Need help making edits to vanilla quests and dialogue

[failmuseum]

I'm thinking about making a mod that adds a few perks to the game. There a few points in the vanilla game that I would like have these perks appear in dialogue and offer alternate solutions for quests like the other perks, special, or skills.

I'm fairly new to using the GECK, but I am able to directly change the vanilla quests to add these options. The reason I am asking for help is mostly because I know directly editing the vanilla quest's dialogue is a bad idea due to it causing incompatibilities with other plug ins that edit the same NPC/quest. I also know that you can use scripts to add topics whenever tagging "Top-Level" isn't good enough.

What I need help with is:

1. How would I go about adding topics via scripts in the first place

2. How would I add my own topics (with scripts) after choosing a vanilla topic (let's use the line where you lie to Marjorie about being a cannibal from "Beyond the Beef" as an example. Say I wanted to have the option to apologize for lying after saying the lie, how would I add that topic using only a script.)

3. Can I/How do I add more choices to existing choice branches (Example, the white glove food vendor in the gourmand will give two choices after the greeting, either "goodbye" or "let me see what you have". I want to add a third choice to that with a script, so I don't have compatibility issues with any other mods that edit that NPC's dialogue.)

 

I already read through the dialogue and scripting portion of "Getting started creating mods using GECK" and I couldn't find anything that would help with this.

Edited October 18, 2020 by failmuseum

[clanky4]

I've never used scripts to do that sort of thing. I'd usually just use conditions in the dialogue topic or the add topics section of the dialogue.

 

There is an addtopic function that you could use in a script though.

 

https://geckwiki.com/index.php/AddTopic

 

You should be able to add topics to an NPC without compatibility issues.

 

With a new quest and your new topics for that NPC be in that quest. The conditions that you would want those topics to be visible under would be the tricky part. If there isn't some sort of variable your only option might be to modify the quest with the vanilla dialogue which may well lead to compatibility issues.