Status of FO4 scene? Almost dead?

[Kimy]

**I have nothing but pure hatred for 'global' dialogues. They burden the players experience, unnecessarily. They make the assumption that every single character in the world will respond in the same way, or be open to the same lines of inquiry. And in a role playing game that is an absolute absurdity.

 

In Skyrim I have created lots of situational dialogue options that would be offered by certain types of NPCs when certain conditions were met. It's impossible to do this in FO4 without overriding their regular dialogue, or fighting with other mods doing the same. In the end, if you want to play it safe, you can't assign any custom dialogue to NPCs you didn't place in the mod yourself. Because if you reuse an existing NPC for your quest and another mod does the same, the result might be a deadlock, where the two custom dialogues override each other in a way that the quest can no longer be advanced.

 

Injecting dialogue into their existing trees can be used for a lot of things other than allowing the player to ask every single NPC in the game "Want sex, right now and here?" Implementing mods like SexLab Solutions, Amorous Adventures, or Radiant Prostitution, or some features of Deviously Cursed Loot with the stupid FO4 dialogue system is borderline infeasible and that's a shame.

 

[pipdude]

 

 

My impression was that they were saying to just have the lounger frame the beginning of the playthrough. Similar to how Alternative Start in Skyrim frames a new game as having more options than the vanilla beginning.

 

If that is the case, you wouldn't have to deal with "coming back", tracking, etc. The lounger experience would be the entire playthrough.

 

 

I'm not sure that helps. I mean if the entire game is in the lounger then you can't re-use existing voice files for out-of-lounger content and you're looking at re-recording all the player dialogue. Or at least any vanilla interactions that you're going to use. Which means that either the stand alone mod is going to be trivial in scope or there's going to be massive amount of voice acting needed.

 

 

Why would you have to re-record the player dialogue or not use vanilla interactions?

[DocClox]

Why would you have to re-record the player dialogue or not use vanilla interactions?

Well, as I understand it, the debate goes as follows:

 

1: Having a voiced player character makes it impossible to add new dialogue, since without hiring the original voice actors, the new dialogue will sound different to that of the rest of the game

 

Response: No problem. Frame the new adventure as an episode in the Memory Lounger. Because you are experiencing someone's recorded memories, you would expect the protagonist's voice to sound different.

 

2: In that case, surely the expectation will surely be that the voice remains consistent within the lounger? Any vanilla dialogue used in the lounger portion of the mod will now, necessarily, be at odds with the newly recorded lines. Hence it will be necessary re-record any vanilla dialogue if consistency of voice acting is to be maintained.

 

I mean if you don't care that the voice sounds different, then it's not a problem. But if you don't care that the voice sounds different, you might just as well record new lines in a different voice and not bother with the memory loungers. Well, unless you really wanted to make a memory lounger mod, of course, but that wasn't the point under discussion.

[pipdude]

 

Why would you have to re-record the player dialogue or not use vanilla interactions?

Well, as I understand it, the debate goes as follows:

 

1: Having a voiced player character makes it impossible to add new dialogue, since without hiring the original voice actors, the new dialogue will sound different to that of the rest of the game

 

Response: No problem. Frame the new adventure as an episode in the Memory Lounger. Because you are experiencing someone's recorded memories, you would expect the protagonist's voice to sound different.

 

2: In that case, surely the expectation will surely be that the voice remains consistent within the lounger? Any vanilla dialogue used in the lounger portion of the mod will now, necessarily, be at odds with the newly recorded lines. Hence it will be necessary re-record any vanilla dialogue if consistency of voice acting is to be maintained.

 

I mean if you don't care that the voice sounds different, then it's not a problem. But if you don't care that the voice sounds different, you might just as well record new lines in a different voice and not bother with the memory loungers. Well, unless you really wanted to make a memory lounger mod, of course, but that wasn't the point under discussion.

 

 

I see. I was thinking more in terms of just how the game begins and maybe blocking some of the vanilla quests that would no longer make sense.

 

Yeah. If you are adding new dialogue, the matching is a challenge. Though, I believe there are ways to use the original voice files to make new dialogue in the same voice. I never looked into how it was done. But, there are some Skyrim mods that re-use vanilla voices that way.

[DocClox]

I see. I was thinking more in terms of just how the game begins and maybe blocking some of the vanilla quests that would no longer make sense.

 

Yeah. If you are adding new dialogue, the matching is a challenge. Though, I believe there are ways to use the original voice files to make new dialogue in the same voice. I never looked into how it was done. But, there are some Skyrim mods that re-use vanilla voices that way.

 

 

Most of the Skyrim ones find lines used elsewhere that say something that can be bent to fit and use that. I think Kendo pioneered the approach back in the Oblivion days. It works, but finding the lines and warping the structure of the dialogue so they fit ... it's a non-trivial exercise.

 

It's not that it can't be done. Personally, if I want that sort of interaction I'll either use menus and popups or I'll just use silent dialogues and let everyone read the sub-titles. but it does add a lot of work for anyone that wants to do it "properly"

[pipdude]

 

 

Most of the Skyrim ones find lines used elsewhere that say something that can be bent to fit and use that. I think Kendo pioneered the approach back in the Oblivion days. It works, but finding the lines and warping the structure of the dialogue so they fit ... it's a non-trivial exercise.

 

It's not that it can't be done. Personally, if I want that sort of interaction I'll either use menus and popups or I'll just use silent dialogues and let everyone read the sub-titles. but it does add a lot of work for anyone that wants to do it "properly"

 

If this was ever turned into a real product, it would help: 

 

 

Is something like that already built for another company?

[flipdarkfuture]

 

In Skyrim I have created lots of situational dialogue options that would be offered by certain types of NPCs when certain conditions were met. It's impossible to do this in FO4 without overriding their regular dialogue, or fighting with other mods doing the same. In the end, if you want to play it safe, you can't assign any custom dialogue to NPCs you didn't place in the mod yourself. Because if you reuse an existing NPC for your quest and another mod does the same, the result might be a deadlock, where the two custom dialogues override each other in a way that the quest can no longer be advanced.

 

Injecting dialogue into their existing trees can be used for a lot of things other than allowing the player to ask every single NPC in the game "Want sex, right now and here?" Implementing mods like SexLab Solutions, Amorous Adventures, or Radiant Prostitution, or some features of Deviously Cursed Loot with the stupid FO4 dialogue system is borderline infeasible and that's a shame.

 

 

 

I'm by no means that experienced with how dialogue works in Fallout 4 and the CK, but couldn't you possibly add the dialogue to one of the existing branches for a NPC? Or maybe even have a item that when equipped makes those topics appear in a new dialogue tree?

[DocClox]

On 4/4/2017 at 9:49 AM, flipdarkfuture said:

I'm by no means that experienced with how dialogue works in Fallout 4 and the CK, but couldn't you possibly add the dialogue to one of the existing branches for a NPC? Or maybe even have a item that when equipped makes those topics appear in a new dialogue tree?

The problem is that every conversation in Fo4 has to have exactly four options. That's why we so many "yes/no" questions with "Yes"/"Yes"/"Sarcastic Yes"/"Maybe" as options. It needs there to be four responses in all cases.

 

In Skyrim, adding a new option was easy - any new dialog just got added on the end of existing topics. In fact it was all to easy to accidentally add dialogue to everyone in the game whether it made sense or not.

 

In Fallout 4 everything has to have exactly four choices, and because of that everything already has exactly four choices. So you can't just stick something on the end of the list like in Skyrim, and you can't just replace one choice because you don't know if what you're going to override might be essential in some contexts.

 

And so we situation where you have to wear the Ring of Foobar if you want to talk about FooBar related topics, because that lets you override standard dialogue with your own, but still lets you get back to the vanilla dialogues if you need them for something.

 

Basically, from a modding point of view, it's a mess.

[TheStranger]

 

I'm by no means that experienced with how dialogue works in Fallout 4 and the CK, but couldn't you possibly add the dialogue to one of the existing branches for a NPC? Or maybe even have a item that when equipped makes those topics appear in a new dialogue tree?

The problem is that every conversation in Fo4 has to have exactly four options. That's why we so many "yes/no" questions with "Yes"/"Yes"/"Sarcastic Yes"/"Maybe" as options. It needs there to be four responses in all cases.

 

In Skyrim, adding a new option was easy - any new dialog just got added on the end of existing topics. In fact it was all to easy to accidentally add dialogue to everyone in the game whether it made sense or not.

 

In Fallout 4 everything has to have exactly four choices, and because of that everything already has exactly four choices. So you can't just stick something on the end of the list like in Skyrim, and you can't just replace one choice because you don't know if what you're going to override might be essential in some contexts.

 

And so we situation where you have to wear the Ring of Foobar if you want to talk about FooBar related topics, because that lets you override standard dialogue with your own, but still lets you get back to the vanilla dialogues if you need them for something.

 

Basically, from a modding point of view, it's a mess.

 

 

Regarding Fallout 4's bad dialogue system.

 

I have an idea on how to implement more than 4 dialouge options. I don't know if it'll work, just throwing the idea out there.

 

So what if you replaced one of the dialouge options with an option that says "(NEXT PAGE)". For example you replace the "(Sarcastic)" option. Lets call theese options "Page 1".

 

Then when (NEXT PAGE) option is selected, it takes you to a new "page" (4 new options of dialouge), where two of them are another (NEXT PAGE) option and the original (Sarcastic) option, and now you have two more slots that you can use for whatever you want. The (NEXT PAGE) option here could either lead you back to the first "page" (The original dialouge options with sarcastic replaced) or take you to a new "page" with three new options and a (NEXT PAGE) option that can lead to yet another "page" or back to the first one again.

 

Hopefully this was understandable. Could be used to implement more options into the games original dialouges, or to add multiple "pages" of options for completely custom dialouge.

[pipdude]

If we can get an extender with scaleform hooks, we should be able to make an alternative dialogue system that uses Flash and XML. Sky is the limit then.

[vinfamy]

I found a workaround for the dialogue system and tried it with Vanilla Fudge. Essentially, you would have a parallel script (could be attached to anything but I use a PlayerRef quest alias) with a suitable On... event that can pick up the akSpeaker. In that event, you would ForceRefTo the akSpeaker to another quest alias, which has a ForceGreet package attached to it. Or multiple forcegreet packages, with conditions based on GetIsId or GetInFaction or whatever 

Then you go about and make a normal dialogue using the vanilla system (using scenes and topic infos). You can be as creative with building your dialogue tree as you want. One of the conditions for your greeting of this custom dialogue should GetIsAliasRef == whatever you name the quest alias that you forced your akSpeaker to. 

 

What would then happen is everytime you talk to an NPC that the ForceGreet package condition applies to, the vanilla dialogue would show up first exactly the way it's supposed to (so no breaking quests or conflicts) then as soon as that vanilla dialogue finishes, your custom (sexy) dialogue will kick in (seamlessly with no break in between, as if it's linked to the final topicinfo of the vanilla dialogue), which can be anything you like it to be. 

 

This method does not modify any vanilla records whatsoever and can be done to add dialogues to as few (one) or as many NPCs (everyone in the game) as you like.

[alucrad90]

I found a workaround for the dialogue system and tried it with Vanilla Fudge. Essentially, you would have a parallel script (could be attached to anything but I use a PlayerRef quest alias) with a suitable On... event that can pick up the akSpeaker. In that event, you would ForceRefTo the akSpeaker to another quest alias, which has a ForceGreet package attached to it. Or multiple forcegreet packages, with conditions based on GetIsId or GetInFaction or whatever 

Then you go about and make a normal dialogue using the vanilla system (using scenes and topic infos). You can be as creative with building your dialogue tree as you want. One of the conditions for your greeting of this custom dialogue should GetIsAliasRef == whatever you name the quest alias that you forced your akSpeaker to. 

 

What would then happen is everytime you talk to an NPC that the ForceGreet package condition applies to, the vanilla dialogue would show up first exactly the way it's supposed to (so no breaking quests or conflicts) then as soon as that vanilla dialogue finishes, your custom (sexy) dialogue will kick in (seamlessly with no break in between, as if it's linked to the final topicinfo of the vanilla dialogue), which can be anything you like it to be. 

 

This method does not modify any vanilla records whatsoever and can be done to add dialogues to as few (one) or as many NPCs (everyone in the game) as you like.

 

There has already been a mod that could lead to the fifth choice: http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/11664/?

 

Acturally, it could trigger a script

 

I'm by no means that experienced with how dialogue works in Fallout 4 and the CK, but couldn't you possibly add the dialogue to one of the existing branches for a NPC? Or maybe even have a item that when equipped makes those topics appear in a new dialogue tree?

The problem is that every conversation in Fo4 has to have exactly four options. That's why we so many "yes/no" questions with "Yes"/"Yes"/"Sarcastic Yes"/"Maybe" as options. It needs there to be four responses in all cases.

 

In Skyrim, adding a new option was easy - any new dialog just got added on the end of existing topics. In fact it was all to easy to accidentally add dialogue to everyone in the game whether it made sense or not.

 

In Fallout 4 everything has to have exactly four choices, and because of that everything already has exactly four choices. So you can't just stick something on the end of the list like in Skyrim, and you can't just replace one choice because you don't know if what you're going to override might be essential in some contexts.

 

And so we situation where you have to wear the Ring of Foobar if you want to talk about FooBar related topics, because that lets you override standard dialogue with your own, but still lets you get back to the vanilla dialogues if you need them for something.

 

Basically, from a modding point of view, it's a mess.

 

 

Basically, the fifth option is not something impossible :http://www.nexusmods...t4/mods/11664/?

 

Bad news is it may not look like vanilla dialogue, and good news is you can now easily tell the different between vanilla dialogue and mod dialogue

[DocClox]

Basically, the fifth option is not something impossible :http://www.nexusmods...t4/mods/11664/?

 

 

Chinning Maxson, satisfying as it may be, is probably not a generally applicable solution to the problem.

 

That said, the Fo4 modding scene does seem to be picking up lately, at least on LL

[VAAlucard]

Hello there everybody,

 

Is it just my impression or did everybody stick witj Skyrim? I am still waiting for some great clothing, high heel system and some slick heels - tjey are nowhere to be found!

 

I mean yes there are some great clothing mods, but not a lot.

 

Not the heels though, do you know if anybody is even working on a HH system and meshes? Fallout 4 is sorely missing them!

 

It would be sad to never move past Skyrim...

It may be little while before FO4 receives anything of semblance to HH. Skyrim didn't even get HH until the game had been out for about 3-4 years. Just give it time.

[Carabosse]

 

What about dialogue that is not global.

 

 

Then it's not global, as you so helpfully pointed out.

 

 

But, is re-used in certain cases?

 

Then it's targeted but distinctly not global.

 

 

For example, shopkeepers. Buying equipment from them would seem to be tedious if it involved a unique quest-like conversation every time.

 

Barter menus are not global, not every npc within the game wishes to sell or buy from you, thank god. That subset of npc interfaces might be a necessary evil but I would rather some distinction between them, would you not?

[Carabosse]

 

**I have nothing but pure hatred for 'global' dialogues. They burden the players experience, unnecessarily. They make the assumption that every single character in the world will respond in the same way, or be open to the same lines of inquiry. And in a role playing game that is an absolute absurdity.

 

In Skyrim I have created lots of situational dialogue options that would be offered by certain types of NPCs when certain conditions were met. It's impossible to do this in FO4 without overriding their regular dialogue, or fighting with other mods doing the same. In the end, if you want to play it safe, you can't assign any custom dialogue to NPCs you didn't place in the mod yourself. Because if you reuse an existing NPC for your quest and another mod does the same, the result might be a deadlock, where the two custom dialogues override each other in a way that the quest can no longer be advanced.

 

Injecting dialogue into their existing trees can be used for a lot of things other than allowing the player to ask every single NPC in the game "Want sex, right now and here?" Implementing mods like SexLab Solutions, Amorous Adventures, or Radiant Prostitution, or some features of Deviously Cursed Loot with the stupid FO4 dialogue system is borderline infeasible and that's a shame.

 

 

 

Kind of what can happen anyway when mods compete over existing resources. You want an existing npc to be in a certain place a certain time, but so might some other mod. The main reason why I turned to exclusively using custom npcs. I would prefer to be sure, rather than leave it to chance.

 

I still insist that blanket dialogues are a bad idea and are a feature of bad mod design.

[pipdude]

 

 

What about dialogue that is not global.

 

 

Then it's not global, as you so helpfully pointed out.

 

 

But, is re-used in certain cases?

 

Then it's targeted but distinctly not global.

 

 

For example, shopkeepers. Buying equipment from them would seem to be tedious if it involved a unique quest-like conversation every time.

 

Barter menus are not global, not every npc within the game wishes to sell or buy from you, thank god. That subset of npc interfaces might be a necessary evil but I would rather some distinction between them, would you not?

 

 

Why get defensive? I was just trying to understand your point of view.

 

To answer your question, no. I don't think I would want them to be different. That would just create work for no gain that I can see. There is nothing compelling about how a person sells wasteland gear, imo.