SQCGen v2.0 - Starsiege Quickchat Generator

Want more than 9 quickchats at a time? Tired of editting quickchat.cs? Want a complete list of quickchats? SQCGen can help.

What are Quickchats?

Starsiege's quickchats are the sound effects, mostly voices, you can send to other players by pressing Ctrl-F1 through Ctrl-F9. The bindings for the keys are defined in quickchat.cs. For instance the following lines:

function QuickChat1()
{
  Say( "TargetTeam", 1, "Excellent.", "M1_DM_excellent.WAV" );
}

binds the message "Excellent" to Ctrl-F1. To change the bindings you have to exit Starsiege, edit scripts/quickchat.cs and then restart the game.

What Does SQCGen Do?

The biggest benefit of SQCGen is that it allows you to use 81 or more * quickchats at once, rather than the 9 the game supports by default. It does this by automatically generating a quickchat.cs file that contains some special scripting logic. You press Shift-F1 through Shift-F9 to activate one of up to 9 sets, then press Ctrl-F1 through Ctrl-F9 to use one of the 9 quickchats in the active set.

Another benefit is that instead of mucking directly with the scripting and formatting fluff in quickchat.cs you instead edit simple lists of Say statements. When you drag and drop a file containing a list of Say statements onto SQCGen.exe it scans the contents for non-blank lines, wraps them with the proper syntactic sugar coating, and saves it all to scripts/quickchat.cs. If you keep your quickchat lists in files with an extension like .txt then double-clicking on one will conveniently call it up in Wordpad for editting. With SQCGen you can have as many quickchat lists as you like and switching between them is easy.

A no-nonsense list of all the quickchats shipped with Starsiege is in AllQuickchats.txt. This includes more than 50 undocumented sounds in addition to the 300 or so documented in the game's original quickchat.cs. Each line in AllQuickchats.txt is a valid Say statement ready for copying and pasting into your own quickchat lists.

SQCGen comes with a few sample .txt files. For instance the game's default set of quickchats is described by MaleDM.txt:

Say("TargetTeam",1,"Excellent.","M1_DM_excellent.WAV");
Say("Target",1,"Honorless dog!","M1_DM_honorlessdog.WAV");
Say("TargetTeam",1,"I'm going to burn you!","M1_DM_imgoingto.WAV");
Say("TargetTeam",1,"See how you like this.","M1_DM_seehowy.WAV");
Say("TargetTeam",1,"You panic easily.","M1_DM_youpanic.WAV");
Say("TargetTeam",1,"You're going down!","M1_DM_yourgoing.WAV");
Say("Target",1,"You're insane--and dead!","M1_DM_yourinsane.WAV");
Say("Team",1,"Vape 'em!","M1_TDM_vapem.WAV");
Say("TargetTeam",1,"That shows very poor discipline.","M1_DM_thatshows.WAV");

Installation

This program is intended for use under Windows 95/98/NT. If you had a previous version of SQCGen your quickchat lists will still work but you should first rename your existing SQCGen folder, follow the instructions below, and then copy your old lists into the new SQCGen folder.

Navigate to the folder where Starsiege is installed - it's called C:/Dynamix/Starsiege by default. Unzip sqcgen.zip into a new folder called SQCGen, eg. C:/Dynamix/Starsiege/SQCGen. Note this folder MUST be in the Starsiege folder for SQCGen to work. When you use SQCGen it overwrites scripts/quickchat.cs, so make sure you rename your original quickchat.cs file before doing anything else. From Explorer drag the icon for Cybrid.txt onto the SQCGen.exe program icon and drop it. A black window will briefly appear and then go away. quickchat.cs should now contain the complete set of Cybrid quickchats, there are 36 in all so use Shift-1 through Shift-4 to select them. Start the game and verify that it worked. OK? Now you're ready to peruse AllQuickchats.txt and create your own quickchat lists. Go get 'em tiger. Have fun.

You may want to create a shortcut to the SQCGen folder on your desktop. That way you can quickly select or edit your quickchats. When creating a new set of quickchats I fire up one Wordpad window with AllQuickchats.txt, scan for the messages I want, select them, copy them, and then paste them into another Wordpad window in the order I want. Once I've finished I save the set to disk and print it out for reference. For this purpose it helps to use comments and blank lines to make it clear what keys you need to press. For example this is how I've got my favorite list organized:

// PinDM.txt

// 1 1 1 1 1 1
Say("Everybody",1,"Niiiceone!","M7_niiiceone.WAV");
Say("Everybody",1,"Thank you sir.","M5_DM_Thankyousir.wav");
Say("Everybody",1,"Shoot them, not me!","M0_TDM_shootthem.wav");
Say("Everybody",1,"I'm on fire!","M7_imonfire.WAV");

Say("Everybody",1,"It's party time!","F2_DM_itspartytime.wav");
Say("Everybody",1,"Where's the damn pizza?","Ee_caa01.wav");
Say("Everybody",1,"Stay frosty people.","M3_TDM_stayfrosty.WAV");
Say("Everybody",1,"OK partner, draw!","ee_pd03.WAV");

Say("Everybody",1,"Luggage detected.","ee_pd38.WAV");

// 2 2 2 2 2 2
Say("Everybody",1,"Excellent//efficient.","C7_excellent.WAV");
Say("Everybody",1,"Oh thank you you you.","ee_pd27.WAV");
Say("Everybody",1,"Don't shoot! I'm on your side.","M3_TDM_dontshoot.wav");
Say("Everybody",1,"Get 'em offa mee!","M7_getemoffamee.WAV");

Say("Everybody",1,"I'll be ready to party after this.","M11_illbereadytop.WAV");
Say("Everybody",1,"*whistle*","M6_Saxon_whistle.WAV");
Say("Everybody",1,"Success is the sole judge of right and wrong.","C2_success.WAV");
Say("Everybody",1,"Prepare to die.","M5_DM_prepare.wav");

Say("Everybody",1,"Huh. Seem to have destroyed you. Sorry.","ee_pd36.WAV");

// 3 3 3 3 3 3
Say("Everybody",1,"Good shooting.","M8_Hunter_good.wav");
Say("Everybody",1,"Thank you sir.","F1_TDM_thankyousir.wav");
Say("Everybody",1,"Watch your target!","M8_Hunter_watch.WAV");
...

Notice I've tried to maintain a certain consistency across sets, eg. Ctrl-F1 is always a compliment, Ctrl-F2 is always a thank you, etc. This helps reduce the number of times I have to consult the print out. You are free of course to organize your chats anyway you want. I'm interested to hear how other people do it.

Troubleshooting

If you can edit text files and use a mouse you should be able to figure out SQCGen Einstein. If you don't get the sounds you expect check the syntax of your quickchat list file. Try using one of the sample .txt files that came with SQCGen.

The files you drag and drop on SQCGen must be plain text. Use Wordpad or Notepad to create and edit them.

If SQCGen encounters a problem it will leave its black window open briefly to display an error message. Read it.

Caveats

Please use your quickchats judiciously. We've all seen what happens when someone first realizes they have 9 quickchats. Imagine that times 9. To disable quickchat sounds rename the Taunts.vol file. The quickchat text will still appear in the message window. I've played this way. Once you know all the sounds you can actually "hear" them in your head just by reading them. Whoa I gotta take a break.

In general the quality of the undocumented sounds is poor. Also I had to type in their text myself; I could only guess what was being said in some cases. Don't sue me if I misinterpreted anything.

* To use more than 81 quickchats at once currently requires you to edit SQCGen.cs to add key bindings for selecting quickchat sets greater than 9. The contents of SQCGen.cs are automatically included at the beginning of every quickchat.cs file SQCGen creates.

Credits

Dynamix produced a great game in Starsiege, but they had nothing to do with SQCGen. Any errors in the program or its documents are my fault, not theirs.

[OF/CM] Pincushion
Orion Faction BCCO tFc

Last modified: Thu April 14 20:25:31 PDT 1999