A lot of people are pointing out "bugs" or other observations that they think are caused by this mod. Unfortunately they are not caused by this mod as those bugs were already present in the original Oblivion and would need different mods to fix them, none of which exist yet to my knowledge.
Such bugs and issues include: NPCs just standing around after conversation.
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This is not caused by this mod. Oblivion is an oldschool game with unsophisticated AI. If the NPC is in a "sandbox" AI package, which is usually the case if they're going around chatting with other NPCs, the NPC is hardcoded to walk around randomly in the area, with random coordinates within the zone. Think of older RPGs, where NPCs just walk back and forth, just standing around.
NPCs talking to each other through walls, doors, floors.
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This is not caused by this mod. That happens in vanilla as well. NPCs basically don't need line of sight to interact with each other. I don't know of any way to fix this as it seems to be a hardcoded issue.
NPCs talking to each other from far away.
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Similarly to above, this is not directly caused by this mod and happens in vanilla as well. It seems to be related to how the game loads in cells and activates NPCs when the player loads into the cell (after a loading screen). The game actually deactivates all NPC AI when a player leaves an area, and only activates them when the player re-enters the area. The game seems to glitch out sometimes when activating NPCs, causing them to begin conversation even if they aren't near each other yet.
This kind of bug was significantly reduced with the Open Cities mod for original Oblivion, as going into most cities (except Imperial City) didn't require loading screens anymore.
This mod does however increase the range at which NPCs will look for conversations, which can in theory increase the chance of this bug happening. However, even after I tried removing the tweak, I still see NPCs doing it, so I decided to keep the tweak in anyway since it didn't seem to make a difference.
I know it's a bit weird to be seeing these kinds of issues in a "modern" game but Oblivion Remastered is pretty much just an Unreal Engine 5 coat of paint over the original Oblivion (which came out in March 2006 mind you) in many ways. They kept even some of the original bugs and engine issues, and mostly only fixed the things that were direly in need of fixing, such as making the game 64-bit. But a lot of these issues that were in the original Oblivion are still in the game, and it can feel pretty jarring and make the game look and feel very janky compared to even something like Skyrim, where NPCs actually walk around in patrol patterns or have animations like chopping wood or looking like they're thinking as they stand around the market. In Oblivion, they don't even know they're in a market to begin with, and there are almost no idle animations used by regular NPCs in the vanilla game at all. Heck even trying to add idle animations with mods was a huge problem (we needed a mod called Blockhead).
Hopefully we can get some mods similar to Skyrim that allows NPCs to have custom idle animations or even behavior hacks that allows them to do more things when sandboxing instead of just standing around or whatever.
No sorry. Hope you figured it out already by now but this mod doesn't do that. It's some other mod for sure. This mod doesn't touch anything like that. Just some Game Settings tweaks.
Not sure if this is the mod or a vanilla problem, but if you stand close to some NPCs for a long period of time they will literally spam their greeting to the player over and over and over again. Sometimes it might just be a simple "good to see you", but on repeat.
Yes that's vanilla. Actually that's what this mod is trying to avoid. By default they'll do that from a far-ish distance from you. Like if you're just walking down the street some guard will say something like, "You have my ear citizen" or something like that. This mod makes it so you need to be right up on them, almost bumping them before they do it.
It isn't caused by this mod. It's just how Oblivion works. NPCs will idle after they finish the last thing they were doing, in this case after they finish speaking to each other. Oblivion is still a very oldschool game. They aren't actually very lifelike at all. They're likely on a sandbox AI package in their schedule, which means they'll walk around a little bit.
If you come from Skyrim, it actually avoids this issue by not letting NPCs chat with each other at all except for very specific scripted scenes, or repeated dialogue rather than random ones. For example, Nazeem talking to Carlotta in the Whiterun market. It's not random and it's a very specific moment. But notice also that after that, Nazeem might just stand around in front of her stand in the market for a bit. Because that's his AI package until he has to do something else. It's still the same system but they didn't give random conversation topics to NPCs in Skyrim unlike Oblivion.
This mod tries to help fix it a little by making them look for more conversations, but if you're in a place with few NPCs they're kinda gonna avoid starting a conversation with the same NPC for a time. So if they can't find anybody else to talk to they'll just stand around until they decide they wanna do something else, like walk around, find a chair, eat, whatever.
Later on, when we get mods that add new random NPCs to towns (like Crowded Cities or whatever), you're gonna notice it a little bit less as there'll be more NPCs around and therefore more potential conversation targets. Also when we get some idle animation mods maybe it'll look a bit less awkward. They'll look like they're still talking to each other, twiddling their fingers or whatever, even if you can't hear them. Old Oblivion used to have stuff like that.
Conversations short-circuit before the dialogue is completed, then they start another conversation that often short-circuits as well, leading to some absurd dialogue outcomes. "Hey have you seen x." "Well, good seeing you." "Best place to get armor is from X" "Bye" LOL
This mod doesn't touch that. This mod literally just edits how far NPCs are from the player before they do their greetings, and also how far NPCs will search for conversations. It isn't even a script or edit to NPC behaviors or voice files or anything like that at all. It's just tweaks to game settings that exist in vanilla already.
What you guys are describing happens in vanilla too. It tends to happen when NPCs run out of topics, which, again, will happen even in vanilla. NPCs will try to avoid repeating the same topic with the same partner, and is hardcoded in the game as far as I can tell. There is no way to force NPCs to finish or cancel conversations with simple tweaks like this. Gonna need to make a script for that, which, again, this mod doesn't do.
As someone who does not have this mod installed, but is about to install it: Yes, this is just Oblivion being Oblivion. It has happened to me on a vanilla playthrough and a modded playthrough. Anyways, looking forward to this mod in action Michiko, thanks for the work!
I used the CS. It is doable in xEdit too but it's hard to find the right game settings in xEdit.
As for tips, it really depends on what you're trying to do. I'd suggest just tinkering with the CS. Game Settings especially are pretty safe to play around with because if you don't like the effects of the mod, you can just disable the mod and it'll reset the Game Settings back to default anyway. The values don't get saved in the save file, unlike some other things like Global Variables.
Thanks! The mod works great. I was probably going to tweak the head tracking a little bit because it's creepy to me when they stare you down robotically. But to confirm, this mod is working great, one of my favorites!!
As far as I know the fAIGreetingTimer setting is supposed to fix that. In vanilla it defaults to 20 seconds if I'm not mistaken, at least according to the wiki. In this mod I actually set it to 2, but it's because NPCs don't already greet you unless you bump into them. So if you're really up in their face they'll say things like "what is it now?" more often. My logic is that if you really don't want NPCs to greet you, you wouldn't try to bump into them in the first place anyway.
If you want, you can use that Game Settings Loader mod I list as a requirement, open up the NPC Socialization Tweaks.ini file I have here, or make your own, and set fAIGreetingTimer to 30 or higher, depending on what you want. The .ini file can be opened easily in Notepad or something, which is convenient as you don't need to edit it in xEdit or the Construction Set or anything.
However, I'm not 100% sure it works properly that way. Because if the default is 20 and you still find that annoying, then maybe that setting doesn't actually do what we think. We'll have to test it more, as there's no real info as far as I can tell. But everybody seems to guess that it works the way we think, as a lot of people suggest raising or lowering it depending on what you want.
Apparently vanilla is only 5 which makes sense because I had a similar issue even before I used any social tweaks. Have changed it to 30 to see if that helps. It's just the vendors that bug me really.
Thank you all so much for your help! The subtitle issue has been completely resolved. Now, the subtitles for the dialogues of the NPCs are always displayed. Even before I can see or hear the nearby NPCs talking, the subtitles have already appeared. I won't miss any conversations anymore. This is really great! Of course, the NPCs often gather together to talk, which makes the subtitle display a bit messy. However, this is another problem that needs to be solved, and it's not an issue with the subtitle display. Thank you all again for your help! This has solved a big problem for me. Thank you! Thank you so much!!
I appreciate you for this mod, greatly. I only have to ask, is this mod what is causing my NPCs to start conversations with each other from much farther away? I'll frequently see someone stop and wait for the engager to approach from the other side of a city lmao. Either way, this is an essential mod for me.
Yes it is. :) I admit it looks silly sometimes but my intention was to make NPCs talk to each other more often because I felt like since NPCs don't randomly talk to you anymore, cities had a tendency to feel dead as you were running through them going about your business.
If you're not paying too close attention, it's generally subtle enough that most people won't notice. But if you are paying attention, you'll see two NPCs looking at each other from far away, because they wanna have a chat.
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Such bugs and issues include:
NPCs just standing around after conversation.
NPCs talking to each other through walls, doors, floors.
NPCs talking to each other from far away.
This kind of bug was significantly reduced with the Open Cities mod for original Oblivion, as going into most cities (except Imperial City) didn't require loading screens anymore.
This mod does however increase the range at which NPCs will look for conversations, which can in theory increase the chance of this bug happening. However, even after I tried removing the tweak, I still see NPCs doing it, so I decided to keep the tweak in anyway since it didn't seem to make a difference.
I know it's a bit weird to be seeing these kinds of issues in a "modern" game but Oblivion Remastered is pretty much just an Unreal Engine 5 coat of paint over the original Oblivion (which came out in March 2006 mind you) in many ways. They kept even some of the original bugs and engine issues, and mostly only fixed the things that were direly in need of fixing, such as making the game 64-bit. But a lot of these issues that were in the original Oblivion are still in the game, and it can feel pretty jarring and make the game look and feel very janky compared to even something like Skyrim, where NPCs actually walk around in patrol patterns or have animations like chopping wood or looking like they're thinking as they stand around the market. In Oblivion, they don't even know they're in a market to begin with, and there are almost no idle animations used by regular NPCs in the vanilla game at all. Heck even trying to add idle animations with mods was a huge problem (we needed a mod called Blockhead).
Hopefully we can get some mods similar to Skyrim that allows NPCs to have custom idle animations or even behavior hacks that allows them to do more things when sandboxing instead of just standing around or whatever.
If you come from Skyrim, it actually avoids this issue by not letting NPCs chat with each other at all except for very specific scripted scenes, or repeated dialogue rather than random ones. For example, Nazeem talking to Carlotta in the Whiterun market. It's not random and it's a very specific moment. But notice also that after that, Nazeem might just stand around in front of her stand in the market for a bit. Because that's his AI package until he has to do something else. It's still the same system but they didn't give random conversation topics to NPCs in Skyrim unlike Oblivion.
This mod tries to help fix it a little by making them look for more conversations, but if you're in a place with few NPCs they're kinda gonna avoid starting a conversation with the same NPC for a time. So if they can't find anybody else to talk to they'll just stand around until they decide they wanna do something else, like walk around, find a chair, eat, whatever.
Later on, when we get mods that add new random NPCs to towns (like Crowded Cities or whatever), you're gonna notice it a little bit less as there'll be more NPCs around and therefore more potential conversation targets. Also when we get some idle animation mods maybe it'll look a bit less awkward. They'll look like they're still talking to each other, twiddling their fingers or whatever, even if you can't hear them. Old Oblivion used to have stuff like that.
What you guys are describing happens in vanilla too. It tends to happen when NPCs run out of topics, which, again, will happen even in vanilla. NPCs will try to avoid repeating the same topic with the same partner, and is hardcoded in the game as far as I can tell. There is no way to force NPCs to finish or cancel conversations with simple tweaks like this. Gonna need to make a script for that, which, again, this mod doesn't do.
As for tips, it really depends on what you're trying to do. I'd suggest just tinkering with the CS. Game Settings especially are pretty safe to play around with because if you don't like the effects of the mod, you can just disable the mod and it'll reset the Game Settings back to default anyway. The values don't get saved in the save file, unlike some other things like Global Variables.
If you want, you can use that Game Settings Loader mod I list as a requirement, open up the NPC Socialization Tweaks.ini file I have here, or make your own, and set fAIGreetingTimer to 30 or higher, depending on what you want. The .ini file can be opened easily in Notepad or something, which is convenient as you don't need to edit it in xEdit or the Construction Set or anything.
However, I'm not 100% sure it works properly that way. Because if the default is 20 and you still find that annoying, then maybe that setting doesn't actually do what we think. We'll have to test it more, as there's no real info as far as I can tell. But everybody seems to guess that it works the way we think, as a lot of people suggest raising or lowering it depending on what you want.
However, when NPCs are chatting, the subtitles often don't show up.
Could you please solve this problem and ensure that the subtitles will be displayed whenever NPCs are chatting?
This was translated using an AI. I hope you can understand it.
Thank you!
for some reason this is set to 0
bGeneralSubtitles=1
https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivionremastered/mods/1359
The subtitle issue has been completely resolved. Now, the subtitles for the dialogues of the NPCs are always displayed.
Even before I can see or hear the nearby NPCs talking, the subtitles have already appeared. I won't miss any conversations anymore. This is really great!
Of course, the NPCs often gather together to talk, which makes the subtitle display a bit messy. However, this is another problem that needs to be solved, and it's not an issue with the subtitle display.
Thank you all again for your help! This has solved a big problem for me.
Thank you! Thank you so much!!
If you're not paying too close attention, it's generally subtle enough that most people won't notice. But if you are paying attention, you'll see two NPCs looking at each other from far away, because they wanna have a chat.