Bizarre but functional dialog constructs in FNV GECK

[Belthan]

I was just looking at the dialogue for Ethel Phebus, and her dialogue looks completely nonsensical in the Topics tab and not much better in the Dialogue Tree tab. The choices for her GREETING are topics that have the player's Topic Text but no infos. There is a topic called "Placeholder for Ethel's Topic Nodes" which has infos with contradictory conditions (Subject GetIsID EthelPhebus == 1 && Subject GetIsID EthelPhebus != 1), and for which the choices are topics named "Placeholder for player topics". Those actually have infos with voice, lip & conditions that make sense.

 

There is no visible connection on either the Topics tab or the Dialogue Tree tab between Ethel's placeholder topics and the player's placeholder topics, but it works in game. One more clue: in FNVEdit FalloutNV.esm (with no other mods loaded) has numerous errors of the type:

Error: record DIAL contains unexpected (or out of order) subrecord INFC
Error: record DIAL contains unexpected (or out of order) subrecord INFX

And she's not the only NPC with dialogue that works this way, just the first one I noticed. Did they use some undocumented feature or a non-GECK tool to create dialog for some NPCs, and if so, why not just use the normal method? Is there some advantage to doing it that way, or did they just not like the GECK UI? Her dialog is pretty simple, so they certainly didn't need to do it to get around some limitation of the standard method.

 

[rickerhk]

The NV Geck has a 'conversation editor'. It can make a couple of subrecords that aren't viewable in the standard quest menus. Do yourself a favor and avoid it like the plague :)

It's the tool bar button to the far right.

That's why you see all those numbered topics in most of the quests. All auto-named and almost impossible to follow/troubleshoot anything.

[Belthan]

Thanks, never noticed that before. Seems kind of redundant and, as you point out, must create a maintenance nightmare.

[llamaRCA]

@rick

 

What are the subrecords that can't be viewed in the quest menus? And which quest menus are you referring to? I'm not sure what you mean by "menu."

 

Re: the conversation editor

 

I like it a lot and use it frequently for longer conversations. It has some issues, but overall it makes building complex conversations and branching dialogue trivially easy. I'm going to sorely miss it when I start building dialogue in FO3 which I'll be doing shortly. Building long, branching conversations in FO3 is hard going.

 

I agree that the automatic numbering thing can be a bit annoying and I've done quite a bit of memorizing of numbered topic names because of it (topics I use over and over again in building other things, etc). But overall I've found the benefit of having the editor to write in and the fact that I can view entire conversations in it outweighs the problems presented by the numbered topics.

[rickerhk]

Sorry, by menu I meant the quest, topics, and dialog tabs.

INFC and INFX are subrecords that allow INFOs to be re-used on other topics. When going through some vanilla quests and trying to follow the dialog chains, I've run into dead ends where there clearly wasn't one. The only way to see the linkage in these cases was in the conversation editor.

I'm not trying to say anything is broken, I just have my preferences :)

[llamaRCA]

 

Sorry, by menu I meant the quest, topics, and dialog tabs.

INFC and INFX are subrecords that allow INFOs to be re-used on other topics. When going through some vanilla quests and trying to follow the dialog chains, I've run into dead ends where there clearly wasn't one. The only way to see the linkage in these cases was in the conversation editor.

I'm not trying to say anything is broken, I just have my preferences :smile:

 

 

 

I thought maybe that's what you meant, but I wasn't sure. I don't like to assume anything, especially when it's you, cuz I figure you always have some interesting bit of information to share that I'm clueless about :P

 

And, yeah, the conversation editor does hide topics that you elect to copy and reuse, which is a nuisance when you run across them in work you aren't familiar with, but it's pretty sweet when building a lot of dialogue and copying lines saves you work/time, etc :)

 

I understand, though, why you don't like it and I'd probably avoid it entirely if it didn't make writing in/for the game so much easier for me. There are a couple of things about it that I detest.

[Belthan]

Can you use the Conversation Editor to edit dialog created in the Topics tab without messing anything up? I'm pretty comfortable doing dialog the "old-fashioned" way, but it would be nice to link a single info to multiple topics in certain cases to avoid having to distribute redundant ogg & lip files.

[llamaRCA]

Can you use the Conversation Editor to edit dialog created in the Topics tab without messing anything up? I'm pretty comfortable doing dialog the "old-fashioned" way,

 

Yes, you can edit dialogue, results scripts, etc in the editor without problems. I edit stuff in either location after creating in either location, but like rick says the stuff that you copy/paste in the editor cannot be seen in the quest tabs and you cannot do anything with the dupes in the editor either. You can see them, but you can only edit the original topic.

 

 

but it would be nice to link a single info to multiple topics in certain cases to avoid having to distribute redundant ogg & lip files.

 

 

 

I don't think I understand what you want to do, because, it seems to me you should already be able to do it, so I need to ask more questions. It's always questions with me :tongue:

 

The topic, as I understand it, is the named topic in the left column of the dialogue page and the info is the line item on the right. Topics can have from one to many infos.

 

So you want to attach an info to several topics as a choice. This is a great idea cuz you don't have to duplicate work. I approve. i do this. I do it a lot. Within quests and across quests.

 

But, my question is this. Do you want to do it with an info from a multi-info topic or an info from a single-info topic?

[Belthan]

Either way, if possible. Simple case would be two or more single-info topics where the NPC says the same thing no matter what topic the player chooses. However, I try to avoid giving multiple choices when there's no difference in the outcome, so a more common scenario is where the NPC starts a multi-info monologue with "Yes sir" or "Yes ma'am" based on PC gender. It would be nice if I only needed separate infos for that first differentiated line, and could use a single set of identical infos for the rest of the speech.

[llamaRCA]

However, I try to avoid giving multiple choices when there's no difference in the outcome,

 

I couldn't agree more about that.

 

Simple case would be two or more single-info topics where the NPC says the same thing no matter what topic the player chooses.

 

 

This is doable in the old set up and can be done in either FO3 or NV. If you've tried it and it hasn't worked for you it may be because you need to tick "allow repeated conversation topics" on the front tab of the quest form. I'm not sure about that because I always tick that on quests I use for dialogue.

 

But when you add topics as choices you can add a topic whenever you want it and it will work wherever you put it (across quests, etc) and however often you use it. And, of course, the great thing is, unlike reusing infos inside the same topic, you don't have to duplicate the voice files for the topic to work.

 

so a more common scenario is where the NPC starts a multi-info monologue with "Yes sir" or "Yes ma'am" based on PC gender. It would be nice if I only needed separate infos for that first differentiated line, and could use a single set of identical infos for the rest of the speech.

 

 

So in these situations I often expand the dialogue tree one more level. I make the first topic the choice one (condition that has to be checked; so boy/girl in your example) then the next topic I add as a choice into each of those (boy info and girl info) is the topic that I use over and over again and would be the first one of the duped monologue. This does involve writing in player comments when I might not have intended to do it that way, but if the duped comment is appropriate for the situation and adding the player comment doesn't ruin my scene, etc I'll do it to save the extra work.

 

If I don't add another topic, I might move the condition check back a level in the existing dialogue tree, add a greeting to do the check and put the choices in it, etc. It mostly depends on what's already built and how can I get the condition check in that I want but also still use duplicated dialogue.