Dialogue - Dynamically modify topic text? Hide original text?

[Zoney]

I have been monkeying around with dialogue and scripts and if anyone has helpful suggestions as to how to implement something I'm trying to do, I'd like to hear them!

 

Problem:

 

Essentially I want instead of the player having single word topics in the dialogue menu, to always have a line of dialogue.

 

The problem is that changing the one word topic text to a fixed dialogue line doesn't work - these topics are used at various points in the game in different contexts. I don't want to replicate the original topics either (i.e. split topic for each context), as then I have to either have no voice dialogue, or else put copies of the original sound files under new filenames. Can I somehow get around this? Altering topic text dynamically in the game would be nice but this doesn't seem possible?

 

Attempted solutions:

 

What I have managed to do, is replace the reference (in e.g. Greeting) to the original topic with a ref to a new topic that has a blank info (no text - just a space) and in the result script, have a "SayTo player OriginalTopic". The NPC will voice the original topic, but the problem is that the topic menu cuts in too, so no subtitles and only the first info is spoken. (Plus the blank info results in the NPC spacing out for a second when you select NewTopic in-game). Is there any function I could put in the result script that would "block" the dialogue menu from cutting in until NPC has finished talking? A timer based on the SayTo return value doesn't seem possible as Result Script is a run-once no begin/end or "persistent" quality to it (as I can see it - I am new to this).

 

So another dirty workaround was to set NewTopic to be a "Goodbye" and in the result script have a "StartConversation player, OriginalTopic". Voilá, the NPC will properly voice the whole thing and the workaround allows one single original topic to be presented to the player as arbitrary text at various game points (using multiple NewTopics). PROS: Post-topic, player has the proper choice of topics again for after that topic. Another plus - any result script on the original topic will execute as intended. CONS: The goodbye/startconversation means a bizarre zoom out/zoom in on the NPC face prior to the "response" to NewTopic. Still have a space-out moment too (would a zero-length mp3 fix this?) I might still use this if nothing better presents itself, and simply rely on abstract "dialogue" ("Tell me about Topic...") to minimise situations where it is needed (e.g. topic Jauffre - even a "Tell me about Jauffre" wouldn't work as in Weynon Priory the topic is used to ask where he is).

 

Summary:

 

So I am hoping at least to improve on the workaround, but would appreciate any ideas from a completely different angle on how to implement this! This is linked obviously to my mod concept that I started a thread on, but I hope it is OK to have a separate thread on this specific technical issue.

[David Brasher]

Before I read your post, my instant reaction was, "Have several dialog infos with the same voiced dialog but different text on the screen and appropriate conditions placed on these infos so they are said at the right time."

 

But then I read your post and got really confused about how things work and don't know what to say.

 

If you want new topic text, I am afraid there is probably no way to do it but have new topics. (So if you don't want the topic text, "I Hate Ogres!" and want it to sometimes be "I sort of dislike ogres." then you will need a whole new info.)

[Zoney]

David, sorry if I was unclear, but thanks for responding!

 

I'm not looking to change the info text, just the topic text (but as I said, a single more elaborate topic text will not fit all the scenarios for which that topic is used - hence a need for multiple topics replacing a single one).

 

It would be trivial to monkey around with the dialogue if I could simply use my own topics (or duplicate the existings ones) and duplicate the existing infos. But the voice file location is *fixed* for a given info so I can't specify for duplicated infos to use the existing files in their existing location. To have voice for duplicated infos, I would have to actually copy the original voice file (out of the BSA archive) and rename it and place it in the location that is predetermined for my duplicate infos.

 

So to get around this, I'm looking for some way to present existing topics with different dialogue text (player menu choices) at different times. The two work-arounds I've mentioned do this by having multiple "fake" topics (used at different points in the game via conditions) to lead into the single original one - but as I've pointed out, this doesn't entirely work.