Change General text: not showing

[malthaussen]

I've been modding some of the generals with new photos and info, and much to my delight the new photos are showing up in my saved games, even when I renamed units (E. Food has been renamed to T. Garrard, but still shows up with the proper name and bio. I didn't expect that). However, when I change/add the text string for the bio, it doesn't show up, the tooltip coming up blank when I mouse over the picture.

I'm not sure why this is happening. For example, I changed the bio pointer for George Getty to Getty, to make the unit actually represent George Getty instead of Kryzanowski, and placed a bio in local strings $ldr_txt_USA_Getty, which is pointed to by the model. But my text does not display. Is there yet another pointer somewhere I have to set?

Oh, and while we're at it, once this gets figured out: how do I put a carriage return in the data field for the bios? I see them when I look at the bio, but I don't know the correct keystroke (sheepish grin).

Ah, I found an answer to the first part of the question. For whatever reason, the strings file does not recognize if you type the $ldr_txt etc field, it has to be copied from another one. Very strange. This also serves as an answer to the second question, since if a copy is made of a string set, it will already have carriage returns in the bio.

-- Mal

[Paul Roberts]

I'm not an expert here, but I don't believe the scenario reads from the excel file where you're probably changing the text. Instead, those files are used in compiling scenarios (by a procedure that I cannot explain). So you won't see your new text unless the scenario is re-compiled or re-baked or whatever.

The graphic files, of course, are read directly by the scenario, which is why you see whatever changes you've made.

[malthaussen]

Mmm, that is true of most of the data files, for which the Excel files need to be compiled in order to be used by the game. The Local Strings file is an exception to this: the strings are read directly from the file.

-- Mal