Familiars and Conversations

[Legacy_henesua]

               What is the method for starting a conversation when possesing your familiar?

Is this hardcoded? Please don't tell me this was hardcoded. 
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_WhiZard]

               

henesua wrote...

What is the method for starting a conversation when possesing your familiar?

Is this hardcoded? Please don't tell me this was hardcoded. 

I don't think there is an On-Possessed event to capture.  The best method might be heart beat (preferably a pseudo-heart beat or module heart-beat as I doubt the familiar scripts will continue to function).  You can certainly use a heart-beat system to prevent possessing under certain circumstances (using the unpossess script command).
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Thanks for the reply, WhiZard.

My issue is that I can't get BeginConversation or ActionStartConversation to work for a possessed familiar. A conversation is immediately exited after calling BeginConversation. ActionStartConversation simply returns an error statement to the effect that familiars can't start conversations.

So in light of the failure of these methods on the possessed familiar, I'm at a loss as to what function I can use to get a conversation to work regardless of what event I use.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Fester Pot]

               Is it across the board, this error? What about starting a conversation with yourself or spawning in a placeable? With the familiar in another area, you could try spawning in a placeable NEXT to the character - not the familiar - and try to start the conversation that way. I'm thinking, one should still see the conversation options when in familiar form.

Of course this is just out of the air thinking, I have no experience with this, so there is a chance neither will work as Bioware may have omitted conversations with familiars in an attempt to avoid having players in this state advance the plot or trigger events.

FP!
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Fester Pot, 16 février 2012 - 07:34 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Thanks for the reply. Across the board? What do you mean?

All of my efforts have been as a possessed familiar. The possessed familiar uses a feat to execute a script. The script - which is running on the possessed familiar - has included the BeginConversation method and the ActionStartConversation method.
With BeginConversation I have tried:

BeginConversation(sConv);

     and

BeginConversation(sConv, OBJECT_SELF);

     and even

AssignCommand(GetMaster(oFamiliar), SetLocalInt(oFamiliar, "SUCCESS", BeginConversation(sConv, oFamiliar));

I can't recall what parameters I tried with ActionStartConversation, but I was rejected rather sternly with that method the first time I tried it so I immediately went with BeginConversation.
The best that I can get to happen is that the conversation briefly appears, the familiar says the first line, and then the conversation ends. None of the conversation options appear.

This is a bit surprising as I thought I had got BeginConversation to work once before in this situation. But I am unable to now. I'll try once more. Perhaps I had an error in my conversation... but I doubt it, I had created a new conversation with a first line to be spoken and then tacked a response on to that. The first line is spoken by the familiar, and I briefly see the conversation panel, but then it just as quickly closes.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Fester Pot]

               By across the board, I meant for everything you're trying to start a conversation with - NPC, placeable or just yourself - that this pops up?

I fiddled around with using a trigger to fire the conversation and at best, all I get is the first line of the conversation to fire as a line of text above the NPCs head - where the choices themselves also get repeated as such - rather than being displayed in a conversation box.

A custom wrapper might be required in this case but even then, it might not be possible if Bioware has blocked conversations in a possessed form from being fired.

Sorry, didn't mean to confuse you.

FP!
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Fester Pot, 16 février 2012 - 10:34 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_henesua]

               No problem, FP. I am easy to confuse. I have to make up for my thick headedness with lots of elbow grease.

Your experiment is interesting, and seems to be telling. I think that if this is even possible its not going to behave very well.

What I was trying to do was create a conversation that would enable a menu of familiar special actions - picking up items, marking targets for their master's spells etc.... Rather than go this route I am simply going to focus on one feature: enabling familiar to mark targets for spells that their master will later cast. Thats enough to take on as it is. And then I think I'll be done with familiars for awhile. This has been more of a hassle than I wanted to deal with.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Fester Pot]

               Are you going to release your modified familiar package by chance as a stand-alone project? I've followed your posts on making familiars as they should be - small, mobile and helpful in giving their master information - rather than the meat shields they tend to be.

I think I read you have a small cat, a frog, a bird ... a little worm would be cool too!

FP!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               I hadn't considered packaging this as a standalone, but that is a possibility. I have made a Bat, Cat, Mouse, and Crow familiar so far. I intend to polish these and then do some play testing of my module before spending my time working on packaging this stuff for a Vault release. The goal really is to make a fun module to play.

However if you are interested in helping me work on this system, I can give you copies of the resources I am working on and we can collaborate. Perhaps rather than release it to the vault it would be better to dump the files as a separate set of working files in a project on this website and share our efforts.