Simple Dialogue Modding Guide

A simple guide to the basics of using the Dialogue Editor in Kenshi.

ps. I've never written a guide before so I hope its somewhat useful. There is much more I could add and there is a little information on the forums as well. However feel free to comment with questions and I'll try to help as best I can.
Finally the best thing to do is dive in and look at the conditions and effects of existing NPC dialogues for ideas.

Open the Forgotten Construction Set

Open the FCS from Steam.
Create a new mod and name it. For this Guide I am using my RecruitablePrisonsers mod.


The First and most useful thing in the FCS is the Changes panel. From here you can see a list of all changes your mod makes.


By right-clicking on an option you can 'revert' the change. So don't worry about 'breaking something' with your mod (well not so much ;-) ).

Dialogues and Dialogue Packages

There are two ways to add dialogue to a character in Kenshi.
If the charater currently has Zero Dialogue you can use just a straight 'Dialogue'. However if they aready have dialogue or you want to use multiples it is much better to use a Dialogue Package. If you want your dialogue to trigger by a player, then you will also need to use a Dialogue Package.



Let's make a new one.


you don't write your actual dialogue here. Instead let's make a dialogue initaited by the player.


As you can see there are many other options to trigger a dialogue.


Press New Dialogue (unless you wrote one already).


The dialogue panel will come up.

Writing your dialogue

Name your dialogue and check the box if the dialogue can happen between the player and an enemy or not.


Start the dialogue by choosing the Create ROOT button.
Root is the start of a dialogue chain. Child is a possible response.
This decides who is actually saying the line. Remember 'me' means the NPC not the Player.
It is better to start with the NPC but you don't have to.


Right click on the Root line and add a child. From the right info panel choose TARGET_IF_PLAYER to make the Players line.

Players lines always appear red.

Here we can add the acual lines.

From here I'll let the Screenshots do the talking. :-)








Using WORDSWAPS
Word swaps are great for mixing up your dialogue. There are already a ton of them added by the devs. But you can also make your own. Such as the bunch I made for recruiting the BrokenSkeleton.

Next let's look at conditions and effects.

Effects dictate if a line will result in an effect such as joining your squad, attacking or trading.


Conditions are important for setting the limits on when the dialogue or line will happen.
Conditions can be set by line, in the dialogue, or to the whole dialogue in the dialogue package.

It is important to remember that for Y/N conditions 1 = yes & 0 = no. There is also a < & > option which is useful for comparing things such as player money. Meaning a condition of Playermoney > 20000 would mean the line wouldn't appear if the player has less than 20000.

The time dictates how frequently the line can occur. I'm not sure of the exact times but VShort seems to be about 20 (in game) mins.

Conditions on the Dialogue package panel.


In the Dialogue Package panel, if there are player lines, make sure to change 'monologue' to false. If you want the dialogue to be triggerable for enemies make that 'true'. Here you can also adjust the frequency of the whole dialogue as well as limits to character type. You can also make the dialogue locked or unlocked. (More about Locking/Unlocking dialogue in another guide).

If the character already has a dialogue package then you can create your dialogue and press the Add Dialogue button rather than Create.

Finally adding the package to a character that you like.

And last but not least, save and upload (if you want to share).


Finally here is another (video) guide i made to help with editing textures for banners and making tattoos
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=882789616

[Nuclearism]

How would you make a dialogue that triggers by using an item? I want to add dialogue to some idle animations

[l GH l NDCasmera]

so well, everything worked out.
except one thing.
I cant seem to interact with the npc. the npc recognizes me and starts talking. but the "talk" option does not appear. do u maybe know any tips?

[Butterscotch]

Yeah, like "Add Root" no longer existing, I don't even know how to literally add the dialogue. It annoys the shit out of me cus I've made mods and recruits and characters years ago and I can't remember how to do any of it now.

[Butterscotch]

Kinda out of date sadly, the base of it is there but some of the stuff has changed over the years.

[Wrongfoot Mcgee]

and i hit the wall, fuck it
this involves a new skill set and im not into that
again, thanks for taking time to respond to my dumb ass

[Wrongfoot Mcgee]

is there a particular guide you have in mind? cuz all the guides are.. strangely difficult and vague, and they all do that screenshot stuff.. and no one talks about placing a new recruitable npc, everyone talks around how to do it, it seems to me..
but thanks for responding, i was really just venting... bad habit. Im elbow deep in FCS tryin to figure it out but damn its not very esay

[Nanogiraffe]

This is a very old dialogue guide and is a bit out of date as (was one of the first guides written about dialogue) there are many better ones more talented people than i have made since then

[Wrongfoot Mcgee]

i just wanna stick a p4 who asks for cats to join like any other recruitable npc

but clicking all these images over and over is tiresome, and i dont think this guide will help me do what im trying to do anyway

[SlugSoap]

Ah, thanks for the help.

[Shidan]

Those buttons no longer exist in the current version of the FCS. It's all done through "Add Line" now.

To create a new root line, you simply add a line to the original dialogue line at the top. To create a child, you add a line to any other line. You can use the button up around where the add root and add child buttons used to be, or the right click menu.