How do you add new dialogue to a vanilla NPC?

[Guest deleted43426342]

Am I supposed to just make a new dialogue quest for that dialogue? Or should I just add it in their own dialogue quest?

[madmongo]

It depends on the NPC. Most NPCs speak from the top level in the conversation tree, so adding a new quest just adds another top level option that shows up when you greet the NPC. Using a new quest is the easiest way to do it, and keeps everything clean and organized.

 

One notable exception is Cass. Her dialog is a huge, freaking, convoluted mess. It's easily the worst in the entire game. She almost never speaks from the top level, and getting her to say new dialog can be surprisingly difficult. It's almost guaranteed that you'll have to modify her existing dialog if you want your new dialog to actually show up for her in-game. I've thought about restructuring her dialog so that it would be much easier to mod, but then I don't really like her character that much and I don't want to take the time to do it.

 

You also get into the issue of voice files, which only exist for the dialog lines that exist in the vanilla game. Sometimes you can get creative. For example, I turned both Ranger Ghost and Corporal Betsy into companions using only the existing game voice files (sometimes snipping pieces out of existing dialog using Audacity). The same voice actors did multiple parts, so often you can use voice files from another NPC as long as the voice actor used roughly the same speaking style for both.

 

Another option is to re-voice the entire NPC, which requires a voice actor, preferably one whose voice is reasonably close to the original.

 

A third option is to leave the new dialog unvoiced, which some people may find annoying.

 

One thing I did for Corporal Betsy was that I left her original dialog in place for the most part, but then when you hired her as a companion, I swapped out the vanilla Corporal Betsy for a custom NPC that was a copy and paste of the original so that her appearance matched. The custom NPC had all new dialog and quests, with many lines copied from the vanilla so that she had the same greeting and a lot of the same dialog options. I made her available as a companion only after her vanilla quest was completed, so after you hired her, there was no need to ever swap her back to the vanilla version. So swapping an NPC out for your own copy and possibly swapping the vanilla version back in later is also an option if you need to go that route.