Speech Challenges

[Banjo]

If there's any way any of us can help you out... I can imagine what a dull task it would be!

[rbroab]

You can help him by answering most of the support questions on the forums. The ones you can answer anyway. One less post for Jax to respond to is just a little more time he can use working on TTW. May sound silly, but seeing as this community is growing and not everyone feels the need to read the requirements and such, helping out here helps the team do what they need.

[ibanix]

This is unfortunately a bit more work than just changing a few flag values; I tested this and found:

FO3 uses the 'Speech Challenge' checkbox with the associated difficulty level, and needs the 'SpeechChallengeFailure' topic as a hook for what to do if the challenge is failed.

FNV does not use the 'Speech Challenge' checkbox; instead it wants a topic with a Prompt (the challenge text) and a minimum of two responses; each with a GetActorValue hook to the value you are testing (example, Speech >= 40 and Speech < 40). The responses' AV/Perk dropdown should also be set to SKILL: Speech (or whatever skill you're testing).

This causes a minor headache because the dialogue entries for the speech failure, in the Fallout 3 challenges, are in the SpeechChallengeFailure topic and need to be moved to the topic holding the main challenge. And when you do that, GECK changes the associated filename for the voice acting line, and that can't be manually renamed in GECK.

Which means that unless someone knows a GECK trick I don't know, the original file name will need to be saved, and then the new entry edited (via FNVEdit or similar) to manually change the file name back. Ugh.

[JaxFirehart]

It's actually worse than that. The filename is hard coded, or at least, it is specific based on the topic's location among other things. So basically you have to create a new sound file for each speech challenge. For RFCW I did a Speech Challenge rebuild changing all the FO3 and DLC speech challenges to FNV style skill checks. It was mind-numbingly dull and incredibly time consuming. I need to do it again... but ugh.

[ibanix]

So you moved the old file to the new filename and then repacked the BSA? Yeah that would make my head hurt, too. I also guess that means I can't do this as a plug-in :/

[JaxFirehart]

Not JUST as a plugin

There are also snags involved, some speech challenges in FO3 point to a generic speech challenge failure that cannot simply be moved, instead it has to be copied, which changes ownership. Sometimes the conditions get very complex (for example the whole interaction between Cherry and Dukov and the player). It is quite an undertaking. It would also probably be an easy win for the modding competition...

[ibanix]

We can't redistribute game assets, so the option I see as a plug in would have to be a downloaded executable + plugin that did:

1) Unpack TaleOfTwoWastelands.bsa

2) Rename old file names to new file names

3) Repack BSA

That's quite a bit for just changing speech checks to FNV version....

[JaxFirehart]

Yep, part of the reason it would have to be integrated into TTW proper, since TTW already does that.

[TJ]

@ Ibanix: Jax is basically saying it needs to be done for the base TTW mod, and that if you do the work don't try to release as a simple plugin, as you'd be doing a sizable chunk of work that directly contributes to the completeness of TTW so it should be IN TTW. No need to patch in all that work when it can be done at install time.

Also:

[quote=JaxFirehart]It would also probably be an easy win for the modding competition...[/quote]

 

[ibanix]

Alternately, I could make the changes as a plugin and leave the voice assets for the next version of TTW