A little help with the construction kit

[MSJ-06II-C]

Hi all, I'm currently making a small mod for myself, now I wanted that one of the NPCs gives the player two books upon speaking with him the first time. I figured it would be fairly easy to make a custom greeting since I made already more than enough dialog, also with items being added and removed from the player. But when I got to the greetings tab I realised that there are 10 categories of greetings, now my question is what distinguishes them and in which would it be best to write a custom one time only greeting?
Thanks in advance.

[King Nerevar]

when shall the npc give it to him? after the dialog option? just put it down there in the field.

[MSJ-06II-C]

No, no thats not what I meant, I meant that there are multiple tabs saying Greeting 0, Greeting 1, etc up to Greeting 9, what I wanted to ask is what is the difference between them and in which should I add my own greeting

[King Nerevar]

I think I used 5, but let me check that. The other are for:
Quests
Vampire
Deseases
Nerevarine or not
werwolf
and so on

[King Nerevar]

5 for quests, 7 or 9 for random hallo´s

[Darkelfguy]

Alright, this might be a little hard to explain, because the Morrowind dialogue system is pretty complicated, but I'll try to answer your question (and if you need more help, I'm actually working on a tutorial video covering Morrowind dialogue and basic quest design that should air this weekend).

Basically, Morrowind's dialogue system is a stack type data structure with a "last in, first out" design at work. Essentially, in regards to Morrowind's Greeting structure, the game starts at the top of the stack (Greeting 0) and scans down to Greeting 9 looking for any possible greeting that matches the current game conditions and shoots out the first greeting it comes across that works.

As such, most restrictive greetings (ones with the most conditions attached) should be at the top of the stack in Greeting 0-3, and least restrictive (few or no conditions attached) greetings should be at the bottom of the stack in Greeting 8-9.

As an example, if you were to put a greeting with no conditions set at the top of Greeting 0, every NPC in the entire game would have that greeting because the game would run into it first when scanning the stack.

However, if you were to put a greeting at the top of Greeting 0 with a condition that it only be spoken by a particular NPC, then only that NPC in the game will have that greeting (which is presumably what you want).

Generally speaking, for making a mod, you should make a new dialogue entry in Greeting 0 with a condition set so that only your NPC will use it. Otherwise, your NPC's greeting may get overwritten by other conditions, particularly if you were to make a new dialogue entry in Greeting 9 (since those are the least likely to show up).

Keep in mind that if you make a second greeting that's more restrictive (i.e. only shows up at a certain disposition level), you'll need to put it above your previous greeting entry (again, idea is to have most restrictive entries at the top and least restrictive at the bottom).

As for what the difference is between the Greeting stacks in vanilla Morrowind, each stack has a particular role. Greeting 0 is used when the player has committed a criminal act, Greeting 1 is mostly for quest greetings, Greeting 2 is used when the player is a vampire, Greeting 3 is for when the player betrays the Morag Tong, Greeting 4 is used for disease-related greetings when the player catches a disease, Greeting 5 is once again more quest related greetings, Greeting 6 is generic faction greetings, Greeting 7 contains class and location based greetings, Greeting 8 has greetings related to clothing (i.e. when the player is naked), and Greeting 9 is all of the generic greetings combined with location specific greetings.

Anyway, hope that explains things a bit. Again, for making a mod, you should probably use Greeting 0 to make sure your NPC always has the right greeting.

[King Nerevar]

Good explanation, see foreward to see that video. I did it at 5 always, and it always worked (maybe because the topics before are corpus etc.)

[MSJ-06II-C]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Darkelfguy:

Alright, this might be a little hard to explain, because the Morrowind dialogue system is pretty complicated, but I'll try to answer your question (and if you need more help, I'm actually working on a tutorial video covering Morrowind dialogue and basic quest design that should air this weekend).

Basically, Morrowind's dialogue system is a stack type data structure with a "last in, first out" design at work. Essentially, in regards to Morrowind's Greeting structure, the game starts at the top of the stack (Greeting 0) and scans down to Greeting 9 looking for any possible greeting that matches the current game conditions and shoots out the first greeting it comes across that works.

As such, most restrictive greetings (ones with the most conditions attached) should be at the top of the stack in Greeting 0-3, and least restrictive (few or no conditions attached) greetings should be at the bottom of the stack in Greeting 8-9.

As an example, if you were to put a greeting with no conditions set at the top of Greeting 0, every NPC in the entire game would have that greeting because the game would run into it first when scanning the stack.

However, if you were to put a greeting at the top of Greeting 0 with a condition that it only be spoken by a particular NPC, then only that NPC in the game will have that greeting (which is presumably what you want).

Generally speaking, for making a mod, you should make a new dialogue entry in Greeting 0 with a condition set so that only your NPC will use it. Otherwise, your NPC's greeting may get overwritten by other conditions, particularly if you were to make a new dialogue entry in Greeting 9 (since those are the least likely to show up).

Keep in mind that if you make a second greeting that's more restrictive (i.e. only shows up at a certain disposition level), you'll need to put it above your previous greeting entry (again, idea is to have most restrictive entries at the top and least restrictive at the bottom).

As for what the difference is between the Greeting stacks in vanilla Morrowind, each stack has a particular role. Greeting 0 is used when the player has committed a criminal act, Greeting 1 is mostly for quest greetings, Greeting 2 is used when the player is a vampire, Greeting 3 is for when the player betrays the Morag Tong, Greeting 4 is used for disease-related greetings when the player catches a disease, Greeting 5 is once again more quest related greetings, Greeting 6 is generic faction greetings, Greeting 7 contains class and location based greetings, Greeting 8 has greetings related to clothing (i.e. when the player is naked), and Greeting 9 is all of the generic greetings combined with location specific greetings.

Anyway, hope that explains things a bit. Again, for making a mod, you should probably use Greeting 0 to make sure your NPC always has the right greeting.

THX thats exaclty what I wanted, very good explained, so I'll just put it at the top of 0 (Its a one time only greeting spoken by one specific character)

[King Nerevar]

NOT AT THE TOP, the second one pls... I do not know why, but there is an dialog that says that this has to be top ever... but you should not care that much about it

[MSJ-06II-C]

Ah, hm okay, then at the second, I don't really mind XD

[MSJ-06II-C]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από King Nerevar:

NOT AT THE TOP, the second one pls... I do not know why, but there is an dialog that says that this has to be top ever... but you should not care that much about it

But the first (six) dialogs @ Greetings 0 are variations of Squeak

Ah I see, at the top of Greetings 1 there is the failed the Oath of silence one that must stay on top, kinda logic when I think about it

[MSJ-06II-C]

Well, I got my greeting:
I made a global short with the name AlreadyGotBooks which at the beginning is 0
upon greeting this happens:

• removeitem "bookskill_block2" 1
  
• player->additem "bookskill_block2" 1
  
• removeitem "BookSkill_Heavy Armor 3" 1
  
• player->additem "BookSkill_Heavy Armor 3" 1
  
• set AlreadyGotBooks to 1

When I made everything correct that should remove the books from the NPCs inventory and add them to mine, and of course assure that this greeting will never come up again, its at the second place of Greeting 1

For completitions sake:
The Greeting is only triggered by the NPC ID Two_Sister_Mireille and when the Global AlreadygotBooks is equal to 0

[Darkelfguy]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από MSJ-06II-C:

Well, I got my greeting:
I made a global short with the name AlreadyGotBooks which at the beginning is 0
upon greeting this happens:

• removeitem "bookskill_block2" 1
  
• player->additem "bookskill_block2" 1
  
• removeitem "BookSkill_Heavy Armor 3" 1
  
• player->additem "BookSkill_Heavy Armor 3" 1
  
• set AlreadyGotBooks to 1

When I made everything correct that should remove the books from the NPCs inventory and add them to mine, and of course assure that this greeting will never come up again, its at the second place of Greeting 1

For completitions sake:
The Greeting is only triggered by the NPC ID Two_Sister_Mireille and when the Global AlreadygotBooks is equal to 0

Sounds good, you really didn't need a global variable though, a local variable in a script would've worked fine.

For example:

Begin _DEG_TST01_Local

short alreadyGotBooks

End _DEG_TST01_Local

Then attach the script to the NPC and do the same thing as you've already done, only with a local variable instead of a global. Global variables can cause mod conflicts if two mods use the same global, so it's generally recommended to use local variables when possible.

[MSJ-06II-C]

Will do, just read sommething in the wiki, and I might want to clean up my mod, I just changed a container and according to the wiki that a big no-no, so I'll have to change it

[MSJ-06II-C]

When the whole thing is finished and cleaned up I might even upload it

[MSJ-06II-C]

Btw, when someone wants to help me with my mod or wants to playtest it just write it in this topic, although the whole thing is more a nostalgia thingy from me