Dialog Errors and the Morrowind Plugin Dilema - Forums powered by UBBThreads™

I've been running anywhere between 50 to 80+ mods since maybe august. I've been checking for errors with files, creatures, npcs, doubling, etc. One thing that I didn't think about checking was errors in dialog. Now the reason I never seen any dialog errors is... we'll let me start from the beginning.

Lets take 2 mods, both have a dialog addition <lets say the "specific person" Dialog node, something everybody sees>. Now when you click on a NPC who has this change, the mod goes through it's dialog link list instead of the default morrowinds list. Now if it is just 1 mod, this is pretty much fine, but when you combine 2 mods who change the same dialog linklist, you will miss out on information, content, possibly quests due to this. Now this is not a major error. What happens is that the latest plugin's dialog changes take effect and any previous plugins dialog gets discarded and the primary plugins dialog linklist shows. That means if a previous plugin had blue clickable text, you will not see it because it is not there.

<now for a visual example>.
I decided to load in 2 plugins to demonstrate dialog errors. I chose 2 very popular plugins, Abandon Flats 2 By Ghost Who Walks, and MoonSpawn By Caladan Brood. Now when I install these into morrowind and Run then both, I do not get any errors or warning. Now when I load them into the Tescs separately, I still do not see any errors. Now when I load them Both in at the same time, I got these six errors.

1) Following string is different for topic "Greeting 1" info 1215227585220936854-"Who's there?"

2) Previous string is different for topic "Greeting 1" info 7505245801866832085-"(null)"

3) Following string is different for topic "Greeting 1" info 7505245801866832085-"(null)"

4) Previous string is different for topic "Greeting 1" info 515184873182019530-"No! All my work! My followers! Everything, ruined! You will pay, %pcname. You will pay the debt of blood with your very soul!"

5) Following string is different for topic "Rescue" info 298276032324888451-"How do you feel? I can't believe you're alive! I was walking along, looking for my friend Kallin, when all of a sudden it started raining, really, really pouring. Fortunately, I was up on a hill, or I might have drowned myself. The water fell for quite a while. I thought I saw somebody fall, too and found it was you. I guess all the water cushioned your fall and allowed you to survive. You've been out for a while, long enough for the water to seep into the dusty, thirsty ground, or evaporate."

6) Previous string is different for topic "Rescue" info 11942143162641832446-"Fine. I will wait. But not for long. I grow tired of this imprisonment."

What this is saying is that these 2 mods have a conflicting dialog string and that only 1 of them will be run. That means that you may get the Abandon Flats Dialog, when you are in Moonspawn, and vice versa. Many times, these errors are minor, but sometimes, these errors can be very debilitating. I have a mod running that puts a lady in the census office next to the man you give your papers to. Now when I spoke to this lady, she asked me if I wanted to go meet her leader. Past that, I could not do nothing. No activators, no blue text, nothing. Now when I uninstalled another mod (in this case, cloak collection 1.4), and reran the game with the said above mod, the lady was their, her dialog was their, and she gave me the paper, the package, and the directions to meet her master. Now before that, I did not know that she was suppost to do that.

Now who do we Blame. In the case of the Abandon Flats mod and Moonspawn, do we Blame Cathaid, or do we Blame Ghost.

We Blame No One. Here is why.

Untill now, most of us didn't even know their was a dialog error with these 2 mods. Heck most of us ran them both together and never gave it a second thought. I ran another test using Moonspawn and Cult of the clouds plugin, no errors, I did the same with abandon flats and Deus Matale, no errors.

Now this DOES NOT effect all mods. These tend to stick with mods which specifically dialog intensive. Their are some dialog heavy mods which come up with no errors at all, then their are some mods which I would have assumed werent suppost to have any dialog at all (for example cloak collection or Shadow Mail armor) and come up with dialog conflicts. Now I am not aiming at these 2 mod makers nor am I trying to paint a big read target at them, they are just the freshest examples of my testing in my mind. I have been running this test for the past 5 hours (combining, recombining, and recombining to see which combinations come up with dialog conflicts) so I am a bit.. well laxed. Please note that 1 mod may not have dialog conflicts with another specific mod, but they may have dialog conflicts with each other when run together in conjunction with another mod set.

Now it is not our right to go out storming into the forums, spamming emails, websites, comming up with rampart demands to our modding community to make their plugin perfect. Some of these errors are unforseeable and come up in both the newest, and oldest mods. What I hope will happen is that people will take better care when inputting dialog into their plugins. We blame incompatability between the really well made and large plugins and the tiny dinky plugins. What I am stating here is that even the largest, most well refined, worked on plugins can have errors with other large, well refined, worked on plugins. All we can do is try to do our part in creating compatable plugins.

For those who are wondering, I did my little test with multiple plugins and have run into anywhere between 0 and 60 errors. (60 being the highest number of dialog conflicts when running around 88 mods altogether). Now in my book, I'm amazed that it is that little. I do run some very dialog intensive mods, and to only have 60 or so dialog incompatablilities when running around 600 megs worth of plugins is an amazing feat. I applaud all our mod makers for really working on their mods and making them a real sight to behold.

Pemolis Underfoot
Druid Galore
Former EQ addict
I need a Hug!