Custom Companion Troubleshooting Questions

[Navitamonasut]

Hi everyone! Like the title says, I've been making a custom companion for a few days and I'm running into a few issues I cannot seem to find any fix for.
I've trawled the forums, youtube, the CKWiki and gone through google search like it owed me money but I can't find any explanations/fixes.

 

So any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

I've copied an existing companion as a base. (X688 to be precise) and have edited the companionscript and their packages. Almost everything is changed and I've

followed a few youtube tutorials to the letter. (Seddon, Kris etc)

The success:

 

I have a custom companion who:

-Follows me

-Sneaks when I do

-takes out and stashes gun when I do

-Trades

-can send him home to a settlement

-re-hire him.

 

The Issues:

1- Can't get his threshold affinities to say the right message. When you hit 500 affinity with X688, a message pops up

that says "X6-88 Admires You." I've set my own messages "Bob admires you" but when I hit 500 affinity, I always get "X6-88 Admires you". I have

gone over my object, my objectref, my scripts, everything and removed anything that is x688 but I can't fix this issue for some reason. I've looked up all of X6-88's

threshold messages and see that they're ONLY being used by NPCX688 and the according ref so I don't know why my companion is getting them. It's driving me. B O N K E R S

 

My read is that somewhere in a script somewhere, my companion is being referenced as x6-88 but where, you could have me at gunpoint and I couldn't answer you.

 

2-Can't get Friendship forcegreet affinity dialogue to happen. I know certain characters (like x6-88) don't have friendship dialogue stages (but piper and hancock etc) do.

I have copy pasted the papyrus scripts and quest stages from existing vanilla companions and have edited the Threshold Event Arrays accordingly, but can't get my companion
to come up and "Hey we need to talk" when I hit friendship but I CAN make it work for Admiration. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why. And of course, the quest stages are all

set accordingly as well.

 

These are the two big things I'm struggling with and I've come to the edge of my knowledge of the creation kit. Any help would be *amazing*.

[taryl80]

Point 1)

 

Messages like "xyz likes you" are usually home at the companionactorscript. Also you could right click on the messages from x688 in the ck and look to what they are linked. So maybe you can reverse learn about those messages.

 

Point 2)

 

Your situation is a great example why it is better to make every single entry in the ck new, instead of copy&paste things. This is something you will not like to read, but it will save you a lot of trouble if you start new with new entrys, instead of copied ones. Also Piper, or Cait and so on would be better templates since they use all affinity steps.

 

Hope I could help a bit...

Edited June 4, 2022 by taryl80

[Navitamonasut]

Thanks so much! Your points make a lot of sense too but i've been having these issues regardless of whether I make them new or not.

 

1) I've removed the companionscript that came with X6-88 and replaced it with a blank Companionscript and put in all of the thresholds manually, CA_EVENTs and all that jazz being linked straight to my companion. Every relationship threshold/affinity message/relationship is completely new and tailored to my companion. From testing, I've been able to figure out that the CompanionScript itself is calling to the vanilla companions (as I removed companionscript and had no x6-88 admiration message/any message at all.) I guess unless I'm about to edit the CompanionScript source code I might have to find a different solution.

 

That being said, reverse engineering was the first thing I tried to do. The x6-88 messages were in use for two cases, the CompanionX6-88 npc and it's linked reference. There were no other places that message was used so I'm still banging my head against it.

 

2) I should have said this in the OG post, but I've copy pasted all the vanilla only because I failed doing them for my own. I guess I just have to experiment more. I've tried DLing some custom companions from the nexus, but it's honestly difficult to understand the thought process of other people, especially if they've got big winding questlines (whereas I just want a companion to talk to me)

 

Onwards towards more experimentation I guess..

[taryl80]

Modded companions can be a template but only if you follow the steps of that mod author to 100% and think also about the goal, the mod author had with his companion.

 

As example, I made a companion "Skarlet" with a short story and usually she would be perfect for you to look into the creation kit and how she was made, but she is it not because I let a lot of things out by her, because she doesn't need them as a evil character.

 

The best would really be, if you look in the companion quest of Piper as example, or Cait and look how she was made. And you should also not forget that every vanilla companion needs 3 quests to work properly: The big affinity quest, the comtalk quest and the enabler quest.

 

The enabler quest is the quest that the npc turns into a follower and as example: The talking quest with Piper after you move your first time to Diamond City is such a enabler quest. This quest can basically everything contain - from talking to killing - but it contains also always the function to turn an npc into an follower.

Edited June 4, 2022 by taryl80

[niston]

In EventData_Array script property for companionactorscript, there are the links between event (keyword) and message.

For example: Disposition_Global "CA_Event_Dislikes" (GLOB 0x5611e) / Event_Keyword "CA_CustomEvent_JessiDislikes" (KYWD xxxx) / Message_to_Display "CA_Jessi_Dislikes" (MSG xxxx)

 

Check that Event_Keyword points to your custom keyword for the respective event and that Message_to_Display is correctly set to the custom message you want to show.

 

You can check Jessica Child of the Wasteland mod for reference, she is a fairly simple companion but has affinity w/ infatuation perk nonetheless.

Btw: I did not make her, only converted the mod to ESLified ESP format. Original was created by radogamer, Kudos to him.

[Navitamonasut]

Thanks everyone for all the comments! Honestly, I turned the creation kit on and off and reapplied the companionscript on a new character and everything worked like a charm. I'm going to assume there was some script holdover from copying but after remaking the character and following everyone's steps, I've gotten it to work properly. Thank you so much!

[taryl80]

Happy that it worked out. Starting to work on a affinity follower for the first time can be quite overwhelming :).