How the Romance Was Made?

[Domi]

I can't tell you how to make an OC romance in general, but here is how I've made Bishop's:

 

I wrote every dialogue in such a way that it is triggered off another dialogue in the OC. For example, if the meeting of True Names took place, and Ammon talked to Zjeave, etc, after this dialogue Bishop will share his thoughts on the subject of his name with the PC.

 

So, I take the original dialogue, export it into a "dummy" mod, and see what commands are on the end of it. Some of them are the 'follow-up dialogue breakers', basically all the ones that make the original NPC to walk away/ destroy itself. If that's the case, I either move my dialogue, or put it into the original, shifting the breaking scripts to my dialogues end, giving the original dialogue 2 exits - one with the conditions that the PC is a male, the PC interrupted the romance or Bishop is not in the party (wherever applicable) - that preserves the original ending of the dialogue. The second ending with the reverese conditions will have one of the following:

 

Dialogue with Bishop copy-pasted in the original dialogue body; ga_start_convo that shoots out Bishop's dialogue immediately if the party is likely to move away or do a battle at that point of the game; a small script with the Delay command that starts Bishop's dialohgue in a few seconds.

 

I also modified 1 cutscene so far slightly re-editing the in-game scripts and actions on the dialogue to bring Bishop in the Glade instead of Shandra, and I will be modifying more for Bishop to come and talk to the PC after Casavir sodds off, etc.

 

The interjections and addidions to the original dialogues are the easiest to handle. I simply export the original file into my dummy mod and modify it with applying the conditions so my lines only run when romance is applicable.

 

I added the FlirtPack to the Main Conversation Node of the gl_ dialogue and I use the gc_rand_1of to make sure the replies are random. I found that the gc_rand_1of does not actually work the way it is documented, so I always add a dummy option on the end of each random selection that never shows up, but enables all 5 other random options to show up. I number _all_ of them, even the dummy one, despite what the description says.

 

I use the 4 ga commands to play the music during the dialogues. ga_music_save, ga_music_set (to set my track) and ga_music_play in the beginning of each dialogue and ga_music_restore on every exit line. The only problem I had with music, was that the bmu files had to go to the Musci folder, while the modified 2DA is just fine in the Override.

 

I place all the files in the Override in a subfolder for Bishop's Romance and divide them further for my convinience in the subfolders by the file type.

 

For the lip movement during the cutscenes that I will have voiced, hopefully, I will be using the RogueDao's LipFlappers, only I will have to edit them so I can rename all the files, so the voice file corresponds to the facial animation file.

 

In the end, when the mod is ready for the release, I will be looking for help to write a self-extracting exe file that will install the files into the proper folders.

 

Well, that's all I can think about, hope it helps!

 

And nope, I have no idea how to 'cut in' a timered, BG2-like sequence into NWN2-OC, without a nice Override script (Heartbeat and On-Rest could be an answer, but since they seem to be not NPC specific, I didn't want to investigate further). To be honest, I think that the event-dependent meshes far better with NWN2 overoll style of the interactions.

 

Adding the new companions in the OC could be tricky. I used dialogue ga commands to do so in the OC Companions in MotB, and I also know that only 1 file needed to be over-written in order to place the altered Bishop on the Castle Wall: GIT file from the cluster of the area files. It is not the smallest one, but it is significantly smaller than all the files that carry the graphic information.

[berelinde]

How do you convert WAV files to BMU files?

[Domi]

You will need to get an MP3 to BMU converter off the Vault Even the WAV files (VO's) are actually 'fake' wavs, which are actually BMU's (the converter has an option there)

[berelinde]

Ah, so it looks like I'm going to have to get WinLAME after all. Oh, well. Thanks for letting me know.

 

Edit: Actually, the whole process was frighteningly painless. I'd been dreading it a lot longer than I should have been.

[berelinde]

Is there a reason you wouldn't want to use ga_start_convo all the time? The description for the action says that it's a convenient way of starting one conversation immediately after another, and it seems to eliminate the need for the scripts.

 

I know that when you wrote the Bishop Romance, you had planned to allow a delay before some conversations began, but with version 1.012 of the game, these delays don't seem to work as billed. Since you're reducing or eliminating the delays anyway, wouldn't it just be easier to just use ga_start_convo?

[Domi]

Well, ga_start_convo is not exactly the most reliable function either (it's actually tough to say what fires the dialogues more reliably - the custom script with a short delay or the ga_), and since the scripts essentially do the same thing, plus allow for a bit of a delay, and are already assigned, I will keep it.

[berelinde]

Oh, no, I wasn't talking about your own stuff. I was talking about which to use for mine. Recommendations?

[Domi]

It's up to you. ga_start_convo uses the same function as your custom script. If you want to have a small breather (1-5 sec), use the custom script; if you don't - use ga_start_convo.