Dialogue hates me

[flazzmoral]

So, my Qunari Embassy camp is working out fine...I got the npcs...I got the camp....All that is left now is give them dialogue and the quest related to them.

 

 

Great, not much more to do, right?

 

So....I read a dialogue/quest making tutorial, great, easy enough. I follow them to the dot...Great, my first NPC has a greeting. Now to add the topic question... Fail. Meh, I shrug it off, make a second npc, try to get him to say the greeting as well...Load game, test, find that NEITHER of them say the greeting now.

 

Crud?

 

I undo what I did, tried again, now the original npc won't say the dialogue no matter what I do, neither of the three will.

 

 

So...Can anyone tell me what I did wrong, or how to fix this problem?

 

If I have to restart the entire project, that's fine. Not much has been done.

[theuseless]

It sounds to me like you messed up your topics for the game. My first question for you is whether or not you can get the topics for oother vanilla npc's. If you can't you will need to use tes4edit. Forgive me for not linking as I am on a moble device which I do not know.

 

If you can see the topics in your npc's you will have to delete them and make them fresh. There are many tutorials on this subjectm. I started a thread on good tuts for beginners. Again my appologies on not linking, but I will be more mobile soon. The topic was called Tutorials Abound. If you search those words you will find my small collection of tuts that helped me. If you post in there I will find a good working tut or I will write one.

 

Fraggin kickin tag,

theuseless

 

Ps I will get my internet to my pc and then I will be able to help more. Tes4edit is a great program and there are some good guides out there. I will add the most common one to my list soon.

[David Brasher]

Don't rebuild your mod from scratch. A little tweaking and you will get it working fine.

 

Forget about TES4Edit. That is not the issue here. This is a basic CS problem.

 

GREETING is not reliable. Your custom GREETING dialog infos will be thrown in with all the possible vanilla Oblivion and mod GREETINGs and it is a random chance what will be used. (You often have a good chance of your custom GREETING being used the very first time you speak to a particular NPC, but don't make your mod hinge on it because the whole thing could break at that point and the entire rest of your mod would be unplayable.

 

You can have NPCs start conversations with the player.

SCN AAMyNPCSCRIPT

;Object Script applied to NPC who starts conversation.

Short DoOnce
 
Begin GameMode

    If GetDistance Player < 500
         If DoOnce == 0
              StartConversation Player, AAMyTopic
              Set DoOnce to 1
        EndIf
    EndIf

End

 

Be aware that you can have the same problems as those listed in the last paragraph if you have the NPCs start conversations and use GREETING. It is better to use another topic that you have total control over. This will also misfire if the NPC is in combat when you meet him or is otherwise busy and fails to catch up with you to start the conversation at the appropriate time. So this needs a backup too.

 

It might be best to have a duplicate of the important dialog in a topic that is available whenever the player goes to talk to the NPC. To do this, you have to have the topic added sometime before it is needed. You can add a whole slew of topics on the first time GREETING actually fires and uses your custom dialog. If it is more critical than that and is happening too late, you can write a quest script which uses AddTopic to add all the topics you will need to start your quest and make it so the NPCs have something to say when you first talk to them.

 

So to sum it up: Don't depend on GREETING. You need a backup in position.

Edited January 20, 2011 by David Brasher

[flazzmoral]

I forgot to mention that I have done the dialogue through a quest, however, when I speak to my custom npcs they simply say "I HAVE NO GREETING" and I am forced to close the speaking menu.

 

I will try your fix David, however I don't think it's affected any of the vanilla.

[David Brasher]

You will want to be sure that the GetIsPlayableRace condition on your new quest is set properly. If you use dremoras that talk, delete this condition. Golden Saints and Dark Seducers don't like to talk in Tamriel. In fact all Shivering Isles people don't really like to talk in Tamriel. All Tamriel people don't really like to talk in the Shivering Isles. If you are using a custom race for your NPCs and trying to make them talk, then God help you.

 

If you have not successfully AddTopiced your custom topic before talking to your NPCs, then you can get "I HAVE NO GREETING."

 

Be sure that your quest has the "Start Game Enabled" box checked unless you want to go through more hassle and more scripting to enable your quest at some point during the course of the mod.

 

Be sure that the priority on your quest is really high, like 75-100. When you do this, you could unintentionally override important vanilla Oblivion topics, so you will want to be careful what NPCs you edit and mostly put your infos into custom topics you create so that no conflict is possible.

[flazzmoral]

Well I guess gods gonna have to help me because I am using custom races for my npcs...hmm darn. I wonder if I can just tweak three orcs instead to look like them...that's what I did last time...hmm...