Two-NPC Conversation is one-sided

[KazFoxsen]

I set up a conversation topic and set up each line spoken with the appropriate target and reference getisid. I even did as it said in the geck wiki and assigned this topic to the link to/from fields, and set up a variable that adds 1 for every line to condition and advance the conversation. Run immediately is checked. It triggers fine with a startconversation or sayto, but I can only get the first character to talk. Since the conversation is disrupted, she goes on to say random Goodbyes even though that is not the topic assigned.

 

What gives? How do I fix this without going into dialogue packages?

[llamaRCA]

I set up a conversation topic and set up each line spoken with the appropriate target and reference getisid. I even did as it said in the geck wiki and assigned this topic to the link to/from fields, and set up a variable that adds 1 for every line to condition and advance the conversation. Run immediately is checked. It triggers fine with a startconversation or sayto, but I can only get the first character to talk. Since the conversation is disrupted, she goes on to say random Goodbyes even though that is not the topic assigned.

 

What gives? How do I fix this without going into dialogue packages?

 

 

It could be a lot of things. Convos don't always work even if you have them set up "correctly." And I wouldn't be shy about packages unless you are worried about conflicts. A dialogue package is easy to set up and can make all the difference between having a successful and reproducible dialogue scene v. one that is kinda iffy.

 

You shouldn't need to increment that variable to keep the convo moving either, although, it might not hurt. I've never done it myself, but I know about that tut in the wiki and I understand how it works.

 

I would say, at this point, you need to double check that you have done the link to/from fields correctly and double check your incremented variable to make sure it's absolutely correct. Have you accidentally checked goodbye in the first dialogue topic? Stuff like that. If you are sure all of those technical things are done absolutely correctly, you could try doing the second topic with a start conversation back to the first NPC. That might get it to work (I'm not sure I've ever done that before, but theoretically I don't know why it shouldn't work even if it's in the middle of a convo), and you would do that in the results script. You might even need to do a package there to get that NPC to talk back to your first NPC for whatever reason if it proves to be very stubborn and to keep the dialogue moving. You shouldn't have to do that, the linking of the dialogue should keep things moving, but dialouge can be weird and you just gotta do what you gotta do sometimes to make it work.

 

Are you trying to do any other effects at the same time? Fade to black or a moveto or anything? That can interfere with the dialogue as well.

 

That's all I could think of off the top of my head just then.

[KazFoxsen]

 

If you are sure all of those technical things are done absolutely correctly, you could try doing the second topic with a start conversation back to the first NPC.

 

Are you trying to do any other effects at the same time? Fade to black or a moveto or anything? That can interfere with the dialogue as well.

 

 

I tried that and it still won't work. No other effects either. It doesn't help that even the esm doesn't do this consistently. Raul and Pvt Edwards have a convo set up this way, but Veronica's exchange with Watkins involves a SayTo linking one quest's dialogue topic to another's. It's insane.

[llamaRCA]

Yeah, I know. Dialogue can be very, very frustrating. It's because there are a variety of different ways to do things and also, you cannot always get the same method to work every time. Almost always, a dialouge package will work when all other methods fail, but when you are having problems with NPC to NPC communication sometimes even that doesn't work, even when backed up with a script that you have running the whole thing. I've had to give up and go with something less than ideal sometimes because I just couldn't make a scenario work. It pretty much sucks when that happens.