Need help making custom NPC dialogue talk/quest

[lorddonk]

Hi community! I am completely new to modding and was raring excitement at the prospect of creating my own quest. 2 hours later now, it has been sucked out of me by something seemingly so menial that I have seen this question all over online without any responses.

 

I thought a great place to start would be this http://www.creationkit.com/Bethesda_Tutorial_Dialogue mod tutorial series. I'm following along exactly and am up to the Try It Out section on that page. I have made my own NPC and customized its clothes, placed it and can see it in game (as per the previous tutorials in the series), but I cannot for the life of me get him to talk.

 

I have my Dialogue window exactly the same as the one shown on that page, but when I walk up and talk to the NPC he does NOT say any of the things I have selected. He says the same things every other NPC says like "Oh, hello" "Can I help you?" "etc,

 

Can anyone point out what I could have done wrong? Or perhaps, does that tutorial not mention a tick box or something somewhere which would cause the NPC not to run my custom dialogue?

 

I'm desperate! I've uploaded the "mod file" if anyone can take the time to install it and see what it wrong? At this point, I've gone through and checked a few extra things that are not in that guide.

Edited September 16, 2012 by lorddonk

[JanusForbeare]

First off, you're going to want to make sure that you've created and assigned a new, custom voicetype for your NPC - even if he or she is not going to be voiced. Otherwise the dialogue options might get all mucked up.

 

Secondly, it's a good idea to give every line of dialogue a GetIsID condition (with your custom NPC as the "GetIsID" value). This will keep the dialogue you write restricted to the character in question.

[lorddonk]

First off, you're going to want to make sure that you've created and assigned a new, custom voicetype for your NPC - even if he or she is not going to be voiced. Otherwise the dialogue options might get all mucked up.

 

Secondly, it's a good idea to give every line of dialogue a GetIsID condition (with your custom NPC as the "GetIsID" value). This will keep the dialogue you write restricted to the character in question.

 

Thank you for the reply! I THINK I have done that. See my screenshots here to see if I actually did so in the right spots... I chose a voicetype here . And I set a GetIsID value on each line of dialogue like so . Also in the upper right hand corner I selected my NPC name for a voice again. (But I had tried without it selected here before hand and it still did not work)

 

Thank you for looking at this, I have no idea what I am doing wrong. I just finished I made a whole new mod with different names and tried again and it still does not work. :(

[JanusForbeare]

You don't need to fill in the speaker value in the top-right hand corner of the topic window - you can leave that blank. I never touch it; to be honest with you, I'm not entirely sure what it's for (though if I were to hazard a guess, I'd say it's to help filter dialogue topics by speaker, in case you wanted to link two topics in different quests).

 

As for your problem... if the quest containing the dialogue isn't set to "Start Game Enabled", and hasn't been started by a script or script fragment, then that could be the source of your troubles. Quests in the CK aren't quite the same as quests in Skyrim - many simply contain dialogue, scenes, or scripts, and no actual quests at all.

 

Damn, now I've overused the word "quests" and it's starting to lose all meaning... :wacko:

Edited September 16, 2012 by JanusForbeare

[lorddonk]

You don't need to fill in the speaker value in the top-right hand corner of the topic window - you can leave that blank. I never touch it; to be honest with you, I'm not entirely sure what it's for (though if I were to hazard a guess, I'd say it's to help filter dialogue topics by speaker, in case you wanted to link two topics in different quests).

 

As for your problem... if the quest containing the dialogue isn't set to "Start Game Enabled", and hasn't been started by a script or script fragment, then that could be the source of your troubles. Quests in the CK aren't quite the same as quests in Skyrim - many simply contain dialogue, scenes, or scripts, and no actual quests at all.

 

Damn, now I've overused the word "quests" and it's starting to lose all meaning... :wacko:

 

Dang it! I was all ready to say "You're a genius!!!" But it didn't work either. :( I hate this. I've tried everything. I tried all these things that I keep finding and thinking "OH, this must be it!" adding an alias for the quest setting the sound file to something else, changing priority of it, making a new NPC and making them a follower. NOTHING works! Is there a way to make quests from the code?? Thinking maybe that would be easier at this point...

[JanusForbeare]

Nuts.

 

Without taking an in-depth look at your quest, I'm at a loss. My next suggestion would be to take a look at a vanilla quest that functions similarly to the quest you're trying to build. Note any differences, particularly in the "dialogue views" tab. Solving mod issues usually takes a lot of patience, trial and error, and sometimes a few swift kicks to the CPU ;).

[DreamKingMods]

Try making a save with your mod loaded, then immediately load that save, then try talking to your NPC. There is a widespread bug that prevents some mod-added dialogue from appearing the first time a mod is loaded.

[lorddonk]

Try making a save with your mod loaded, then immediately load that save, then try talking to your NPC. There is a widespread bug that prevents some mod-added dialogue from appearing the first time a mod is loaded.

 

OH MY MOTHER THE F-ING GOSH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That solved it! You, DreamKingMods are my favorite person now in the ENTIRE universe!!! Seriously WTF I was seriously going to just give up! I don't mind a challenge but following everything EXACTLY and not having it work was VERY frustrating! Thank you thank you thank you and a thousand times thank you! And thank you to JanusForbeare as well for trying your best to diagnose this nonsense!

 

In the end, that was exactly what solved it, I didn't even have to start a new save (which let me tell you, if you don't already know, it gets REALLY grating after a while "Oh, you're finally awake" I wanted to smack the smug look off his dirty face... anyway) I loaded my main game save, saved it new, then loaded the new save game. It works perfectly! He's apparently now a follower too since I started checking and unchecking all sorts of things in an effort to make this work.

 

HOW and WHY is this a "widespread bug" that hasn't been patched? I never thought it could be a glitch because the guy was showing up, just not talking at all. BETHESDA you need to fix this because you seriously almost deterred someone with huge enthusiasm for making a mod. I'm sure others have given up and I will be trying to retrace my steps backwards through the Internet to spread this "solution" to everyone.

 

Thank you again for all your help. I hope you might download my mod when it is released. I will certainly mention you guys in the credits. THANK YOU!

[JanusForbeare]

I've heard about this bug, but despite the fact that I've been knee-deep in dialogue since the CK came out, I've never encountered it. I guess that explains why I couldn't diagnose it. :)

 

I'm glad you managed to resolve the issue - DreamKingMods strikes again!

[DreamKingMods]

HOW and WHY is this a "widespread bug" that hasn't been patched?

It was actually the last patch, 1.7, that introduced this bug. Bethesda has been made aware of it and we're all hoping that it'll be fixed in the next patch.