[IDEA] Talk to me! : III - Morrowind

» Thu Mar 11, 2010 6:47 pm

i just had a slightly amusing idea, for this.... well here it goes. if a NPC walks up to you and asks you a question about something i think the player should at the least get three options of a response depending on the charactor alignment. Example ......... little tired so dialogue wont be great

NPC: Excuse me traveller, it seems i have found myself lost, could you point me in the direction of Balmora.
PC: ( heres the choices ) [ yes it is to north of here, just over the hill ]
[ sorry i can't help you there ]
[ follow the road to the east till you reach a cave, near the cave you'll find the road to balmora ]
my point is if a NPC asks a player a question on how to do something or how something is or where something is it would be neat to add different responses depending wether the player is good, evil, or just nuetral. and depending on what response was chosen a different action will happen.

i think it would make things interesting and more immersion to a charactors personality or alignment.

Love this idea.
Perhaps it's a minor point, but it would make the later stages of the game (where everybody usually loves you) more interesting - you can be a helpful nevarine or a b*****d, refusing people help and such like.

» Thu Mar 11, 2010 11:14 am

This sounds awesome, but instead of having static and premade conversations, would there be a way to incorporate some sort of chatbot function by using an external progrm and mge. And have it to where, if you typed somthing related to a quest, they would reply with the standard morrowind response as if you clicked on it. Is this possible? Oh, and here is a chatbot I made with cybertwin.... https://mycybertwin.com/chat/xargoth

» Thu Mar 11, 2010 9:47 am

Canned conversations would be the only viable way to implement this unfortunately. Morrowind doesn't play well with external programs and none of them can interface with chatbot type programs that I know of. ForceGreeting means that the NPC will come up to talk to you instead of waiting for you to talk to them. It should really only be called once.

» Thu Mar 11, 2010 3:29 am

Wow my post was made sooo long ago O.o But I appreciate the enthuisiasm for my alignment idea. . . . ( Sorry spelled enthusiasm wrong twice ). I just had to throw that idea out every since I played those types of games where choices were made would effect the outcoming situation.

Anyways I think this whole idea is awsome and keep on trying.. .

» Thu Mar 11, 2010 6:24 am

Sounds great I hope it can be implemented because it would add a bit of the only thing thats missing from Morrowind; interactive nps that feel a bit more alive

» Thu Mar 11, 2010 7:36 am

Sounds great I hope it can be implemented because it would add a bit of the only thing thats missing from Morrowind; interactive nps that feel a bit more alive

True. :nod:

Now you can imaging what impact this mod has to other mods or addons. If this mod can became a reality I will definitely want to use it.

» Thu Mar 11, 2010 4:27 am

I'm looking to dialog and I have to say there is massive potential there. I am working on a funny demonstration as my first scripting mod, to show how easy things are; not had any responds in my thread in CS board today, but I really want to progress on that.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1089932-dialog-result/page__view__findpost__p__15894668

any help?

» Thu Mar 11, 2010 7:23 pm

I'm no dialogue person, but it seems like it might be easy to learn. I'll give it a go and find out. Even with my memory problems, it's something I could take notes on, write up in note pad and submit. As long as I understand it and don't lose my notes, I should be fine and it should increase my available skills. I make no promises, because it can be hard for me to learn new things sometimes, but I'll give it a try. It's been awhile since I had a look at tutorials and the like.. I'll look for a sticky on some stuff, but is there any where I should check out in particular?

Also, from what I understand so far, the force greeting is being used to give the impression that they are walking up to you and talking, and it's being put on a dreamer timer. The dreamer timer is such that many say they never hear from a dreamer a second time, so should it be shortened? And of course, the more variables the better, because then it's not them saying the same thing all the time.. (or for that matter them talking to you all the time)

» Thu Mar 11, 2010 4:25 pm

A couple of suggestions:

1. If an NPC is talking to you, don't have another one come up and try to do the same.
2. Have a way for the NPC to know that they've already forced greeted you. You can do this by setting a local variable and a condition statement. Example:

short doOnceif ( doOnce == 0 )    ForceGreet    set doOnce to 1endif

Note that the above is not a full script and is merely the part that'll prevent an NPC from force greeting repeatedly. You can clear out the doOnce after the NPC has already talked to the player.

3. Segment rumors by faction/area/class/and maybe gender. Two people in the same town may not have heard the same rumor or have heard it differently. If anybody writes them this way, they should specify when and where the rumors should be said and by whom.

If you're not familiar with scripting, check through the Morrowind Scripting for Dummies, it's an invaluable resource for this type of mod.