Flavor Text Tutorial

Are you looking for a guide in how to specifically setup flavour text then? You can start here on how to make a custom faction.

No, sorry. I'm looking for a tutorial to explain to me what everything does in the XML and how to set everything up for flavor text. I'm confused about how the game reads the definitions and what every category does.

Hey there. I've done quite a bit of work with the Flavortext files. They are not super-complicated, but also, not great. It's hard to tell which parts are relevant and which are not.

Also, the editor doesn't actually seem to work all that well, and you can't (last time I checked) properly upload AND download flavor texts off of Steam Workshop. 

So I gave up on the editor. I also noted, that a lot of conversation was controlled by certain files for ALL races. Most of which can be overwritten by the individual faction flavor text for a truly unique set... however, you won't find these entries added by default.

After a long struggle, I eventually created a few fully customized (as far as I can tell... testing everything can be tough) flavor texts.

https://www.nexusmods.com/galacticcivilizations3/mods/18?tab=files

If you download my mod... and open either of these files:

Clan Tiamat of Zrentak_6C95223110634F6A90E9CB7C84A99432_FlavorText.xml

Terran Sovereignty_2D224926570843249F2431108DA055E0_FlavorText.xml

 

You'll find them essentially a good template, adding the additional content I'm referring to, I also reorganized the entries to be more sensible (to me).

 

Best I can do for you right now.

PS: Also... I decided to increase the customization of race's ongoing banter between themselves and others based on their traits/ideology/etc. The game has the ability to do this nicely, but wasn't "thorough". I largely rectified this for all races by creating a series of files that overwrite the game's default conversations, but in turn, are generally overwritten by individual faction flavor texts.

You can find them under the main GRM mod folder:

GRM\English\Text

With labels of "1-GRM New Declare War Responses.xml" and such.

 

For example... in this file the second category is for "GENERAL DECLARE WAR RESPONSE"

You'll see many entries, such as:

   <FlavorTextOption>

      <Requirements>

        <PersonalityType>Trader</PersonalityType>

      </Requirements>

      <Text>Why war with us when we could simply trade?!</Text>

      <PreferenceWeight>100</PreferenceWeight>

    </FlavorTextOption>

 

The Requirements section notes "Trader" meaning this response (to someone declaring war on the Trader race) is only allowed for those with this trait. The line "<Text>" is the response itself. You can add multiple lines of this to increase variety.

      <Text>Why war with us when we could simply trade?!</Text>

      <Text>But... we gave you a discount?!</Text>

      <Text>I'm so sorry, but we don't give refunds, war is hardly a mature response though!</Text>

Finally the "Preference Weight" is the chance of this being used, when there are multiple possible responses allowed by other entries. Meaning that if the race in question could use this Trader response or a Xenophobia response... the ratio of weights determines the likelihood.

So if two options are possible, and both have a weight of 100 the chances should be 50/50 of either response. Whereas a weight of 100 and a weight of 50, would (I believe!) result in a 66/33 chance of the responses.

I generally avoided messing with weights (and I tried to make them uniform) but I had to mess with some to make sure certain things prioritized (like Synthetic races being robot like more than "Trader" like).

 

I hope this helps you.

 

Thanks Gauntlet, I'll check it out.