For my own interests, I was trying to edit the order of a majority of Morrowind's voiced hello dialogues, so as to "unlock" some unused or underused ones. However, the order is not preserved. At first I thought that it was an issue with mod cleaning, but simply saving the file and reloading edits the order. I have no idea what I'm even doing wrong, as some dialogues remain where I want them, whereas others revert to their original locations. Any suggestions?

Change the value of "MaintainImportedDialogueOrder=0" to 1 in Morrowind.ini.

Will that also make it take effect in-game, too?

I don't think so. It affects how the Dialogue is exported and imported to CS.

Perhaps we're not quite on the same page. I'm speaking about editing the order of Morrowind's existing voiced lines -- that is, moving their position so that some may be heard. I'm not importing text.

Ha! I misread you then. Sorry.

I haven't heard about that particular problem though. Just a shot in the dark, Are you by any chance changing the order while filtered for specific ID in the bottom left corner of Dialogue window?

Nope, it doesn't let you do that.

I'm on the cusp of giving up. It's refusing to accept the order I've placed the dialogue in, and I can see no way of convincing this dinosaur.

How about simply adding new voiced lines where you want them and in order you want them, duplicating text and voice files of what you have in mind to "reorder"?

This is something of a point of pride now, you see, and I care less about finishing than learning why it's happening.

I think you should try to make a minimal reproducible testbed for others to try, e.g.
describe in detail a minimal amount of changes/movements to recreate the problem

Well, what seemingly never worked was re-positioning the Imperial female Legion hellos into a coherent order (expelled to outranked to by-rank to same faction, etc.). The issue was that the ones directly under the topmost hellos (vampires and nudity) would be positioned as I left them, but then the rest would break off and revert to around their vanilla location, except, by all appearances, in a different order. This isn't a cleaning issue, as it occurs simply by saving and reloading the plugin.

As another example, go down to the Argonian male disposition 30 index and arrange them as such:

1. Random100
2. Diseased
3. Injured
4. Bounty
5. Slave
6. Clothing value
7. Same faction
8. By-race
9. Stopgap (the very last hellos for this disposition tier, which in theory will be used for non-diseased, non-injured, law-abiding, well-dressed Argonians who aren't in the speaker's faction)

It refuses to accept this order when reloading.


I am trying to rearrange the voiced hellos into a coherent order as opposed to Bethesda's jumbled mess, based around the idea of most-temporary state and certain precedents set by other race's hellos (ex. faction members don't greet you by your race), incorporating the unused service and Nerevarine hellos.

VGreetings is somewhat more expansive than my tastes, so don't direct me to use that instead.

We need CS code patch...

BTW not all voiced greetings that came with the game were used. Have a look at http://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/42296/? .

http://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/42377/? are related mods.

I tried more or less your example, and it seems to https://www.dropbox.com/s/vsn0201bsur5db7/__reorder.zip?dl=0 for me, changes are kept on reloading in CS.
What does not work is cleaning the mod with TESTool or tes3cmd, both consider changes as duplicated info and clean them, so reshuffling entries like this is a very risky practice if your mod is going to be released.

Really? I tried exactly my example as an isolated case, and it failed to work; in fact, on loading yours, the order is jumbled in exactly the same nonsensical way.

Further, any issue caused by cleaning is, I think, the fault of the cleaning tool. Morrowind's cleaning tools are lackluster at best and dangerous at worst if they ignore crucial information like the previous and next info of a dialogue record.

***

As your file contains no errant GMST records yet you say you didn't clean it, are you using a non-expansion version of Morrowind? It's worth noting that when I reordered a few hellos from Tribunal, they stayed put.

I think we may have a different setup.
I am using Morrowind engine /Construction Set version 1.6.1820, master plugin version 1.30. and reloading keeps the dialog shuffled. Maybe someone else could try loading in their CS my test mod and see if dialog changes are there (Dialog\Voice\Hello, click info column, press * key)

It depends on what you think the purpose of a cleaning tool should be. If tool primary purpose is to strictly clean technically wrong things, for a user who want to use the mod on his own and knows what he is doing, you may be right.
If tool primary purpose is to clean known potential sources of bugs/incompatibilities with other mods, then you may be wrong. {EDIT]just for clarity: reshuffling standard dialog is probably something http://lovkullen.net/Emma/Comprehensive_Dialogue.htm

I am using latest 1.6.1820, and made the example dependant on both Tribunal.esm, Bloodmoom.esm, so no dirty GMSTs has been generated.
I tried also making the example dependant only on Morrowind.esm. As usual dirty GMSTs have been generated on save, but the shuffled dialog is still there.

[EDIT]version typo

I'd try making your reordering changes with one/both Tribunal.esm/Bloodmoon.esm loaded and see if/what changes.

That's the version I have, downloaded off the disk that came with the Game of the Year Edition. When you say reloaded, do you mean saving the plugin, closing the Construction Set, and then loading the file back up to see if the order changed?


It is never proper for a cleaning tool to arbitrarily remove records on the basis that they "might" conflict, especially as a one-click method or otherwise automated process that does not allow the modder to choose what he or she wants removed.

Mod cleaning is, at least by the current definition, is removing unintentional or unnecessary edits from the file. Correcting incompatibilities is relegated to patches for that purpose.


I didn't notice. Also, this is with Tribunal and Bloodmoon loaded. Nothing changes and there's no method to this madness.

Yes. As I said, probably testing from different setups is needed, because our results are different
Your opinion. If I have an option to do it or not, I think it may be useful
I agree with testool manual here:
You can technically keep pure reshuffling (that is, if you first manage to do it from the CS) if you want, testools cleans it by default as it is considered bad practice, but there is a toggle.
No other ideas other than try testing with other people setups if anybody is interested.

I am forced to agree with this. Since when did it become the arbitrary domain of some tool to decide "gee, this guy's dialogue shouldn't look like this" when such a thing is readily possible to do in the CS and should be considered an intentional edit?

Makes me seriously question now whether I should have trusted the two mods I have done for MW to being cleaned with ANY tool that makes decisions this way.

because even if it is technically possible, it is bad practice and may cause compatibility issues with other mods. You are free to skip the cleaning just clicking a checkbox

This is not a valid reason for assuming it SHOULD be done though. Compatibility issues are par for the course with modding a Bethesda game. Morrowind shouldn't be treated as some kind of special snowflake where this sort of behavior is actively referred to as bad practice.

Every other game that has come since, people have accepted that these things can and do happen. Compatibility patches exist to fix these sorts of things. Cleaning tools DO NOT clean these sorts of things out automatically.

I would have thought such a thing would be common sense - don't remove something that's not completely identical to the master record from the game's own data files. Doing anything else presumes tool makers can know that modders, like Shroob in this case, couldn't have intended to do what they're doing.

Yeah, sure, tes4edit "apply filter for cleaning" does nothing automatically. Anyway, I'm tired. Good night and good luck with your morrowind modding

Ah, deliberately misapplying my meaning by trying to quote it out of context. Nice.

TESxEdit does not clean what Shroob is doing automatically. Such records would show up as conflicts and would remain in place, marked in the appropriate color for the level of the conflict.

It DOES remove the records which are identical to the game's master files automatically. AFTER you tell it to go ahead and do so.

It will also correct deleted records AFTER you tell it to go ahead and do so.

It will also log every single record it intends to act on BEFORE the work is saved to the active file.

Morrowind's cleaning tools are assuming far too much in the name of "don't conflict with me bro" and that's just plain wrong.

Well, anyway, preliminary happiness: I deleted the Code Patch-edited Morrowind.exe, uninstalled the Construction Set, re-applied the Code Patch changes I wanted, then reinstalled the Construction Set. Of course, now it's crying when I try to load Bloodmoon...

EDIT: So, I'm thinking the last MW patch busted this. Apparently, if the CS won't load Bloodmoon, you need to reinstall Bloodmoon because Tribunal is loading over it. But when I reinstall Bloodmoon, now the dialogue ordering won't stay put.

What's odd is TESAME reports that all the dialogues have the proper PNAM and NNAM records (i.e., they should be in the order I want them in, but they aren't), and the game is loading the Construction Set's order, according to my tests.

It is pretty much acting as though sometimes it decides to take NNAM into account while mostly ignoring it and using PNAM to position itself.

I had someone else try http://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index.php?/gallery/image/2593-construction-set/ and the CS messed it up, too. So there's definitely some kind of issue with the Construction Set, since I can't think of any other variables that'd interfere.

It was noted that the CS was complaining about "following/previous string values" being different when the dialogue was reordered, even though the file hadn't been cleaned, meaning that the CS should have saved every changed record's PNAM and NNAM.