NPC Dialogue

[Sigurð Stormhand]

ARRRRGH!Is there such a thing as a simple tutorial on just adding dialogue and custom greatings to NPC's without having to attach them to a complex quest?I litterally just want custom one-off greetings for my monks and a couple of expositionary topics so they don't look like mute idiots.So, I have a quest, "SGDPelinalAbbeey", I have added the GREETING topic, and added a custom info for the Abbott to say when you fist speak to him. I set the conditions so that only he can say it, that works, but getting it to fire on the "TalkedtoPC == 0"...Can I get it to fire?No, of course not.RandomPercent works, but then the GREETING info doesn't add the "PelinalAbbey" topic using the "addtopic" box, nor does attaching a script to the quest that uses the "begin gamemode" block.ARRRRGGGG!This is why I just do architecture.

[Hana]

*Thinks this should be it's own topic*This is why I don't use the AddTopic box, I use AddChoice instead. And you've confused me on the conditions, really don't need any except the GetIsID = your NPC, and have all your greetings AddChoice Pelinal Abbey. Just make sure the quest is set to initialize on start.PS: I'm going to be writing a Dialogue tutorial very soon for TES Alliance. I'll share it here too.

[Arthmoor]

Moved :PIn the GREETING topic, you can't use the AddTopic box. There's a bug in how that box is handled by the game.

[Dwip]

Ah, the joys of dialogue. It really is a powerful system once you figure it out, but the trick is, well, figuring it out.The takeaway from that article Samson linked is that you want to, in the result script box for your greeting info, put "AddTopic PelinalAbbey" That will solve that.It also sounds like you may have some issue with quest priority, and you're getting pre-empted by other greetings. Setting your quest priority to 20 or 60 or so may well fix that for you.I know I talked about a lot of this somewhere. Let me see if I can dig it up.

[Dwip]

Ok, not as great as I thought it was, but this post may help, especially the Quest Data and Topics tab discussions and wiki links.Also, @Hanaisse, if I'm reading both you and Sigurd correctly, that's not going to do what he wants to get done, which appears to be to say a single greeting once upon the initial meeting with the PC, which adds a topic to talk about the Abbey. Correct way to do that is about what he's doing - GetIsID check for the abbot, with a GetTalkedToPC == 0 check, although you could just use the Say Once checkbox, it's probably easier and does the same thing. The main thing here is the use of AddTopic in the result script box, which is what he needs to get that to fire (and the right GetIsID check in his PelinalAbbey topic, of course).There are a couple of issues with using the Choice box in that fashion, none of which are particularly helpful:- Tying the PelinalAbbey topic to that greeting as a choice means that the Abbot is going to have to speak that particular greeting each and every single time he talks to the PC, or have two greetings - one for the initial meeting, one for general use. If he wants the Abbot to revert to standard greetings, that's not going to work so much, since the only way to the PelinalAbbey dialogue would be through that greeting/choice combo.- Choices aren't particularly portable. If he's gone through the AddTopic bit, he's basically done - anybody with a properly set up PelinalAbbey dialogue can now use it, at whatever point in the conversation it seems appropriate to the player to do so. They can go Rumors -> PelinalAbbey, PelinalAbbey -> Rumors, say "Wait, I didn't catch that" and go PelinalAbbey -> PelinalAbbey, etc. Insofar as choices restrict you to a dialogue tree that you have to puzzle out, that's not helpful in this case (though it is in many others, of course).Which is all to say that for general purposes, AddTopic is a much superior way of doing business.@Sigurd again - If you have a copy of AFK_Weye handy, you might want to check out the quest AFKSerranusMonks in the CS, because I'm pretty sure I'm doing a lot of what you're trying to do, and it might be a helpful example for you.

[Sigurð Stormhand]

OK, something fruity is going on, I've got the greeting working but the topic still isn't showing up, despite being in the Abbott's filtered dialogue.

[Dwip]

What kind of conditions do you have on it?

[Sigurð Stormhand]

OK, everything seems to work now, having used a clean save. Very odd.Oh well, onwards and upwards.

[Dwip]

Yeah, you really, really need to be testing with clean saves every single time. Too much can go wrong otherwise.

[Arthmoor]

Dialogue is evil. Evil I say. I will say this though, clean save testing is very important but you also need to test under full load to make sure you don't get stepped on by someone else's mod.

[Sigurð Stormhand]

Yeah, funny thing is that I was sure it was a clean save.As for mod conflict, well I still can't figure out what it is added chickens and a donkey to the mountains around Everwinter Valley. I was thinking MMM but I can't see any aextra spawn points, so I don't understand how I got a donkey, two chickens, and two sheep.Then there's the wildlife and Orc bandits around Battlehorn Castle where I know I disabled all the vanilla spawn points.Anyway, now to get on with the dialogue - and someone really should write about it without burying it in quest-building for "go here kill this" stuff. A lot of the tutorials are like that, especially with setting onditions - quite sparse and seem to expect you to work by trial and error.