Advice/help sought regarding Custom Companion

[Rioplats]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm a new modder, and for my first mod, I've created a custom companion, fully voiced by myself.

The project is well under way, and I'm essentially just missing a few things now. Basic functionality is all available; affinity is far beyond my capabilities, so he won't have any.

 

First is a question about requirements. In the mod, I've utilised playervoice sound and lip files, for male and female, for immersive purposes. All are from the base game, except one line which is from the Automatron DLC. Since this is the case, do I have to list Automatron as a requirement, as it is a piece of licensed content?

 

Second is a question about companion quest commentary. I've noticed there's a quest in the base game called COMQuestCommentary, and looking at the Misc section there's a COMQCIdles section which seems to list idles that a companion will comment about when a certain part of the main quest is completed. I've looked at the format, and added in my own responses for my companion, but they are never triggered. Does this need to be used in conjunction with something else, such as the "Your thoughts" option of dialogue? Or am I just missing something?

Basically, I just want my companion to be able to comment about events which happen ingame, such as joining the Brotherhood, or killing Kellogg.

 

Finally, I've a question about cleaning and mod safety. I would like my first mod to be as safe as possible. As a content adding mod, that should be quite manageable I think. Do I just open up FO4Edit and clean it the normal way?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Rioplats

[llamaRCA]

1) If you use assets from the DLC you have to make it a requirement. You might consider finding another line to use from the vanilla game if you don't want to do that. If you don't know about this mod I cannot recommend it enough. It's a great way to speed up that process.

 

2) To get the commentary about the quests you can attach the vanilla companionactor script to your companion. You don't have to fill the properties, it just needs to sit there. The main Followers script uses the presence of that script on the companion actor to trigger the availability of the quest commentary idle.

 

Based on my tests and looking at how the idles are set up I think the idles are set up to be available to play under two different conditions, but each comment will play only once:

1) when you click on the companion (you can set up this option on the first page of a quest)

or

2) whenever the next idle comment should play it will play the quest commentary idle instead of the general idle from another, lower priority quest.

 

The dialogue from 1) will definitely happen if you attach the script and click on the companion after the appropriate quest event (I'm also working on a WIP companion and tested this system). I don't know if the idle will ever play as a random, idle comment because I didn't test it. It should, but I've found the idles to play unreliably and IIRC some of those quest idles are conditioned in such a way that if they don't play on the next idle opportunity you might never hear them. I've played for hundreds of hours with Danse and there is quite a lot of dialogue I know is written for him and is in the CK, but I never heard it while he was following me around.

[Rioplats]

Thanks for the reply.

 

1) If you use assets from the DLC you have to make it a requirement. You might consider finding another line to use from the vanilla game if you don't want to do that. If you don't know about this mod I cannot recommend it enough. It's a great way to speed up that process.

 

 

Hah, unfortunately I've trawled through the dialogue, and the number of lines which refer to someone taking off their mask is rather minimal I'm afraid, and restricted to that one Automatron DLC. Now I have to wonder if I should change it to accommodate the base game only.

 

 

2) To get the commentary about the quests you can attach the vanilla companionactor script to your companion. You don't have to fill the properties, it just needs to sit there. The main Followers script uses the presence of that script on the companion actor to trigger the availability of the quest commentary idle.

 

Based on my tests and looking at how the idles are set up I think the idles are set up to be available to play under two different conditions, but each comment will play only once:

1) when you click on the companion (you can set up this option on the first page of a quest)

or

2) whenever the next idle comment should play it will play the quest commentary idle instead of the general idle from another, lower priority quest.

 

The dialogue from 1) will definitely happen if you attach the script and click on the companion after the appropriate quest event (I'm also working on a WIP companion and tested this system). I don't know if the idle will ever play as a random, idle comment because I didn't test it. It should, but I've found the idles to play unreliably and IIRC some of those quest idles are conditioned in such a way that if they don't play on the next idle opportunity you might never hear them. I've played for hundreds of hours with Danse and there is quite a lot of dialogue I know is written for him and is in the CK, but I never heard it while he was following me around.

 

Ah, do you mean the "Add Idle Topic To Hello" box on Quest Data? For some reason "Hello" topics never trigger for my companion. I've added and configured the vanilla actorcompanionscript but I guess that's of no use unless I can get my "Hellos" working. I can't seem to find examples of existing companions using this topic, for example in COMPiper or COMPipertalk.

[llamaRCA]

 

Ah, do you mean the "Add Idle Topic To Hello" box on Quest Data? For some reason "Hello" topics never trigger for my companion. I've added and configured the vanilla actorcompanionscript but I guess that's of no use unless I can get my "Hellos" working. I can't seem to find examples of existing companions using this topic, for example in COMPiper or COMPipertalk.

 

Yes, that box.

 

Hellos via Idles should work if you create infos for them in the "Idle" topic, click that box and as a test don't put any conditions on the hello (The Hello topic is found in the Misc tab of the quest).

 

 

Edited for clarity