|
Post by Emma on Mar 6, 2010 22:09:04 GMT
Making dialog has always been my favorite when it comes to modding. Somehow, I seem to be pretty "unique" in this aspect. I have understood that many modders "fear" the dialog part and tend to avoid it. In 2003, I participated in making a "Comprehensive Dialog Thread" at Bethesda's forum. It's still available there, but I thought I'd put it up here as well, as you'll find the answers to many, many dialog related questions here: COMPREHENSIVE DIALOG THREAD Another good way to learn dialog is using Srikandi's Dialog TutorialI have tried to reply to dialog related questions at Bethesda's TESCS forum as well as Gamer's Roam, but the former has seemed rather pointless lately, as the threads disappear so quickly, and the Roam is now closed. So, I thought I'd start a dialog thread here, and till TRY to reply to questions. But, please, check the link to the COMPREHENSIVE DIALOG THREAD first, as many of the answers are already there.
|
|
|
Post by Emma on Mar 6, 2010 22:09:30 GMT
Posted by DinkumThinkum
|
|
|
Post by Emma on Mar 6, 2010 22:09:55 GMT
I do believe it's better not to put the persuasion responds at the very top of the list, i.e. at least below 2 lines of persuasion responds would be better. But if you are filtering your dialog entries for unique ID-names, it's probably not that important, as people very rarely use the persuation section (whereas everyone use the greeting sections).
|
|
|
Post by Emma on Mar 6, 2010 22:10:18 GMT
Posted by Kateri
|
|
|
Post by Emma on Mar 6, 2010 22:10:44 GMT
Posted by Neko
|
|
|
Post by Emma on Mar 6, 2010 22:11:19 GMT
Neko, have you tried using globals with if/endif in dialog resultboxes? I haven't - has never been a need for it - but I know some people at ES-boards reported that it prompted a CTD...
|
|
|
Post by Emma on Mar 6, 2010 22:11:43 GMT
posted by Kateri
|
|
|
Post by Emma on Mar 6, 2010 22:12:18 GMT
OK... that's good news! As I said, I haven't tried, I just participated in a discussion at the ES-TESCS-forum where some guys said it worked with locals but not with globals.
|
|
|
Post by Emma on Mar 6, 2010 22:12:42 GMT
Posted by Gez
|
|
|
Post by Emma on Mar 6, 2010 22:13:09 GMT
Posted by AlAraan
|
|
|
Post by Emma on Mar 6, 2010 22:13:33 GMT
They will only work if they are *exactly* 64 kbps 44100 Hz Mono mp3. If they aren't the npcs will attempt to use them, but you won't hear anything ingame. Turn on the subtitles to check if they try, or call up the console and click on a npc (so that his ID shows up at the top of the console) and make him attempt to use your voice entry by writing like this: say "vo\my_subfolder\my_filename.mp3" "blablablatext" Some voice editors - like for instance Audacity will *claim* that they convert to 64 kbps, but Audacity in fact convert to 70 kbps, which won't be enough accurate. I have edited in Audacity, but then used another freeware program, Quintessential, to convert my wav-files to mp3. That worked fine.
|
|
|
Post by Emma on Mar 6, 2010 22:14:57 GMT
posted by CyranoThe website appears to be unattended, but here is a working download link from Tamriel Rebuilt’s tutorial page that professes to be Srikandi’s dialog tutorial (I cannot tell from the filename). It that doesn’t work out for you, or even if it does, you might want to check out some of the other tutorials that are linked from that site. Emma: Off to England now? Have a lovely time there.
|
|
|
Post by Emma on Mar 6, 2010 22:15:44 GMT
Posted by Cyrano
It is not hyperbole to say that I have read just about every thread in the official site’s construction set forum relevant to dialog during the past three years. I’m not proud–I’m just making the case that this is not a broadly discussed issue.
Working on LGNPC mods tampers with many official topics. Ostar reported to me on a couple occasions opening up his work in progress to find his new dialog entries on an existing topic moved to the bottom of the list of entries. It required hours of work to move them back to where they were originally created. I had nothing to offer by way of explanation since I never encountered the problem personally and knew no details of the circumstances that led up to the ‘shuffle’–until this past weekend.
I was working on LGNPC Foreign Quarter. I had just duplicated a few LGNPC dialog entries under ‘latest rumors’ for Agrippina Herrenia so I could filter them to allow a few official rumors through. After I did this I recalled that she is noLore’d and the changes would be moot. Considering carefully which ones I had added, I deleted the new lines using TESAME. When I returned to the editor and after a bit of work on something else I noticed that some (not all) of the new ‘rumors’ and including the official one just above where I inserted were now at the bottom. However, not all of the new entries were moved. It was split through Agrippina’s entries at the location where I had introduced and then removed the additions. Since I do not 'clean' the original entries on either side of where the splice is made, I think that the top half still had the upper reference and therefore stayed. The bottom half with its reference was sent to the bottom of the list.
I shared the details of my experience with Ostar to confirm that his difficulties were the result of cleaning out some (not all) new entries for an affected dialog topic. He cleans the original dialog that is on either side of the insertion of the block of new dialog, and he flags entries to delete with ‘ignore’ in the ‘details’ within TESCS. Unless he removed the new dialog entirely, he found that the new dialog was moved as I described: the new dialog below the deleted entry is sent to the bottom of the list.
For the time, I will not delete my own entries, unless I am removing all of them for a given topic. Instead, I use a contradictory dialog filter (such as a cell check that the NPC will never be found). Obviously this is not something that I regularly do if I am just now discovering the consequences of it.
I am posting this as a warning. It is difficult for me to believe that there might not be other modders that are not aware of this potential problem. Also, I hope that the experienced modders in this forum will have some comments. Have I correctly described the cause of the problem? Is there a method to safely remove new dialog entries without having the new entries retained be moved as a result? Any additional insight into this problem is most welcome.
|
|
|
Post by Emma on Mar 6, 2010 22:16:23 GMT
Posted by Kateri
If I am understanding this correctly... this is a problem with the "previous entry" "next entry" reference codes on the dialogue.
Sometimes, if there is a risk of the references getting hopelessly messed up, it can be best to export a whole chunk of dialogue, open it in a text editor and carefully edit the "previous entry" "next entry" reference codes as you delete/move lines. Then reimport it all. It can be a pain, but in a last resort, it's saved me a lot of *other* work trying to fix errors in the CS.
Is this any help?
K.
|
|
|
Post by Emma on Mar 6, 2010 22:16:56 GMT
Posted by Melian
Thanks for that information! Call me slow, but I had no idea what was going on. :?
I just did some simple tests, using 5 new dialogue lines in a topic, 1 - 5 from bottom to top, with 2 original lines above and several below. Here's what happened:
Test 1: Toggled ignore flag for entry 5. 1 - 4 kept the same order in relation to one another but were moved to just above the last original entry. The entry above the group in the original position was still flagged as changed, but the one below wasn't. The entry above the group in the final position wasn't flagged as changed, but below (the last entry) was. Previous ID was incorrect for the original entry that was below the group in the original position, Following ID was incorrect for the original entry above the group in the final position.
Test2: Deleted 5 in dialogue editor. Entries remained in place and Previous/Next IDs were correct.
Test3: Toggled ignore flag on 3. 4 & 5 remained in original position but the entry below was not flagged as changed. 1 & 2 again ended up second-to-last in the topic, the original entry above not flagged as changed, but final entry was. The same original entries had incorrect Next/Previous IDs as in the first test.
Test4: Deleted 3 in dialogue editor. All entries correct and as expected.
---
I can't say I know much about linked lists, but I'm guessing Kateri is right about the ignore flag messing up the Previous/Next IDs. MW's response to this seems a bit odd, but that seems to be par for the course.
Can anyone who knows about linked lists explain what the CS thinks it's doing?
|
|