Restoring Dialog in TES Construction Set

[vandorssen]

I've been attempting my first mod using TES Construction Set, with rather good results, I believe, for a first time modder. In any event, as I was trying to create new NPCs for this mod, I started editing dialog. Unfortunately, as I was trying to delete several unused topics and greetings I had added, but were not ultimately going to use, some of the standard (default) greetings and topics went out with them. At first, I did not notice it, and I was foolish enough to save the changes. I then began to grow suspicious when every NPC my test character encountered screamed out "AH! A vampire!", when I obviously was not. They are still there... They all have the word DELETED in front of them, and their conditional settings are missing. So far, I have tried to remedy it by exporting the standard Morrowind/Tribunal/Bloodmoon dialog settings (with no plug-in loaded... thankfully, my little gaffe did not affect that), then re-importing them with the mod set as the active file. This did not seem to help matters, and just put a * (asterisk) after every topic and greeting, indicating I had changed them. But the ones with DELETED in front of them remained as they were. This is all terribly frustrating to me, as I have nearly an entire week’s worth of vacation time invested, and it seems the only way to set it right will be to start over from scratch (in which case I would be just as happy to leave it as it is for my personal use, but would certainly not submit it to any of the popular mod sites, gaining, appropriately, the title of a no-talent hack).

 

For those of you suggesting a remedy may already be listed in the forum somewhere, I tried searching for keywords “restore dialog” and “construction set dialog”, among others of a similar nature, and found nothing of relevant help.

 

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One more thing... If someone more experienced would like to take a look at the damaged mod to see just what is happening, tell me, and I'll send you a copy.

[Don88]

Try pressing delete again when you have the topic highlighted. I think that restores it.... I had the very same problem in my early modding days and i still haven't mastered it. i always wanted to remove topics from just 1 person. I think the only way i've figuered out is if you change the 'Speaker Condition' to something which doesn't apply to your new NPC. For example make it only for a certian race(e.g. If your new NPC is Breton make it only for say... Nords etc.) or to completely tie it down to 1 person change the ID condition to the only NPC that you want to have that topic. Please please please save before tryng Ne thing wit dialogue! not that i don't think you will since what you just did to youe weeks work... ;)

 

If you think thats bad check this story: When we started to make a mod we made it (well we thought that we did ne way :lol: ) so that when you talked to our new NPC he would say something like "You have found my lair, now you die" and changed his attack to 100% so he would attack the player. Then we tested in our new cell and it worked fine. Then we 'coc'ed to balmora and we talked to someone and thay said "You have found my lair, now you die" and attacked us!!! Food for thought...... never get cocky! If in doubt save as to a new .esp.

[vandorssen]

Thank you very much. It removed all the duplicate entries, and more or less restored the dialog... I still have to go in to the CS with just the original .esm files to copy down their conditions, but that is a lot better than having to restore all the dialog greetings from scratch. I am beginning to find out that the dialog export/import does not really seem to do anything useful. Unless I am just using it wrong.

[Don88]

Im not sure what it does either but I think if you have no dialogue what so ever(e.g. in a blank esp.) it will add all the dialogue from whatever .esms you export it from. this works for everything else which is importable/exportable(i think ;) )

[vandorssen]

I've more or less restored the dialog conditions to how they should be (or close enough to play the game). But After doing this, the ESP size file suddenly ballooned from 478KB to 11.0MB! :ohmy:

 

There is also a problem now where I can no longer get dialog hyperlinks to stick (i.e.: when I type "Welcome to @Seyda Neen#!" it will not hyperlink the @Seyda Neen# to the topic discussing Seyda Neen (just an example... not really used in the mod)). Or rather, it will appear as a hyperlink, but as soon as I save, it reverts back to unlinked dialog.

[Don88]

That has only ever happened to me once and that time i had screwed up dialogue so much that i had to start again........ i cant help u with that one!

[ThetaOrionis01]

Do you still have the original plugin from before you tried to restore the missing topics?

 

If so, open up the TESCS, go to the load file screen, highlight your esp and select 'Details'. This will bring up a list of everything contained in your plugin - including the references for the delete flags you set for existing topics & greetings. The easiest way to undo your changes is by highlighting the references you want to take out, and pressing 'delete' (this will give you a message about setting the ignore flag - just ok it)

 

When you delete such a reference, you delete the changes made by your esp - restoring esm defaults.

 

Once you have deleted all the references you want to get rid of, load the esp into the editor, and save it - you should now have restored the missing topics, complete with the conditions attached to them.

 

 

As always though - before you carry out some major editing of your esp, make a backup in case something goes wrong.

 

Good luck :)

 

 

The changed esp size is probably due to duplication - by restoring the conditions you have duplicated the responses into your .esp - again, check the esp details as described above, and take out everything that shouldn't be in your plugin.

[vandorssen]

Gadzooks!!!; It worked!

I removed all objects with the ID of "INFO" and "DIAL", and it restored the dialog back to 100% default (event got rid of the * (asterisk) that preceded every dialog topic and greeting). There are still a number of redundant reference data (REFER), but they do not seem to have any real effect on the game (as so far as I can tell). The file size is also back down to a paltry 433KB. And I think I figured out the hyper linking issue… I was trying to do it unfiltered. After I filtered it for the character I wanted to use the hyperlinks for, they stayed.

 

Thanks so much.