blazon said:
I downloaded vim, ...whatever file I open up in it comes up as undecipherable
Wow... winning. You opened up the .fla inside of vim. Your stupidity knows no bounds, and I love you for it. I'm serious, I've been so mad with idiots lately, and you just made my mood better... so I will actually help you.
.fla files get opened in Flash CS5 (hence the SDTModdingCS5.fla) or CS5.5 if you wish.
SDTModdingCS5.fla is not for making dialogues, it is for making characters if you can draw and use flash/actionscript.
vim is a text editing program, I was messing with you, you didn't need to download it, I really didn't think you would... Notepad/Wordpad works just fine.
There is a guide to making dialogues
Guide to Making Dialogues.
You write the dialogue, save the .txt file, load the .txt file inside of SDT.