Anyone who has used the Filter for thing when searching for dialogue for a specific NPC has probably noticed that, well, it doesn't really work very well. Anyone know what exactly determine whether or not something is filtered correctly? At first I thought it only came up with dialogue entries assigned by ID, and not indirect things like race/faction, but I recently noticed that even some ID-assigned entries don't show up through the filter (and some indirect things do).

If you're looking for dialog assigned to your Ordinator companion, Lack, use Wrye Mash's export dialog function instead. I rarely use the filter by function for the reasons you mentioned.

Greetings, Lackadaisical

Couple thoughts occurred to me - might be helpful, maybe not ...

As I'm sure you already know, the Dialogue "Filter For" box only works for "Objects" [NPCs, and Creatures] that are allowed to have Dialogue, by the MW Game Engine. A lot of time [e.g., for Alits] everything is just blank. For NPCs, they ALL get certain "vanilla, standard" Dialogue, based on race/class/Faction/Cell location, etc.

If you are making a mod, and have added dialogue, all of your new dialogue will be "asterisked" in the Construction Set (assuming you have it loaded as the "Active" file), so you can see if your Dialogue actually got "saved" last time, or not (whether you view the Dialogue "filtered" or "unfiltered").
As I'm sure you also know, the CS really doesn't want you to add "new" Dialogue while the Dialogue Tree is "filtered." [Pain in the butt, I know, but, there you are ...] The Dialogue Tree is this one, gigantic database ...

So, my first thought is, if your Dialogue entries don't show up at all (unfiltered), or if they show up "unfiltered," but not when "filtered" for that NPC, you probably need to look closely at the parameters you have set, for that Dialogue to appear. Mis-spelling of the NPC's name (ID) is a typical silly example. Another is, if you added Dialogue for (e.g.) "Snowy Granius" but set it for Race=Dunmer [he's an Imperial] or Cell=Ald-Ruhn, Ald Sklar Inn [he never goes there], it will probably never show up. And, quite likely, the CS (when you ask it to "save") will say to itself, "Self, this silly hu-man is trying to do something utterly ridiculous. We ain't puttin' this foolishness in our database, Nossir! Not today!"

And, it never really gets saved. In other words, down to "Operator Error."

The other thing is, if you are doing your "evaluating" with other 3rd-party mods loaded [and, if they are not "active," their Dialogue changes WILL NOT be "asterisked"] .. Well, you don't really know what they may be doing to your Dialogue Database, do you? Unless you have previously anolyzed them, and possibly repaired any glaring errors beforehand?
Uh Huh! Thought not...

But, I'm sure Jac's advice will be helpful to you. He's very good at Dialogue.

However, if you could clarify what, specifically, you are trying to accomplish with your "Filter" efforts, perhaps we could provide more useful feedback for you, than just "general" comments???

Happy modding!

DARoot

Thanks Jac, I'll give that a shot. And DARoot, I was using it for my own mod where I know certain dialogue shows up correctly in-game, but they don't show up if I use the filter in the CS (for no obvious reason). The only time I actually use the CS filter is when I'm proofreading, since while you can't add new topics/greetings you can edit existing ones.

I use the export function then copy/paste the text into Word so I can do quick spell check. It doesn't catch everything, but it does catch more than a few errors.

The dialogue entries that do not appear when you have filtered for your NPC's ID: Are those 'missing' entries also filtered for a cell different from the cell your NPC is placed in the editor? In my experience, such entries do not appear presumably because the dialogue engine takes the cell filter an impossible to satisfy condition (it knows what cell the NPC is in). I suspect this is a common frustration for companion mods since companions may find themselves anywhere in the game world and modders like for them to have something appropriate to say.

Oh, good catch cyran. I think you're right. One entry I noticed was where the beginning of a conversation tree was absent when filtered, but all the entries that would result from choices on that first entry still showed up. The entry that started the conversation did have a cell requirement, but the subsequent entries only had the choice requirement. They would still be technically unreachable (since the choices only appeared in the initial, cell-dependent entry), but I can see how the construction set is thinking.