Morroblivion

Exactly, I agree with Squally.

Obviously generic lines are not necessary, though a npc should be welcome to talk about his trade

So, this will be another post where I will have plenty of people against me. It's a long piece but please read it.

First thing first, I am not against modifying the dialogue spreadsheets if that's necessary and if stuff are missing. My only concern is about the complexity of the process for aspiring voice actors.

My points are about re-organizing the dialogue. Some of my points below were already discussed long before most of you joined.
Another preamble: the voice acting project is a companion project to Skywind - We have as many people who can't live without voice acting as the ones that despise it. (Dig deep in this forum for proof).
Therefore the voiceacting project can inform Skywind but it should not impose Skywind's content. For example, a release of Skywind will not be delayed due to the voice acting package. The two have different release cycles.

I. facts

I would like to put some "definitions" and facts on the table. Hopefully, there isn't much debate on this as I feel this part is objective.

1/ What do we call generic dialogues? (excluding specific types of dialogues like greetings, alarm, attack, flee, hello, hit, idle, intruder, thief)

It's a dialogue that is not unique to one (or a list of) specific NPC. They can be lore dialogue (eg detail of a disease), directions to a landmark, how to find a NPC for a quest, etc...

How do you know which lines are available to NPC have these lines then ?
- NPC race
- PC race
- NPC gender
- PC gender
- NPC class
- NPC faction (+ rank)
- PC Faction  (+ rank) / expelled from faction
- current location/cell
- NPC disposition towards PC
- quest stage
- PC is diseased (spell target)
- NPC knows lore or not (noLore faction)
+ other conditions (global variable value, other NPC X is alive or dead, NPC has item X, PC clothes worn value, ...)

Most topics with generic dialogues also have lines for specific NPC.

Example: if you have a quest to find a given NPC, you might have to discuss with some NPC in a city in order to find some clues. Most NPC will offer a basic dialogue, while a few might have more
details and help you advance your quest.

2/ Skyrim vs Morrowind dialogue organization

Morrowind have the following structure
- Topic
---- list of Info / Response
-------- 1 chunk of text for each info / response

Skyrim / Skywind
- Branch
---- Topic
-------- list of TopicInfos
------------ list of responses (limited number of characters on each response) for each topicInfo

The text of one morrowind response, if larger than the max size of Skywind response, is split.
Since Skywind was ported from Morroblivion, since we do not cut words in the middle and since some lines were cut to have some rythme, it is impossible to predict from Morrowind content where the lines are cut.
This point is particularly important: the voice file name is based on the response number. If you have 3 responses, you have 3 files.
Therefore, there are two possibilities: either have the actors record each response in separate files or have the modders split the files.


3/ Skyrim vs Morrowind: How dialogue options are discovered and how the NPC choose their reply.

In Morrowind, dialogue conversation can be seen as html links. If a dialogue contains some keywords it will "unlock" some other topic (and this topic is then unlocked for every other NPC if they match the conditions)
So by default you know nothing and you build a list of topics.

In Skyrim/Skywind: by default you know every topics of all the quests currently running and if you want to limit the NPC topic list you need to add more conditions.

However, when it comes to choosing which reply the NPC will give Morrowind and Skyrim work exactly the same (excluding random replies).
- check the conditions for the first topic info in the list. If they match, give reply, otherwise go to next topic info.
- check the conditions for the second topic info in the list. If they match, give reply, otherwise go to next topic info.
... repeat until the end of the list.

In Skywind, we have a quest where most of the lore dialogues are stored (but it also contains some dialogue options)

4/ Voicetypes and how are the voice files organized?

What is a voicetype? http://www.creationkit.com/Voicetypes

It represents basically a voiceactor or the voice for a group of npc. For Skywind, we decided to have around 25 NPC voicetypes: 1 per race and gender and 1 for special voices (deadra and such)

in the voice folder, you will get a subfolder for each voicetype, where all the topic infos matching this voicetype are stored. When speaking to a NPC, if the file exists it is played, otherwise the dialogue is silent (but works ok).

5/ Conditions and implementations

In Morrowind, you could repeat a dialogue as many time as you want. Each time you hit the topic in the list, you will get the reply again and again.
In Skyrim, the philosophy is different. You get the information you need at the time you need it and you may never see it again (with advanced conditions, "say once" flags, ...).

This is really important because if you look at the dialogues in Morrowind master, you can see a certain lazyness from Bethesda. As we saw in (3), you will stop at the first line whose conditions match.
In Morrowind's master, you will therefore see that conditions for topic info N is based on the implicit negation of topic info N-1. They didn't implement every condition explicitely.

eg:
topicInfo 1 : conditions isDunmer + isLocation Vivec
topicInfo 2 : conditions isLocation Vivec
Actually for 2, the implicit condition is: isNotDunmer + isLocation Vivec. As mentioned, for a dunmer NPC in Vivec Morrowind dialogue would stop on topicInfo 1 and topicInfo 2 would be available only for non-dunmer.

In the Morrowind editor, you can see for single NPCs what are all the lines that would be available for them. But look at topicInfo 1 and 2, individually they work for a Vivec Dunmer NPC! So they would both be listed. But in game only topicInfo 1 would be available for the dunmer in Vivec.

So when we think about the volume of generic dialogue we have to take the full topicInfo list in mind.

Actually among all my work for the last two years I have also worked on precising the conditions. For the same topic as above, in Skywind you will have

topicInfo 1 : conditions isDunmer + isLocation Vivec
topicInfo 2 : conditions isNotDumer + isLocation Vivec

I'm trying to make the each line with a set of conditions so they are restricted to the fewer numbers of NPC possible. This reduces the number of dialogue/NPC combinations.


6/ Special dialogues (greetings, alarm, attack, flee, hello, hit, idle, intruder, thief)

In Skyrim, each of those topics are actually "virtual" topics for all the topicInfos regardless of the quests where they are defined. They cover a number of cases based on all the conditions based on I.1

7/ Dialogue overhaul in Skywind

We all know Skywind is cluttered (see point 3), even when implementing the Morrowind conditions. Since several months, I am doing a dialogue overhaul with the following axis:
- explicit conditions
- more strict conditions, remove as many combinations as possible, relevant dialogues only for each NPC
- say once
- do not repeat until
- dialogue flow (link topics to create a sort of discussion)
- prompts
- "hide" lore dialogue in sub dialogue menu
- adding NPC to noLore faction
- topic discovery mechanism
- ...

If you have access to it have a look at the latest dev version for improvements.




With that on the table, we can discuss the challenges.




II Challenges

1/ Dialogue documents not up to date.

As stated above, do whatever you have to in order to fix that if there are issues. Keep it as simple as possible. I also would talk to Thermador on this topic as he spent a large effort on this. He might have interesting advice.
And yes some dialogues are missing in Morroblivion. In my opinion, today the source of truth should be Skywind master (I'm overhauling the dialogues every day). Skywind master also has the exact response list and even you could export the file names from it.

2/ Old-fashioned / Awkward dialogues

This is a very subjective topic. I admit some of them are a bit awkward. But at the same time, it kinda is Morrowind's charm. However, it is not in Skywind's scope to re-write them.
We have to aknowledge that it is possible some like them and that some hate them.

3/ Removing content

Removing dialogue content just because it will never be voiced is a no-go. The fact that we will probably never be able to record all lines was a parameter we took into account at the very beginning of the project.
Also, I am very surprised to want to remove some lore content. I guess most lore "experts" have learned a lot from those NPC ;)

Regarding generic greetings, today we have a ton of them that cover your race, your clothes, your disease, the location, your crime level. Ain't that more immersive that just have 3 or 4 for each type of NPC ?

Also lore content (including "morrowind lore"), is already hidden under a sub menu. And I beg to differ to your assessment of " 'generic kwama farmer #7' was telling you what a halberd was and how to keep it in good working condition".
Check the conditions in the master (explicit and implicit). At present it's already certainly a lower occurence than what you think. And when I am done with my overhaul, certainly a farmer will not talk about the arts of war.

As I'm the only one working on this, I'm certainly to receive detailed feedback and detailed notes.

With regards to greetings, they are often quite informative and same as in Morrowind where they offered a gateway to new topics, in Skywind they tease your curiosity.
"Welcome to Balmora, seat of House Hlaalu where flows the Odai River." teases curiosity more than "welcome outlander".
Also existing greetings take into account plenty of conditions, including disposition. I like a NPC tell me to piss off in case of wrongdoings...

4/ Minimizing dialogue/NPC combination

As I mentioned in part I, I am more than ok with that. I'm already doing it! However, not drastically. For example, it makes sense for me when looking for a NPC, to have 8/10 of townspeople reply "I don't know him".
Also, considering the size of the map, if you want to discuss a somewhat general topic and only can do it with one NPC on the map it's not very good. Having savants the only one with lore topics make them even more wikipedia-esque.

Latest Rumors, Little secrets and such we can give to less people, but if you say it's just beggars and bartenders, it makes for a very formulaic gameplay: "Enter town, find a beggar or a bartender".
I am not very inclined to add new NPC only to have them give lore dialogue: That will remove the interest of existing NPC and will make the ones very random (LoreDude #1). Also, it makes for more work to create new NPC.

I agree that people are very forthcoming with you and talk about a lot of things but that can be balanced by using the dispostion. If you're best buddies with a NPC, you should be able to talk to him about a lot of things.

5/ Voice conflicts on same NPC

This can already happen outside of generic dialogue. Some topicInfos are shared between specific (named) NPC and if they have the same race and gender but not the same voice actor you are screwed.
The only solution for this is to have multiple voicetypes (as stated above voicetypes all have their folders). Even with your proposed spreadsheets, there is no way to prevent it happens.

6/ Files provided

see I.2  Who splits the files?

III Conclusion

- My feeling is that the concerns about the generic dialogue may be smaller than you think. I certainly strive to make the topics less distributed. This is a WIP.
- There are concerns with voice actor recording the correct dialogue: in an ideal world, a voice actor comes and claim a NPC we would be able to extract ourself the list of dialogues and send it to him/her.
- Removing dialogue / rewriting content is not on the roadmap.
- Voice conflicts : the only way to fix is to have one voicetype per actor. But then if you want 100% voiced you need to record every line. Note: isVoiceType is a possible condition on dialogue but I'd rather not add it on all dialogues with no voice acting.
- Ideally voice acting recording should have started once the dialogue is stabilized and the documents should be based on Skywind master.


== TL;DR ==

Of course - for documentation update if it helps
Yes - for minimizing the dialogue / NPC combination - It's already happening.
No  - for removing content
Not Really - for adding new characters. Just make better use of existing ones.
 

Hey all, I’ve recently become interested in the Skywind project and came to this part of the site to lend voice acting talent but then saw the terrible discovery smitehammer ran across recently concerning the incomplete dialogue info (which someone may want to plaster on the front of the voice recording page for recruiting sake). This may have been checked already, but perhaps look into how uesp contributers gain the additional dialogue info? Was it just individual entries from in game reading or did someone automate dialogue extraction in a more complete way? When a way of compiling an accurate and complete source of in game dialogue is discovered I think the structuring process will be essential to the continued progress of this facet of Skywind. Hence, I’m here to offer my two cents concerning Smitehammer’s proposed restructuring and will try to offer constructive solutions based on what I could decipher from Digital paranoid’s detailed description of the how-to’s of dialogue implementation. I’m just a newcomer passing by, and I’m truly impressed by the level of effort that has been put into this project so far by dedicated individuals, so just take this as some lowly plebe’s attempt to offer an outside look to this difficult problem.

First, I agree new NPC lore givers should be avoided if that is indeed what was being suggested but that filtering the number of uniquely voiced NPCs with all this info should be a priority due to filesize/recording effort it would take and in order to not have conflicting voice actors for an NPC. I agree quite strongly with Dragomir’s post on this front and all others.

I propose:

1. A master document of all dialogue for all NPCs rather than five separate documents once a way to compile ALL dialogue accurately is found.

This proposed master document (or multiple docs separated among gender/race pairs as currently exists) should automatically filter potential dialogue based on matching conditions of an NPC in the following categories:

Npc name,

Gender

Race

Faction

Class

Location

Unconditional (screams, shouts, battle, special/virtual topics, etc. i.e. essential dialogue EVERY npc needs)

Generic (local rumors, pc diseased, npc disposition, morrowind lore, etc. i.e. every npc CAN have, but not really essential) (make Lorefaction For filtering? See concept later on)

I believe this system rather than 5 separate docs/spreadsheets with no proper condition filtering mechanism is essential or else dialogue lines will be missed through human error and cause spotty coverage. Not sure the best tool for this, but it is important imo.

This way you’d selected an NPC name and all dialogue will be filtered to meet conditions of that NPCs relations and traits showing you every line that needs to be recorded on one page.

More voicetypes needed than 25, although a good starting point, I believe more is necessary to avoid voice conflicts and would be relatively easy to implement in the grand scheme of things. If ALL the in-game dialogue was recorded, however unlikely, it would probably cap around 100-150 voice actors (versus skyrim’s 50 or so)

There should be a small number of archetype voices (expanding only slightly or not at all from the original 25) for each gender/race combo voiced by a single/or at most a duo or trio of hardworking voice actor(s). These voice actors would voice dialogue for the majority of a given race/gender (and would be set as the default voice type for a given race/gender combo) but would probably avoid NPCs with significant unique dialogue to reduce workload and allow for important NPCs (with more dialogue) to be unique.

Other Voicetype folders should be made as other voice actors select smaller groups of npcs and should include all audio for selected NPCs voiced actors and include a .txt file listing the npcs that the voicetype should be applied to for reference when implementing in the ck.

I don’t know if this following idea would be possible with the creation of new voice types, but perhaps these less involved voice actors would not be required to record ALL potential dialogue, cutting out the local rumours, little secret etc. to reduce the number of uniquely voiced generic dialogue needed by marking them as a member of NoLoreFaction and the above fluff topics as members of Lorefaction (thereby reducing total filesize for skywind audio and the workload by quite a bit). These lines still would be covered by archetype voice actors and would be easily found in-game among those voice actor’s npcs. These non-archetype voice actors however would still need the minimum “unconditional” short lines such as greetings, one liner comments, death screams, etc. that all NPCs really need to avoid voice conflicts or missing essential dialogue but hopefully shouldn’t be all that intense compared to the wiki like background information, or latest rumours.

Would these ideas solve the voice conflicts on the same npc by dividing dialogue along more voice types while limiting certain generic dialogue options on non-archetype voice types, or just create a ton more work? Would additional conditions need to be applied to generic dialogue, local lore, etc?

Hope this provided some food for thought and I hope I don’t come across as domineering. This is just an idea, feel free to bash it for my elementary understanding of CK implementation, but I hope this may be helpful in some way.

I think I may have figured out how to filter multiple columns within excel. Here's a quick run through with instructions and a diagram. it would require setting the 4-5 column conditions when selecting a character but really isn't that arduous after the first run through.

1. here is our data set. we are looking for any entries falling under john, a, b, c

2. start by selecting all cells (Ctrl+A)
then go to the data tab and press filter

3. select each top column and take the following steps:
click "deselect all"
4. then search for character's stat for that column. for this first one it is his name (john) and check it and press ok

5. you will end up with only rows that have the characters name but not random faction/race lines across multiple actors. to do this we need to make sure no data for npc column is OK as well.

6. re-click column and check the (blanks) option at the bottom of the list as well

7. now we have all rows that have the word john or are blank (i.e. unconditional) under the npc column. we must now filter the rest of the columns

8.repeat same process for all columns with appropriate criteria (John, a, b, c) to achieve a master list

*edit: It's also important to note that if an NPC does not have a value associated with a column (such as faction) that they always deselect all and have (blanks) checked to make sure that a non-aligned npc is not ending up with random house Hlaalu dialogue for example. in short always deselect and check (blanks) and then check whatever data may also be in the column.

Ok, so I fiddled around the the existing spreadsheet more and brought the # of lines per a major NPC down to 500 from 1000. I think a good 4/5 of these lines could still be spread out among actors/npcs as I haven't touched the large sections such as latest rumors, lore, etc. yet which would bring it down to something beginning to be manageable. The hitch is i already feel like this spreadsheet is woefully out of date and doesn't have the new conditions/npc combination work that digitalparanoid has been working on (which would make this easier, and not lead to my planning on a crash course with his hard work programming). I think if any real attempt is to be made with the voice acting, digitalparanoid's work must reach a place where it is more or less solid for us to take the info from the skywind master and use it with confidence when assigning voice actors with the given class/race/faction/... conditions. This, I believe is the next step the voice acting group needs to take with the help of digitalparanoid.

The system of assigning dialogue would also be based on the concept that any one actor would only be voicing about 1/5 of the potential generic dialogue leaving the other 4/5ths to other actors. Digitalparanoid's work may have already relieved some of this through what he has described, but I believe more will have to be done to make voice acting not a week long project per NPC. In all every line of generic dialogue would potentially be voiced by at least 2 of the 10 races for each gender with the exception of unique dialogue if a single voice actor was used per gender/race combo. This divison would be split among voice type.  It would require for the dialogue system to realize for example that, voice type X only has set B dialogue (out of the 5: A-E options) in order to not have any empty lines. I'm not sure the viability of this model in Skywind's current state, but I think something like this would be necessary to have fully voiced NPCs. I'm also curious as to why latest rumors/little secret is currently unable to be voiced. Is it the current conditions or something else?

Lastly for now, I really do believe voice acting would be made much more viable by cutting some of the generic greeting lines based on traits such as disposition (we really only need something like 4 options, 10,50,70,90) and not the 20 or more that exist with small variations in text for a single race and gender combo. Another example is the "Hello" voice, which any race/gender combo comes in at a whopping 150 options generically speaking, which even if spread out among 5 voice actors for a race/gender, still gives you about 30 lines of Hello! when probably 4-8 would do just fine. I really don't believe this would harm the feel of the game and would still provide quite a variety. The only other work around is to make some responses exclusive to certain individuals, and that can be problematic at times because of the varying tones but is an option.

TL;DR
Anyway in summary, I think digitalparanoid's suggestion pertaining to extracting dialogue info from the skywind masterfile is a must.
We should also consider trimming generic dialogue in areas where it truly is excessive
personally, my goal is to create a system where EVERY line of meaningful dialogue can potentially be voiced in game with only the rather useless variations of a topic being cut.