North Road - Remove ESM requirements without breaking the main quest

[th3overseer]

I'm working on a decently substantial update to one of my older mods, the North Road. One thing I'd really like to do is remove it's "dependency" on the pre-order DLC. I say dependency in quotes, because it doesn't actually use any assets from the pre-order packs. They're only required because I mistakenly had them checked waaaay back when I first started making this thing. I removed the requirements once before in FNVedit, but it caused a couple of quest-giver NPCs to... not give out quests. Like, if the quest stage was 30, they're supposed to have unique dialogue, but it just wouldn't trigger. The conditionals were exactly the same, but once I removed the pre-order packs as requirements, the game just wouldn't acknowledge that it was supposed to be saying something different at that stage in the quest.

 

I'm probably not articulating this particularly well. Anyone got any advice?

[dubiousintent]

Hmm? Let's break this down. If I'm understanding you correctly, you successfully used FNVEdit to "Clean Masters" and it removed the POP masters, which means NR does not refer to any records from them. Which makes perfect sense.

 

But if the "quests givers" are not giving out quests, it means there is a condition in the dialog topics leading to the quest being given that are not being met. (Presumably these are YOUR "quest givers", not NPCs from any other mod, correct?) So, if removing the POP is breaking the conditionals, my first suspicion would be the conditionals are no longer getting set correctly due to the absence of the POP. Variables (used in a conditional or not) will not (to the best of my knowledge) prevent FNVEdit from "cleaning out a master" as they are not "records".

 

Therefor I would:

1. Insert some debug prints to show the state of the conditional variables just before they are used in the dialog. See 'TIP: Debugging data to file' in the wiki "Getting started creating mods using GECK" article.

2. Insert some debug prints wherever the variables are supposedly being set.

3. Verify that these are YOUR variables and NOT ones defined by other quests or scripts and used elsewhere.

 

If the variables have the correct values, then look into the conditionals test itself for the dialog topic; especially if it is a "compound" conditional. See 'TIP: Debugging Compound Conditionals'. (Same article for all these tips.)

 

Also, bear in mind 'TIP: Script Result vs Result Script'. A "Result Script" might be changing the values as well.

 

Finally, check that you have your quest dialog in the correct position in the dialog topics list. Remember that the first topic to test "true" for all conditions is the one used. See 'TIP: GECK parses the entire line before evaluating', 'TIP: Obsidian Conversation Editor (OCE)', and 'TIP: Standard Dialog'.

 

I haven't as yet had occasion to use "GECK Extender NVSE Plugin" instead of "GECK Powerup", but it may provide more information from the 1220 messages it has restored.

 

BTW: Excellent mod. Hope you get this cleared up.

 

-Dubious-