Best way to trigger a quest from a note on a corpse?

[UndeadMartyr]

I've been working on a quest that begins with a suicide note on a dead Detective, and I'm wondering what the best way to trigger the quest from getting the note.  I guess I'd want to either tie a script to the NPC that checks if the player has the note or just use a script activator for the same.

[madmongo]

I would use a misc item for the "note" which has a script with an OnAdd block. When the player takes the misc item note from the body, the script adds the actual note to the player (so it shows up in the Notes section of the PipBoy) and starts the quest.

[UndeadMartyr]

An intriguingly devious solution and one I may use, but I submit a revision to trigger the quest via dialogue instead.  Dialogue is fairly counterintuitive to me, though I've made some stabs at it.

I'll look it over this week and test.  Any potholes re: quests or dialogue that I should be aware of? (for example- issues from not having audio with dialogue)

[madmongo]

FNV's dialog system doesn't seem to make much sense until you realize that it evolved out of the quest and dialog system for Morrowind. Much of the dialog wasn't voiced in Morrowind, and multiple NPCs could all give you the same information. So everything is organized by topics instead of by NPCs. While this makes sense when you look at things from a quest point of view, from a regular dialog point of view everything is splattered all over the place.

For example, Doc Mitchell's initial dialog during character creation is in the VCG quests (CG=Character Generation). His regular dialog is in all of the generic Goodsprings dialog quests and all of his doctor related stuff is in vDoctors which all of the doctors in the game use. So from an NPC point of view his dialog is a splattered mess, but from a quest point of view each part is organized by its quest function.

You aren't forced to follow Bethesda's convention. I often put all of an NPCs dialog into a single quest just to keep it organized that way. You don't have to splatter things across multiple quests. Whether you choose to be NPC-focused or quest-focused is up to you.

When you greet an NPC, they say their greeting. Anything that is "top level" generally appears from their greeting, no matter what quest it is in. However, some greetings can have restricted choices, which you'll see on the dialog form in the GECK. For example, if you are in a particular quest with an NPC, they may greet you with a specific greeting that only has choices related to that. Cass is one of the worst NPCs in the game because she almost never speaks from the top level, so if you add a top level dialog option for her it often won't even show up when you greet her. This makes Cass notoriously difficult to mod. Someone even made a mod that re-arranges her dialog so that she does speak from the top level much more often, just so you can more easily add options to her dialog.

When I made a Ranger Ghost companion, when you "hired" Ghost, I swapped out her NPC with a copy just to avoid dealing with all of the potential dialog issues and getting AI packages to work correctly without interfering with all of her existing dialog, quests, etc.

As for audio, I've been experimenting with xVASynth. I've used artificial voices before in mods, and I've been dinged because they sounded too robotic. The newer generation of AI voices seems to be better though.

For Ranger Ghost, I used voice files from the same voice actress in the game and edited them with Audacity to make the audio clips that I needed. If you do that, you are limited to what's in the game files, but if you're creative in your editing you can come up with a lot.

The GECK for FNV is broken with respect to voices. It's missing the FonixData.cdf file that you need to generate the .LIP files. If you have Oblivion or Skyrim you can copy the file from those games (the Skyrim one is supposedly better) and if you don't have either game there is also a mod here on the Nexus that has a FonixData.cdf that you can download.

[UndeadMartyr]

Yeah, it's the way everything is split apart that seems counterintuitive to me, but I can sort of see the logic behind it.  Quest related dialogue is where I'm focused at the moment, there's only three NPCs (one dead, so really only two) that I've made so far.  Neat thing about a new worldspace mod is everything is scratchmade- I get to set all the rules for NPCs etc.

Scripting has always frustrated me because I lack the patience for it.  Dialogue's a bit of the same because I just want to write.

[UndeadMartyr]

So I added a script on an activator near the body.  Seems like it should work?  GetQuestRunning == 0 might work better instead of quest stage but I'm not sure from the wiki whether that condition evaluates if a quest is completed or failed.

Spoiler

scn YMDedDetectQuestInit

begin OnTriggerEnter player

if GetStage YMSQDetective < 10    ;quest not begun

    if GetHasNote YMDetectiveBodyNote
        startQuest YMSQDetective
        setStage YMSQDetective 10
    endif

endif

end

 

[madmongo]

I've never used GetStage to determine if a quest is running. I don't know if that works.

You are probably going to need some sort of DoOnce type variable. Otherwise, every time the player enters the trigger and they have the note, it will restart the quest and reset the quest stage to 10. You only want to do those once.

I am wondering why you are using a trigger instead of  just starting the quest when they get the note.

 

[laclongquan]

You can take reference on how Fallout 3 set up the quest Troubles on the Homefront. Once you get near V101 (or any place it's set up) the radio kicking up, and that start the quest.

I think if you dont set the radio on, it's also started once you get to the vault exit. If the main quest had passed certain point (Dad dead) it's changed to allow you to jump into the quest. Otherwise, it doesnt get kicked up.

So that quest is all about setting area trigger~

Edited August 4 by laclongquan

[UndeadMartyr]

I used an area trigger with script attached.  Don't think I have FO3 on steam.

 

[laclongquan]

ah well, nvm. 

Edited August 5 by laclongquan