[LE] General questions about custom follower

[x0jackie0x]

I can't voice anything, so this isn't about voicing any dialogue. Rather, it's about a possibility. I've made a custom standalone follower, successfully had her show up in-game and all that normal junk. I got the itch to write some silent dialogue for her to use throughout the general world, but it got me wondering:

 

(Note: I know these are all entirely possible with the proper skills, but my experience with CK and scripting in general is really low. This is more about the possibility of these things happening with only basic knowledge)

1. Combining multiple character's (non)quest line dialogue into one character's dialogue tree, then adding my own.

2. Creating a faction that allows my follower to have hostility towards a certain faction (like, imperial/stormcloak soldiers) outside of a city, but not inside, as if she is acting civil within city walls.

 

I have a feeling that this would take quite a bit of experience to make work, since it took me two and a half days just to make a standalone follower. : P

 

Thanks for your time!

[JonathanOstrus]

1. Combining multiple character's (non)quest line dialogue into one character's dialogue tree, then adding my own.

2. Creating a faction that allows my follower to have hostility towards a certain faction (like, imperial/stormcloak soldiers) outside of a city, but not inside, as if she is acting civil within city walls.

 

I'm not sure I understand #1. If I am then you'd need to duplicate all the dialogue lines. Taking a non shared dialogue and making it shared doesn't work in practice. At least not from what I tried.

 

For #2 a possible method would be to create the faction you describe, setting the desired enemy of your choice on it. Then in a quest alias with the follower npc as the reference have a script that receives OnLocationChange and detect when entering an appropriate city location, then remove the faction. When anywhere else set the faction and preferably a bool to test against for checking if you already set it. Obviously swapping the bool when removing the faction when entering a city. You could use an array of locations then do something like LocationArray.Find(Follower.GetCurrentLocation()) to see if it's one where you want to remove the faction.

[x0jackie0x]

 

I'm not sure I understand #1. If I am then you'd need to duplicate all the dialogue lines. Taking a non shared dialogue and making it shared doesn't work in practice. At least not from what I tried.

 

For #2 a possible method would be to create the faction you describe, setting the desired enemy of your choice on it. Then in a quest alias with the follower npc as the reference have a script that receives OnLocationChange and detect when entering an appropriate city location, then remove the faction. When anywhere else set the faction and preferably a bool to test against for checking if you already set it. Obviously swapping the bool when removing the faction when entering a city. You could use an array of locations then do something like LocationArray.Find(Follower.GetCurrentLocation()) to see if it's one where you want to remove the faction.

#1: That's what I figured, I think. So, it seems like if I wanted to give a character more voice lines, it'd just be a lot of running around, but not necessarily loads of scripting.

 

#2 And woof, that will take scripting. xD That's gonna take me a bit to learn, but I guess that what comes with modding. Thanks for your time, hun!

[nerdofprey]

Custom dialogue is really hard to figure out at first, but it's easy to do a ton of it really fast once you do figure it out. Unlike a lot of things in the CK, your file structure has to be altered to match the plugin, instead of you telling the plugin being where the files are. When you create a new line of dialogue in the CK, it will generate a file name for you. The sound file has to exist in data/sound/voice/pluginname.esp/voicetype, with that file name, then the game can play it. Basically to reuse existing lines without editing the audio or anything, you just have to copy the original sound file and put it in the right subfolder and give it the right file name.

 

(I know this is not a complete tutorial, but I'm hoping that if you are looking at real tutorials this basic info will help make sense of it.)

 

Easy way for #2 would be to use an AI package with conditions that the location does not have any keywords like city, town, hold capital, settlement, and then put a little script fragment that adds them to a faction when the package starts and removes them from it when it ends. When you enter a location like that, the AI package would change and they would stop being hostile. Usually areas immediately outside city walls also have these keywords, so it would be a relatively smooth transition most of the time.

 

Of course, this would involve using custom AI packages on your NPC, which would probably have to involve either using a quest alias or taking them off the standard follower framework. (This is also less complicated than it sounds)

 

 

 

This stuff can be complicated, but it can be done. Over about the past 3 years I went from having zero game modding experience and zero computer programming knowledge to making crazy complicated mods with complex multi-stage quests, hundreds of lines of custom dialogue, and complex scripting. It only takes patience to figure it all out!