut. Will there be visual editors for USDF? I don't mind typing out the UDSF scripts manually but sooner or later, as things get larger, it's going to get kinda difficult to manage...

[Nash]

This doesn't seem to work. D: I'm using ZDoom r2562. What have I done wrong here?

[Ceeb]

I'll check it out. GIve me a few, Nash.

Edit:

Hey this isn't compiled.

[Nash]

That's the whole point of r2561, right? No more compiling necessary.

[Ceeb]

I dunno. I'm using gzdoom r901 and the zombieman can't be spoken with...

[Nash]

Pretty sure the reason the USDF parser was integrated into ZDoom is so that you don't have to compile anything anymore. Either I'm not putting the DIALOGUE lump in the correct position in the WAD, or the parser isn't really functional yet. I'll just wait for Graf's response.