Text for new NPC appearing in other NPC topics help

[quasar25]

So I added my 1st NPC to a mod. I edited its dialogue for background, secret, advice and Morrowind Lore. It was working fine. However, as I played the game, other 'generic' NPC's were using the same background and secret/advice dialouge as the new NPC I added.

 

The new NPC was there to explain some new items added to an area. What I did is deleted the other optional lines in those 4 categories of secrets, advice.... etc. So she would always use the one line that was necessary instead of pulling from a random list. Is this what is causing problems? I don't understand why the new NPC's dialogue is being used by other NPC's that I did not edit.

 

When I go in to check the other NPC's those lines I added do appear for generic NPC's with an * that indicates something was edited. Its wierd. So how do I fix this? Better yet, can I give my added NPC an entirely unique greeting when the PC meets it the first time?

[leonardo2]

If I were you I would wait for cyran0 to stop by as he knows dialogue in the CS better than any modder I know of.

[cyran0]

It sounds like you opened the dialogue window from the open window of your new NPC. Correct me if that is wrong.

 

When you do that, the existing dialogue is filtered for the NPC. That is by class, race, faction etc. When dialogue is filtered it is not possible to move or create new entries, so the entries you edited and deleted were the official responses that other NPCs would regularly use. That is not what you want to do.

 

You might be able to fix this easily. Open the full, unfiltered dialogue window and find your edits (yes, they are marked with asterisks). Select (for example) your edit of the background response. Right-click and select 'Copy'. It will make a duplicate of that entry above the original. Make whatever changes you want to the duplicate (upper) entry. In particular, under speaker conditions, enter the ID of your new NPC. That assures that only that NPC will use the dialogue response. You need to clean the original entry as well as the other official entries around your new entry that are marked with an asterisk. My approach is to replace the text with 'x' to make it easy to recognize. Repeat this process for every topic that you changed.

 

To clean the mistaken changes to the official entries, you can use a third-party utility or the construction set itself. For the latter, go to the File tab, Data Files and select your mod - assure it is active. Don't click [OK] yet. Click on [Details]. It will list all of the changes your mod makes, including those mistakes. They are INFO entries. They should be easy to identify since their content is a single 'x'. Select and press [Delete]. An info window will pop-up saying you have toggled the 'ignore' flag and as you to confirm. Say [Yes]. An 'I' will be added before the line of text. Do this for those entries that you 'deleted' in the dialogue window. [Close] file details and now click [OK] to load your mod. When it loads, it will ignore the changes you marked - it does not delete them from the game. Your unintended changes are ignored, restoring the original entries' content. You can confirm this by going to the topic 'background' to see only your new entry marked with an asterisk and all the x's are gone. Saving will preserve your clean mod.

 

When you next load your mod in the editor, you will see several warnings that changes were made to official 'background' entries and those of other topics. This is not an error or a problem. The change is to the linked list that is Morrowind dialogue, because you inserted new entries. This is the way you want your dialogue changes to be handled.

 

Edit:

 

@Leonardo: Thank you. I am pretty knowledgeable about dialogue, but there are plenty of modders I defer to about the construction set in general. About my inevitable appearance - am I really that predictable? :wink:

Edited October 30, 2020 by cyran0

[quasar25]

Thanks for the replies. Yes I opened the dialog from the NPC tab in TES. I don't know how to open the full, unfiltered dialogue window. I haven't found where that tab is. My help button in the software doesn't work at all and the tutorials I have found have not show where the unfiltered dialogue window.

 

So still doing it the original way. I managed to get it unfiltered by selecting the top blank line. I was able to create new topics, but they do not appear on the NPC in game. A small tutorial briefly mentioned that you have to get the NPC to bring up the topic in either a greeting or as a rumor. I managed to do this once in a greeting, but the game warned of a script error. The link was highlighted blue at least, but can't use it with the error.

 

I have kind of given up on the whole thing, now about 10 hours into retrying stuff. I did get new rumor text to display once. So I thought I would condense my story down to 512 letters (or whatever the max is , and put it all in a rumor. Now the charactor only has 1 other rumor to say besides my new one. (The 3 other rumors are situation specific, ie related to crime and such) Wouldn't you now that the NPC only will display this 1 rumor now, and never will show that 1 I added. So break time for now. At one point at had 2 NPC's added, then deleted 1 instance, but both still appeared in game. That is when I packed it in for the day.

 

I may try added the story I want in a book and just place it nearby. At least I can get a generic NPC in the game to train or sell stuff. I'll try to at least get the new rumor in tomorrow.

Edited October 30, 2020 by quasar25

[cyran0]

On the upper right side of the construction set window, just below the drop-down menus, is the toolbar. Third from the right (the text bubble) is the icon to open the dialogue window, but you can do it the way you described.

 

Yes, the player needs to learn new topics before they are available. One way is to introduce the topic word or phrase in a greeting or another topic. That is nice because it creates a guided conversation through the hyperlink. You can also use AddTopic in the dialogue results section of a greeting or topic, and also from a script. E.g. AddTopic "latest rumors". I typically use both methods at the same time - you know, 'belt and suspenders'.

 

You are not restricted to a mere 512 characters to tell your story. Add the line: Choice "Continue" 1 to the dialogue results of the start of the speech, create a new entry above that and filter it for Function: Choice = 1. You can add as many continuations as you want: Choice "Continue" 2, etcetera.

 

Jac wrote a dialogue tutorial that many have found helpful.