Stop this NPC chatting with other NPCs

[Moogiefluff]

It's been so many years since I used the CS... :(

 

I've been staring at an NPC's Dialog window for ages, wondering how to stop him being spoken to by nearby NPCs, but still be addressable by the player when needed.

 

He used to be a CM companion (Cog-Rein), but I've been stripping him of all the CM stuff so I can use him without that mod. After lots of frustration, I've finally gotten rid of his CM dependancy. Hurrah! I can now use him with Companion Share & Recruit and he's a wonderful guy to have along on my journeys!

 

However, he enjoys chatting with people a little too often when we stop by in town... and I can't help but think that other non-butchered-by-me companions don't do this sort of thing, so there must be something I need to add/change to get him to stop chatting with the townsfolk. It gets frustrating after a while if he gets into long conversations about Mudcrabs, or the state of Morrowind's Great Houses, etc...

 

I've removed all scripts and AI stuff from him. One thing I haven't done is touched his Dialog... simply because, well, I have no idea what I'm doing there.

 

From what I've gathered on the wiki, I need to remove the 'HELLO' conversation topic so they can't talk to him? Is this right? But I can't, there's no way to delete anything from that list, and there's quite a few items of conversation in there. And I'm nervous about removing that huge list of responses inside the 'HELLO' topic, in case it affects my whole game instead of just this one NPC. And statistics suggest this would be a Bad Thing.

 

What can I do?

 

(One tiny caveat: I cannot tick 'No Rumors' on him because that is needed for him to work as a companion. Hope that doesn't interfere with a solution.)

 

Thanks.

[zprospero]

Well, first of all, you should never edit dialogue in the Dialogue menu.

You should use the Quest menu. The only way to give a companion, or

anyone, new dialogue properly is to make a placeholder quest.

 

So, open the quest window, and then find the quest that's been made

to allow your companion to be a companion. Once you find that quest

you can delete the 'HELLO' option without badly messing up the game.

 

If you have difficulty finding the quest, right click on your companion

NPC in the Object Window and choose 'Use Info.' That will display a list of

all the packages, scripts, quests, etcetera that that NPC is used in.

 

In order to have made it a working companion, and not having every

single NPC you meet offer to join up with you, they would have had to

make some specific reference to your NPC, so it should tell you what

quest is used for his dialogue.

[Moogiefluff]

Thank you very much for your reply, zprospero. :)

 

Unfortunately, that's exactly how Companion Share & Recruit works in this case-- all NPCs in the game are recruitable. As such, he has no quests or scripts attached to him, especially not after I stripped him of all CM-related scripts (since he was originally a CM companion, and I don't use the CM mod). For all intents and purposes, he is just another blank-slate NPC in the game world with only the Rumor topic and those relating to Companion Share & Recruit which are added to all NPCs ingame via scripting (presumably).

 

From here, I would guess the solution is to add a quest to him that somehow prevents NPCs targetting him for conversation? I'll mess around with it a bit and see how it goes. But any additional help in the meantime would be great.

 

Thanks again for the concise and speedy response. Even though it didn't fix the problem, I still learned something useful from it. :)

[DavidBudreck]

One way around would be to make him a custom race. Random dialogue is done by race.

 

You do need to give any new race at least one "GREETING" Topic, otherwise you get that stupid "I have no greeting" message.

[Maigrets]

Does this companion have any specific AI packages? If he has a Follow package you can stop him from engaging in conversation while following you and NPC's are nearby.

 

I don't use any NPC companions, but I have seen references to this when making my creature companions. They don't talk so it's not an issue. :whistling:

 

You can try checking this in his AI Tab:

 

Skip Fallout Behavior: The actor will not engage in dialogue or other behavior not relevant to the package. He will enter combat to defend himself, but not for other reasons.

 

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index...ags_on_Packages

 

Worth a try. :biggrin:

 

EDITED: Sorry, I meant to check the Skip Fallout Behaviour not uncheck it.

[zprospero]

Ah, I don't use companions, so I never really mess with this sort of thing.

 

What Maigrets said is probably the way to fix it. I would assume that all NPCs

are either given or have a generic 'follow' AI package, and so by editing that single

AI package you would then fix it for all the available companions. If you aren't sure

what the name might be, you could look for the 'follow' rumor in the dialogue and see

what's going on in it's 'Result Script.' On Vanilla NPCs it would have to add it to them in

that conversation for it to work.

[Moogiefluff]

Thanks for the help, I'll try this out at the next opportunity and report back on how it goes. :) Unfortunately something absolutely disastrous just happened to my installation, and I have absolutely no idea how it happened. Half of my data files just... just vanished after rebuilding my Bashed patch today. I mean they're just gone! Oblivion is totally dead, doesn't even try to load now. Wrye Bash has almost all the masters listed as 'Missing' after I opened it again. One second everything is fine, the next... my entire week of mod-collecting has been laid to utter ruin. And I mean that literally. Didn't reboot, didn't even close the window. I just installed a sound mod, rebuilt Bash... and then the Oblocalypse occured.

 

Just... wow. I'll have to think about what to do about this. I've never even heard of this happening before. I'm not sure what to do in this situation. xD

[Maigrets]

Ouch! :pinch: I never heard of anything like this either.

 

Did a background process interrupt the Bash rebuild or something like a power interruption? Sounds like something unrelated to actually rebuilding the patch happened during the process.

 

I know if Windows tries to update while I'm playing a game it will freeze and I have to reset manually. Even though I have Updates set to ask me first before downloading it still happens, but I don't want to disable my internet connection unless absolutely necessary. It's only done it a few times anyway.

 

In case of disasters like this if you have hard drive space you could make a copy of your entire Data directory outside of the game folder and replace it with all the mods intact. Anything that has to be installed via an installer will have to be reinstalled though. Like OBMM, the CS and other tools. You could leave out the files that Oblivion installs since if you have to reinstall completely they will be replaced anyway.

 

I hope you kept all the mod archives you downloaded so you don't have to hunt for them again... :smile:

[Vagrant0]

Have you tried making his idle "standing in town" packages have "skip fallout behavior" toggled? This should prevent him from engaging in conversations with anyone. Just make sure it isn't on something like a generic follow package as it may lead to the NPC no longer reacting when the player gets attacked.

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index...ags_on_Packages

[Moogiefluff]

Ouch! :pinch: I never heard of anything like this either.

 

Did a background process interrupt the Bash rebuild or something like a power interruption? Sounds like something unrelated to actually rebuilding the patch happened during the process.

 

I know if Windows tries to update while I'm playing a game it will freeze and I have to reset manually. Even though I have Updates set to ask me first before downloading it still happens, but I don't want to disable my internet connection unless absolutely necessary. It's only done it a few times anyway.

 

In case of disasters like this if you have hard drive space you could make a copy of your entire Data directory outside of the game folder and replace it with all the mods intact. Anything that has to be installed via an installer will have to be reinstalled though. Like OBMM, the CS and other tools. You could leave out the files that Oblivion installs since if you have to reinstall completely they will be replaced anyway.

 

I hope you kept all the mod archives you downloaded so you don't have to hunt for them again... :smile:

 

Turns out it was OBMM that caused it. Twice (the second time happened just after I'd spent an hour copying all the files back-- fshgjks). Something to do with Archive Invalidation/BSA Alteration wipes my Data folder, so I'm currently avoiding it like the plague. :/

 

I'm almost back to a playable state, but... [Edit: snip]

 

[Edit]Okay, I backed up all 10GB of my Data folder and dared to touch OBMM again (after a reinstall, of course). It didn't mess up this time. My texture/mesh problems appear to be solved, which is a step in the right direction. All the NPC behaviours are still messed up, though. It's going to be hell to get all this fixed...[/Edit]

 

Btw, thanks everyone who suggested the fallout tag-- I will be sure to try this, if I ever get things back to normal. :)