#me3explorer

But much more importantly, I can resize the active area at will now to isolate sections of time and the changes in view go across all phonemes so I can see where everything is at all times wherever I want. I can work one word at a time, or do something line-wide.

Uuunnngghhhhhghhhghhggffhjggggdfghhhhbhnnyesssssss sweet, sweet efficiency

I'm still going to be in FaceFX Hell for a long time but this makes it like 80% less painful. Also the discovery I thought I made that would revolutionise this absolutely 100% did not work at all and everything does, in fact, need to be done manually because of course it fucking does, but hey, at least I tried to innovate. That's the story I'm sticking with.

Also I've been looking at Shepard and Kaidan's little Citadel date dialogue trees a lot recently for Reasons™ and I've decided to do a very tiny mod for Shepard/Kaidan that I'll release in a few days probably.

I really, really hate that "I understand why you cheated, but..." line Kaidan busts out at fShep if she dared have a relationship in ME2. Whilst he'd clearly broken up with her. She can't even defend herself against the accusation, she just has to sit there and take it. It's a load of crap and I hate it. Did you know mShep can tell Ashley off if she tries to pull the same on him? Yeah. But fShep can't.

Bull. So, I've decided to either:

- Wholesale remove the line and concatenate something entirely new

- Wholesale remove that line and have Kaidan say one of the other contextually appropriate things he can say

- Leave it in and create a response for Shepard so she can correct him out of acting honestly kinda entitled and wrong in that moment. I have secret weapons I can use to enable this

Also I'll boost the gain on the replaced audio. It's not going to be the exact same quality unfortunately. Replaced audio will stand out a bit, but I'll do what I can to minimise it.

Hokay, so.

I have completely rewritten the mod's TLK file from scratch, created custom String References for each piece of my dialogue, and made the existing conversation function using that. So, what this means in essence is:

The editor now shows my subtitles as they appear in the game. There is now no chance of the game getting confused and loading the wrong subtitles. Anyone who loads my mod into the editor will see things as they are.

I have written, recorded audio, and created placeholders for about 20 new nodes so far but I anticipate more. This allows an interested Shepard to take different approaches in this conversation.

You can be more emotionally open and tender with him, you can be interested but a little sceptical of this sudden development, or you can kinda tease him and bust his balls about it a bit. It all depends on what you see your Shepard's dynamic with him as being, and what you want it to be. I've tried to account for different ways that different versions of the same person might be interested in him, and I've taken into account different romances Shepard may have had, too.

Be aware that at this time, I'm not too concerned about the options that lead Shepard into not hooking up with him. They're there for the sake of immersion, and they do function, but they're not fancy. At all. At present, they lead to Joker saying something about it being a stupid idea, and then it more or less just boots you out of the conversation and sets a negative. I don't foresee myself putting a lot of time & effort into options that lead to a no, or to dumping him. My priority is making the yes as beautiful as it can be, first.

This also allows me to focus on different versions of yes. I'd love to craft a version of all this that has him respond differently depending on what routes you take with him in conversation through a playthrough. I'd love to have Shepard's relationship with him be actually somewhat dynamic, but, we'll see. I'm starting relatively small, and then complicating it as I go.

All this is to say that there may not be a Daily for a few days as I sort out making the conversation function with all these new options.

I'm aware I'm going to be in FaceFX hell for some time after this, too. But my plan is, broadly:

Get conversation working

Get romance scene working

Get ambient dialogues working

Get custom conditionals working

Get things visually passable

Release

Refine

Refine ad nauseum

I'm doing what I can with the facial expressions as the conversation progresses as well. As an experiment, I'm trying to animate one of Jeff's nodes without mixing and matching any existing animation keys from any other nodes. I'll import the expression set I want and start from 0 on everything. Let's see how good I can make it.

I got a nice comment today from someone in one of the modding Discords, "When you came in here & said what you were doing, I'll be honest, I didn't think you were gonna make it, but seeing what you've done so far I actually think you can pull it off!"

ME1 is an organisational nightmare and also a repository of excellent lines to use for my nefarious purposes. It took me hours to sort out what I was doing here today so hopefully these notes will make your process a little easier if you’re trying to do something similar. ME2 & ME3 store their English audio in LOC_INT files, which are found in the same directory as .PCC files, known as Package FIles. Package Files contain scene data and asset usage instructions and whatever, LOC_INTs contain conversation flow and references to associated sound assets. With ME2 & ME3, sound assets themselves are stored in AFC files, and are named according to the conversation they are from. ME1 also has LOC_INTs, however in ME1′s case, only certain scene-specific sound effects are stored there. Things like different footfalls, mechanical beeps, asari meld effect noises, things like that. Actual voice assets will be referenced in these files and will show up in Soundplorer, but will show up as having no associated audio data. If you are looking for actual spoken lines, you will need to look in a different directory entirely, as they are stored in a different file format. The directory you want is: Mass Effect\BioGame\CookedPC\Packages\ISACT The files you want are .ISB files. You will want to load these up in Soundplorer. Unfortunately there are a few pitfalls with this, which I will explain: