General

Description

The text of a dialog can be edited with either The Insurgent's Workshop or the ff12-text.exe tool from FF12 VM Script Decompiler and Compiler (which the former also requires).

Instructions on how to unpack and pack a text file are found on the respective mod pages.

Layout

{dialog 0}
Moogle
So long, kupo!
{/dialog}

The first line is the speaker name, but only in a dialog window, not a system window.

Symlink

A symlink is used in cases where the same dialog needs to be used for more than one object.

For example, if an action heals the target by a small amount, its text could be:

{dialog 0}
Restore a small amount of HP to one ally.
{/dialog}

Now, if there is another action which heals the target by a small amount, but with a different formula, mp cost, etc. you might want to use the exact same text for it.

So instead of creating the exact same text, you can also just link to the first dialog.

{symlink 1 link=0}

In this case, the link option in the dialog header refers to the dialog id whose text should be used.

The only advantage to this is that changing the base text will automatically change the text in the symlink and also that a little bit of space is saved since the symlink doesn't include any text itself.

Dialogex

An extended dialog is usually only used in menus and also comes with its own font.

It can not use any of the general text tags and comes with its own instead. These tags are also surrounded by curly brackets and used to adjust the text position and other unknown things.

{dialogex 0}
{ͩ,}HP{ɩȬ}
{/dialogex}