[LE] Looking for Advice. No Audio from Custom Follower (With SEQ)

[Thurkar]

Problem Solved, Read on if interested in the solution.

Hello everyone,

I have been working on a custom follower and learning little by little to use the CK. I got him talking, following, sharing inventory and waiting, and had him say a few different hellos. Everything was going great.

I then went into my Skyrim Folder, wrote in the search field the prefix for everything related to my mod and copied all the files that appeared into a folder. I of course made sure to create the different folders and subfolders required such as \Data\sound\voice\. That was to make a backup. However due to a mistake, I now lost the original Skyrim folder and my working mod with it.

I since re-installed Skyrim and the CK, put my backup mod hoping it would work. When I clicked on the audio in Player Dialogue in my follower's quest, the audio did play back.

The NPC is there, idling and when I talk to him I can see the subtitles but no audio. When I loaded the mod in the CK, my script show as ?CODE NOT LOADED. I replaced one of them with the correct script [setowningquest().setstage(15)], clicked on compile and sure enough after I restarted the game my follower now follows, but still will not speak.

I do not mind that much having to re-do the mod. I would however like to learn from my mistake and also how to properly prepare a mod to be moved to another computer or uploaded.

I did use TES5Edit to generate a SEQ file and put it into the Data/SEQ folder.

Any tips & tricks are appreciated, or a link to your favorite tutorial perhaps ?

Thank you !

[Edit] : I got him to talk !

 

I converted the audio files to .xwm and then archived the mod using the Archive.exe tool in the Skyrim folder.
Under "Archive Stats" I checked Meshes (for the exported face), Sounds, Voices and Misc.
To the Right of that I selected "Retain Directory names" and "Retain File Names".

I then dragged and added my Skyrim\Data\sound\voice\[MyMOD.esp], along with the relevant Meshes, scripts, and the SEQ folder into the Archive.exe.

Finally I clicked on "File > Save As", named my mod the same as my .esp file and saved it. I then deleted the .bsl file that came with it, selected Mymod.esp and Mymod.bsa and archived it using Winrar.

To test it I added the mod manually to a different installation of Skyrim with Mod Organizer. My follower still only follows and does not perform any other scripted actions (wait, open inventory and part ways.).
Since I copied all files that started with my prefix in my other installation, I suspect some of my scripts were labeled something such as [ini__tif__01010101.pex] and did not show up in my search.

I am going to start rebuilding my follower, but if anyone has any advice, corrections, criticism, it is very welcome.

[Edit 2] : Okay I figured more of it out.

 

Skyrim\Data\Scripts is empty before you start modding save for the "Source" folder. Once you create your mod and "Compile" your scripts, it adds them here. I ignored them the first time around, but now I knew there was nothing in that folder before starting, and after I re-wrote all my scripts in the CK i found a bunch of [TIF__02001545] files had appeared. I did the same procedure I described above (with Archive.exe) but this time I added these files in and voila, my follower works perfectly !

Edited January 24, 2017 by Thurkar