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Editing ingame text : CSF & STR

Hostile

Category:	Code
Level:	Beginner
Created:	Monday March 26, 2007 - 11:01
Updated:	Saturday June 27, 2009 - 18:53
Views:	12948
Summary:	Learn to edit the in-game text

Rating

Staff says

3.0

Members say

3.3

Average

3.2/5.0

6 votes

Page 1 2 3

The purpose of this tutorial is to show you what a CSF file is, what it does, and how to edit it. This allows you to adjust the displayed text that shows up ingame. The second page will go over STR files, used in BfME2.

A CSF file is the file in BFME that includes all the text in the game. Everytime you hover over a unit and see a description or load a game and see the name of the faction, assume this is all contained within the CSF file

The CSF file is contained within the English.big file. You need to extract that file if you want to adjust the CSF file. Once you extract the CSF file. Then you need a program made to edit this file, CSF Editor. Open this program and load the CSF file that is located in the
\The Battle for Middle-earth (tm)\lang\english\lotr.csf and it will open up.

If you have installed EA Games patch 1.01 for BFME than your CSF file needs to be extracted from _englishpatch101 file.

You can than find and edit the existing text or add your own.

You'll notice the general syntax is name:name than post the string. Once you look over the factions, buttons, units, and such. You'll see alot of this format. Name (what section am I refering to):Name (what faction) string (what text should appear)

Page 2 will explain how to edit texts in BfME 2
Page 3 will explain how to convert a CSF file into a more easily editable STR file

Links / Downloads

	Hits	Added
Hex Editor	2502	April 3, 2007 - 6:35
colorINI	2494	March 30, 2007 - 17:42
CSF Editor	3595	March 30, 2007 - 17:29

Comments

Display order: Newest first | Page: 1, 2

Prolong - Wednesday July 28, 2010 - 8:02

Ah I should have mentioned ages ago - your method to convert a CSF file into a STR file will never actually work because it doesn't account for the '=' character in the game's tooltips, so every STR file you make with it will have syntax errors around those tooltips. I don't remember them all but they include the Fortress upgrade tooltips Burning Forges, Eregion Forge, Excavations (or at least two of those)... and I think there's others as well. You'll basically have to manually fix all of these after converting the file, which means starting and crashing the game for the next error message many times until it works.

borbak trufa - Friday August 8, 2008 - 11:34

Thanks for this tutorial, it's really useful, I would never have found the ingame text without it. Now I've got one question: Do I have to activate subtitles or do anything other than changing them to get them working? Cos I dunno how to activate subtitles, there ain't an option in BFME settings menu. Or do they activate themselves automatically after being edited?

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Thanks for this tutorial, it's really useful, I would never have found the ingame text without it. Now I've got one question: Do I have to activate subtitles or do anything other than changing them to get them working? Cos I dunno how to activate subtitles, there ain't an option in BFME settings menu. Or do they activate themselves automatically after being edited?

Acronos - Thursday February 7, 2008 - 18:55

If I installed patches for BFMEII, do I have to change the text in those .str files too?
Or can I just change lotr.str?

Medicleous - Sunday February 3, 2008 - 3:14

Ok done, that helped. However some hundreds of lines failed to convert properly, I had to go in and manually add the " and END commands. Works now though, thanks.

m@tt (Team Chamber Member) - Saturday February 2, 2008 - 3:55

The Hex Editor has a replace function (under the search menu), just fill it in and hit Replace All.

Medicleous - Friday February 1, 2008 - 17:37

I also don't understand this rediculous tutorial. I've spent ten minutes staring at this hex code and don't know where to start. There's heaps of 0D 0As throughout the code, do I replace all of them? If this is the best the 3rd Age community can do then god help us all.

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I also don't understand this rediculous tutorial. I've spent ten minutes staring at this hex code and don't know where to start. There's heaps of 0D 0As throughout the code, do I replace all of them? If this is the best the 3rd Age community can do then god help us all.

Maereandil - Monday October 22, 2007 - 2:26

May I add that for some languages for Bfme2 and Rotwk the game still uses CSF files. Maybe you can add that.

Bart (Administrator) - Sunday August 19, 2007 - 2:22

yes

CNCM_BLITZ - Saturday August 18, 2007 - 19:55

I cant understand THIS part.

Quote

you need to replace the following HEX strings in THIS ORDER!!

Code
0D 0A -> 22 0D 0A 45 4E 44 0D 0A 0D 0A.
3D -> 0D 0A 22
7C -> 5C 6E "

I dont really know what I am replacing. Is it the part before ->?

Bart (Administrator) - Saturday August 18, 2007 - 17:38

you just need to find the 'find and replace' function, which is of course different depending on what hex editor you use

in Notepad++ it's Ctrl+H

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