[LE] Number of minimum lines required for a custom follower?

[SmedleyDButler]

You often see follower mods promoted with bylines like "Over 500 lines of unique dialogue!", but I was wondering what's the actual perspective on that?

 

For vanilla-style generic followers, where you only have all the standard functional dialogue - trade, greeting/parting, combat, yes/no, etc. as well as a couple variations on these (seems to usually be around two-three depending on the line?), how many dialogue clips does this amount to, roughly?

[TheWormpie]

Vanilla-style followers already have a ton of dialogue (since a lot of their dialogue, like combat lines, are generic stuff that all npcs use), so they are probably not the best example of the simplest possible follower. The following is the most essential though, I'd say.

 

Misc

• Hello
• Goodbye

Topics

• Start Follow
• End Follow
• Continue Follow
• Wait
• Trade Items
• Do Stuff

Favor

• Start Favor
• Exit Favor
• Agree
• Impossible Refuse
• Moral Refuse

Combat

• There's about 10 different important ones here, but I have survived using almost nothing but the "Hit" topic, because that's the most likely sound to be played in combat.

With 2-3 variations of each, that's about 35-45 lines or more depending on how many different combat situations you want to cover.

 

Apart from that there's of course also the tons and tons of less important topics played when something specific happens, like when you absorb a dragon soul or enters a big dungeon area for instance.

 

I've done a follower with only about 20-25 lines of dialogue, leaving out all the favor lines, so that's about the minimum amount, I think.

[SmedleyDButler]

Vanilla-style followers already have a ton of dialogue (since a lot of their dialogue, like combat lines, are generic stuff that all npcs use), so they are probably not the best example of the simplest possible follower. The following is the most essential though, I'd say.

 

Misc

• Hello
• Goodbye

Topics

• Start Follow
• End Follow
• Continue Follow
• Wait
• Trade Items
• Do Stuff

Favor

• Start Favor
• Exit Favor
• Agree
• Impossible Refuse
• Moral Refuse

Combat

• There's about 10 different important ones here, but I have survived using almost nothing but the "Hit" topic, because that's the most likely sound to be played in combat.

With 2-3 variations of each, that's about 35-45 lines or more depending on how many different combat situations you want to cover.

 

Apart from that there's of course also the tons and tons of less important topics played when something specific happens, like when you absorb a dragon soul or enters a big dungeon area for instance.

 

I've done a follower with only about 20-25 lines of dialogue, leaving out all the favor lines, so that's about the minimum amount, I think.

 

Thanks. I don't mind recording a lot more myself, but it's nice to have a sense of what the slimmest framework is. Minimum viable product and all that!

Edited July 3, 2018 by SmedleyDButler

[Tasheni]

What do you want to do? A mod for just yourself or a mod for the comunity?

There are thousands of followers outside with standard dialogue and they are nothing but boring.

Otherwise a playthrough of Skyrim can take immense of time and even thousands of lines

maybe not enough to satisfy players.

[PeterMartyr]

Duplicate Dialogue Followers.... for 1 Voice Type only. That the minimum required.

 

 

 

Shite, forgot to mention, you need to create an independent follower system first. And I think you putting the cart before the horse!! Since if you could create independent follower system, you would not be asking about dialogue. So learn how to code first.

[SmedleyDButler]

Duplicate Dialogue Followers.... for 1 Voice Type only. That the minimum required.

 

 

 

Shite, forgot to mention, you need to create an independent follower system first. And I think you putting the cart before the horse!! Since if you could create independent follower system, you would not be asking about dialogue. So learn how to code first.

What do you want to do? A mod for just yourself or a mod for the comunity?

There are thousands of followers outside with standard dialogue and they are nothing but boring.

Otherwise a playthrough of Skyrim can take immense of time and even thousands of lines

maybe not enough to satisfy players.

 

 

There are several excellent tutorials on making custom-voiced followers. It's not so hard as all that. And there's lots of preexisting code and modders who're happy to help with reuse of their architecture.

 

Standard-voice followers ARE boring as

 

Anyway, the question is relevant for both standalone custom-voiced followers, and those who might be part of a larger mod package.

Edited July 4, 2018 by SmedleyDButler

[PeterMartyr]

Don't forget their Idle dialogues, grunts, breathing, etc, combat, there more than just clicking on a npc to see them talk. Then there is world interactions. And special comments, like, "look a cave" & "I smell blood", stuff like than. Good luck.

 

Get Notepad++ or even better Sublime, even Microsoft Visual Code has papyrus these days. So it's never been easier to learn.