NPC Idle Chatter - is it in the client?

[Kaiser Tarantula]

One of the best things about CoH was the idle chatter and text responses of NPCs.  Some quality lore was buried in those.  With the game now down, we can no longer use it as a reference.

However, that got me thinkin' - are the NPC chatter lines stored in the client?  Can we perhaps data-mine the client to get them out and read them again?

I personally wouldn't know where to begin, but there's gotta be folks on here who know better than I do.  I kinda want to compile a Praetorian Clockwork dictionary.

[redgiant]

Try a pigg viewer, a lot of message text for the UI menus and dialog for localization is in the .pigg files. Not sure about all of the NPC chatter but I can't imagine them downloading that text on-the-fly at runtime.

misc.pigg has a lot of text like the above, for example.

Rule #1 of MMO network code is: Don't send it if you can install it on the client.

It's not inviolable, but to deviate would mean there is a big benefit to counter the disadvantage of further burdening the server with Stuff It Shouldn't Have To Do while still coping with all the Stuff It Has To Do. An advantage like dynamic branching decision making and associated text that they only update in the server without needing you to patch anything, at the expense of having to download it lazily at login, map load or whatever event makes the most sense for locality, prediction and perf.

[Codewalker]

No, NPC dialog is not in the client. It arrives over a chat channel just like if a player were talking in /local, except it's the NPC channel.

For a while, however it WAS in the client, along with mission briefing text. Apparently this was an accident and those localizations were not supposed to end up in the client files. It was definitely there at GR release and disappeared somewhere around issue 21.

So if you can dig up an old version, you might be able to find some of what you're after.

[Triplash]

For a while, however it WAS in the client, along with mission briefing text. Apparently this was an accident and those localizations were not supposed to end up in the client files. It was definitely there at GR release and disappeared somewhere around issue 21.

So if you can dig up an old version, you might be able to find some of what you're after.

So... a really good place to start would be the install you get from the GR edition disc?

[Codewalker]

If you have one, clientmessages-en.bin is the file you're after.

[Kaiser Tarantula]

Drat.  The only installation disc I have is the Good vs. Evil edition from way back when.

[Triplash]

Well I could install mine and send you that file out of it. One question first. For purposes of Icon and... possible future things... I don't need the game installed, right? Just keep a copy of the main folder and things can run from in there.

[Blondeshell]

Some of us kept historical copies of the \piggs folder as each issue came out..

Issue 20 clientmessages-en.bin

[Triplash]

That works too :)

Archiving type people are awesome. They really are.

[Arachnion]

Thanks for that, Blondeshell!

;D