Writing Story Arcs outside of AE

[KelsoKajek]

Hi all! I've written missions in AE, but it's easier for me to work out of a text editor, like Visual Source Code.

 

I've edited the .storyarc files, but when I open the modified files in AE, while no errors are reported when I open the story arc, when I try to re-save the file in AE, I get error notifications - like multiple "The field PersonRescuedSpeech exceeds the text limit.", even though all those fields seem to be within their limits.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions for using text editors/applications for writing missions, without having to log into AE?

[UltraAlt]

I would just leave those fields in issue empty, save the file, exit AE editor, go back in, and then ... copy-and-paste in the missing text and see if it saves out

 

You might also want to try copy-and-pasting the text causing the error out to notepad, deleting it in the editor, and then copy-and-pasting it back in from notepad.

There may be some stray special characters that are causing an issue that you can't even see in the text. Running it through notepad (copy-paste in and back out) should clear any unseen or special character stuff related to the text that may be non-compatible.  

 

I've used google docs to write/edit text, but I just do it a field at a time and not the entire .storyarc file.

[KelsoKajek]

Thanks for the suggestion Ultra. Opening the file in Notepad, I saw that Visual Studio Code had entered some spaces as ' ', which wouldn't show up when viewing the text in AE. Removing those fixed the issue.

 

I guess I'll try working with Notepad until I figure something else out. It is a lot easier to edit the file directly, but I guess I'll keep a working backup in case something like this pops up again.

 

 

[Jiro Ito]

I write in google docs, and copy/paste over when I'm ready