Missing Dialogue

[Anach]

The problem:

Ok, it seems I'm missing some important dialogue from various NPCs in the game, both from official NPCs and mod NPCs. Normally I'm able to track down theses issues with particular mods or quests, but because it went unnoticed for a while, the save game was long lost.

 

The request:

I've run out of ideas and know-how for solving this problem. I was hoping someone with some dialogue scripting experience or knowledge of the issue might be able to help me track down the source of the problem. The alternative is to restore a very very early save game and work my way back, which is a last resort.

 

The background:

My level 40 character has completed the main quest long ago, and this issue has only recently surfaced. However, when this issue first showed up, I had not installed any new mods, but had been finishing off the Daedric shrines quests.

 

From what I can gather in retrospect is that all was working perfectly fine until I finished the last of the shrines (Sanguine) and went to do the "Hermaeus Mora" Shrine. When I arrived, none of the NPCs had any dialogue and when clicking the shrine, the quest window popped up straight away without any voice overs. At the time I thought that maybe that was how it was intended (oddly), but have since realised that this is where the bug first showed up.

 

Other missing dialogue I didnt notice right away, until doing things like talking to a fence, who would only let me "Invest in this shop" and not give me the usual fence type options, as well as the arena betting had no options at all.

 

Some things still work, like trainers, certain quests, but others are missing entirely.

 

 

The Investigation:

First thing I did was start disabling the last few mods I had installed, even though they had been installed before all this. That didnt fix it.

 

Next I uninstalled almost every mod which affected dialogue (Checking with TESView). That didnt work either.

 

Finally I went into TESView to try and track down any nasty conflicts. However, there was only 2 conflicts, and that was between Thieves Den and Living Economy, and seeing I had disabled LE, I didnt think that would be the problem.

 

Everything else was highlighted as Green or Grey text, which according to TESVIEW, means there is no issue.

 

 

The Help:

So how can I go about tracking down a problem with missing a certain dialogue path. What should I look for and is there any other tool I can use to help?

 

The final comment:

I've been very careful about which mods I install and check almost everything for conflicts. My game is as stable as Oblivion gets, and I dont get any crashes upon exit (first sign of conflicts). I'm using the mod load order guidelines (with a few exceptions) and have managed to get to level 40 with only minor issues until now :(

 

 

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

[wizardmirth]

This sounds like a problem linked to certain mods not being patched for SI. I know I saw a problem like this before that was resolved to this issue. If that is not your problem then please disregard.

[Vagrant0]

If you have SI, I would assume you've already tried using the portal into/out of SI a few times to see if it changes anything since if you leave without using that portal a flag which is used to determine what dialogues are spoken is set, effectively breaking all dialogues on the other side. This can be changed in console, I just don't remember the specific values.

 

Other than that, you might want to bring up the details of every mod you have to see if they change common dialogues (greetings, ect). If you only have one mod that does this, it won't show up as a conflict (since it is only in conflict with the esm), but will still cause errors. I believe this is related to the unclean dialogue issue, or an incompatability issue with/without SI.

 

Beyond that, there isn't very much else that would cause this problem. Even if someone had snuck in coding that would drastically change the class, factions, ownership, other flags of an NPC through scripting in an attempt to break dialogues, you would notice other abnormallities, and there would still be some dialogues which were workng (conversations, sounds in battle).

 

What you might want to do is create a new game with your current mod setup (just "cow tamriel 5,5" to get out of prison) to see if the dialogue issue still exists. If it does still happen, you can continue doing that disabling one group of mods at a time to narrow things down without screwing up your main game. If iit doesn't still happen, it would have to be related to something which was somehow triggered (like the SI portal thing), or a quest with 100 priority and blank dialogues.

[nosisab]

This sounds like a problem linked to certain mods not being patched for SI. I know I saw a problem like this before that was resolved to this issue. If that is not your problem then please disregard.

You can be right here, mainly if Anach has been at Shivering Isles and get out of there abnormally. As the game sets a variable so to avoid normal dialogs appearing there. Again it's just a supposition. If this is the case, Anach you can try returning there and quiting using the normal ways.

 

Well, maybe someone had similar issue before and have a better answer. good luck

[bben46]

I had a missing dialog problem in my current mod project. I have been developing it with only the bare minimum loaded - No SI, no other mods that are not absolutely needed and no OBSE yet as I have not gotten that deep into scripts yet. I have not yet begun to add any dialogs at all, either spoken or written. Before putting it into my game, I cleaned it using TES4Geko ver 14.5.

 

I loaded it into my main game with many other mods plus SI and suddenly several mods came up with 'I have no greeting' or no dialogs at all. One of those was Williesea's ancient towers which looks to be a very tightly made mod. I verified that it was my mod by disabling only my mod using OBMM. And the dialogs came back.

 

So it may not be a mod that relates to dialog at all. I haven't figured it out yet as I have not had much time to work on it lately.

 

The mod starts with a copy of Stonewall shields - all 3 levels, cleaned out and renamed. Adds one new NPC with no real pathing yet. added several standard objects, some with new textures and a new use. I had finished the doors and placed the shop in a bare stretch of wall in the market with a facade and door. Just enough there for a character to walk into the shop and look around. no clutter yet either. So far I can see nothing there that would cause missing dialogs. I am on hold with the mod right now though and may not get back to it for another week. I definitely will not be releasing it without finding out why it caused that problem.

 

I'll be following this thread closely to see if there is something that might help me.

[nosisab]

I had a missing dialog problem in my current mod project. I have been developing it with only the bare minimum loaded - No SI, no other mods that are not absolutely needed and no OBSE yet as I have not gotten that deep into scripts yet. I have not yet begun to add any dialogs at all, either spoken or written. Before putting it into my game, I cleaned it using TES4Geko ver 14.5.

 

I loaded it into my main game with many other mods plus SI and suddenly several mods came up with 'I have no greeting' or no dialogs at all. One of those was Williesea's ancient towers which looks to be a very tightly made mod. I verified that it was my mod by disabling only my mod using OBMM. And the dialogs came back.

 

So it may not be a mod that relates to dialog at all. I haven't figured it out yet as I have not had much time to work on it lately.

 

The mod starts with a copy of Stonewall shields - all 3 levels, cleaned out and renamed. Adds one new NPC with no real pathing yet. added several standard objects, some with new textures and a new use. I had finished the doors and placed the shop in a bare stretch of wall in the market with a facade and door. Just enough there for a character to walk into the shop and look around. no clutter yet either. So far I can see nothing there that would cause missing dialogs. I am on hold with the mod right now though and may not get back to it for another week. I definitely will not be releasing it without finding out why it caused that problem.

 

I'll be following this thread closely to see if there is something that might help me.

Whenever this issue happens and is related to SI it is mod independent. Is the own engine that does it, since entering SI sets one variable, a flag better saying as vagrant0 pointed, that is meant to shut down the cyrodiil dialogs that would not make sense in SI. So, if the player goes to SI and for some reason he/she get out without that flag being reset, the engine get confused, as it is supposed to not show cyrodiil topics. Obviously this only make sense if such flag was set at all, by entering SI or something else messing with it.

 

Edit: Don't saw before you saying that disabling the mod the dialogs returned, disregard this comment, please.

 

And I too will be following the thread with attention.

[Anach]

This sounds like a problem linked to certain mods not being patched for SI. I know I saw a problem like this before that was resolved to this issue. If that is not your problem then please disregard.

You can be right here, mainly if Anach has been at Shivering Isles and get out of there abnormally. As the game sets a variable so to avoid normal dialogs appearing there. Again it's just a supposition. If this is the case, Anach you can try returning there and quiting using the normal ways.

 

Well, maybe someone had similar issue before and have a better answer. good luck

 

 

Actually I believe I did exit SI via an external mod last time I went, which would be around the same time as this bug started. Hopefully you hit the nail on the head there and I'll check it out tomorrow after some sleep.

 

Hopefully that's all it is and I'll be back in the action. :)

[Anach]

Works perfectly now. Thankyou all for the helpful responses. I'll have to look into the scripts of those mods which take me out of SI and see if I can fix it.