Custom Quests Don't Always Start

[David Brasher]

Skyrim seems to have some issues that could pretty much stop anyone from wanting to build new quests for the game. Because it is pointless to work hard and build something if it won't reliably work for everybody afterward.

 

If you write custom dialog for NPCs in a new quest that is "start game enabled" and make the branch "top level" and if you have very minimal conditions on the opening dialog info such as:

Run on Subject GetIsID/GetIsAliasREF  AAMyNPC == 1 AND
Run on Subject GetStage AAMYQuest < 5 AND

 

And even if you .fuz the .wav and .lip files, there is often the situation where the quest is temporarily or permanently broken because this dialog that was so carefully set up is not available. You go to talk to the questgiver and the quest topic is not there to click on.

 

In some cases, the problem will go away, and at some later point, the dialog topic will be available.

 

In some cases, the problem seems to be associated with lag. Like if you save the game and then reload it, suddenly the dialog topic will be available.

 

But these two resolutions of the problem do not always work and do not form a consistent pattern.

 

What is causing the topics to not be available?

Edited May 13, 2012 by David Brasher

[gasti89]

From my experience, the only time when a dialogue didn't show (well, actually no dialogues at all) was because i messed up with aliases.

 

I put a conditioned alias to pop up later in the quest, but i didn't set it as "optional". So in the starting moment, the game tried to fill all the aliases and, not being able to fill one, didn't start.

 

Hope that's your case ;)

[Korodic]

I seem to have this issue when sending my mod to others. Not sure why, and won't be able to look at it till I get home and have access to my desktop as a virgin test partner.

 

It's always nicer to have 2 pc's and see for yourself rather than have a beta tester somewhere else doin it :P

 

EDIT: As a suggestion... maybe they are starting, but not starting the stages properly for some reason? Maybe try using a quest that starts up your start up quest... With an OnInit that starts up your other quest.

 

Why? Because maybe the trigger will fire even if the quest won't. But we only want this to happen once on a dummy quest used to start the other. It's a long shot lmao, but still worth giving a go.

[Cynster]

I'd like to add that this is also happening to me (and I was wondering if the OP found a resolution yet). It's happened to my quest twice. I threw out all my work and started over from an early version, then I finally got to finalizing it today and it doesn't work on one computer (my good gaming computer) only on my laptop. I've tried reinstalling, shutting stuff down to avoid lag, advancing the quest via the console, and nothing will allow that dialogue box to pop up on this specific computer.

[David Brasher]

I still haven't found a solution to this.

 

The situation I have been able to study best is the lag situation. It seems that quests won't start well in areas where there are a lot of NPCs, clutter, and lighting. If you go to an inoperative questgiver, save the game and load it and then talk to them, or in some cases exit Skyrim and then load it up again, the dialog will work perfectly because the game has not lagged up yet or the computer has been forced to reexamine what is going on upon reload.

 

With the .wav files not working, this is a pass/fail thing and seems to always or never happen on a particular computer. If the .wav files are not working for someone, the dialog topics will be present and clickable, but there will be no audio and the text flashes past so fast you can't read it. People will think you didn't use voice acting or create silent voice files even though you spent lots of time doing the task. So it seems that .fuz files are the best way to go even though they are hard to pack and it may take several attempts to succeed. (Be sure to always test your file after packaging and before uploading if you use .fuz files.)

 

With the alias fill problem, I have never done anything with radiant quests and my aliases are always force filled and pointed to one particular actor or object with no other possible options. So here again it is pass/fail. One broken alias prevents a quest from working and none of the dialog will be available to click on if a single alias is broken. So if I mess up an alias, all the dialog is gone. If I do all the aliases right, all the dialog works fine. I have not encountered the intermittent alias fill failures that break dialog that so many other people are reporting presumably because of the kind of mods I have worked on.

[penguinchao]

I've thrown out days of work multiple times due to this glitch. I've restarted one mod about 3 times, and had to throw out an even bigger mod recently too. I'm glad this is being talked about, I posted a troubleshooting thread here, but noone has answered. I will be sure to post it here if I hear anything.