I am SO confused - Mod Dialogue

[Forerunner2]

So I'm taking my first shot at a mod and I've been plodding away and making most things work but I think I've made a mess.

 

I wanted a merchant type NPC that would, at some point, behave just like any other merchant so I just copied one of the other merchants in the game.

 

At one point I wanted my merchant to have some entirely non-merchant dialogue. So I DELETED a bunch of dialogue from my NPCs GREETING before I realized that I was affecting ALL GREETING apparently for all merchants, as far as I can tell anyway.

 

So now if I call up, say, Jensine, she shows "GREETING *" and the modified stuff.

 

How do I put the default GREETING stuff back? Is there any way to remove what I did?

 

 

Now my quest script moves my merchant person off somewhere else and I go meet up with them and would like to have them kind of direct the quest. They don't display the normal buy/sell option but the dialogue I try to add to my quest does NOT work. I just get their default greeting text.

 

I'm guess that the default GREETING text is just taking priority.

 

I thought, well, I'll go put another condition on the NPC's greeting text to do a getstage != x but that would mean a LOT of editing and, if I'm not mistaken, would mean I'm doing that for ALL merchants in the game.

 

 

 

I'm really missing something here in terms of how Dialogue works. How can you copy dialogue to another person and then modify it to work for your person while still maintaining all the merchant like stuff later on?

 

How do I now fix the disaster I think I've made of the original GREETING text?

 

Can anyone point me to a tutorial that would help de-muddify this mystery?

 

 

Thanks so much! :)

[Forerunner2]

I've figured out my first problem. The details button on the CS load data screen did wonders. I Ignored (deleted) all the base dialogue I mucked around with.

 

But I still can't get my merchant to run a different greeting and I'm feeling really stuck.

 

I'm following a tutorial that I found on line:

 

On the Quest.

Topics Tab

Add Editor ID: GREETING

Add Info: my greeting

Set the Conditions to make sure that it is the right Quest Stage on the topic but I'm still getting all the same dialogue.

 

Does MY greeting need to be pushed up in priority some how? I've already got the Quest priority at 99.

 

Thanks again, in advance...

[fore]

A barter's (merchant) dialog and greeting is not in Topic -> GREETING, but part of Services -> Barter...

 

I don't think you can temporarily change a merchant into a regular NPC (at least I didn't find a corresponding script command, regular or OBSE). So I would simply create 2 identical NPCs, one merchant, and one regular, and give them those distinct options.

[Forerunner2]

Thanks fore, for your help.

 

This Dialogue stuff confuses the heck out of me. If I copy my merchant character and change the class, I don't seem to be able to remove the dialogue from them. Everything I try seems to affect everybody in the game.

 

What am I not understanding that a given person has dialogue that I don't want them to have?

 

Most tutorials I see say just copy another character, but then you get all that character's dialogue??? So are you actually always better starting from scratch with an NPC?

 

Thanks so much! I think once I'm beyond the dialogue, I'm off and running.

[fore]

Usually it's always better to start from scratch, but the dialogue stuff is pretty tricky to do without a start.

 

Keep in mind that dialogue is totally based on conditions. If you copy a character, then the new character will meet the same conditions as the old. Except for the ID, if a condition is checking for the old character.

 

And if you copy a topic and simply change the text, you copy all conditions for this topic, and the new topic will apply to all characters the old topic applied.

 

So if you want a new topic work for your new character you need to add a condition which only applies to the new one, like "GetIsID <new npc>". And if you want certain topics not to be valid for your character, you have to read and understand the conditions for those topics, and change your new character in a way that he doesn't match these conditions any more. This can be really hard, I know from experience, but that's the way it works.

 

In the case of your non-merchant character it's a little different though. You don't make him non-merchant by changing class. You have to change his AI window in a way that he doesn't buy/sell any more.

 

Isn't modding fun? But once it works you will be proud of yourself. :thumbsup:

[Forerunner2]

So, this is very weird. I tried starting from scratch and did minimal settings on the character and I still get the same list of topics under GREETING on the Dialogue screen for that new NPC.

 

I assumed that because some of those conditions are things like disposition >30 and <70 it just overrides anything I try to do. I've got my quest priority at 99 and try adding a simple greeting and it doesn't work.

 

So I took another approach and just created a topic xyz and I tried to put in the quest results AddTopic xyz and that still doesn't work.

 

I appreciate all the ideas you've given me and will continue to plug away. I get this right and I'm lauging. :)

 

Thanks!

[Forerunner2]

You won't believe this... I had IsPlayableRace condition set to 0! That makes a big difference apparently. I wonder if it will work with my original NPC character now instead of the duplicate I made. I'll give it a whirl.

 

Thanks for your help and advice! :)

[fore]

IsPlayableRace = 0? This means your new NPC is a vampire, dremora or similar?

 

There are still some misconceptions in your thinking.

- Quest priority 99: this doesn't change anything for dialogues. It's only important for how often your quest scripts run

- Conditions override: there is no "override", only condition results and sequence. Your character gets ALL topics (from all quests) for which there is at least 1 match in the response list. And then it uses the 1st conditional match from the top. Except for those responses which have the Random tick.

 

Maybe you want to check this Dialogue_Tutorial

[Forerunner2]

Hi Fore...

 

I think you're probably right. I've got some misconceptions happening.

 

- On the quest dialog, under Quest Conditions, you put the IsPlayableRace condition there. I had ==0 instead of ==1. I found another forum thread that had this issue too.

- Many forum threads suggested raising the quest priority if the dialogue wasn't working. That's why I was mucking with it.

 

Once I got over that IsPlayableRace thing it started working and I was actually able to use my Merchant character to make it work! :)

 

Thanks for your direction and help :D