Trying to mod the campaign

[rambo919 3]

Basically I want to tweak the dialogue/subtitles, removing offensive language.

 

I can get it working by extracting 1985.pbo and renaming it to 1985.pbo,old, this runs the edited folder and the changes work fine.

Leaving the pbo and a "1985" folder with only the edited files makes the campaings selection screen show two 1985 campaings, tried pbopatcher but that produces corrupted pbo's.

 

Tried a "mod folder" with the edited files as well... is there something I'm missing or is the "campaign" protected somehow? I vaguely remember something about arma games not allowing campaign modding from years back.

[ProfTournesol 956]

Offensive language ? What for ?

[rambo919 3]

I will have to respectfully refrain from going down that particular "why" rabbit hole again, ALWAYS trolls show up... as if the very subject is catnip to them.

[ProfTournesol 956]

The fact is I was genuinely surprised by the fact you want to remove strong words in a game aimed at killing AI bots. Anybody can place his morality where he wants...About strong words, you don't seem to be embarassed  to use some in a forum, calling me a troll.

[rambo919 3]

I did not call you a troll, do not read too much into it.  It's just a easily repeatable pattern of voicing a conservative type opinion and being swamped by basically "don't spoil our fun" comments (nvm that the mod is OPTIONAL) even branching out to if to tin-foil hat type talk of once it seems possible then "far-right" groups will start forcing the devs to include it optinally and then finally permanently etc.... happened every time I have tried to explain my reasons and I just did not wish to needlessly derail this thread with that type of nonsense. And no it's not always strong words themselves that matter as much as how you use it, I am not a "sensitive viewer" by any means.

 

Seems like I have no way of avoiding it though so. There is a difference between killing and murder, both can be fake (as is the case in the arma games) but it is impossible to fake any kind of language use... it's either done or it is not and the context(of fiction in this case) does nothing to alter that. If the game promoted murder (even if fake) I would not play it, honourable battle only becomes murder when some aspect of it becomes dishonourable. My personal gripe is the casual verbal blasphemy incorporated in a superficial manner to "enhance" the swearing, it is unneeded actually and not only does nothing tangible to improve anything the removal of it does nothing to alter what is being said. It is a poor writer indeed that actually NEEDS to resort to this kind of cheap offensive tactic.... rather than get angry though I try to do the work the devs could have easily done myself and cut out the handful of offensive words and about 95% of the time the result sounds as if it was never there in the first place.

 

btw if I sound aggressive it's nothing personal it's just that I probably have more passion for this subject than I sometimes should.

[Lenyoga 326]

It should be possible by first of all backing up the original 1985.pbo somewhere safe and creating a new .pbo using the extracted edited folder and a program like WinPBO or something similar. So far I've messed around with only my own test campaigns, if there is an issue with an edited 1985.pbo, just rename it to something else - I don't know whether the game checks the specific file for any discrepancies. If that also produces corrupted files, I'd first try testing it with PBOing a normal mission. If that mission works, then there's probably an issue with the compressed sqm mission files or something similar.

Doing it with mod folders sadly isn't an option, the Campaigns and Missions folders seem to be global (at least if I didn't miss anything there).

[Macser 776]

I'm not sure what the problem is you're having. I just created a new 1985 pbo and edited a few lines in the stringtable.csv of the first mission. It took a few minutes.

 

I then changed the file extension for the original PBO and slotted my own into the campaigns folder. The only campaign that shows up in the menu system is the edited one. Missions are intact and the edits to the subtitles are present. Sound assets shouldn't be any different.

 

Quote

My personal gripe is the casual verbal blasphemy incorporated in a superficial manner to "enhance" the swearing, it is unneeded actually and not only does nothing tangible to improve anything the removal of it does nothing to alter what is being said. It is a poor writer indeed that actually NEEDS to resort to this kind of cheap offensive tactic.... rather than get angry though I try to do the work the devs could have easily done myself and cut out the handful of offensive words and about 95% of the time the result sounds as if it was never there in the first place.

Perhaps that's because the authors aren't religious? People swear or take the lord's name in vain, as the term goes, all the time. Soldiers probably a little more than usual.

 

I'm not remotely religious, and I swear all the time. It's something people do. 

 

If an atheist writer, for example, removed any and all references of a religious nature from their work, no matter how small, It'd be unrepresentative of reality. Or at the very least not believable. Religion exists, and people practice it with all the associated rules, regulations and beliefs. Whether the author agreed with it or not wouldn't be a good enough argument to pretend it doesn't exist.

 

For me, removing the language that bothers you, would be like watching an action film where the protagonist uses terms like "oh dear", or "You silly billy" when something or someone annoys or angers them. That would be bad writing, as far as I'm concerned. 

[rambo919 3]

21 hours ago, Macser said:

I'm not sure what the problem is you're having. I just created a new 1985 pbo and edited a few lines in the stringtable.csv of the first mission. It took a few minutes.

<snip>

 

I'm not remotely religious, and I swear all the time. It's something people do. 

<snip

The problem is packaging the mod (not even 1MB) without including the whole original campaign which could rightfully be considered a breach of copyright or including a pbo unpacker and instructing the end user in the process. I need plug-n-play.

 

You misunderstand, I leave the swearing in only removing the " take the lord's name in vain" parts. If it really bothered me I'd remove all swearing entirely but that is also a subjective individual thing.... some people want to shoot politely and that's their business. You obviously never considered how funny a shooter would be if everyone was extremely polite in it even with their insults but that's another matter.

 

Lastly the blithe use of this particular kind of swearing is actually rather insulting, if every "God" was replaced with "Allah" and every "Jesus/Christ" with "Muhammed".... such a game would never be released. Swear and curse all you want if you feel you need to just leave insults to religion out of it.

[R0adki11 3949]

On 2017-6-4 at 3:49 PM, rambo919 said:

Basically I want to tweak the dialogue/subtitles, removing offensive language.

 

I can get it working by extracting 1985.pbo and renaming it to 1985.pbo,old, this runs the edited folder and the changes work fine.

Leaving the pbo and a "1985" folder with only the edited files makes the campaings selection screen show two 1985 campaings, tried pbopatcher but that produces corrupted pbo's.

 

Tried a "mod folder" with the edited files as well... is there something I'm missing or is the "campaign" protected somehow? I vaguely remember something about arma games not allowing campaign modding from years back.

What offensive language is in the 1985 campaign, i can't remember there been any? Though i last played it when OFP released, at least 15 years ago, so can't remember. 

[Macser 776]

I'm not saying what you're doing is objectionable. I'm just having a polite conversation about it. We see things differently. Nothing wrong with that.

 

I can see now you're looking for a way to reference it externally so you can provide an uploadable version for other users. I thought it was just for your personal use. I can't say for sure, but I don't think that's possible from an addon or mod folder. Presumably it works the same way as the data/data3d folders.

 

What you could do is something similar to what was done with sky mods, like Llauma's sky pack. Which usually would've required people to download two large pbos for a few small edits. A DOS batch file was written by the authors using common commands (originally Kegetys I believe). This was included in the upload with the edited content resulting in a very small package. The user downloaded this and ran the batch file, updating the relevant pbos with the modified files. I'm not a coder, and especially not when it comes to DOS. But I think that might work.

[rambo919 3]

Sorry, I'm just too used to idiot adults acting like entitled teenagers... I apologize for my tone.

 

I tried the included cpbo but it does not extract folder, found a newer one but it extracts with errors. Found mikoro's extractpbo but some genius compiled all those tools as x64 which makes it useless for anything but dev work, also it only works on Vista+ which for this very first game in the series can be a problem for some. No working commandline tool then. Seems I am forced to include binPBO and instructions for manual installation.

 

Yes I do make it for personal use but if I am annoyed by such language use others will be as well, and it might even show someone that wants to fully sanitise the games how to do it himself for all I know.

 

Thank you for the help.

[Macser 776]

No problem. We all sometimes make quick assumptions. Text on it's own is hard to gauge at times. An honest comment can sound like sarcasm. Or a thinly veiled insult.

 

Have you tried PBOX?. It's the sixth entry down. It will reliably open and pack OFP era content without corrupting data. I still use it myself.

[ProfTournesol 956]

Using Pbox myself too. Having some glitches on Win7 though, but you can go through.

[JdB 151]

A lot of the tools I have had problems with in Win. 7 and 10, presumably because they were made before UAC.

[rambo919 3]

PboX was included in the initial toolpack I started out with, can't use it in cmd (I have not been able to anyway) so bat usage out. It's what I used actually not BinPBO.... I have so many unpackers at this point I get confused.

[Kalle M. 113]

On 6/8/2017 at 1:54 PM, rambo919 said:

I did not call you a troll, do not read too much into it.  It's just a easily repeatable pattern of voicing a conservative type opinion and being swamped by basically "don't spoil our fun" comments (nvm that the mod is OPTIONAL) even branching out to if to tin-foil hat type talk of once it seems possible then "far-right" groups will start forcing the devs to include it optinally and then finally permanently etc.... happened every time I have tried to explain my reasons and I just did not wish to needlessly derail this thread with that type of nonsense. And no it's not always strong words themselves that matter as much as how you use it, I am not a "sensitive viewer" by any means.

 

Seems like I have no way of avoiding it though so. There is a difference between killing and murder, both can be fake (as is the case in the arma games) but it is impossible to fake any kind of language use... it's either done or it is not and the context(of fiction in this case) does nothing to alter that. If the game promoted murder (even if fake) I would not play it, honourable battle only becomes murder when some aspect of it becomes dishonourable. My personal gripe is the casual verbal blasphemy incorporated in a superficial manner to "enhance" the swearing, it is unneeded actually and not only does nothing tangible to improve anything the removal of it does nothing to alter what is being said. It is a poor writer indeed that actually NEEDS to resort to this kind of cheap offensive tactic.... rather than get angry though I try to do the work the devs could have easily done myself and cut out the handful of offensive words and about 95% of the time the result sounds as if it was never there in the first place.

 

btw if I sound aggressive it's nothing personal it's just that I probably have more passion for this subject than I sometimes should.

I'd like to try this "politically correct" version of the Cold War Crisis campaign :D