(Couldn't resist the Specials reference for the title )

I'm in the process of building a town. At the moment I'm starting to populate it with NPC's. My problem is, other then saying a random line when the player walks past, the place is really quiet.

I have two questions at this point:

1. What conditions have to be met for NPC's to randomly talk to each other using the vanilla discussions?
2. Any other tips and tricks for adding a lived-in atmosphere to a town?

I'm at work at the moment otherwise I would've had a dig around the ck a bit myself before asking.

- Hypno

Baaaaaaannnnds don't play no more ...
(Too much fighting on de dance floor!)

Damn, I'm going to have that going round my head all day now

On topic, vanilla towns use a lot of single scene quests. So the discussion with Adrienne about forging swords for the legion is one. So is the "Battle Born! Give me your money" scene.

You can trigger them from activators or from stages in other quests, or have the story manager select one at random whenever the PC arrives in your location.

Cheers mate, I'll have a look at them when I get home.

Anybody else got any ideas? Are there any ambient audio tracks I can play (and if yes, how? )

- Hypno

If you double click on a location in the Cell view window, you can set its music type and acoustic space (you may have to click on another location and back again, to make it editable). You can make a new music type and assign just the tracks you want to it.

Thanks ingenue. I've got another one of those long late shifts today. I'll have a look when I get home. Just trying to use this time productively by figuring out a plan of action so I know roughly what I'm doing for when I get back

- Hypno

On NPC Packages there is a Flag (or a checkbox in the Package setup bits and pieces ... it's in one of the two places in the Package design, anyway!) that says "Allow Random Conversations" and/or Allow Random Greetings

You can also tie that to StoryManager (Activate NPC - or Hello Event, or something like that - is I think the event in SM) and tie that event to a number of Scenes in a MyTownQuest that you setup just for this purpose.

In that same quest, you can also have Dialogue-based conversations that trigger on certain events (as others have said, player near, stage of foriegn quest, time of day, day of week and so on). Either using wide criteria - so almost any one in town can say a line ("I heard Helgen was attacked by Dragons!") - or tight criteria that mean a particular type/class of NPC ("... until I took an arrow in the knee") or even two particular NPCs (like the Adrienne one, mentioned above by Doc)

Have a Look at the Khajiit Caravan Quests ... they have a set of random "scenes" that allow them to be active - with one another - when the player is in range.

The Execution Scene in Solitude is also worth a look (if you can find it, I forget which Quest it belongs to). And there's a beautifully designed little Scene the first time you enter Winterhold (between husband and wife, outside the pub) ... coc from Main Menu to Winterhold to see that one (best example of an apparently random conversation that the player walks into that I can think of, in the vanilla game ... well worth a look)



Basically:

• Think of each NPC you place in town as a character
  
• Think of a daily routine for him/her
  
  • What is their job? Where do they work?
    
  • Where do they live/sleep?
    
  • Be even more sixy and vary that by Day or by Month (Saturday's off are spent hunting ... or in the pub!)
• Think of some other NPCs they might visit (maybe they are related, and visit every day/evening?)
  
  • Do they have a spouse?
    
  • Do they have kids?
    
  • Cousins, aunts, uncles, brothers/sisters?
    
  • When do they visit these ^^^^^^^ people? Do these people visit them?
    
  • Do any of these people live in other towns? Or out in the country? (better get them a horse to go there on)
• Maybe they have a favourite shop (if they "haven't all been closed down" ) - or the Inn - that they go to hang out in at lunch?
  
• Think of some stories they may tell, or events happening in their life - and give them a couple of lines to say about it (triggered when they meet any - or a specific list of other - NPCs)
  
• If they are very special, make them part of scenes ... that trigger when you know the player is "watching" ... when the scene triggers, other actors will make their way over to join in (if you set it up like that)
  
• Use the PLAYER when you can (but not all of the time!) ... It's very nice to have the player wander into town and someone walk up to say, "Hey, you're new around here", or "Have you seen my little dog, Toto?" (and start quest ...)

All of that adds life to your place. And the more in-depth you are prepared to go (this takes hours and hours to do well) the more life-like it appears.

All of a sudden you walk into a town and it's suddenly like a real town, with people out and about, getting on with their own lives.

(This is my very favourite part of the CK ... You can - well I can - have days and days of fun making up stuff that plays like an episode of a soap opera )

A final tip: Have something atmospheric right by the gates ... the blacksmith shop in Whiterun is a brilliant example. As soon as you walk through the gates (at the right time of day) you get the hammer on anvil sounds (or the furnace, or the whet-wheel) and that helps it feel like a "real place, with life" the moment the player enters.

Note that many DefaultPackages help you out a lot ... you don't need to make every package yourself!





Yes ... I should have bought The Sims!!

Thank you very much H4vent. Highly informative post. Cheers for going into so much detail.

At the moment the majority of the NPC's are randomly generated named "local" with various sandbox packages. At a later date, I might end up making them all unique (and therefore opening up more specific convo possibilities) but because the town is only a small-ish part of a larger quest mod (and definitely not its main focus!) I think this'll serve for the time being at least.

With that in mind, I think the first thing I'm going to try to tackle is including the more generic vanilla conversations ("a dragon attacked Helgen" etc) and then go from there

Thanks again to everybody who has offered help

- Hypno

(BTW I wish I never picked that damn topic title, that songs been floating around my brain for 24hours and counting! )

If you want the "generics" just check your voice types. They basically work just on those. You'll get some life ... but if I'm honest, not a lot. I started with that for my PlayTown and it still seemed lifeless.

But I appreciate what you are saying, if it is just a "village" which is there to help you start a quest or two, making it "real" is going to be way too much work for you to take on. You could make a few "generic scenes" - a fight outside a pub, a bard to listen to, worshipping at a temple ... stuff like that - And fill the aliases with the randoms you created (in a random fashion). At least that way you'll get a few events to provide a bit of life on the couple of times the player visits. That sort of thing is fairly quick to do (not the same as quick, though!).


(And count yourself lucky ... I could have written 59 pages on my fav subject )