Greetings, Page 1

Now we’re getting into it. Greetings and topics probably cause people the most trouble when they try to start a mod. Once you understand how the game executes the dialogue, it becomes much simpler. I’ll try to explain as we go.

1. 1. Go back up to the little arrows in the upper left corner, and click over to the Greetings tab. Click it. In the list of greeting categories to the left, you’ll see Greeting 0, Greeting 1, etc. Each group of greetings is generally used for a different purpose…if you read through some of them I think you’ll get the idea. Greeting 1 and Greeting 5 are usually used for quests, so lets put Madera’s greetings in Greeting 1. So click on Greeting 1 in the left box, and a long list of greetings will appear in the Info/Response list. Because we aren’t filtering the dialogue for a particular NPC (that Filter For box is still blank, right? Good!), you’re seeing EVERY greeting for many NPCs that have unique quest-related greetings.

2. Click on the third greeting (All is silence…) so it’s highlighted, then right-click and select New. Notice this added a new line above the greeting you had highlighted. It also notes the “All is silence…” and “Who’s there” greetings as being changed, but don’t worry, they aren’t really, and this won’t give you a “dirty” mod. Just like you did in the Journal entries, click in the large box below and type in: Hmmmm? Oh, hello. I'm sorry if I seem distracted. I'm so upset I can't seem to concentrate!

3. You just added Madera’s first greeting! This is what you want her to say when you first talk to you, and you only want her to say it once, so we need to tell the game to execute the dialogue that way. The way to do that is down below in the area labeled “Function/Variable”. In the first drop-down box in that section, select “Function”. There are several other options there, and we’ll cover some of those later. Basically what we are doing here is adding a condition to this greeting.

4. Once you choose “Function”, the drop-down boxes to the right of it become available. Go to the next one to the right and find the option “TalkedtoPC”. This is a check the game runs to see if you have ever interacted with the NPC before. It’s equal to zero if you haven’t and 1 if you have.

5. The next drop down box has a list of operators which are pretty self-explanatory, except that != is “not equal to” in Morrowind language. Choose the = (equal to) sign.

6. In the final box to the right, type in 0 (zero). This will tell the game to use the greeting you just typed only when it’s the first time you talk to Madera (or so you hope). After that, the game will set TalkedtoPC to 1 for her, and the condition for this greeting will no longer be met. Unfortunately, this isn’t the only condition you’ll need on this greeting…

7. OK, let’s talk some about how the game executes dialogue. Basically, it starts at the top of Greeting 0 and runs down the list in order until it finds a greeting that meets every current condition EXACTLY. This means that we have to choose conditions very carefully, and that the ORDER the greetings appear in the CS matters a lot. So can you see a problem with what we just did? Right…if we leave the greeting we just added as it is, every single NPC who you haven’t talked to yet will greet you like this the first time! The only condition we have right now is that TalkedtoPC equals zero…for every NPC! So we need to limit this a little more.

8. Go over to where it says “Speaker Condition” and click in the drop-down box labeled ID. There are tons of NPCs, so type in the first couple of letters of the ID you gave Madera, and it should bring it up in the box. Select it. Now the first time you talk to Madera, the game will start with Greeting 0 and go down the list until it hits this greeting, at which time the conditions will be met (you’re talking to Madera, and only Madera, for the first time). Here’s what it should look like:

On to Greetings, pg. 2