Duck and Cover

Well I am running into some problems when it comes to making 2 characters have a conversation. I have made the speech file and it looks like this :

M01_Echo_A01 = { I salvaged this M16 off of Bravo's body, but don't forget we have a job to do }
M01_Delta_A01 = { No YOU don't forget...who your talking to Echo }
M01_Echo_A02 = { *Silenced* }
M01_Echo_A03 = { Here just take the rifle and lets get down to business }
M01_Delta_A02= {Wait whats that...}

That is the order I want the conversation to go in and I load the speech file. However I don't understand exactly what to do next. I make the speech nodes, but do I make 1 for every line in the conversation? After that making triggers set them off confuses me too (if you haven't gotten it by now I am not very good with all this at the moment but I have a good idea for a storyline).

I am going to try this when I get home in 2 days but would like to know if I am making it right before I get there. I was thinking this is the way to do it. First making the first line ALWAYS the condition and force speech as the action. Then Speech occured as the condition and the Action as force speech, and so on and so forth.

Sorry if this sounds jumbled but it has been a long week and I was trying to relieve stress by building a map (relieve-what a joke). Instead it seems to have done the adverse and hightened it. So any help would be greatly appreciated.

Oh and on a side note, I was wanting to know how I could make my own costumes for the characters in my campaign. I would like to have a squad of military personnel, police, and SWAT. I want them to look like present day figures so that is my problem. Well thanks in advance.

Make a speech node in the editor for each line of conversation. I think it will be easier that way. So you will want a node for:

Echo A01
Delta A01
Echo A02-03
Delta A02

And then make an event name for each of the nodes:

Echo A01 Speech
Delta A01 Speech
etc...

Now I included Echo A02 & A03 in one node - make one random 1 and the other Random 2. Give only Random 2 an event name.

Also I think you may want to have these Floating speeches.

Initially you don't want either character to speak until a certain time so leave their random speeches in the entities to "none". Now you will need a trigger for the switching of each of the speeches:

Condition
"Something happened to trigger speech"
Action
Change random speech for unit Echo to Echo A01

Condition
Speech "Echo A01 Speech" occurred
Action
Change random speech for unit Delta to Delta A01.
Change random speech for unit Echo to "none"

And then seesaw changing the nodes to the desired effect.

The best you can do to changing costumes is to change the colors of the entities. Military personnel=green, police=blue, and swat=black.

This guide is for something a little different, but should give you the basic ideas for speech:

http://www.execpc.com/~yance/Fallout/guideto.htm

I really appreciate the help and I got the conversation thing going but I am having a problem. It is going just a little too slow. The guy says "line A" and 10 or so seconds later the other guy says "line B" and so on. I need it to go faster if it can. Is there any possible way I can speed this up? Thanks again

The way I make conversations is a little different. I use Windowed speech instead, but you can use Floating if you want.

Going with what JJ86 said, you could just use Force Speech instead of Set Random Speech. Just be sure you put a Wait action after every speech node is said - otherwise, the speeches will happen too fast for the human player to read 'em

That's why I think Windowed is better, but all those conversations are "important," and that's another reason to use Windowed.

Windowed is fine where you are going to interact with an NPC but it doesn't seem right with two NPC's interacting with each other. It may be good to use when there is a lot of text to read but it requires the player to click the "ok" button to move the dialogues along which I find annoying. Also if you want to make it windowed make sure you give the NPC's an picture to round it out.

I think I do use Force Speech as an action and then experiment with using a Wait action so that the speeches don't overlap.

I totaly agree with JimmyJay there.............. flaoting for NPC to NPC,
Window for PC to NPC........ i only uses flaots for like special messages
and NPC talking to them selfs stuff.. hehehe and people bitching for no good reason hehehe................ Hey I'd like to thank you guys for all the help you've given me.. Now i hope i can help others........... THanks!!


TRUST ME TALL these guys KNOW what they're talking about!

*I think*
btw :crazyeyes: !!!!!!!! lol

the crazy eyes are the best! lol

Hey, no problem.

Here is a tutorial OTB put together on the old forums that I ran across last night:

NPC's Conversing With Each Other - OTB

There is a way that you can simulate NPCs chatting w/one another w/o the headache of scripting the conversations.

The answer is actually quite simple. Compare the following two speech nodes:

D02_WSPR01_A00 = {This wind is getting on my nerves...}
D02_WSPR01_A01 = {This is just *too* boring...}
D02_WSPR01_A02 = {I could go for some more chitlins.}
D02_WSPR01_A03 = {As if anyone would have the nerve to attack this place...}
D02_WSPR01_A04 = {Better check your weapons.}
D02_WSPR01_A05 = {::belch:: Yep, those chitlins were good...}

D02_WSPR02_A00 = {It is a bit breezy...}
D02_WSPR02_A01 = {It like it when it's boring...}
D02_WSPR02_A02 = {The mess hall certainly made enough...}
D02_WSPR02_A03 = {You never know...someone could be watching us right now.}
D02_WSPR02_A04 = {But I just checked my weapons when we came on shift.}
D02_WSPR02_A05 = {::fans air:: I hate the effect chitlins have on you...*gag*}

Basically, each line within a node is related to the identical line in its sister node. These two nodes are each for one roving guard, and in practice, they far more often than not will look like they are having a conversation. This is, however, not foolproof, so you might not want to have lines that sound odd if they happen to be seen out of context.

Ok I tried the force speech and wait actions in a test scenario. I thought it would work fine, but when I started the game it would freeze whenever the condition was activated. So I once again tried the Changing random speech action but it still looks as if it is too slow. JimmyJay's last thing he said roused a few questions. First of all if I have a node with 6 different random speeches, but I need to know if they will say the random speeches after a certain amount of time or is it just random. Like Random 1 is said and X seconds later Random 2 is said, etc. Because if this is how it works I have an idea that would make the conversation be twice as fast. Let me know and I will report anything I find, that is if this isn't just a common sense thing that everyone else knows.

Oh, I forgot to mention that if you Force Speech a speech node with an Event tied to it, the game freezes

A simple remedy: Remove the Event

IIRC you can put a Wait action (B Wait 1 seconds) before the Force Speech. That might fix the freeze without removing the Event.

Yeah I just found that out. Well at least there is a way around it. Thanks

Talls wrote:Oh and on a side note, I was wanting to know how I could make my own costumes for the characters in my campaign. I would like to have a squad of military personnel, police, and SWAT. I want them to look like present day figures so that is my problem. Well thanks in advance.

In addition to using JJ86's suggestion of changing the squads' colors, you could also do some entity work that is a bit more involved. I suggest designing your own armor types. For instance, you could make up new armor types w/the same protective values, but simply change the type of armor under "Armor Type". If you like the look of Environmental Armor for your military personell, you could simply give them armor that has that type set, but protects as well as Metal Armor. (If you're not planning to let the PCs have the stuff there's no reason even to add names or descriptions to the items.txt file.)

OTB