Construction Set question

Dark Master · Post by **Dark Master** » Sun Jun 06, 2004 1:22 pm

I'm currently learning about various aspects of the construction set for the Less Generic NPC Project, and I've got a sort of mini quest in mind, its purely dialogue based, with a bit of walking from one end of Khuul the other, but after a specific bit of dialogue I want to add a journal entry. I know how to do that, but I don't know where in the CS set I can write the journal entry! Any help is apprciated.

DM

Edit: I've found the journal bit now, so I know how to add entries. Just playing around a bit more, but any specific instructions on how to get the journal to update after dialogue would be nice.

Sojourner · Post by **Sojourner** » Sun Jun 06, 2004 1:40 pm

In the Construction Set, click on character at the top, then Dialogue. Wait for it to load up. On the Dialogue window, click on the right-arrow tab until you reach the journal tab. Right-click on the list and select New. Type the name and fill in the data to the right. Note that you cannot have any filter selected to make changes to the dialogue/journal.

Edit: posted this before you edited your message. You need to have indexed journal entries to point to. For example, look at the MG_Bowl entry. Note that it has a top entry, Mages Guild: Ceramic Bowl, with two more entries, indexed at 10 and 100. Now look at corresponding dialog topic, ceramic bowl. Note the results box for the "Yes, take these 10 drakes..." line has the following line (among others):

Journal MG_Bowl 10

This line updates the journal to the entry corresponding index 10 for MG_Bowl. And that's how you do it. To have it update your quest journal, you check the Quest Name Box for the top entry of the journal topic. For the entries which close the quest - check the Finished boxes.

Hope this helps!

Dark Master · Post by **Dark Master** » Sun Jun 06, 2004 1:50 pm

Yeah, I managed that, and I typed out the journal entry I wanted, it was called khuulthongar. I wanted it to appear after a certain piece of dialogue, for in the result box for that dialogue I typed:
Journal khuulthongar

Unfortuenly when I tried to load the game it told me something like: Dialogue: Topic "" tried to become journal.

I have no idea what that could mean, all I know is that I removed the journal entry, and still the message wouldn't go away. Long story short, the message still comes up, even though I've deleted the journal entry, and the reference to it in the result box of the dialogue, yet the dialogue works fine.

Something must be wrong because its giving me this error message, and its frustrating.

Dark Master · Post by **Dark Master** » Sun Jun 06, 2004 1:53 pm

Clarifying error message: Dialogue "" Type "Topic" tried to become "Journal"

Help!

Sojourner · Post by **Sojourner** » Sun Jun 06, 2004 2:06 pm

Also, check this tutorial. It has a dialogue section.

Some more info.

Dark Master · Post by **Dark Master** » Sun Jun 06, 2004 2:12 pm

Originally posted by Sojourner
In the Construction Set, click on character at the top, then Dialogue. Wait for it to load up. On the Dialogue window, click on the right-arrow tab until you reach the journal tab. Right-click on the list and select New. Type the name and fill in the data to the right. Note that you cannot have any filter selected to make changes to the dialogue/journal.

Edit: posted this before you edited your message. You need to have indexed journal entries to point to. For example, look at the MG_Bowl entry. Note that it has a top entry, Mages Guild: Ceramic Bowl, with two more entries, indexed at 10 and 100. Now look at corresponding dialog topic, ceramic bowl. Note the results box for the "Yes, take these 10 drakes..." line has the following line (among others):

Journal MG_Bowl 10

This line updates the journal to the entry corresponding index 10 for MG_Bowl. And that's how you do it. To have it update your quest journal, you check the Quest Name Box for the top entry of the journal topic. For the entries which close the quest - check the Finished boxes.

Hope this helps!

So your saying I'll have to give this entry a quest name and have at least two bits of dialouge, one at the start and one at the end of the quest?

Sojourner · Post by **Sojourner** » Sun Jun 06, 2004 2:28 pm

Not bits of dialogue - you mean indexed entries. But yes, you'll need at least two, along with the entry header (quest name). Hope this is making sense.

Dark Master · Post by **Dark Master** » Sun Jun 06, 2004 2:29 pm

OK, I've given 2 entries for the journal, with different index numbers, and they both came up when they should - it all ran perfectly fine, but the error message still comes up when I load the game. How can I get rid of this? I don't want people's first impression when they load up the Less Generic NPC mod to be that its screwed up the game. The quest works perfectly, so I have no idea what might be causing the messages, is there anything I should check?

Dark Master · Post by **Dark Master** » Sun Jun 06, 2004 2:30 pm

Originally posted by Sojourner
Not bits of dialogue - you mean indexed entries. But yes, you'll need at least two, along with the entry header (quest name). Hope this is making sense.

I didn't give the quest a name yet, could that be the problem?

I'm putting your name on the credits for the lgnpc_Khuul mod unless you don't want me to, since you've helped us out with this aspect of it.

Sojourner · Post by **Sojourner** » Sun Jun 06, 2004 2:39 pm

I believe I've found the answer here:

You were right, It's an anoying behavior of the editor, almost a bug: Everytime you make a new topic the editor creates two of them, the one you give a name and a empty one. Keeping the old topic-name as "Deleted" entry might be necessary when you rename old topics, to make the plugin compatible with older savegames, but it's just plain stupid for new entries.

Sooner or later you'll get one "Empty"-topic as Dialogue-topic and another as Journal, and when you load the mod now, you'll get that weird "topic tried to become journal" message...

You need to delete those entries, save and reload and they should be gone, then save again and your mod should load without errors. To ease things up, you should use TESAME, it's much easier and faster to delete such unclean entries with this tool.

So, you need to hunt down the empty journal entries and delete them. That should fix the problem.

Dark Master · Post by **Dark Master** » Sun Jun 06, 2004 2:42 pm

Thank you very much. I'm very grateful. I can't offer you much in return other than your name on the credits for the Less Generic NPC Mod for Khuul. Unless you don't want it there, I'll add it to the list.

Dark Master · Post by **Dark Master** » Sun Jun 06, 2004 2:48 pm

I deleted the dublicated 'empty' entries, you were right about them, but now the message is still there. Any thoughts?

EDIT: Reread the post you found on the other forum, I've saved and reloaded several times, and the error message has gone. Thank you, so much.

DM