Quest Parser Bug or Intended? SplitField() error when colon in Quest Display Name

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haloterm
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Joined: Sat Feb 16, 2019 5:21 am

Quest Parser Bug or Intended? SplitField() error when colon in Quest Display Name

Post by haloterm »

Once again I got back into quest creation, and as always the first few hours are needed to get back into the topic.

Now I wondered why my quests won't compile anymore, even though I did not change anything significant since last time.

I always got the following error:

"SplitField() encountered invalid number of results."

I wondered what the h...?

I really scratched my head. It must be some parser message. The parser obviously trieds to split some string into something, maybe keywords and parameters and somehow was not able to do so. I did not find any obvious error in my quests.

But then I remembered something.

In an effort of systematic renaming my quests, I changed all display names. For the main quest of my Black Horse Courier mod, I added a "MQ:" to each display name, and for my side quests I added a "SQ:"

Note the colon. The colon that is used to mark a lot in the quest files. Could that be the culprit?

I removed the colons and finally, all my quests compiled again.

So, note for myself: Do not use colons in the display name.

I checked the Tipton docs, but nothing is to be found there, and I think it is also not mentioned in Jay's tutorials (or I am blind). Is that an intentional limitation, or a parser bug?

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Jay_H
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Re: Quest Parser Bug or Intended? SplitField() error when colon in Quest Display Name

Post by Jay_H »

Yep, that same thing happened to me. Just one of those little details you learn as you write quests ;)

One thought is to make a quest-writing compendium with everything people should know about them. I have some details stored on-line, but it's just information, not a reference guide. https://github.com/JayH2971/dfunity-que ... nformation

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haloterm
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Re: Quest Parser Bug or Intended? SplitField() error when colon in Quest Display Name

Post by haloterm »

Jay_H wrote: Thu Sep 16, 2021 11:26 pm Yep, that same thing happened to me. Just one of those little details you learn as you write quests ;)

One thought is to make a quest-writing compendium with everything people should know about them. I have some details stored on-line, but it's just information, not a reference guide. https://github.com/JayH2971/dfunity-que ... nformation
I agree. Maybe one day we will have a nicely formatted PDF, which includes an updated version of the old Tipton docs and all the new docs which are scattered throughout the forums.

Your GitHub link is very useful, thanks for posting!

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