Question about linking IdleChatter to other topics

[itsazoefish]

I'm working on my first mod, so I'm sorry if my question seems mind-numbingly stupid. I'm making a companion mod with two NPC followers. I have my dialogue all set up and working except for some of my idle chatter.

 

Each character has their own follower and player Q&A dialogue quests, but the idle chatter for BOTH characters is in the same quest. I'm doing this because several of the comments have the two characters going back and forth. I set up a conversation topic specifically for timed idle chatter not tied to a quest or location. From this custom topic I can link to other topics so that the characters have a conversation. Currently they are allowed to speak these lines every in-game hour. This works exactly as I envisioned it.

 

However, for quest dialogue or location dialogue I have everything in the IdleChatter topic. The dialogue works - I've tested it for two quests. What does not work is linking from IdleChatter to a custom topic in the conversation tab. (Idle chatter plays only one spoken line, even when there are supposed to be follow-up lines.)

 

So my question is: is it possible at all to link from the IdleChatter topic to another topic, or will I need to create another custom topic and script it to behave with the same implementation as IdleChatter?

[sullyvanj93]

Not a stupid question at all! I've spent an ungodly amount of time trying to figure out how to get certain dialogue flows down.

 

I'm not 100% sure I'm understanding exactly what you're wanting to do, or if my solution would work for you or not, but something to at least look into is to do it by packages.

 

In your IdleChatter's result script, add a scriptpackage to the NPC that initiates the dialogue/action that you're wanting to tie in. There are specific dialogue packages that can initiate new conversations, so you should be able to get it to flow the way you're wanting to.

[itsazoefish]

Not a stupid question at all! I've spent an ungodly amount of time trying to figure out how to get certain dialogue flows down.

 

I'm not 100% sure I'm understanding exactly what you're wanting to do, or if my solution would work for you or not, but something to at least look into is to do it by packages.

 

In your IdleChatter's result script, add a scriptpackage to the NPC that initiates the dialogue/action that you're wanting to tie in. There are specific dialogue packages that can initiate new conversations, so you should be able to get it to flow the way you're wanting to.

 

Thanks :) I definitely will try this. My hesitancy with this is ... processing latency?

 

I have other situations where an NPC will say a random line (like "patrolling the mojave...") and one of my characters responds, and it took a lot of fiddling to get the timing of the response even remotely near. I set up a quest variable that I attached in the results script, and in order to get a response "right away" I had to run the result script immediately so that my bark script would run it in time. Sometimes it sounds accurate...

 

After reading through a lot of old posts here, I'm also contemplating setting up reaction comments the same way Veronica and Cass work - like you recommended, using a dialogue package to force react, but skipping the IdleChatter topic entirely.