Branching Dialogue Tutorial

This page is an intermediate-level tutorial on creating branching choices for dialogue with NPCs.

See the Project Tamriel Wiki article Writing and Diagloue Guides for an introduction to working with dialogue in Morrowind.

Tutorial:

Figure

_Morrowind dialogue uses a topic-based system rather than a dialogue tree system, but with a little bit of MWScript you can create branching dialogue trees as complex as you like*

• Difficulty level: Intermediate
• Requirements:
  • Morrowind, Tribunal and Bloodmoon
  • This tutorial assumes you have a basic knowledge of Scripting

Scenario:
Duder the Dunmer wants to know whether you would like to discuss Kings or Cabbages - but you can only pick one. If only there was a way to create branching dialogue choices in Morrowind..?

Create a dialPath branch in dialogue:

The first thing we need is an NPC with a script with a local variable. This local variable will be used in dialogue:

Getting set up:

For branching dialogue to work properly, an NPC needs to have a script attached with a local variable.

Tip

Remember, shorts are 0 by default

Let’s set up the greeting on dialPath == 0

Figure

Note that in the result we specify a choice function

Example in-game:

Well? What shall we talk about?

Nesting choices within a dialogue path

We can nest further branching choices within dialPath 0, depending on whether the player responds to choice "Cabbages 1" or "Kings" 2, using the Choice function.

Choice 1:

For the first choice, we set the dialPath to 1 in the results:

Figure

Do you enjoy cabbages? It’s a simple choice.

Example in-game:

To which a response can be made:

Figure

If Choice 2 is chosen, the NPC can be made to respond “Neither do I.” As neither you nor the NPC wish to discuss cabbages any further… we can set the dialPath back to 0.

Example in-game:

Choice 2:

For the second choice, we set dialPath to 2:

Figure

Example in-game:

In-game, the other choices are displayed:

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You should now understand the fundamentals of creating branching dialogue. You can create dialogue trees as complex as you like within the confines of Morrowind’s topic-based dialogue system.

Tip

Consider making a flow-chart to keep track of your branching dialogue.

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Credits:

• GrumblingVomit: Created the original tutorial
• MasssiveJuice: Edited and formatted the tutorial for Morrowind Modding Wiki