[SKY] Of Aliases and Invisible Dialogue

[TigerCubofPNW]

It may seem like I don't know what I'm doing, and I don't, but you'd be amazed how many of these things I figure out myself. I bring that up because this question is more to get people's experiences so I can figure out what the eff is happening.

 

So, I asked before about the Alias not overriding the NPC's idles. I found that, against all reason, by renaming the idles the problem went away. That's filed under, "I don't get it, but it's fixed now so I don't care."

 

Sadly, the problem came up again and the rename fix ain't gonna cut it.

 

So, firstly, do weird things happen when you assign multiple aliases to characters? Given how festively entertaining CK is, I'm guessing so. In this case, once again the alias is absolutely assigned and yet (again) the idle is not overriding the idles I just forced it to accept with the previous alias. Basically, I'm assigning a temp alias to have them follow the player around the house to meet people. I promised them I would return them in the same condition I found them, but they refuse to follow my character.

 

Now, the frustrating thing here is this is one of the first things I ever did, this "follow the leader" thing and it worked fine. The only difference I can see is that when it worked before, the character only had one alias.

 

Since there is no script command that I have been able to find, I don't know of any way to get the character to follow outside of an alias. I came up with what I thought was a terribly clever solution--I added the follow idle to the original alias, the one I first assigned them instead of the temp idle. Then I slapped a condition on it to only do that when the introduction quest thing was at Stage X.

 

CK's response was to stop showing the dialogue at all, call me unflattering names and cast aspersions on my mother's honor.

 

So I undid the little alias trick. And still no dialogue. I removed all the conditions from the dialogue. Nothing. Clearly, CK has been terribly offended by my ineptitude and wants me banned from using it.

 

So the next question for you fine experienced folks is, what causes dialogue to not show up? I've got the SEQ thing handled. It's not the conditions. My only guess is that the quest itself is invalid in some way. Does that happen? It shows up when I ask the Console about it, so it's in the game somewhere.

 

Another fun fact, I wrote the first topic for this dialogue tree, saved, loaded, tested to be sure I had it right. It showed up in game without a fuss. Then I went back in and added more dialogue, conditions, aliases, etc. That's when CK threw stuff at me.

 

So, in conclusion,,,,

Can NPCs have multiple aliases?

Why won't aliases use the idle I asked them to use even when I do ForceRefTo and EvaluatePackage?

What causes dialogue that was working to stop working?

Can Quests not start because silly modders like me did something wrong and that is the root of all my problems?

 

*tries some viruaul cupcakes this time*

 

ETA: Okay, I hope I'm not annoying people here with my attempts at humor. Anyway, I found a solution to both my problems.

 

I misunderstood the CK wiki when it talked about the "Optional" ticky box in the quest alias tab. For all intents and purposes, that ticky box must be ticked. There are involved things governing it, but in most applications it must be ticked. If it isn't, the dialogue won't show.

 

As for aliases and using them to make people follow you around temporarily, I got the idea from the "Heart of Dibella" quest and didn't realize that really, the follow thing in the quest alias is not all that useful.

 

Scenes though. Man, scenes are where it's at for temporarily overriding actors and their AI. If anyone is curious about it, I'll field questions for my fellow noobs. But I won't spam the board with the stuff just to sound like I know something.

 

*slinks off to his shadows*

Edited July 11, 2015 by TigerCubofPNW