Looking for guides or references for modding/scripting

[Alva]

Well, I'm still trying to learn to mod stuff and have followed most of the tutorials / read a lot of the guides and done quite a lot of googling - and I'm still very much at rock bottom trying to claw my way up.

 

So - now I'm turning to the forum in the hope that some can help me a step further.

Basically - I'm trying to add some functionality to followers to make them a bit more intractable and able to react to events and also initialize their own events (going to lead to quests).
So the dream would be I could turn a follower from Skyrim into more like a follower from - say Dragon Age Origins, so I need them to be able to start talking to the PC themselves and not wait for the PC to talk to them - plus later, get the follower to talk to other NPCs.

 

The hurdle right now and where I need most help is how to get the follower to actually intialize dialogue (with player and/or other NPCs) on their own.

I can simply not find any reference any where on how I can - after some random time - get my follower to start dialogue with the player.

Basically - it's the functionality when a normal NPC is triggered with a quest and walks up to the player and 'forcegreet' or what the term is. But as said - I cannot find anywhere where it's described with followers.

I can do some rudimentary/low quest, dialogue and script work - but I'm missing this step to move forward with my idea.
From what I've found so far, it might be something which needs to be done via "scenes" in the tool kit, or maybe multiple sub-quests and dialogue etc.....

 

Anybody that can follow my rambling and has any advice or hopefully some (non-YouTube*) guide about how to actually get your follower to start something

 

Help please, and thanks in advance for any.

 

 

* It's not that I dislike YouTube as such, but for scripting/modding/programming guides it's really awful, because a) it's rarely scripted so it's a lot of random rambling and b ) you cannot easily get an overview of parts and c) moving back and forth is rather difficult.

[Veladarius]

There are a few ways to do a forcegreet, typically it is done either by the Dialogue or it can be initiated by a Scene.

 

For Normal Dialogue once you make your topic you can change it from Custom to Forcegreet  using the Subtype dropdown just above the Topics list. In the NPC dialogue, set the conditions so only the npc's you want speaking will use it along with whatever will trigger it (quest is at a stage or something like that). As long as the conditions are met they will use the forcegreet dialogue or it can be set so it is only said once.

 

For a Scene Forcegreet it is more complicated but is started by a script.

[Alva]

Hi - thanks for the reply. I was thinking, based on earlier search, that Forcegreet might be the (easier) way to begin with.

 

The issue is that I cannot seem to set up a correct Forcegreet where my follower (Lydia in my current test) will initiate a dialogue with the Player.

 

I have made a Dialogue view for this specific "Lydia talk to Player" test, which only contains a Response text (empty topic text and prompt) . I've set condition to a stage of my quest and GetIsID on subject is set to HousecarlWhiterun (which should be Lydia).
Then I've set dialogue Subtype to Forcegreet.

 

However this dialogue view is still player intialized, so when I talk to Lydia I see a "Forcegreet" topic which prompts my response text.

 

So I'm still missing something for this Forcegreet thing to work correctly - if it is even possible to have follower start a conversation with player.

(It's frustrating that documentation and references for the creation kit are so sporadic - it really makes me appreciate all the more the mods that people can put out)

[Veladarius]

Set the dialogue branch to Blocking so that it bypasses the players dialogue and goes directly to hers. She should say the lines when you are close enough but I am not sure if it will start the dialogue or not, I usually use them with them marked as Goodbye so it is more of a passing comment.

[begalund]

I don't know if this helps out any, but there is a companion mod on the nexus you might be able to rip apart that seems to do exactly what you are looking for.  Viconia DeVir.  http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/28941/?  The author of that mod included a number of scripted conversations where Viconia would initiate dialogue with the PC - typically once per day as I remember.  He even checked to make sure that the PC wasn't in combat or otherwise already involved in a conversation with another NPC (cause that got annoying real fast).  If nothing else, you could always track him down and ask him what he did.

[Alva]

I don't know if this helps out any, but there is a companion mod on the nexus you might be able to rip apart that seems to do exactly what you are looking for.  Viconia DeVir.  http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/28941/?  The author of that mod included a number of scripted conversations where Viconia would initiate dialogue with the PC - typically once per day as I remember.  He even checked to make sure that the PC wasn't in combat or otherwise already involved in a conversation with another NPC (cause that got annoying real fast).  If nothing else, you could always track him down and ask him what he did.

 

Nice - will try to peek inside that one for inspiration - 'cause it sounds very much like what I'm after. Might even learn some more advanced techniques will at it.

Edit: Looking at the description it says that the NPC will no longer interrupt .... *arrgh*

Will try to look at A.I. ForceGreet package where I decided to look through one of the YouTube guides (and yeah, poorly structured and difficult to 'scroll' through, meaning it took about an hour) and it seems it might be possible to do what I wanna do through an A.I. package - maybe.... couldn't find information about how it would work when the NPC is a follower vs. all the settings on a forcegreet package.

 

Anyways - thanks for the attempt to help me on.

[begalund]

I would still try ripping the mod apart and pawing through it.  While it has the no longer interrupt flag in the description, I'm betting that was thrown in as a "fix" because the mod does so damn many interruptions (90 something days worth one after another).  In your case you want the NPC to interrupt, even if it is rude.  Most of the mods on this site are far less concerned about quest completion and more about role-play, so having that "fix" not be present wouldn't be a problem.

 

And if you don't gain much out of it, at least it wasn't a lot of wasted time.  Unlike my several days worth of trying to fix 3ds max/mudbox and learning how to paint textures for the first time.  *sigh*

[Alva]

Yeah - it's not wasted as I'm picking up tidbits here and there which hopefully will result in enough understanding that the idea can come to life.

And yes, I know it's "rude" (or maybe more "could be annoying") to have the NPC interrupt the player, but I feel it's an important tool if you want your follower to be able to react and interact with the player instead of just being a thin cardboard figure following you around. And that reaction/interaction should be more than just "ask me" or "flavour floating" text.

In essence I'm getting inspiration from the older games, like Baldur's Gate and Gate 2 while wanting to craft a little more personality like Dragon Age (ambitions yes, but well - goals are nice to have .... and maybe the skills will be transferable to the next non-online instalment)

I might - once I figure out the next few steps turn to making my own follower (would likely be  a lot easier for testing/implementing the idea) - so digging around a mod like this is good inspiration because clearly a lot of time has gone into replicating the personality of the NPC from the original game.

 

But for now, I'm going to try seeing if I can (ab)use the A.I. packages - which seems like the best bet right now.

[Alva]

Hmmm - I can't seem to get my Forcegreet package to trigger unless I basically dublicate Lydias 'hello' package..... annoying.

Back to square one.