Keeping my speech_character files up to date effectively

[Wonderlarr]

Hey there modders, I was wondering if anyone had any practical solutions to updating speech strings on custom characters as new updates come out? What's your process? The esctemplate provided one is definitely very out of date at this point, and diff tools aren't exactly great at merging changes without breaking table structures and making lua yell at you.

[Garamonde]

I desperately need help with this too, as I'm incredibly unmotivated to even work on my characters' speech files due to them being as old as Wolfgang's refresh...

[Chesed]

I've been working on a character mod on and off again for over two years now and the speech files have by far been the biggest nightmare... especially as my character has several of them!

My current process is very inelegant. I keep a copy of Wilson's speech file handy, then whenever a new content update comes out I use a website like diffchecker to compare the old Wilson file with the new one. Then I can find where the new lines are and splice them into my character's files. When the game updates next, I grab the last version of the Wilson file from diffchecker and compare it to the new one. Repeat ad nauseam.

It's extremely tedious and I've begun to dread every update the game gets haha. It would be nice to have a better solution. Many of my friends who have character mods have completely given up updating the speech files at this point because it's so cumbersome.

Edited July 14, 2022 by Chesed