Replace word in Object's String with Global String at runtime

[FlipSwitchX]

Hi there everybody I'm makin' a game where the player set's their name on a save file at the beginning, the name is also stored in a global string. I'm trying to get NPC's to give the correct player name when I type in their alterable strings something like' "Hi playername, how are ya?",(playername is the global string function), but I can't just type that in their alterable string edit box in the editor. I have to do:

Start of frame -> Set alterable string to "Hi" + playername + "how are ya?"

I was wondering if there was an easy way around this. Like if there was a secret delimiter that can be typed in the editor to let fusion know the next word is a function and not a word?

I'm currently trying to start a loop for each object, for each string, for each substring, and compare each substring to "playername" to replace it with playername (the function), but I'm getting caught up on not being able to get a substring via an index. (In this case the loopindex of the substring loop).

[Pixelthief]

There are some nice string parsing extensions for MMF2 if you want a rich string editor at runtime, but if all you're doing is replacing one word with a substring, its something you could do with just the built in MMF2 string handling. Under the "special" object, theres a function "Find string in string", which uses the function
Find(>Enter string to look into<, >Enter string to look for<, >Enter first character<)

Now what you can do is assemble a simple function that searches every string for the word "playername" before its displayed. If it finds it that function will return the 0-based index of the letter the phrase starts on, and you can retrieve substrings on the left and right of that word, then concatenate the (leftstring + playername + rightstring), replacing it regardless of the length. It gets a bit trickier if you want to let NPC's say the playername more than once, you'd have to make it a loop and do it multiple times (although just recurring the function has the same effect). If "playername" wasn't found, it would return -1, and you just skip the function

I've created a basic example function for you in MMF2, attached:
string editor.mfa

feel free to copy/paste that into your project, no credits needed

also you'd probably want an additional check of
if Find(string_to_insert, string_to_replace,0) =/= -1
then don't let the player use that playername or don't run that function (as it will crash your game)

[FlipSwitchX]

Thanks Pixelthief, that was insightful