Game Data Text Export/Import

Involved development of the OpenMW construction set.
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FiftyTifty
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Joined: 15 Oct 2014, 21:02

Game Data Text Export/Import

Post by FiftyTifty »

A very important feature that the original Construction Set offers, is the ability to export much of the game's data to a delimited text file. That is very easy to make tools and programs for, as it's just a set number of text fields separated with tab characters. But, unfortunately, it doesn't export/import all of the data.

As an example, you can export the data for NPCs, which will contain their levels and stats, via File -> Export Data -> NPCs. Change them, save the changes to the .txt file, then File -> Import Data -> NPCs. You can create overhauls extremely quickly with just that. But there is no data about the appearance of the NPCs, their spells, nor their inventory. For that, you're stuck with manually editing each NPC one by one. OpenCS Would do wonders for quickly overhauling major aspects of Morrowind if it supported this functionality.

I know Delphi, CSharp, and a bit of Lua, which probably isn't going to help with this. C++ Is too bogged-down to wrap my head around, but if there's a way to expose the record data to other languages (a barebones API in a .dll?), I'd make tools for working with the resultant data. Any chance of something along these lines happening?
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AnyOldName3
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Re: Game Data Text Export/Import

Post by AnyOldName3 »

Eventually, the CS is going to have a (probably Python-based) plugin API so hopefully when that's available, it'll satisfy your every desire. As for the short term, our CS might not be the best place to look. Maybe chat to ElminsterAU about the state of Morrowind support in xEdit, as Delphi is the language that project uses, both for the actual application and scripts.
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FiftyTifty
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Re: Game Data Text Export/Import

Post by FiftyTifty »

AnyOldName3 wrote: 09 Jul 2020, 15:52 Eventually, the CS is going to have a (probably Python-based) plugin API so hopefully when that's available, it'll satisfy your every desire. As for the short term, our CS might not be the best place to look. Maybe chat to ElminsterAU about the state of Morrowind support in xEdit, as Delphi is the language that project uses, both for the actual application and scripts.
At least it's on the cards, which is better than nothing. It was actually xEdit that taught me Delphi precisely because I needed scripts to automate stuff for New Vegas, Skyrim, and Fallout 4. Last I checked, TES3Edit was just a wishful would-be-nice on the to-do list, though it can't hurt to ask if there's been any improvement.

It's a bit of a shame, really, that TES3CMD is without any documentation. It's got the same scope and functionality as xEdit scripts do, but it's in Perl, and extremely terse.
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AnyOldName3
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Re: Game Data Text Export/Import

Post by AnyOldName3 »

A quick chat:
AnyOldName3Today at 16:27
@ElminsterAU what's the status of TES3Edit?
ElminsterAUToday at 16:28
TES3View
AnyOldName3Today at 16:28
Fair enough.
ElminsterAUToday at 16:28
That's the current status
AnyOldName3Today at 16:28
If I throw a Delphi programmer of unknown skill and experience your way, will that help?
Kerber reacted with :thonk:
ElminsterAUToday at 16:29
Probably not. This is very low level work inside the xEdit core. The issue isn't that it's incredible hard, just that I haven't worked on it for a while
Nonetheless, anyone who wants to contribute is always welcome
Pinned messages in #dev-support on the xEdit discord contain all required information to set up an xEdit development environment
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FiftyTifty
Posts: 63
Joined: 15 Oct 2014, 21:02

Re: Game Data Text Export/Import

Post by FiftyTifty »

AnyOldName3 wrote: 09 Jul 2020, 16:33 A quick chat:
AnyOldName3Today at 16:27
@ElminsterAU what's the status of TES3Edit?
ElminsterAUToday at 16:28
TES3View
AnyOldName3Today at 16:28
Fair enough.
ElminsterAUToday at 16:28
That's the current status
AnyOldName3Today at 16:28
If I throw a Delphi programmer of unknown skill and experience your way, will that help?
Kerber reacted with :thonk:
ElminsterAUToday at 16:29
Probably not. This is very low level work inside the xEdit core. The issue isn't that it's incredible hard, just that I haven't worked on it for a while
Nonetheless, anyone who wants to contribute is always welcome
Pinned messages in #dev-support on the xEdit discord contain all required information to set up an xEdit development environment

Ooh, that's interesting. I was on the wrong discord then, asked over in the Mod Tools one with Mator and Zilav in it. My skill is probably not applicable, since I've only worked with my own code sans the odd API to work with JSON and CSV files. I'll take a look, though the amount of interconnected records is not something I know how to work with.

Anywho I'll join it, maybe get something going.
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AnyOldName3
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Re: Game Data Text Export/Import

Post by AnyOldName3 »

Apparently https://wiki.xedit.org/developer-guide# ... ource-code has the same information on building, but is better-formatted.
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