Can anyone help me figure out new dialog function? : Fallout: New Vegas

» Sat May 28, 2011 2:17 am

Hey everyone. I am just starting my first NV mod, and remembered that they added node-node connections that dont require PC input in between. On the NV geck site it says:

Link NPC dialogue nodes to other NPC dialogue nodes without requiring a PC node in between.

How do you do this? I would like to have two dialog choices that the NPC responds to with one line depending on which one you choose, then says the next few lines the same no matter what. This new system allows you to do so without having to copy the same sound file with two names. I don't know how to set this up though, and poking around the quest and dialog windows in the geck, I dont see an obvious way to do it. Can anyone explain how to do this? Thanks for any help.

Gunmaster95

» Sat May 28, 2011 12:19 pm

Merry Christmas buddy.

If I knew this one I would chime in, I think llamaRCA knows it well already. She made these comments in a thread in the mods forum:

1) You can't get anything into the editor until you've created something in a quest.
2) Once you have a topic to build under you can open it up in the editor with the Load Dialogue pop up. Choose your NPC and the Quest you have made. I couldn't get anything to load the first time unless I only chose the second of the Advanced Options, but later I found using both Advanced Options got me everything I had in my quest. I now use both all of the time.
3) To reuse topics you can go to a topic you want to reuse and right click on it and choose copy and then go to the blue dot of the place where you want to reuse it and choose Paste as Link.
4) To add a new topic under another one right click and add as child. This is how you continue to build dialouge. That new topic will be added into your quest automatically. This is what makes the editor so great. That and you can easily read all of your dialogue in one place all laid out for you.

llamaRCA pointed this out to me a couple of weeks ago. I have alternated between using this and using the regular quest editor. Neither of them makes it "easy", but both of them make it "possible". A couple of annoying things about the conversation editor: the topic names it generates by default are too long to read in the topics tab, so once you start using it for a particular quest it's hard to edit using the topics tab. Also it renames the topics when you add more, so if you knew something about topic 019 before, it might be 020 after you edit. So there are some quests I have entered completely with the convo editor, and some I have entered completely with the topics tab, and I never mix the two styles when working on a single quest.

You may want to reach out to her if you get really stuck.

Luck!!

Miax

» Sat May 28, 2011 4:35 pm

I would like to have two dialog choices that the NPC responds to with one line depending on which one you choose, then says the next few lines the same no matter what. This new system allows you to do so without having to copy the same sound file with two names. I don't know how to set this up though, and poking around the quest and dialog windows in the geck, I dont see an obvious way to do it. Can anyone explain how to do this? Thanks for any help.

Hey, Gunmaster, you are looking for the new Conversation Editor. You open it up from a button on the front page of the GECK. It's located in the row of buttons that include the "snap to Grid" button, and is on the far right. It looks like a little, right justified paragraph.

To do what you want to do (reuse dialogue without having to recreate it) you would do #3 of what Miax copied from the other thread.

:) llama

» Sat May 28, 2011 2:33 pm

Thank you both of you! That checklist allowed me to much more easily figure some things out. I think I have it set up correctly, though I have not tested it ingame, I see no reason for it not to work. Thanks again!

» Sat May 28, 2011 2:04 pm

Ok it appears there has been some confusion. I don't want to just reuse a topic, I want to reuse the same few lines from a topic, directly after another topic, without the PC having to say something in between. Let me explain.

A guy asks you "How are you, I am John." You can respond two ways. I create three topics, one that has one response info for the npc that says "Will you help me?", one topic that has the player say "Im fine, how are you?" and the computer responds "Good, thank you for asking.", then one last topic where the player says "I hate you, go die." and the NPC responds "Why would you say that?". Now, what I want to set up is where two things can happen here.

The NPC says "How are you, I am John." At which point the player has two options:

1. Say "I'm fine, how are you?" To which the computer responds, "Good, thank you for asking. Will you help me?"

2. Say "I hate you, go die." To which the computer responds "Why would you say that? Will you help me?"

Do you guys see now? I link the same sentence "Will you help me." to both opening sentences, but its the same topic, same audio file, same lip file. This way the first sentence is a direct response to how the player treats him, but the second line is always the same. I think they added this function, I just don't know how to do it. Like I said, this is what it says on the GECK page.

Link NPC dialogue nodes to other NPC dialogue nodes without requiring a PC node in between.

This sure sounds like what I want to do. Can anyone help me?

» Sat May 28, 2011 2:35 pm

No, I don't know how to do that the way you want to. And, to make it sound right, since you want it to be a continuation of the same statement, I would make it a second line within the same topic anyway, which, as far as I can tell, still requires copying and renaming. I am still figuring out how the editor works, though, and right now am a little frustrated as a significant amount of my dialogue has ceased to show up in the editor :blink: and I have no idea how I've managed that. lol.

Do you remember where you read that bit in the GECK?

» Sat May 28, 2011 7:15 am

The only issue is that what I want to appear under both topics is more than the sentence "Will you help me?", it's like, 3 large paragraphs. And it happens several times with different dialog throughout. I just dont want to have like 3 large dialog files copied 2 or 3 times in the mod. And what I quoted them saying makes it really sound like you can do what I want to. Its said http://fallout.gamesas.com/eng/downloads/geck.html. Its the second line under the 'New Dialog Editor'. That sure sounds like what I want. I will keep trying to do stuff and see if it works.

Also, with your missing dialog, when you load a conversation try checking both boxes. (load stuff without info, and load not in top layer, or something) I had dialog missing until I did that, then it all showed up. Let me know if you figure out how to do what I'm looking for at any point. I'll keep trying and do the same.

» Sat May 28, 2011 8:14 am

Well I am dumb, this was very simply. All you do is set up the topic, as if it were normal, and make the response info. Then you go into the dialog tree, and copy the response, NOT the topic, then say Paste as link under another response. Then it skips the pc node and goes directly from one info to the next, in two separate topics. Brilliant! Now I can have my dialog set up very nicely indeed.

» Sat May 28, 2011 8:39 am

Well I am dumb, this was very simply. All you do is set up the topic, as if it were normal, and make the response info. Then you go into the dialog tree, and copy the response, NOT the topic, then say Paste as link under another response. Then it skips the pc node and goes directly from one info to the next, in two separate topics. Brilliant! Now I can have my dialog set up very nicely indeed.

Oh, that makes sense. It works the same way the other copy/paste as link works. Thanks for sharing that.