Just because I'm scared

[Colin_man]

So I've been talking with a friend on the official forums who has the scripting done almost entirely for the telekinesis spell I had mentioned earlier.  I'm amazed at what he's done.  I'm writing this post to ask how difficult it is to create a simple quest with which to implement the spell in-game.  I'm thinking a crazy old codger in a cave or something.

More precisely, I'd like to add a discussion topic concerning him to some mages guild NPCs after I reach a certain level.. or maybe a certain level of mastery in Mysticism? Either way I'd like dialogue to start the quest, a remote but small cave to be included, and for the spell to ultimately be delivered to the PC in the form of a book.

How hard would it be for me to learn such things? I'd really like to tackle that stuff myself  

BUT, as I've never modded myself before and have a THEATRE DEGREE    

I'm a little scared  

[DarkRider]

Nothing to be afraid of, quest building can be very simple!  

What you describe would be a bit more complicated. Anytime you make changes to existing NPCs things can get tricky. The best way would be to add a couple new mages with that topic to the houses you want. For my Weynon Retreat mod, I added new monks to Weynon Priory to introduce quest info. Adding a new NPC to each guild house would be pretty simple though.

First thing you'll need to look at is  this tutorial for making NPCS:

http://cs.elderscrol...eation_Tutorial

Then this one for basic questbuilding:

http://cs.elderscrol.../Quest_Tutorial

If you have any questions, post em here and I'll check in on ya! Good Luck!  

[Colin_man]

Wow.. New-found respect. I'll uh.. I'll be at this a while  But not tonight... tonight it is sleepytime.

[DarkRider]

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Wow.. New-found respect. I'll uh.. I'll be at this a while  But not tonight... tonight it is sleepytime.

Take your time!  

[Colin_man]

So I've got a dungeon and a couple NPCs and was trying to do the Questing Tutorial, but my Quests menu doesn't seem to have the options mentioned in it, specifically the "key opens a door" part of the tutorial.  I seem to only have "add" or "delete" options and it asks me to click on "new".  Am I misunderstanding?  Also.. I'm not sure how to make a new quest without it being an altered versioun of an already existing one.  If that is the easiest way to make a quest.. is there a way to quickly delete all the info in that quest after I re-name it?

[DarkRider]

You do NOT want to use duplicate quests with the original data stripped. In the list of quest right click and select New not duplicate.

As for the confusing part of the tutorial, can you quote the paragraph here, so I can see what you mean?  

[Colin_man]

Absolutely.

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Right click under "Editor ID" and click new. Make three this time before you select one.Make the following, or name them your own. I went with "FA*" as the FA stands for "Fallen Alliance" which is the quest name, it's good to group them with a prefix like this, or else you will get lost.    * FAWho    * FAYes    * FANo Go ahead and paste the GetIsID NPC:DiemosVeland 1 condition in each of them before we forget.

[DarkRider]

They skipped a step, which is why you're confused. When you are adding topics for dialogue, the first one will always be the default tipc GREETING. To add more line of dialogue, under EditorID you will right click> AddTopic and a list of topics will appear. Rightclick>New in that list to create the 3 topics described in that passage of the tutorial!  

[Colin_man]

Ooooohhhhh... sweet. thanks a ton. I'll report back!

[Colin_man]

so that worked perfectly, thanks!

The tutorial doesn't tell me how to mark an NPC on the map.  Can I do this after a certain phase of the dialogue?  Or at least mark a building that the NPC is in?

[DarkRider]

You do this under the quest target tab, use conditions like GetStage to determine when the game should target your NPC!  

[Colin_man]

Wow.. I feel like I've almost got this quest finished! Thanks for all the help DarkRider!  I'm only incapable of doing a couple things now, but I'm guessing that this MOD is 75-80% finished! If I might ask a few more things:

First: is there a resource that i should be going to instead of to you, regarding quest-building?  (I mean another one)

How can I make an NPC disappear from the game after completing his part of my quest?

How do you make the PC give an amount of gold to an NPC after making a choice in a quest?

Umm.. how are things with you?

[DarkRider]

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Wow.. I feel like I've almost got this quest finished! Thanks for all the help DarkRider!  I'm only incapable of doing a couple things now, but I'm guessing that this MOD is 75-80% finished! If I might ask a few more things:First: is there a resource that i should be going to instead of to you, regarding quest-building?  (I mean another one)How can I make an NPC disappear from the game after completing his part of my quest?How do you make the PC give an amount of gold to an NPC after making a choice in a quest?Umm.. how are things with you?

LOL We do have a questbuilding class that is just getting off the ground, you might find helpful hints there and Scholar Lingwei is still building onto it, but I don't mind helping where I can!

To make an NPC disappear, you will add a disable result script to the quest stage (quest stage tab). First thing you need to do is double click on the NPC in the render window and give it a ref ID like MyNPCRef. Then on the quest stage tab, select you stage and in the result script box add the result script MyNPCRef.Disable that will make him vanish when that stage runs.

To give the PC gold, you will use another result script on the quest stage where the player is rewarded. It will be player.additem ItemID count# (So would look like player.additem 0000000F 50)

[Colin_man]

So would I write player.subtractitem ItemID count# to have the PC lose (or pay) that amount?

[DarkRider]

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So would I write player.subtractitem ItemID count# to have the PC lose (or pay) that amount?

Close, it would be player.removeitem itemID count#

[Colin_man]

Got it....  

[Colin_man]

SOoooo.... hows a guy go about making a book into a spell tome?  it seems my options in the CS only really include skill training.

[DarkRider]

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SOoooo.... hows a guy go about making a book into a spell tome?  it seems my options in the CS only really include skill training.

It takes a bit of scripting, which is not my strong suit, but you need to start by creating your spell (or choosing a spell). Then you create a new object script:

scn aaMySpellTombSCRIPTbegin onactivate player.addspell spellIDend

Then add the script to the book you want to make a tomb.  

[Colin_man]

I feel like I'm taking a master class here. HAHA.. scripting, the CS, quest writing.  I knew none of these things before this   Thanks a ton, again Dark!  I think I've hit the stage where I'm just working out the bugs in this mod! Unfortunately, that's added a few more questions to my list:

Concerning the quest:  I've been able to start the quest, but only when my quest-giver is in the correct cell.  Otherwise, she only has a rumors topic.  I'm guessing this has something to do with how I set up her conditions.  I might get this one figured out myself... maybe

I am also having a similar issue with my second NPC, but he only resides in a certain interior cell and never has the quest topic listed     I'm pretty sure I'll have this issue with the 3rd NPC as well.  I am not using a GREETING topic to start their conversations, as I thought that you could only use this once per quest. I'd really rather use one, as it seems to work well in beginning a conversation.  Is it possible to use it twice?  or three times?  I'm just sure that I read that it was a bad idea to change it's name in both of the questing tutorials.  

I've also been sent the .esp with the spell in it that Critterman created.  The issue here is that I can't seem to open the .esp with any program.  Is there something I'm doing incorrectly?  does the .esp need to be in my data folder to be opened? It isn't currently..   but I've tried opening it with the CS and with OBMM and unzipping it with 7zip.

Oh.. and I'll want to "merge" the .esp files right?  I don't know what that means, really, either

[DarkRider]

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I feel like I'm taking a master class here. HAHA.. scripting, the CS, quest writing.  I knew none of these things before this   Thanks a ton, again Dark!  I think I've hit the stage where I'm just working out the bugs in this mod! Unfortunately, that's added a few more questions to my list:

This is how I learned Mate, cant beat a forum for schooling...which is why I started a school!  

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Concerning the quest:  I've been able to start the quest, but only when my quest-giver is in the correct cell.  Otherwise, she only has a rumors topic.  I'm guessing this has something to do with how I set up her conditions.  I might get this one figured out myself... maybe

Less is more with conditions. In general, all you need is the GetIsID and probably GetStage to tell them what stage to speak the line in. You dont want to use conditions for the heck of it, you have tohave a specific reason for each.

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I am not using a GREETING topic to start their conversations, as I thought that you could only use this once per quest. I'd really rather use one, as it seems to work well in beginning a conversation.  Is it possible to use it twice?  or three times?

You use the topic GREETING once, but you never ever change the topic text for GREETING. To create greetings, you rightclick>new in the table under topic text that starts with Info. You can create hundreds of greeting lines under that single GREETING topic. The conditions for each line will determine who says them and when.

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I've also been sent the .esp with the spell in it that Critterman created.  The issue here is that I can't seem to open the .esp with any program.  Is there something I'm doing incorrectly?  does the .esp need to be in my data folder to be opened? It isn't currently..   but I've tried opening it with the CS and with OBMM and unzipping it with 7zip.

Use 7zip to unzip the folder, then drop the .esp in your data folder to open it in the CS. The better utility for merging is to download TES4Gecko from TES Nexus.  You don't have to merge the mods if all you want is the spell. The best thing to do would be to open the .esp Critterman sent you in the CS, open the spell and see what it contains. Then open your .esp and recreate it. A single spell isn't worth the headache merging can be.  

[Colin_man]

well... I feel like I'm not doing anything correctly this time.  I tried implementing the scripting on my book and nothing happened.  here's what i typed:

scn aaTelekineticDamageSpellTomeSCRIPT

begin onactivate

player.addspell CMDamageTelekinesisSpell2

end

and then I implemented it on my book.  any ideas?

I'm also unable to get my second actor to display any topics other than rumors when he's talked to.  I DID use another NPC to create him from, but the first NPC worked fine and I did that with her as well.  His only conditions are:

GetIsID NPC:'ElenarasCourier' == 1.00

and

GetStage Quest:'MissingTelekineticMaster' == 5.00

[DarkRider]

Forgot the activator. Your script should be:

scn aaTelekineticDamageSpellTomeSCRIPTbegin onactivateplayer.addspell CMDamageTelekinesisSpell2Activateend 

If that still doesn't work, post your spell tomb question in the scripting class for Scholar WillieSea.

Do your characters have greetings? You give your character a greeting, then use the Add Choices bvox to give him the quest topics.  

[Colin_man]

They do have greetings, but the second character is using a stock greeting with vanilla voicing instead of the one I added to him.

[DarkRider]

Your script issue is because you are using the wrong spell ID.

Script should be:

scn aaMySpellTomeSCRIPTBegin onactivate     player.addspell 000A97DBactivateEnd

I suspected this, but ran a test to be sure. This script functioned perfectly in my tests. The numerical ID for your spell can be found in the object window in a collapsed column next to its Ref ID name. Just pull the column open so you can read the digits and swap the numbers in place of the name you were using before (the numbers in my example are a life detect spell).

As for the character not using dialogue, the only thing I can see without looking at the quest is you have his condition as GetStage == 5 perhaps you should try = 5.

[DarkRider]

By the way, make sure when you test your mod you are using a clean save, meaning a save from BEFORE your mod was ever loaded. The spell will not work if the book is already in your inventory, only when you activate it the first time. Using a clean save is especially important when testing quests and dialogue. A dirty save can contain ghost data that will show you errors that are not actually there.