LE Random Dialogue-Generator?

[Gorgopis]

Hello, Brilliant Community.

 

In principle, it should be possible to create a random-dialogue-generator mod, similar to dialogue-overhaul mods, so that all NPC's in the game will say and volunteer surprising and new dialogue? Turning NPC's into chat-bots?

 

In our view, cells contain "items" we can call "environments," "scripted events/quests," "objects," "terrain," and NPC's. (Please excuse the simple-mindedness of this list.)

 

Any one or more of these cell-local-items in quote marks could serve as triggers for activating cell-specific NPCs' to generate their random-dialogues, within a timer-parameter perhaps, (five seconds to speak or not), and also triggered solely by nearby-NPC-to-player-character location coordinates; while the comments in their dialogue-generation would correspond to voiced observations about the most startling (ranked) local items. (A global variable ranking events and items in the cell?)

 

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Rudimentary, random sentence-construction systems could follow "(X) verb (Y)," and build on legal sentence-construction rules from there. X might be a pronoun from an NPC, or a noun drawn from the names of the items above, grouped in vocabulary-sets built out of the items in cells as above, and selected by a randomness-variable or by a ranked priority variable.

 

Y would be the object of the NPC's observation, drawn from the same vocabulary sets built from items in cells as above. Articles or selector words like -- the/that/those/an -- are easy to program to pair with noun-sets. Adjectives would be kind of easy to correlate with specific nouns in the sets.

 

The verbs would come from a limited and scripted-set of verbs built/chosen by the modder.

 

Extensions to simple sentences, for variety, could include easier compound dialogue: "(X) verb (Y), and (S) verb (T)." Where S and T can also come from item-sets in the cell. ETC. Proceeding to more complex sentence types.

 

Hardship would involve snipping existing audio files in Vanilla Skyrim so voices matched existing NPC's and types, but maybe this latter approach is outmoded already?

 

Also, hardship would require matching verbs to pronouns and objects in a correct, context-logical way. For examples:

 

"I (X) love (verb) that armor (Y)." OK, easy. Love is a kind of universal verb for almost any thing/event/person.

 

"That dragon (X) breathes (verb) fire (Y)." Harder.

 

"That treasure chest (X) swims (wrong verb) the dungeon (Y)." Not acceptable, as chests don't swim, (unless the speaking NPC comes from a foreign land, then it might sound cute?)

 

"The dragon-priest shoots firebolts, and I think we should run" = (X-noun) verb (Y-object), and (R-pronoun) verb (S-second pronoun) helper verb + main verb. (This is a a simple sentence + a nested sentence--tougher to correlate and randomize.) Nested sentences will be hardest to randomize: "I (X) love (verb1) that armor (Y = object) you (S) wear (verb 2)"

 

But maybe there's such a mod out there already? Anybody superior at coding and programming logic-trees could manage fun like this? And it could be OK if this mod started small, but was "extensible" by other mod authors?

Edited January 4, 2021 by Gorgopis

[eomer11]

You could use VASynth to generate dialogue based on existing voice acting, though right now it takes a while

 

would be an interesting direction to take skyrim. I'd definitely give it a try but havev nowhere near the knowhow