NPC has weird movement when moving to another cell w/ package

[StealthDick]

I have an NPC with a dialogue package that is to move through 2 cells to get to my desired location, however when the package activates he will just move towards the door and stand still - forcing me to push him close enough towards the door for him to resume walking to it.

 

I've seen him do this dozens on times and without fail, he just walks to the middle of the room and stands there, if I push him towards the door by walking into him sometimes he'll run to the door himself, or he'll just run back to the position in the middle of the room that he likes to stand in for some reason.

 

On top of that, when he finally walks through the door he'll walk through the next door with ease and go to the package wait location and then begin walking back towards the player even if the player is still in the cell prior to the NPC's xmarker location.

 

All of this forces the player (mainly me) to rush to the location after he proceeds to it so the dialogue works properly. Due to the Dialogue conditions, the NPC will only say the correct dialogue if the player is in the correct cell with him, but whenever he reenters the middle cell he'll just stand at the door after blankly initiating his dialogue with the player that leads to just zooming in on his face.

 

Under the dialogue package's flags, I have Must Complete, Must Reach Location, Continue if PC near, and Always Run toggled. Every other Flag is off.

 

I must also mention that the initial cell that the NPC begins his package in is a vanilla cell that I've edited according to my tastes, I'm sure that that plays a role into his weird movement/disobedience.

[dubiousintent]

Clarify a bit please? You are having the actor walk/run through the intervening cells because you need to be able to have him say something in each or the player be able to interact with them in each cell, instead of teleporting the actor to the destination cell?

 

Do you have separate dialog to be said in each intervening cell? If so, have you tried "chaining" the AI packages so they are tailored to each cell and the "End Result Script" triggers the next package?

 

Are you using some "gateway" variable to ensure once the actor starts on this journey, only the related dialogs and packages are utilized at the different stages? (Think of this journey as if a quest for that actor.)

 

-Dubious-

[StealthDick]

So basically here's how it goes, there's cell A, B, and C for example.

 

The NPC gets the package in A, travels through B, and force greets the player in C.

(A->B->C)

The NPC is only to greet the player in C.

 

The NPC walks halfway through A and stops moving until the PC pushes him towards the door, or until he decides to stop standing around and go through B to get to C.

When the NPC goes through B into C, he'll shortly walk back to either A or B to initiate dialogue with the player, I only want him to initiate the dialogue in C.

 

When the NPC backtracks into A or B, he'll initiate dialogue but it will only zoom into his face because one of his dialogue condition relies on him being in C.

Edited May 7, 2019 by StealthDick

[madmongo]

When you say the "NPC gets the package in A", are you using AddScriptPackage? If so, I have found that to be very unreliable whenever any type of teleportation is involved (coc, moveto, going through a door, etc). Give the NPC the package permanently in their AI Packages tab and use a conditional flag to enable the package. Make sure you execute an EVP on the NPC when you want them to start executing this script package.

 

You might also have an issue with your navmeshes. Were the navmeshes finalized after adding the door teleports? Are there any gaps between navmesh areas that might screw up the game's pathing algorithms?

 

What flags are set in the NPC's definition?

 

It also looks like you have something set up wrong in how you are getting the NPC to initiate the dialog. How are you triggering this?

[StealthDick]

The dialogue package is a permanent package, he begins walking to the location just fine but has some issues (as stated above), my navmeshes are all finalized and there is a direct line that the NPC can follow to get to the B door.

Under the dialogue package's flags, I have Must Complete, Must Reach Location, Continue if PC near, and Always Run toggled. Every other Flag is off. 

The Package is activated after a conversation prompt, for example, he say's "I'll take you to the bunker" dialogue ends, in the result script (end) of the dialogue he is set to .sayto player.

Under the result script (end) of the .sayto, the NPC .evps to get his proper package (the dialogue package).

 

If there were anything wrong I'd assume it's the flags I have set, but toggling some of them on and off provides no corrections to my problem.

 

I can record a youtube video of the issue if necessary to show the problem in further detail.

Edited May 8, 2019 by StealthDick

[StealthDick]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGe3xtRN2Xo&feature=youtu.be

[StealthDick]

I fixed my issue!

 

I had fixed the navmesh prior, but when I reverted to a previous backup of my .esp the changes didn't remain, so that stopped his awkward standing in the middle of the room issue.

I also didn't have a set trigger location for the dialogue package, so once the NPC would reach his Start/Wait marker he'd return to the player. I fixed this issue by setting the trigger location to the cell itself, and now it works perfectly.