Hello folks!

While I'm working on learning more about Skyrim modding and the Creation Kit, I was hit with an idea that I am very determined to implement.

I have noticed that there hasn't been many new follower mods for Skyrim yet, and I don't just want to make another robotic follower NPC. Alongside my work with a http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1348797-wip-scrawny-body-type/, I'm going to be working on a new companion for Skyrim that has personality. I'm anticipating there's going to be a lot of female companions in the future, so I am going to create a male companion with depth of personality and character.

The companion is NOT intended to be a good warrior and is NOT intended to heavily assist the player in battle. I feel like other people will already accomplish a unique, powerful companion for these situations, so my intent with the mod is to take things in a more story-driven direction. The companion will be a follower with the specific purpose of being an interesting character to interact with, implementing a dynamic personality and quests.

I have the resources and ability to fully voice-act the character, and I will devote the time and attention necessary to creating a believable, unusual character to interact with.

Here are details on the character. If you're planning on playing this mod some day, I wouldn't suggest reading ahead as I'm going to spoil the character. Part of the fun is discovering the character's various quirks and issues. But for those who are wanting to read about what my ideas are and present opinions, I have a few questions for anyone experienced in the community.
1. Are the particular functions that I present possible with Skyrim's scripting?
2. Do these concepts strike you as unique and entertaining? Or do you personally believe that they are too much of a hinderance to gameplay to be enjoyed?

The concept is as follows.

Kai is a Breton Mage that the player discovers one day in a bit of a predicament. He won't say what, exactly, but he pleads for the player to help him and become his bodyguard. He doesn't have a lot of money but he swears he will make it worth the player's while by providing the only service he is capable of providing: healing.
Perhaps it seems like a good idea at the time. Recruiting Kai will result in him following the player around and assisting them in simple healing tasks, providing alchemical potions when given the resources to do so, and attempting to provide some in-combat healing through use of magic.

However, there's a few issues that the player will recognize not long after having the wimpy mage tag along: he won't fight. He never deals a single scratch on an enemy. In fact, quite the opposite. Sometimes, he begs for the player not to kill an opponent, especially if the opponent flees. Not only this, but if he's in the position to, he will attempt to heal the enemy.
The player might get fed up with Kai's annoyingly pacifistic nature, can abandon him, or chide him for his stupidity, or perhaps agree with his philosophy. Kai's actions will open the doors to multiple dialog options discussing his philosophy, as well as the player's own philosophy on concepts such as the value of life, views on afterlife, and morality in general.

Through the player's adventures with Kai, they will discover more about his dark history, which will open up a new questline to experience concerning the character's past- and it will interweve player decisions and determine Kai's fate.

Here are some details on the character. These are what I'm planning for the mod and will definitely implement.

In-Depth Persona
Kai is intended to be well-developed, with a strongly established personality. He is a character concept that I have been working on for the past several years.
-He is not a shallow character. Expect deep conversations about questions of ultimate concern: morality, the afterlife, the value of life, the reason for suffering, etc.
-His beliefs will affect his actions. He will also judge the player for theirs. Do not expect Kai to follow you unquestionably.
-He will be romancable to female players only. My personal opinions on the subject of homosixuality are irrelevant to this decision: this is just how Kai is.

Lots of Voiced Dialogue
Kai will talk. A lot. He will comment on things in every vanilla area. He will comment on choices the player makes in quests. He will make comments during battle.
I have a voice actor who's ready and happily willing to voice Kai's dialogue. I'm blessed to have a boyfriend who's a good actor, with a tone similar to Kai's character.
-There will be hundreds of unique voiced lines of dialogue.
-Comments will work with vanilla content.

Commands
Kai will use basic comapnion commands: Follow, Wait, and View Inventory. He can be told where the player's house is, or a location that he will travel to when the player decides to part ways with him.
He will also have more unique options: Alchemy and Conversation. With Alchemy, the player can ask him to craft high-quality potions if he is provided with the ingredients. Conversation will open up a list of topics to discuss with Kai, that are unlocked while traveling with him. This is where the player can discuss Kai's many viewpoints or issues that have come up during your adventures.

Unique Functionality Never Done Before
Kai is not intended to be a companion that is useful in battle. He is intended to be a unique character. He will have unique in-combat functionality that has, to my knowledge, never been scripted before.
-Alongside healing the player during combat, he may sometimes heal humanoid enemies during combat.
-He will lose respect for the player if the player kills a fleeing enemy.
-He will only defend himself when absolutely necessary and with no weapons.

Quests

Lastly, Kai will have his own questline, and what happens along it will determine his fate. Choices the player makes will drastically affect the outcome of the quests. I won't detail much else here, for I'll spoil my ideas.



Thanks for reading and please let me know your opinions on this idea. Does it sound fun and entertaining? Would you download it, if I finished it?

A little bit of an update:

I already have the NPC created and many lines of dialogue implemented and recorded. I've tested him in-game and he talks normally, using the new voice-acted dialog lines. There are a few basic things I need to figure out before I will make much real progress. Firstly, I need a bit of help in a few particular areas.

1. While the character has unique dialog options associated with beginning his quest, he still has many generic greetings that I want to change. I want the character to be a fully realized unique character, which means no generic "hello" dialog. Everything, from greetings, idle pvssyr, and combat sounds will be replaced with the character's unique voice.
I can't figure out how to change the generic dialog topics. I'm afraid I might break something, since they aren't associated with a unique quest ID like the previous dialog topics I created following http://www.creationkit.com/Bethesda_Tutorial_DialogueDoes anyone know what I'm talking about and is there any solution?

2. I have yet to figure out how to have it so that when the player discusses this with the character, the quest will advance and he will become a follower/companion. Does anyone know how I can go about this, or am I asking too broad of a question? Is there any tutorials out there about creating a follower NPC with basic stay/go commands? I've searched around but I've come up with nothing.

Hi, your companion is very interesting. I would download such a deep character to give a little more life to Skyrim.

Will you implement a "wait" Option? It could be a problem to dive with him into a full dungeon and he is healing a few enemies , who will attack you until they are healed...

Of course. Kai's more of a hazard in combat than he is a help, so the player will have every option to tell him to stay somewhere else.
The character's only purpose is to provide a unique storyline and a springboard to dynamic, deep-thinking conversations.

Thanks for your interest in the mod. He already has multiple lines of voice acting and my primary concern right now is to continue to make him vocally unique before I try and dive into properly setting him up as a follower NPC.

1. Yep--it's actually covered in http://www.creationkit.com/Bethesda_Tutorial_Quest_Loose_Ends, but basically the hello and goodbye dialogue is set in the Misc tab of your quest. I believe the Combat tab covers combat grunts and exclamations and such.

2. When the player chooses the dialogue that makes your NPC a follower, you'll 1) use SetPlayerTeammate() on them and then 2) start a new quest with a reference alias pointing to your NPC, putting that NPC in the PlayerFollowerFaction (I think is what it is called--don't have the CK open at the moment) and assigning them an AI package that makes them follow the player (again, there is a default one that you can probably use to start with, called something like PlayerFollowerPackage). When you want the NPC to stop following the player, you stop the quest and turn off the playerteammate functionality. Take a look at the script of the default follower quest in the Generic quest subsection to see an example of how it works.

I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out how to make it so that Kai becomes a follower when the player chooses that particular dialog option. I don't know how or where to apply the package to. For some reason the editor won't allow me to add a Follower Package directly to his AI. It allows me to add scripts such as eating and sleeping, but not follower packages. Secondly, I don't know how to make him become a follower when the quest advances to, say, stage 10. Also, how do I set his faction to PlayerFollowerFaction when the quest advances? Does he need to be in this faction directly from the start or can it somehow be added to him after a quest advances?

Has anyone made a follower NPC before and could someone perhaps give me detailed instructions on which steps to take? Sorry for being a complete noob, but there's no tutorial on this that I can see.

Essentially, after a brief dialog with the player, if the player chooses the option "come with me" he will say something along the lines of "thank you" and he's supposed to start following the player from then on, and be opened up to a new list of persistent dialogs such as "come" and "stay" and "Let me see your inventory" and "can you make me a potion" and "tell me about yourself". The last one would be the hardest to deal with because he will say something different depending on how long he's been with the player and how much time they've spent actually traveling with him.

Like I wrote previously, the trick is that when you want to trigger him to become a follower, you start a new quest, that overlays the follower functionality on top of your NPC. As you've seen, it doesn't make much sense to apply the follower AI packages directly to the NPC--but what you can do is apply it to them while they are a reference alias. So when that new quest is running, when the reference alias applies to him, the follower package does, too.

Here's a snippet of my code, part of a function that gets called when the player chooses the "follow me" dialogue choice:

Actor FollowerActor = rCoreFollower.GetActorRef()If FollowerActor.GetRelationshipRank(Game.GetPlayer()) < 3 && FollowerActor.GetRelationshipRank(Game.GetPlayer()) >= 0	FollowerActor.SetRelationshipRank(Game.GetPlayer(), 3)EndIfFollowerActor.SetPlayerTeammate()FollowerActor.SetAv("WaitingForPlayer", 0)FollowerActor.SetNotShowOnStealthMeter(true)qFollowPackageQuest.Start()

So it's that last line that triggers the quest that overlays the follower functionality.

Similarly, when the player asks the NPC to stop following, I execute a function that looks something like this:

Actor FollowerActor = rCoreFollower.GetActorRef()FollowerActor.SetAv("WaitingForPlayer", 0)FollowerActor.SetPlayerTeammate(false)FollowerActor.SetNotShowOnStealthMeter(false)qFollowPackageQuest.Stop()

The actual code is a little more complex; if you wait about a week, I figure I'll upload my source code to someplace like Google code, as a modders resource. I want to see many more fleshed-out followers, and while I don't imagine my code is the best--I'm very new to this--it may at least provide a starting point, that can be improved upon by the community for everyone's benefit.

Thank you for your time and in-depth response. I'm excited to continue working on my follower, but unfortunately I'm rather puzzled still.

Is the code you wrote a script that's added directly to the alias, or is this an entirely new follower script you wrote?

I think I've got it figured out, but I'm not sure. I at least figured out what an "alias" was to begin with and now I'm attempting to modify this alias... I'd hate to ask for hand-holding but right now I'm just trying my best to decipher what you mean and do it in the CK.

Basically what I did was after the quest that involves speaking to Kai, after the player choses the option for him to follow, it completes the quest and starts a new one, the "follow" quest. I opened up the Follow quest, went to the Quest Aliases tab and did this::

I checked "unique actor" and set it to my NPC. I added "PlayerFollowFaction" and "CurrentFollowerFaction" to the factions list and added the generic "PlayerFollowerPackage" to his package.

For a basic follower, is this all I need to do for now, or have I misunderstood something? Where do the scripts you provided come in to play? Are they unique and unassociated with the PlayerFollowerPackage?
And will the game automatically apply this to the character upon this quest being started?

If I did things correctly and didn't misunderstand, next comes making sure I get his dialogues such as "stay" and "come" and what not...

Alright, I went ahead and tested what I did in-game. Amazingly, after I went through his dialog string and recruited him, he started to follow me around! However, he wouldn't follow me outside the city gates of Whiterun (where I placed him), and I can't speak to him yet. Still, I feel like I'm getting somewhere.
EDIT: Also, I just realized that he follows me *before* I actually recruit him... I just never realized before because I ran up and talked to him as soon as I found him, but yeah, he starts following me from the get-go. XP

My next concern is replacing all his dialogs with unique lines involving hellos and goodbyes, and implimenting commands when you speak to him. (As well as fixing his inablity to follow me outside.)

Quick question: What is the diffrentiation between an NPC saying something to the player when they are NOT activated: such as, when an NPC looks at you and says "hello" before they are activated?
I would like to add dialogs for Kai looking at the player and saying something to them before he's actually activated. Would these still be added in the "hello" section of his dialog?

Let me know what you think, and thanks for your help.

I still haven't quite figured out where to go from here. Sorry if it's not a good thing to bump forums, but I have yet to figure out where to go next in my mod, concerning my questions above. I actually tried to fix the fact that he followed me right from the get-go, and now he doesn't follow me at all after I run through the initial dialogs... I don't really know what I'm doing wrong.
I'm actually pretty close to asking someone if they wouldn't mind me sending them the ESP and them fixing it up themselves and then telling me how they did it so I can understand and do it again in the future... Does this sound reasonable? I'd hate to ask someone to do my own work but if someone teaches me how to fish, I can feed myself... if that makes any sense XD

Well, i'm afraid i can't help you with anything, but i wanted to say this is an excellent idea. The Elder Scrolls lack and need deeper characters, and i'll be happy to go on adventures with such an unusual companion.
I hope you'll be able to achieve all this as intended !

You need to post code, or screenshots of what you have setup in the CK, or ideally both, if you want help. There's just not any way to tell why things are happening based on your brief descriptions. Maybe they're happening because of the way you defined his faction memberships. Maybe they're happening because of code you added. (shrug) Who knows: we don't know what you added or changed.

Sorry for my silence for so long on this project. I'm still interested in it, it's just that I'm having trouble getting past this road block and actually fixing this character.
Since I'm a complete newbie I'm having difficulty figuring it all out. I would hate to ask someone to look at it for me, but for anyone who is interested in helping me find out what I'm doing wrong (as I detailed a few posts above), I've uploaded the WIP of the data file here. I didn't include any of the voice acting, this is just the ESP.
http://www.4shared.com/file/_ST1nJ_F/Companion_Kai.html?
For those who don't want to bother with downloading the ESP I'm getting up some screenshots ASAP- I don't have the time to presently, I'll do it in a few hours.

I just need a nudge in the right direction- as of now he fails to properly start following the player after the proper dialog option is selected.

Once I get him to actually start following I can figure out more into his specific scripting and how to implement basic follower commands.

In addition to the .esp file, seeing the scripts for when he's supposed to start following the player would be useful. That's probably where the immediate problem is. I'm guessing that after the player agrees to let him follow, you must be starting the follow quest which assigns the alias follow packages to him?

I'm about to try doing basically the same thing, and when i have some detailed steps here I'll let you know.

The most important thing is to not be discouraged. You should expect to make a couple dozen quests in a mod, test some things out, and then throw that mod away and start from scratch.
The CK is very advanced, but like all video game development tools it is by no means user-friendly. The thing was designed by super smart people all working together for a very specific purpose, and you're coming into this blind by yourself with only the help of other online people blindly trying to figure out why these super smart people programmed this tool to behave the way it does.

Being a programmer myself who is experienced with video game development, it still took me a couple weeks before I really grasped all the ins and outs of quests, papyrus scripts, and their aliases.

So keep your chin up, keep reading wiki's and forums, don't give up, and you will eventually triumph.

Okay, after reviewing what dreamking said, i was able to figure this out. Aeolian, he is using some advanced scripting knowledge, it involves attaching scripts to dialogue, which is a pernicious finicky process, and if you're not both familiar with scripting and the CK it can be very intimidating for a beginner. There is a thread regarding attaching scripts to dialog that i had to follow to figure this out:
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1363478-attach-a-script-to-a-dialogue/page__p__20571604#entry20571604

You might want to review that. I'll try to walk you through this process so you and other's can hopefully have something reliable to go by. This example is bare-bones and doesn't take into account relationship status or any other cruft.

Basically like dreamking said, you're going to need two quests. for the purpose of this post we will call them 'PotentialFollowerQuest' and 'PlayerFollowerQuest'.
Go ahead and create 'PlayerFollowerQuest' and hit OK. we basically just need a shell quest at this point, we'll come back to this one later

Now create the second one, 'PotentialFollowerQuest' you probably want to select 'Start Game Enabled' in the quest data tab. Then create an alias to your unique actor.
Then, in 'Dialog Views' you'll want to create a new topic with text like
'(Player) Follow me, I need your help'
'(NPC) Sure thing, whatever you say!'

Now pay attention to this part cause it's really important:
1) In the Topic Info Dialog, in the scripts section select the 'End' papyrus fragment and in that edit box put a single ';' (semicolon)
2) Hit the compile button
3) click the 'ok' button
4) click the 'ok' button
5) click the 'ok' button to close the quest

Now do that exact same thing, except this time you're going to create a topic branch with text that is like:
'(Player) It's time for us to part ways'
'(NPC) Fine then, I don't like you anyways!'

Don't forget to put the semicolon, compile, and then hit 'ok' a bunch of time until the quest is closed

It's probably a good idea to save at this point.
1) Now, open the PotentialFollowerQuest again, this time select the 'Scripts' tab at the top
2) Add a new script and call it 'StartFollowingAfterDialog' make sure it extends quest
now right-click the script and select 'edit source' and then paste this code in:

Scriptname StartFollowingAfterDialog extends QuestQuest Property PlayerFollowerQuest  AutoFunction StartFollowerQuest(Actor Follower)   ;start following   Follower.SetPlayerTeammate()   Follower.SetAv("WaitingForPlayer", 0)   Follower.SetNotShowOnStealthMeter(true)	  ;start the following quest  PlayerFollowerQuest.Start()EndFunctionFunction StopFollowerQuest(Actor Follower)   ;stop following   Follower.SetAv("WaitingForPlayer", 0)   Follower.SetPlayerTeammate(false)   Follower.SetNotShowOnStealthMeter(false)   ;stop the following quest   PlayerFollowerQuest.Stop()EndFunction

Now go back to the 'Dialogue Views' tab and select your 'Follow me, I need your help!' topic
This part is also tricky, there is a lot of closing the quest dialog and re-opening, it seem superfluous, but it's really important so read carefully
1) In the 'Scripts' section under 'Script Name' you should see your papyrus fragment named something like 'TIF__0100FD1D'
2) right-click this script and select 'Edit Source'
3) At the very end of all the code, copy paste this in:

StartFollowingAfterDialog property pStartFollowingAfterDialog auto

4) now click 'ok'
5) now click 'ok'
6) now click 'ok' to close the quest dialog
7) re-open the quest 'PotentialFollowerQuest'
8) re-open your 'Follow me, I need your help!' topic
9) in the script section, select your 'TIF_0100FD1D' and click the 'properties' button
10) select the property 'pStartFollowingAfterDialog' and edit the value to be 'PotentialFollowerQuest'
11) In the scripts section, under the 'End:' papyrus fragment paste this code in:

pStartFollowingAfterDialog.StartFollowerQuest(akSpeaker)

Now, you need to follow those exact same instructions again, but this time for your 'It's time for us to part ways' dialogue. Only this time, your papyrus fragment is going to be:

pStartFollowingAfterDialog.StopFollowerQuest(akSpeaker)

Now click 'ok' a bunch of times to close out the PotentialFollowerQuest quest, we're done with that one for now, *whew!*
Now for the PlayerFollowerQuest...
1) In this quest, go ahead and create an alias to your unique actor, and make sure to select 'allow reserved' (this is because the PotentialFollowerQuest was 'start game enabled' and so has reserved a reference to your follower)
2) For this Alias, add the package 'PlayerFollowerPackage' under 'Alias Package Data'
3) Under 'Alias Factions' add 'PlayerFollowerFaction'


Now your are done! YAAY! Now when you walk up to your NPC and say 'Follow Me!' he should follow you just like a normal follower
You'll notice though that when you test this in game, you'll see both the 'Follow Me' and 'It's time to part ways' dialogue at the same time. You can fix this by adding conditions to your dialogue topic, like "GetInFaction PlayerFollowerFaction==0' for the 'Follow Me' dialogue and 'GetInFaction PlayerFollowerFaction==1' for the 'Leave me alone' dialogue.

Well, its really late here and I am very tired so I really hope that made sense and I hope this post helps others out too

I hope you get the problems all ironed out, it seems like it will be a very interesting companion mod.

Just want to say thank you Jediborg for that detailed tutorial. I am bookmarking this thread, it will come in very useful soon

- Hypno

This is a really great thread, thank you! I have run into a problem, though. When I get to this part:

It won't compile and I get this error:

Starting 1 compile threads for 1 files...Compiling "TIF__02000D6A"...c:\program files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\skyrim\Data\Scripts\Source\temp\TIF__02000D6A.psc(15,35): unknown type startfollowingafterdialogNo output generated for TIF__02000D6A, compilation failed.Batch compile of 1 files finished. 0 succeeded, 1 failed.Failed on TIF__02000D6A

What am I doing wrong?

Do you have a script named "StartFollowingAfterDialog"?

Actually, though, while jediborg's instructions are excellent, there's a simpler way to do this part. Instead of steps 3-11, where you setup your script as a property, you can instead just use this code in the "end" Papyrus fragment for the "follow me" dialogue:

(GetOwningQuest() as StartFollowingAfterDialog).StartFollowerQuest(akSpeaker)

Likewise for the "stop following me" dialogue, the end fragment can just be:

(GetOwningQuest() as StartFollowingAfterDialog).StopFollowerQuest(akSpeaker)

Of course, "StartFollowingAfterDialog" needs to be whatever you've named your script that's attached to this quest.

*Applauds Dreamking*
Well done, your approach is much easier. I have to admit I wrote the instructions back when I wasn't quite sure what exactly properties were or what i was doing with them.

I'm an experienced programmer, but that has actually been a liability for me when it comes to papyrus. I went months modding just relying on examples and my own understanding of programming before I actually read the 'papyrus primer' on the wiki. *facepalm* Now a lot of this advanced stuff makes so much more sense to me Actually, it's not so much the 'advanced' stuff that makes sense now, but the 'basic' papyrus-specific stuff. lol.

Thank you all for your responses and I aplogize for my silence as of late. I went ahead and tried your suggestions JediBorg but unfortunately it wouldn't work. I tried checking everything but I simply can't figure out what the problem is.

Here's the ESP agian. http://www.4shared.com/file/0JREvoYq/Companion_Kai_2.html

In particular, 1kaiquest is the dialog string that the player starts the conversation with him. 1kaiquestfollow is the follow quest in which he takes on a follower alias.

I did everything you said with no issues, which is why this is puzzling me to no end.

Let me know if you need more details than what is seen in that ESP- I'm afraid I'm still a bit over my head and feeling rather stupid that it still won't work even after I followed your tutorial. I am guessing I'm missing something.

I think part of my problem is I didn't completely restart this from scratch, rather I am building off of things I have already done with this character because it would kill me to go back through and add all his voiced dialog again... I suppose though my next step is to just restart it from the beginning, but I'm just wondering if this can still be saved.

At this point I'm willing to give 5 bucks through Paypal to anyone who's willing to look through the ESP, point out what the problems are and explain why they're problems as well as fix it up for me and make it functional. xD I'm very willing to learn from my mistakes and learn why these scripts aren't doing what they're supposed to do. In the meantime I think I'll start with something a bit more simple and go through the CK wiki and build m yknowledge from the ground up instead of trying to learn these advanced scripts blindly. THEN I'll be able to work on bringing this character of mine to life.

i'd use this mod. sounds great!