NPC-(mod) NPC banters, finally understood how it works :) Options

[jastey]

Hi everyone,
I have somehow troubles to get a working script for banters between my mod-NPC and the ingame NPCs. Before I start scanning through the existing mod-NPCs (in the hope to identify the banter-triggering script), how is your banter script? Could you post it here for me? Is there a tutorial somewhere? (There are some for writing the banters, but how are they called?) Do you have banters that are started by the BioWare NPCs, and how did you script those?
Thanks!

EDIT: I'm asking for BGII, btw.

This post has been edited by jastey: Nov 22 2004, 08:32 AM

[jcompton]

Agreed. I had a look at Solaufein's and Kelsey's banter scripts (well, for Kelsey I'm not too sure, I think I looked at something else (it's the Banter Accelerator script, increasing the frequency of interparty banter both from Kelsey and other NPCs, but I didn't understand what's going on there.))

Solaufein is actually a terrible example, Wes uses a very non-standard approach with Solaufein which involves hacking ALL of Solaufein's dialogue into one DLG file, because he didn't really grok the use of the B, J, and P DLG files. (They were somewhat poorly documented at the time, and he DID craft functioning workarounds, but it's not a model to be followed.)

Kelsey is a somewhat better example, but you'd do even better to look at an NPC with more refined and modern coding. Ghareth seems to be the new reference example.

The banter accelerator is very simple. It runs a timer. When the timer expires, it randomly picks one of the party members and tells them to Interact(). That calls their B DLG. The timer resets and runs anew. Repeat.

After reading your post I have the impression I didn't succeed in making clear what I'm looking for. I don't need any BXXX examples or any tips on how to write (and code) banters. What I'm looking for is exactly the "Do I see someone else I want to talk to here? And have we done this banter before?" as a script for my mod NPC. I thought someone might have a ready script he/she could post here, as most of the mod NPCs have banters with the BioWare NPCs.

You're still not making it clear what you want, or at least, you're asking the wrong question. As long as your mod NPC's DLG appears properly formatted in INTERDIA, and your state triggers are properly formatted (see hundreds of in-game examples or mod banters for examples), you need no scripting.

So I'm actually only looking for the "Do I see someone else I want to talk to here? And have we done this banter before?" trigger in my Bxxxx-dialogue, and don't need an extra script to call the banters? 

Yes.

Now, of course, if it's not intended to be an "anytime" banter, then you would in fact employ scripting, like if you want to "start a banter as soon as we've given the acorns back" or "start a banter as soon as we have Lady Galvena's Medallion", then you would write a code snippet and employ Interact(). But for regular old anytime banters, you just put the DLG in INTERDIA, write up your banters, and away it goes.