Information devices

In order to display text using data cubes, books and newspapers, an external text resource is needed.

Prerequisites

• Custom packages
• Textures

Properties

• InformationDevices
  • imageClass
  • TextPackage
  • textTag

The image¹ to be transfered

The name of your package

The name of the imported text

¹ More about images

Create a folder

Create a Text folder inside your package, like so:

• DeusEx
  • MyPackage
    • Text

Create a text file

Create a new text file called 16_MyText.txt inside your Text folder. The 16 is your mission number

Text has a few HTML-like formatting tags available (not all of these are actually supported in Deus Ex):

Tag	Description
<P>	A paragraph
<B>	Bold
<U>	Underline
<I>	Italics
<G>	Graphic (?)
<F>	Font (?)
<L>	Label (?)
<PLAYERNAME>	The player's chosen real name
<NOTE>	A note to add
<GOAL>	A goal to add
<JL>	Left aligned text
<JC>	Centered text
<JR>	Right aligned text
<DC=0-255,0-255,0-255>	Default colour
<C=0-255,0-255,0-255>	Text colour
<COMMENT>	A comment that will not be visible in-game

A common practice is to close all tags except the <P> tag, like so:

<P><JC>This is a centered title</JC>
<P>This is a longer sentence with a <DC=255,0,0>red</DC> word in it
<COMMENT>This text will not be visible in-game</COMMENT>

Create an import file

Create a new file called TextImport.uc inside your DeusEx/MyPackage/Classes folder with this content:

class TextImport expands Object abstract;

#exec DEUSEXTEXT IMPORT FILE=Text\16_MyText.txt

Rebuild your package

Delete the DeusEx/System/MyPackage.u file if it's present and run this command from within the DeusEx/System folder:

UCC.exe make

Add the information device to your map

1. Open UnrealEd.
2. Bring up the actor browser from View > Actor Class Browser.
3. Navigate to the data cube, book or newspaper you want in the Decoration > DeusExDecoration > InformationDevices section.
4. Right click where you want to place the actor and select Add <actor> here.
5. Double click the actor (or right click and select Properties).
6. Expand the InformationDevices section.
7. In the TextPackage field, type MyPackage.
8. In the textTag field, type 16_MyText.

Images

This is an example of a custom image.

class MyImage expands DataVaultImage;

defaultproperties
{
     imageTextures(0)=Texture'MyPackage.DataVaultImages.MyImage_1'
     imageTextures(1)=Texture'MyPackage.DataVaultImages.MyImage_2'
     imageTextures(2)=Texture'MyPackage.DataVaultImages.MyImage_3'
     imageTextures(3)=Texture'MyPackage.DataVaultImages.MyImage_4'
     imageDescription="A description of this image"
     colNoteTextNormal=(R=50,G=50)
     colNoteTextFocus=(R=0,G=0)
     colNoteBackground=(R=32,G=32)
}