CSV2DLG is a Python script that takes a formatted CSV file and parses it into a Ren’Py script file. I wrote this script to make the lives of the designers slightly easier, or at least make it to where they didn’t have to touch the code.

Before using the CSV2DLG script, we need to make the dialog file. The dialog file is a .XLSX file for ease of modification, this dialog .XLSX file needs to be formatted in a special way for it to be understood by the parser.

Each of the rows below describe how differing lines are handled.

Guide:

• The first line of the CSV gets ignored, so put the guide there so it doesn’t get parsed as a variable.

Dialog:

• This line starts with the variable name in the first column and the dialog string in the second one. The dialog string has no quotes around it.

Comment:

• Denoted with a ‘#’ in the first column and text in the second column, the comment is parse to a Ren’Py comment.

Space:

• This blank line gets parsed as a newline in the Ren’py script.

┌─────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────┐
│  Variable Name  │         Dialog String            │◄ Guide
├─────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────┤
│ main_intro_1    │ ... <- dialog in variable        │◄ Dialog
├─────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────┤
│ #	          │ <- Hash denotes a comment        │◄ Comment
├─────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────┤
│                 │ Empty lines are parsed as Spaces │◄ Space
└─────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────┘

Using CSV2DLG without any arguments results in an error, so to learn how to use it, pass --help or -h to the script.

usage: csv2dlg.py [-h] --csv CSV_FILE [--output output] [-y]

Parse dialog CSV to monolithic dialog script.

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --csv CSV_FILE, -i CSV_FILE
                        The CSV file to be converted
  --output output, -o output
                        The path where the script file should be output to
  -y                    Automatically confirm all actions

The script requires a CSV file to run, however an output file doesn’t need to be. If an output file is not specified, the script will print the resulting dialog file to the terminal.