Random Contacts

Originally Posted by Goblin Wizard

Dialog files that use coding have header "FILETYPE DYNAMIC". If you change it to "FILETYPE STANDART" you can write plain text messages. Of course, if you change existing coded dialog to STANDART you must copy all dialog options from the game and retype them, otherwise, you will see that strange sequences of signs in the game . That's why I've made new dialog files for my motherships buying script.

I'm feeling sufficiently annoyed with my frustrations on the other scripts to take a break and tackle these instead. However, I haven't looked at missions at all so I'll need some starting clues:

1) \Data\Scripts\Quests\mission_1\ seems like the first place to look, yes? The Dialog files also seem to correspond to the conversations which happen at the start of the game. However... why is there a huge 85kb script ReturnHero.script inside mission_1 folder?

2) Even though the scripts are in that folder, the text appears to be in a different path altogether, \Data\LocData\English\Quests\mission_1\. I can match the various start_message_name (in the script xml) to the corresponding L_D1_msg/ans# (in the FILETYPE DYNAMIC dialog loc). This is correct, yes?

The encoding probably won't be simple but after a few comparisons we'll know. But even if we can't decode them, I'll just try replacing the loc files with custom written FILETYPE STANDART using plaintext and see if it works.

Edit:
There's a chance that will not work, however, according to the German modder Tech who posted at the Elite-Games forum about 3 years ago. Looks like he was trying to mod SW2.

Update:
Well call me Cirno's uncle, that was unexpectedly easy. I decided to forgo deciphering the text first (mainly because each line of dialog was crammed onto one line, like 1,300+ characters) and simply do the FILETYPE STANDART replacement test (screenshot 2). Looks like it worked (screenshot 1).

For reference, this is the original line:
#L_D1_msg00=755C292929292828285C2929285D285B285C2C 5A2C2D2929292F282C285C292E292D285B292F29292C5C2C2D 2B292928292F285C2C2D285B282B282B2C2D295D285B292829 2F2C2D2828285C282A285D285C2828292E2C2D282C285C2829 2C2D292D292F2828292D282C292F28282C2D282B285B292F2C 2D2828295E282C2859285D285C282C2929285D285B285C2C5C 5A5C5A2F592F292C656E0B07
(There aren't supposed to be any blank space in that gunk, I think the forum inserts them to avoid breaking the display.)

That translates into "Attention, transport. Turn off your engines and prepare for examination."

encoded: 312 characters
decoded: 72 characters

Well, didn't say it was gonna be easy. Any crypto guys here feel like taking a crack at this?