Has anyone here made a companion mod before?

What did you start with? Dialogue? Inventory Management? Did you use a tutorial or did you wing it and figure it out in the Construction Set?

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1502430-wip-mwse-companions-template/ was IMO last state-of-the-art development thread, sadly probably on hiatus/no download available/MWSE based so not for noobs if you want to tweak it, but you can get some ideas about problems/history etc. from thread

As you are starting, in practice I'd try using http://download.fliggerty.com/download--112 as foundation

Don't have a lot of time, so I'll just list my major tips. Meant for big dialogue-heavy companions w/ personalities.

1. Look at other companion mods -- their scripts, their dialogue (how do they structure their greetings? what variables / filters do they use?), their features. Look at what they implement, and how. You can copy, decide you don't need that feature, decide on an alternative way etc., but it's really helpful. I suggest looking at Julan and Stuporstar's Uvirith's Legacy companions (eg. Sara), maybe also Jac's Jasmine. (For non-MWSE companions)


2. Plan what sort of dialogue organisation you want before you actually start writing. ESPECIALLY variables. Eg. Julan has an alcohol-related variable which practically all dialogue is filtered through, so he says different things for all sorts of topics depending on drunk or not. This sort of function requires that you plan beforehand (or spend HOURS adding filters to dozens of dialogue entries). Greetings also tend to get cluttered easily -- I organise mine by blocks -- the lowest of the lot are general "Hey, how's it going?" type stuff, then come weather responses, general town cells, specific cells, quest-related, etc. Sounds simple, but if you go into Random100 filtering to give your companion a more organic "doesn't say the same thing 10x in a row" feel, it can get complicated.


3. Make notes on the companion's personality and speech mannerisms in a document somewhere (eg. speech rules, word choices etc. like "she prefers saying 'alright' to 'okay'") and read over this regularly. This helps to make sure you're writing your companion's dialogue consistently -- especially important if you're working on long time scales where you can start to forget how your character talks.

Can't think of anything else right now. It can be really rewarding making someone who feels like a real person. Good luck!