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nwn2_tips.2da Definition
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Overview: Controls the loader tips that show up when you load the game and transition between modules and areas.
Area and Game State filters do not work on load games or module transitions, only on area transitions.  A tip must pass all filters to be considered (i.e. all filter conditionals are ANDed together).

Two campaign settings also control the loader tip behavior:
* Game State Variable Name: the name of the global variable (an int) used to keep track of game state.  Value must be set for the Game State filters to work properly
* Loader Tip History Max: the maximum number of loader tips remembered and not reused until they fall off the history list; e.g. if set to 15, the last 15 messages will not be reused until the 16th tip is played.  Defaults to 15.

There is also a global filter which eliminates any tips that have "****" for GameStateMin and GameStateMax if Game State Variable is > 0.  This way, once you are in a loading situation where the engine can grab the Game State Variable, only area-specific messages will show up (i.e., generic messages will be filtered out).

Moreover, note that if your Loader Tip History is larger that certain subsets of your loading messages (e.g., a small number of general tips, and a small number of game-state-specific tips that cover mutually exclusive game states) you will not be able to keep those loader tips from mixing with each other, since tips in history are recycled without regard to filters.

<additional 2da info sources:
http://www.nwn2wiki.org/
http://nwn.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=187079&forum=48
>


Modification history:
AFW-OEI - 05/31/2007 - Initial creation.



 Column  Column Name	 
+-------+---------------
| A	| *blank*
+-------+---------------
Row id

+-------+---------------
| B	| Area
+-------+---------------
Filter on the loader tip.  If "****" then it will always show up.  Otherwise it should be tag name of an area; if that area is being loaded, then the tip is added to the pool of possible tips, otherwise it is filtered out.  This only works on area transitions; we do not know anything about areas when loading a game or module transitioning.  In those situations only generic "****" loader tips will be displayed.

+-------+---------------
| C	| GameStateMin
+-------+---------------
Filter on loader tip.  If "****" or "0" then there is no low-end game state filter.  Otherwise the game state (as set by the global variable set by the Game State Variable Name campaign setting) must be greater than or equal to this value.  Like the Area filter above, this does not work on load games or module transitions.  If this is greater than GameStateMax the tip will never show up (unless GameStateMax is "****" or "0").

+-------+---------------
| D	| GameStateMax	
+-------+---------------
Filter on loader tip.  If "****" or "0" then there is no high-end game state filter.  Otherwise the game state (as set by the global variable set by the Game State Variable Name campaign setting) must be less than or equal to this value.  Like the Area filter above, this does not work on load games or module transitions.  If this is less than GameStateMin the tip will never show up (unless GameStateMin is "****" or "0").

+-------+---------------
| E	| Weighting	
+-------+---------------
Increases the chance the loader tip will be displayed relative to other loader tips.  Weighting is clamped between 1 and 10 by the engine, except for an override value of -1.  Think of each tip as a ball in an urn; the weighting is how many balls with that loader tip are put in the urn.  Tips with a weighting of -1 are placed in a "priority urn" with an effective weighting of 1 (that is, all priority tips have a similar chance of being selected).  Then the engine picks a ball at random out of the priority urn, or, if there are no tips in the priority urn, the regular urn; and then diplays that tip (also taking previous message history into account -- see overview above).  A tip with a weighting of 5 will show up five times more often than one with a weighting of 1 (for regular tips); the actual % chance a regular tip will show up depends on how many tips you have on the list and the sum of all their weightings.  If you have more priority tips than the size of the message history, you will never see any regular tips.

+-------+---------------
| F	| String	
+-------+---------------
Stringref of the loader tip.  Overrides any value in the DebugString column.

+-------+---------------
| F	| DebugString	
+-------+---------------
If the String column has "****", the engine will try to use the string in this column as the loading tip.  Strings with spaces in them must be enclosed in double-quotes (").  Note that Excel will put a set of double-quotes (") around any double-quotes it sees in a column, so if you plan on using this feature, you will should NOT edit your nwn2_tips.2da in Excel or you will likely never see any of your DebugStrings, and quite possibly corrupt the whole file, too.

+-------+---------------
| G	| Comment	
+-------+---------------
Description of the loader tip.  For user clarity; not used by the engine.
	