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Import & Export Dialogues

The Dialogue System can round-trip a Dialogue Tree to a portable archive and back - both to move dialogues between projects and to hand a conversation off to the standalone Mountea Dialoguer web tool. This page documents the archive format and the actual import/export pipeline as implemented in the Editor module.

1. Introduction

What You'll Learn

  • What actually goes inside a .mnteadlg file, and how .mnteadlgproj differs
  • Where import comes from (there's no "Import" button on the graph editor itself)
  • What the importer does, phase by phase, when it populates a Graph
  • Where .mnteadlg fits alongside Mountea Dialoguer

2. The .mnteadlg Format

A .mnteadlg file is a ZIP archive - the plugin writes it with its own minimal ZIP writer and reads it back with an embedded miniz-based unzip, so no external tools are required. Inside:

File / folder Required Contents
dialogueData.json Yes The archive's identity: a stable dialogueGuid plus the dialogue's display name. This is what lets a later import recognise "update an existing Graph" versus "create a new one."
categories.json, participants.json, nodes.json, edges.json, dialogueRows.json Yes The Graph itself: node/edge structure, participants, and the actual dialogue row content. Import refuses the archive outright if any of these is missing.
decorators.json, conditions.json No Describes any custom Decorator/Condition types the archive references, so the importer can generate matching Blueprint classes in this project if they don't already exist.
audio/ No WAV/MP3/OGG/FLAC files, imported as SoundWave assets.
Thumbnails/ No PNG files, imported as Texture2D assets.
stringTable.json No Localized text, imported into UStringTable assets plus a .po file per non-default locale for Unreal's localization pipeline.

A .mnteadlgproj file is the project-level container: a single projectData.json, shared categories.json/participants.json/decorators.json/conditions.json, participant thumbnails, and a dialogues/ folder holding one nested .mnteadlg per conversation. Each nested archive is extracted and imported through the same pipeline described below, then every resulting Graph's import record is updated to point back at the parent .mnteadlgproj rather than an ephemeral temp file.

3. Where Import Comes From

There's no dedicated "Import" button inside the Dialogue Tree graph editor. Both file types register as standard Unreal UFactory classes instead, so importing uses the engine's usual asset-import surface:

  • Drag a .mnteadlg or .mnteadlgproj file into the Content Browser (or use its own Import action) to create one or more new Dialogue Tree assets.
  • UMounteaDialogueGraphFactory also accepts a bare .zip extension - the importer only checks for a valid ZIP file signature past that point, not the specific extension.
  • Reimport: right-click an existing Dialogue Tree asset → Reimport. The factory implements Unreal's FReimportHandler, and reimport is also detected automatically through the plain import path - ImportDialogueGraphFromFiles looks up any existing Graph carrying the same dialogueGuid (via the asset registry's GraphGUID tag, falling back to import history kept in UMounteaDialogueImportConfig) and updates it in place instead of creating a duplicate asset.

Warning

Reimporting fully replaces the existing Graph's content (ClearGraph() runs first) - it is a real reimport, not a merge. Once you start round-tripping a dialogue through Mountea Dialoguer, treat the archive as the source of truth, not the in-editor Graph.

4. What Happens on Import

Populating a Graph from an extracted archive runs in four phases:

  1. Decorator / Condition Blueprint classes - for every distinct definition in decorators.json/conditions.json, the importer looks for an existing Blueprint subclass (matched by a GUID stored on the class's CDO) and creates a new one under <Project>/Decorators/ or <Project>/Conditions/ if none exists yet, wiring up its member variables from the definition's declared properties.
  2. Supporting assets - registers any Gameplay Tags the participants reference, builds string tables plus .po localization files for dialogue text, creates the Participants and Dialogue Rows Data Tables, imports audio as SoundWave, imports thumbnails as Texture2D.
  3. Graph population - creates every node object from nodes.json, every edge (with its Conditions) from edges.json, then resolves each Return To Node's target now that every node exists.
  4. Data table fill - populates the Participants and Dialogue Rows tables with the actual row content and links each dialogue node to its row.

The Graph is saved once population finishes. Any Open Child Graph node pointing at another dialogue in the same import batch has its target resolved once every graph in that batch exists on disk.

5. Exporting

Export Dialogue Graph, on the graph editor's own toolbar, packs the currently open Graph into a .mnteadlg at a destination you choose (defaulting to the Graph's own name). Crafting Your First Dialogue already covers clicking the button - the content it produces is the same file layout described in section 2: the JSON set, each referenced audio asset re-exported alongside the archive, and any available thumbnail data.

6. Mountea Dialoguer

The .mnteadlg/.mnteadlgproj formats are shared with Mountea Dialoguer, the standalone web-based dialogue editor - build or edit a conversation there and import the result directly into the engine, or export from the engine to hand a writer a version they can edit without installing Unreal at all.

Mountea Dialoguer

https://mountea.tools/dialoguer - a standalone web app companion to this plugin.

7. Next Steps

Setup Defaults

Auto-configure your project's GameMode classes for Dialogue