Hey guys,

I'm adding a few new shouts and I had some questions. I've never in my entire time modding every dealt with spells or spell effects or creating custom ones, so I'm not sure how things work. I have a few questions about shouts:

1. How would I make a shout drain someone's life while giving it to the player? I know it's a spell effect I'd create, but I'm not sure what parameters to put where to make it drain the health of anything hit by the shout, but only while their alive. (So the player doesn't get health after the target is killed, etc)

2. Another shout needs to increase the players dmg output (By a %), and decrease the damage the player takes. I'm close to figuring these out, but not quite there. I assume there is a spell effect somewhere, or I can create one that alters these two things?

3. Which quest is player dialogue stored in? I can't find it yet. I know how to add my custom voice to my own shouts, just not where the player dialogue quest is so I can take a peak at it and poke around.

Again, I'm completely inexperienced with spells and their effects. I'm going to spend tonight trying to figure it all out, but if someone can nudge me in the right direction and save me some time that would be awesome!

Thanks,
AJV

1. If you make the MagicEffect a basic "DrainHealth" (see AbDamageHealth, or something similar) then add a SCRIPT to it, that applies the value drained back to the player. So long as you DO NOT tick "No Death Dispel" the Effect will self-cancel if/when the NPC dies. You might find it difficult to get the out and in to exactly equate, but I doubt it will be a worry for the amount involved?

2. Damage Output? Is there an Actor variable for this (or is it weapon based)??? But - assuming there is - Same deal, really. Have the Effect itself do one thing and an attached script do the other. (I would be interesting to know what Actor Variable you are trying to effect??)

3. If you take a look at MAGIC-EFFECT, "DragonVoiceStormCallEffect" you can see (right side, in the Sounds bit) where the "Voice Sound File" is assigned. What that is, is a Sound Descriptor (search for "VOCShoutFX", in all items ... you will find loads ... But I do not know where you find the things in the object tree!!). So you then should see how the "audio" files are added. But note: I have no idea if the sound is changed for different Actors ... but I am assuming it is not?!

(warning: searching on here says this is not straight-forward and I can't find a tutorial anyone wrote).

For the second one, you can make perks that do that, and since dynamically manipulating perks works fine for the player, you're good to go.

I've also never dealt with perks. Can you guys do a little more details, I'm still rather confused. Last nights efforts were mostly for not. xD

And H4vent, those sounds are the FX sounds for the shouts. (Like the thunder crack for Fus-Ro-Dah; or the firey explosion for Flame Breath) The actual shout vocals are added via quest in the Misc section, I'm just not 100% sure EXACTLY how to do it, so I need to know what quest player dialogue is stored in so I can take a peak.

All player dialogue is done via quest, so it must be in one somewhere.

AV, is this any good to you? http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/522532-skyrim-tutorials/page__view__findpost__p__4523418

Oh, yes that helps with the number to character system they have set up (3 for ii, etc), may save me some time. Thanks.

Found this, not sure it's what your needing, but it may help.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar1b5YjAimI

Ah, thanks, but that's how to replace a vanilla shout with new audio. (He just made Fus-Ro-Dah into Duke Nuken audio instead)

I just need to know how to do the spell effects, because I know literally nothing about them, and the quest containing the player dialogue for each race.

Ah, I had a feeling it wasn't quite right. My google-fu must be weakening.

Are you sure about this quest?

I don't do unpacked BSAs and wotnot, so I've no idea if you can see a directory tree behind the scenes where the audio is stored?

But I don't find any hint (and I did look!) of a Quest that Contains SHOUT Dialogue.

I have never paid attention, in game, to NPC Shout Vocalisation: Is it distinct for each NPC, or is shout always the same "voice"?

The "tutorial" linked a few posts above makes it sound (sorry, bad pun intended) as though just constructing the words with the correct "Dragon Language Identifiers" will produce the sounds? (I should note, that is one old tutorial, in comparison to the CKs age!)

(Note: I did do quite a bit of searching, last night in the CK, and no Quest pops out at me. I'm not saying you are wrong - like I say, what is in the audio files behind the scenes? - but I would have expected an obviously-titled quest in an obvious categorisation ... but I don't find one ...)



Spells / Perks: What do you need to know, AV? I can give you a couple of vanilla-MEs that do something along the lines of what you want ... let me know if that is any use?

And there's a tutorial on Perks, here (I have not done much at all with Perks, I tend to use Spells): http://www.youtu.be/ECryUnMljEU?hd=1 (and a bit more/different here: http://youtu.be/VaSiI5MvpSI?hd=1)

I'm actually having second thoughts about those specific shouts. I'm going to think about it some more and casually poke through the spell system and look for that dialogue.

I'll revive this thread when I figure things out if I need help at that point. Thanks for everyone so far guys.

Well I have had a stroke of amazing luck, or rather, I've figured out just about everything!

I have my new shouts set up, I looked at a vanilla word wall to figure how to link all that, and I found the shout voices and I know how to add custom ones! My two shouts ended up being rather basic, so based off vanilla effects I can figure them both out.

I am so doing a tutorial on this, mainly adding your own voice to custom shouts because I don't think that anyone seems to know how to do that.

TRIPLE EDIT: Okay I've basically gotten everything working after hours of messing around and looking at vanilla stuff!

DOUBLE EDIT: Okay, well I changed the application thing to Self instead of Contact, so that solves that. When I choose the effect in the Spell, do I need to pick a magnitude? I know the duration is how long the effect (And thusly the shout) will last, but is the magnitude required?

----------------------------------------------

Okay I need a tadbit of help on this. So I'm trying to make my shout increase damage output, while decreasing damage taken.

I've looked at the GhosthalfDmg and ExtraDmg effects and spells and sort of gone off those. I have a ModIncomingDamage * Multiply perk, that is applied by a Magic Effect. That Magic Effect should be applied by a Spell, and the Spell selected in the Shout. However, when I try to apply the effect in the Spell, it's not in the list. Does the Effect have to be a certain type or something?

Again I'm completely new to the whole spell/effect area of the CK, so any help is appreciated.

EDIT: I just noticed that those ghost things apply the effect to the ghosts when you hit them, so I may be doing this totally wrong... Can I just tell it to apply the perks to the player instead of what they hit?

Alright everything is peachy except for one minor thing. The damage shout has a spell with two effects on it. One that reduces incoming dmg, and one that increases outgoing dmg. They both have descriptions, but both effects in the Active Effects menu display the Defensive effect description. It displays properly, just both of them do it, instead of them each saying their respective description.

How can I fix this? Other than this (And balancing, obviously) the shouts are working flawlessly.

I appreciate all the help so far!

I'll also add that when I click "Test Concatenated Effect Descriptions" in the spell window it properly displays both effects together. Just not ingame, each seperate effect has the same description.

I swapped the effect order in the spell, but it still says the same thing for both... No ideas from anyone?

I'm not going to be able to test until later AV.

But, can you find a similar vanilla shout (one with two effects)?

If you can, does it work with the descriptions in game?

I'm going to bet it does not - if there is such a vanilla shout - and that you discovered another feature