Idle Chatter not working

[thefourwings]

Seems like it's something basic but I can't get any of my follower's idle chatter to work, and there seems to be little to no explanation out there on the wikis for how these lines execute and what you need to do in order to create your own...

 

Have a few lines of dialogue created under the IdleChatter conversation item for the NPC, each set to random with the only conditions being the standard GetIsID... she says nothing no matter how long I stand around.

 

Confirmed the follow AI package she's on allows IdleChatter and added the blank, non-random line at the top that I found in all Vanilla followers' IdleChatter, with the added condition of GetRandomPercent <= global variable FollowerChatterPercentage.

 

As far as I can tell, I've got some basic idle chatter setup for her exactly as it is for Vanilla NPCs but... no lines fire no matter how long I wait.

 

 

Anyone run into this problem / gotten it to work / know what I'm missing?? Thanks in advance,

 

TheFourWings

"Ties that Bind" (yes, it's still alive)

[acidzebra]

This 10-part howto taught me all I needed to know about npc dialogue, including idle chatter.

http://deck16.net/post/22645519500/making-a-unique-voiced-follower-in-skyrim-part-1

 

Note that even if you did everything correctly, if your quest containing the chatter is start game enabled you should test by loading up skyrim, go to wherever your npc is (or anywhere in the worldspace/cells) then do a quicksave and quickload, then talk to them/wait for them to idle chatter. For whatever reason NPCs don't seem to want to talk otherwise, it's kinda buggy.

Edited April 10, 2013 by acidzebra

[thefourwings]

That seems to be related to a glitch with Skyrim, not Fallout 3 / GECK. That said, I gave it a try in case it was the issue here as well and doesn't seem to be...

[acidzebra]

Yeah - sorry, my bad. I was answering skyrim forum questions and this popped up in the recent questions bar and since it's such a common skyrim question, I thought it was another one.

 

I kinda hate that it mixes all recent questions from all the nexus sites.

[thefourwings]

Haven't figured out why this isn't working and would still really like to know, but I did at least come up with a workaround, so thought I'd share.

 

As best I could understand it from looking at how the Vanilla followers were setup, the IdleChatter topic has a list of random one-liners with a non-random line at the top that has no text or voice data and has the condition GetRandomPercent <= Global Variable FollowerChatterPercentage. Then there is SOMETHING (can't find what) that is telling the NPC to speak their IdleChatter line. When that happens, it first hits the non-random empty line, which basically rolls the dice and 75% of the time will speak the empty line, which has the effect of seemingly nothing happening in the game. The other 25% of the time when the non-random line's condition is NOT met, it gets passed down to the random lines, one spits out and it has the effect of the NPC spouting a one-liner.

 

What I couldn't find anywhere was WHAT was calling the line, but I got around this by adding a GameMode script to my dialogue quest that effectively does this: continuously fires the IdleChatter line with a success rate of 25%. Rather than having the empty line of dialogue, I just built the whole "if GetRandomPercent > FollowerChatterPercentage" into my quest script because it seemed more efficient, but I'd still like to know the proper way of doing it, because I would think the vanilla followers are setup in a more efficient manner than a "sayto" line that is constantly firing...

[rickerhk]

In your quest script, are you doing something to the effect of:

MyNPCREF.Say IdleChatter or MyNPCREF.SayTo Player IdleChatter

If that works then your quest and IdleChatter topic are set up correctly. What you described in your first post is exactly how I set my follower up, emulating the vanilla followers.

If the follow package allows idle chatter, it should work. Though I've had problems with this when testing from a dirty save. Have you tried a new game? And with no other mods?

[thefourwings]

Yes that's effectively it, using a sayto player, I just know there's got to be a way of doing it without adding my own GameMode script, because none of the vanilla followers have anything like that attached to them, so they've got to be utilizing something more universal, which is probably part of why there exists a unique IdleChatter conversation topic and the GlobalVariable that goes with it. My workaround is getting the job done, it's just good practice to avoid using GameMode scripts that fire continuously ad infinitum.