XML Dialog-Editor for ArteGordon's XMLSpawner
The XML Dialog-Editor is a tool to create or edit the NPC-Dialogs (*.npc) from RunUO's XMLSpawner by ArteGordon. In addition to the standard-functionality the ".xmledit"-command gives you ingame I made a few features to make this editor as newbie-friendly as it could be. So I asked myself: "What problems I have to face when creating a new dialog e.g. for a quest?".
One of the biggest problems are a lot of XMLSpawner-specific commands, values etc. with a lot of (optional) parameters. A complete documentation is not present at the moment, only a chronological release-info. So when I want to know how a specific thing is working in the actual version I have to look backwards through the whole txt-document - it's time consuming in case you are not working on a daily basis with this (great!) system and knowing it's niceties. So on top of my wish-list for the editor are wizards for all of those text-fields.
Some minor issues are resulting from the Ultima Online client itself and it's usability with dialogs: You cannot edit the text of a textbox by clicking right in the middle of the text, thats working only with those books. Also there is not much space to view all those necessary information so it's difficult to get a overview of your dialog (e.g. dependings) 'cause resizing of the gump isn't possible, either - no matter if you have a 1024x768 resolution or a 16:9 tft. The fact that you have to be online is just an additional fact - and not every Gamemaster or Seer wants to run a local "development"-server only to make new dialogs offline (e.g. when traveling with a notebook).
All those things keeping in mind I started with my XML Dialog-Editor and added a few more points to my whishlist on-the-fly (exporting to txt-file for posting in a forum, connecting to a server for remote-editing, ...). The actual version is a first result of my efforts and I'm still working on a lot more things. A great system like the XMLSpawner is deserving not just a "good try" and my effort is to give the community something great in return for all those things I learned from it!
Features:
Not all of the above features are yet implemented in the current build (V0.2.3.0) but you will get them via autoupdate as fast as I can code (just want to make it stable and not a big mess...
).
In case you want to help me translating it in more languages please contact me - I will send you a list of sentences / phrases that have to be translated (or just take the resource-file from the repository, username & password are "guest").
You can download the tool here or visit the project website. You can find some pictures there, too.
I hope someone can profit from this little tool. Any comments, bugs, requests, ... are welcomed
Greetings,
--Anheledir
The XML Dialog-Editor is a tool to create or edit the NPC-Dialogs (*.npc) from RunUO's XMLSpawner by ArteGordon. In addition to the standard-functionality the ".xmledit"-command gives you ingame I made a few features to make this editor as newbie-friendly as it could be. So I asked myself: "What problems I have to face when creating a new dialog e.g. for a quest?".
One of the biggest problems are a lot of XMLSpawner-specific commands, values etc. with a lot of (optional) parameters. A complete documentation is not present at the moment, only a chronological release-info. So when I want to know how a specific thing is working in the actual version I have to look backwards through the whole txt-document - it's time consuming in case you are not working on a daily basis with this (great!) system and knowing it's niceties. So on top of my wish-list for the editor are wizards for all of those text-fields.
Some minor issues are resulting from the Ultima Online client itself and it's usability with dialogs: You cannot edit the text of a textbox by clicking right in the middle of the text, thats working only with those books. Also there is not much space to view all those necessary information so it's difficult to get a overview of your dialog (e.g. dependings) 'cause resizing of the gump isn't possible, either - no matter if you have a 1024x768 resolution or a 16:9 tft. The fact that you have to be online is just an additional fact - and not every Gamemaster or Seer wants to run a local "development"-server only to make new dialogs offline (e.g. when traveling with a notebook).
All those things keeping in mind I started with my XML Dialog-Editor and added a few more points to my whishlist on-the-fly (exporting to txt-file for posting in a forum, connecting to a server for remote-editing, ...). The actual version is a first result of my efforts and I'm still working on a lot more things. A great system like the XMLSpawner is deserving not just a "good try" and my effort is to give the community something great in return for all those things I learned from it!
Features:
- wizards for most textfields
- implemented all XmlAttachments with overloaded constructors
- implemented commonly used properties and other commands / values (e.g. nametypes)
- listview like the one in ultima online
- treeview for dependancies overview
- export as textfile and pdf (flow chart)
- create / edit dialogs via remote-server
- deleting and duping many items at the same time
- multilanguage support (currently english and german)
- bugs and feature-requests can be submitted out of the program via a simpe dialog
- installation and auto-update via ClickOnce
Not all of the above features are yet implemented in the current build (V0.2.3.0) but you will get them via autoupdate as fast as I can code (just want to make it stable and not a big mess...
).In case you want to help me translating it in more languages please contact me - I will send you a list of sentences / phrases that have to be translated (or just take the resource-file from the repository, username & password are "guest").
You can download the tool here or visit the project website. You can find some pictures there, too.
I hope someone can profit from this little tool. Any comments, bugs, requests, ... are welcomed
Greetings,
--Anheledir
