[RELz] Snowy Dreams

[Hana]

Ok, first, on adding topics. When you right click to add one to the list for the quest, and you get that box with the huge list of topics and the two empty slots, you have to right click in that box and select "new" in order to generate a completely new topic. Otherwise you're adding existing topics to your quest and altering them by adding your own response conditions, which is bad. Assuming I understand what you just said correctly, you changed the name of the EMPTY topics and the Abilities topic to something other than EMPTY and Abilities? If so, that's bad.

Ok, well, I give up then. I've completely fucked things up.No where in either tutorial does it say to right click AGAIN in the box to add a new topic. A slightly important step if you ask me. So yes, I've used existing topics and overwrote them. I did use GetIsID so that only my ghost says them but it doesn't matter, it's still messed up.

The easiest way to get the stage to fire as you approach would be to use the script you created to add a condition check to.

I don't know what you mean. What script? The original quest script Dwip wrote? This is the whole problem. I don't understand scripts, I don't know how to write scripts, so all these conditions, results, quest scripts, etc are just a jumble in my head. With a deadline looming now is not the time to try to learn. All these problems and questions and all I've accomplished is kicking off the quest nevermind the real trick to come of enable/disable stuff. I really thought this would be much simpler and that the CS did most of the work. If it won't even start a quest like it's supposed to then fuck it.I think the only right thing I've done was link my dialogue together using the Choices box and not the AddTopic box. Yay me.Dwip, you're a great teacher and I appreciate all the help and explanations but I just can't do it. I'll file this away to work on some other time. Thank you too Samson. I'm frustrated at myself, not you guys.My house is now just a house.

[Arthmoor]

Sorry. By script, I meant the one Dwip and I had you add to the Quest Data tab for the quest. I don't know what it looks like right now but the part I was talking about would look something like this:

if( player.GetDistance [mapmarkername] 
That would set stage 10 upon getting within 512 units of the map marker, which would be able the same time in game the marker itself is added to the map.Unfortunately the CS is a clunky tool that frustrates most of us when using it. See my own previous rants elsewhere about the hell of dialogue.What tutorial are you following for dialogue topic creation? If it's a wiki, it needs updating, and I'll go update it. Because yes, that's a fairly critical step in the process of creating new topics.

[Dwip]

The CS is a really powerful tool, but yeah, the learning curve is steep. If it makes you feel better, see also this on the topic at hand, not to mention this and this. Which is to say that your pain is felt, and the things I am attempting to teach you now were learned through hard years of blood, sweat, tears, and the corpses of a thousand esps.Been there, done that, trashed the esp, screamed in rage, learned from the mistake, moved on. Hurts, but hey, at least you learned some stuff, right?All that said, a couple of thoughts for your next stab at this:1. Recognize that this is going to take some time. A lot of time. It's pretty likely that your first quest is going to take longer than anything else you ever do, but once you get over that initial hurdle, everything is so much easier than it was before, and you'll work so much faster.2. One of the best things you can do for yourself, in my opinion, is sit down and deconstruct some quests. Find a quest in the vanilla game that you're familiar with (or a mod, if that floats your boat), and sit down and try to do what I did with SQ09 in my tutorial with it. Examine each piece and try to learn what it does and why it does that way, and if you don't get something, look it up in the wiki - not the tutorials, the real reference parts of the wiki. With scripting in particular, this is pretty much the only way to learn how to do anything. No matter how long you keep at this, you'll be using the function reference a lot, so try to get to know it as best you can. You're going to want to keep doing this until everything looks vaguely familiar to you, which it hopefully should once you do it a couple times.3. It's of some help, when you say to yourself "Man, how the hell do you do $THING!?" to hopefully remember some vanilla quest where $THING has already been done, and go look at it and shamelessly steal the hell out of it.4. Pre-planning obviously helps. I'll have more to say on this later, perhaps when I finish that tutorial that I keep prodding at.5. Recognize that you're going to make a ton of mistakes, especially as you're first starting out. Particularly at this early stage, it's very useful before you start any new thing where there's any possibility that you might fuck something up (ie, almost everything), it's a very good idea to make a backup or three of your esp.6. When in doubt, if it looks like you're changing some vanilla item, stop and make sure that's actually the way to do things. This is the #1 way to mess yourself up.7. Ask questions, but you knew this already.

[Dwip]

Oh, and a couple more things.If we say something and makes zero sense to you, please ask for elaboration. Happy to provide.As far as the dialogue thing goes, it's very repairable, given a bit of time in TES4Edit. Were it me, I'd do this:- For every bit of dialogue you have, write it down somewhere. Responses, conditions, and what have you. Ideally you did this already, but if you didn't, do it now.- Load up your mod in Edit. Expand the tree so you see a thing called Dialog Topic. Right click, remove. That will obliterate all your old dialogue so you can start over. Alternately, if you know which topic edits need to be deleted, delete them individually. If you want, post a screenshot of your dialogue in Edit and I can walk you through.Also, re: deadlines, you may be right. That said, it's probably going to be worthwhile for you to attempt to finish the quest as a learning exercise. Even if nobody ever plays it, you'll have learned a lot of stuff you can apply to other quests down the road.

[Conner]

I just can't do it. I'll file this away to work on some other time. Thank you too Samson. I'm frustrated at myself' date=' not you guys.[/quote']I don't believe that for a second, I clearly recognize your frustration and confusion, but I don't doubt your ability, if coupled with a bit of patience, one bit.

[Hana]

A deep breath, lavender scented candles, hot shower, etc and I think my hissy fit is over.I am also happy to report that my quest is working as planned perfectly so far.* I deleted the entire dialogue with TES4Edit. Apparently there were 3 bad things in it (one touching the Canvas the Castle quest, another a Mage guild quest) so I removed it and started over since there wasn't much there at this point. Easier for me.* I removed all conditions from quest stages as advised.* I added the above script to the quest script.All pop-ups and journal entries now show up and the green little quest marker now shows up (I don't know why it didn't before I didn't change the quest targets tab).A thousand thank you's to all of you, including you Conner, for the support.(Oh, and expect more meltdown rants as I progress. Yes, I (we) will muddle through this. I still have 4 days.)Edit: To Arthmoor - the CS Wiki Basic Quest tutorial. The Talk to an NPC and Get an Item sections talk about dialogue topics.

[Conner]

Sorry, Hana, the stages you're working with at this point are such that support's all I got to offer. (Besides, like you could hope for better than Dwip & Arthmoor as guides anyway?)

[Arthmoor]

Hmm. That quest tutorial is a bit lean, and somewhat awkward to get the changes inserted into.Also, no worries about the rants, I'm sure we can all handle it

[Dwip]

It is my firm belief that it's not real modding if you don't throw a few angst and/or profanity-laced rants.That is perhaps not the best quest creation tutorial in the world.

[Hana]

Ok, next question.I'm ready to enable NPC A at the stables so that I can deliver the package to him.Is it better to add enable NPC A in a result script at the end of my dialogue with Santa, or, add this to the quest script by using getstage 20 first? (And could someone show me the correct syntax to do so?)

[Dwip]

IIRC, I usually do that sort of thing in stage result script, but as far as I remember there's no reason you can't do it either way. Stashing it in the stage result script has the advantage of being easier to find than random dialogue scripting, but other than that...- Find NPC A in the world (not in the NPC list), and double click him, open him up. You need to check the Persistent Reference box and the Initially Disabled box, and give him an Editor ID, something like aaaSnowyDreamsNPCARef (where NPCA == actual name, and Ref == shorthand for reference). Also remember to give him some basic AI if you haven't done so yet.- In whatever the appropriate bit of Santa dialogue is, in the result script for that response, put in "setstage aaaSnowyDreams 20" without the quotes.- In the script block for stage 20, put in "aaaSnowyDreamsNPCARef.enable" without the quotes.- Optionally, drop about 500 mountain lions just outside. Open them all up like you did with your NPC reference, then switch back to the cell with the NPC in it. For each open mountain lion window, check the initially disabled box, then switch to the Enable Parent tab, click the Select Reference in Render Window button, and click your NPC and hit OK. When you are done, this will enable 500 hungry mountain lions outside, which will provide significiant challenge to the player as well as the player's computer hardware, which will hopefully shoot blue flames out the fan ports at this point and look totally awesome.Or, if you choose not to do the mountain lion thing, you're done. Although, for the record, that process is how you enable groups of objects at the same time. In case you ever want to.

[Hana]

Teehee. Another quest stage successful. Now on to those mountain lions and I should be finished. Except for adding all the toys they play with.

[Arthmoor]

A Mountain Lion? In my basement!?(sorry, couldn't resist)

[Hana]

Ohh, funny guy :P236 mountain lions down ... many many more to go. Also, I just made a scroll note, and it was actually perfect the first time. Yay for basic html classes.Oh, right, I had a question. In a messagebox, I want to put two lines. How do I force the second line down without turning it into a button?

[Dwip]

Not entirely sure that's possible. I don't know messageboxes well at all, though.

[Arthmoor]

You can't do a line break in a messagebox.

[Conner]

Why on Earth does she need 500 mountain lions??

[Dwip]

Why wouldn't she need 500 mountain lions?

[Conner]

I guess my Christmas mythology's rustier than I thought as I really don't recall mountain lions, let alone 500 of the creatures who normally live very solitary lives unless mating and then in very small family units only until the cubs can survive on their own, being part of the yule lore...

[Dwip]

It's a Very Special Mountain Lion Christmas.

[Hana]

Aww, poor Conner. The mountain lions in this case are every single piece of clutter (furniture, books, food, etc) that I'm putting in my mod. :)New question, because I think I confused myself.On the subject of parent refs. I've currently parented everything in "old" scene to aaaSDFatherChristmasGhost, because, well, it let me.In my script I've put aaaSDFatherChristmasGhost.disable, but it doesn't like that. So, I should do similar to NPCA question above, and give him an editorID of aaaSDFatherChristmasGhostRef ? Will I have to redo all my parenting to this 'ref' or will it still work on base ID?

[Dwip]

Yeah, any time you're going to do anything to an NPC/object in a script like that, you need to give it an editor ID. aaaSDFatherChristmasGhostRef works. After doing that, I'd check a few of my references to make sure it actually worked ok for them.As a style note, I prefer to do all of my scene parenting to a persistant/named static object that's part of the scene in question. Usually a rug or the like, that I'll then enable and disable seperately from any NPCs, since you never know what you'll want to do with an NPC. That's just me talking though, and you're not doing anything wrong here.

[Conner]

So this is like one of those cartoon afternoon Christmas specials and the mountain lions are very atypical getting together to celebrate Christmas rather than sit back in their private dens eating yummy latkes, eh? :PWell, 500 of 'em certainly sounds like plenty of clutter to me, but I thought the cabin was going to be furnished...With that question, we return to Dwip's & Arthmoor's input...

[Conner]

Never mind then, Dwip already snuck his answer to the question in while I was posting...

[Hana]

Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy! :lol:I have completed my quest! Now I turn it over to you guys for a quick run-through for me. The mod itself is not yet fully complete, but the bones are there. There's all the holiday cluttering left to do in the 'new' scene but there's a few things there so far, like furniture in the bedrooms. Be sure to check out my cool tombstone in the 'new' scene, off to the right hand side. And the reindeer don't bite.Remember to wait 24hrs in-game for the quest to start. The location is N of Chorrol, NW of Hermaeus Mora's shrine.