Category:Dialogue

Overview

Dialogue is any text that is spoken in the game. In the Creation Kit, all dialogue is organized into Quests. Some Quests exist solely for the purpose of containing dialogue (such as DialogueWhiterun), while others include both quest and dialogue content. Note that a Quest must be running in order for any of its Dialogue to be used.

Nine of the tabs in the Quest Form allow you to create, view, and modify dialogue. They are:

• Dialogue Views Tab: Displays Player Dialogue in a graph view for easy editing. This is the primary way to create and edit dialogue.
• Player Dialogue Tab: Displays Player Dialogue in a Branch/Topic/Info view.
• Favor Dialogue: Not used.
• Scenes Tab: Allows you to edit Scenes, which can include a combination of Actions and Dialogue.
• Combat Tab: Topics related to Combat Events (Attack lines, Flee lines, Taunts).
• Favors Tab: Topics related to Follower Command Events.
• Detection Tab: Topics related to Detection Events and transitions (Alerts, Search lines).
• Service Tab: Not used.
• Misc Tab: Other Topics, including Hellos, Goodbyes, and SharedInfos.

All of these tabs share the same underlying concepts (like Branches, Topics, and Infos), and many share a similar interface. In general, dialogue is organized into:

• Branches, which contain collections of Topics. Branches represent a 'thread' of the conversation, giving the dialogue system a place to start and a chain of Topics to follow from there.
• Topics, which are stacks of Infos. Much of the time, they contain exactly one Info, but they can have more. The first Info whose conditions are satisfied will be used.
• Infos, which represent one or more lines of dialogue to be spoken.

For an introduction to the Dialogue System, see Bethesda Tutorial: Dialogue.

Why isn't my dialogue displaying?

• As noted in the intro, the quest containing the dialogue must be running before the dialogue will display.
• If your quest is start game enabled, ensure you've generated an SEQ file.
• If you have aliases, make sure they are filled or marked as optional.
• Double check your Topic Info Conditions or any conditions specified on the Quest Data Tab.
• Actors without a name cannot be spoken to.

Under the hood

Disassembly of the game executable suggests that, when fetching an NPC's dialogue, the game iterates over all Quests, then their Topics, and then their Topic Infos in order to check the conditions on them. There is no sign of this laborious process being optimized in any way. Even the Quest Dialogue Conditions on the Quest Data Tab are checked over and over again on each Topic Info rather than being used to skip the quest altogether.