Party Banter and other Dialogue (Override or Extend)

[ikutomita]

I started working on a mod a week ago which contains:

A new area (not built by me, but recycling the Dalish camp from the Dalish origin)

That contains several new (based on existing morphs and models) characters/creatures, including a merchant and a few quest givers with cut scenes.

A few dungeons that can be explored as part of the quest (also recycling existing areas, wolf lair and a few others)

A new recruit-able female elven archer who is romance-able (cut-scenes not done) and accepts gifts.

She has her own specialisation which through becoming her friend she is willing to teach you (which will unlock it).

 

Although I don't have any voice over for the cut scenes or dialogue I did notice a file under the conversations tree called party_ran_banter (I think).

 

I opened up this file to see how it all worked and noticed that Shale was in there, this got me thinking that unlike the xls files (which you can copy, delete the rows you don't need and just insert the rows/id's you want and thereby extend the original) for the party_ran_banter file, it would have to be overridden (safely by copying the whole thing, adding the banter for my character and saving it in the override; so not deleting the original).

 

The problem I have is that I believe it must contain everything; so other characters people make and add banter lines would thereby either need my characters lines in there or would overwrite my 'overwrite' making my characters banter vanish.

 

So I'm asking, after a somewhat very long-winded explanation, can the party_ran_banter (or any conversation) be extended by either scripting in the module or by making a party_ran_banter file that only contains the new characters conversation (that the game's system would merge like it does the xls files)?

 

This way you could extend conversations to involve your character if she's in the party; not just with the banter file, but imagine the cut-scenes such as telling the smithy in Redcliff that you'll help his daughter to which Morrigan makes a comment about saving kittens - if our custom follower was in the scene they could call her a b*tch and a small argument could ensure, without the need to override the whole conversation/cut-scene file.

 

Any thoughts?