khzmusik

Update on adding these NPCs to POIs... Rather than add them to sleeper volumes, I tried creating a spawn block, modeled after the "spawnTrader" block: <block name="spawnNPCGeneric"> <property name="Extends" value="spawnTrader" /> <property name="CustomIcon" value="apparelSweatshirt" /> <!-- just to tell which is which--> <property name="SpawnClass" value="NPCBaker,NPCNurse,NPCFarmer,NPCAmmo,Hunter,Pest" /> </block> (Note: I've also done it the "explicit" way, by copying-and-pasting the entire "spawnTrader" block, and only changing the "SpawnClass" value.) This spawn block can then be placed in the POI like any other block. This works, in the sense that the NPCs are awake and wandering when spawned in. But, it works a bit too well... because the NPCs keep spawning until some predetermined limit is reached. I have no idea what that limit is. Depending upon the NPC, it could be only one, or it could be anywhere from five to nine. Am I missing something really stupid? Some XML property that I need to include/modify, or perhaps some way to customize the "settings" of the block in the prefab editor?

That's good news, thanks! (As an aside - this likely won't be ready for a while, for technical reasons which aren't relevant here. It's just good to know that if/when I can get them to work, I can distribute them.)

Question about modified versions of original 7D2D assets. I am creating a modlet that adds Xyth's excellent NPCs to POI spawn groups. To see them in action, I am taking some of the original 7D2D prefabs, and altering them (slightly) to spawn NPCs instead of zombies. Other than the spawn groups, the POIs are not modified (or at least not much). Here is the question: Can I distribute this modlet through GitLab or similar? I would imagine the XML/Xpath is not an issue, but the prefab files might be.

Stupid question, but after you ask them to "Follow me for your patrol route", did you try to dismiss them at that point, or did you say "Patrol your route" before trying to dismiss them? If you only asked them to follow, then my guess is the NPC is still waiting to finish learning the patrol route, and it's not possible to dismiss them until they've started patrolling (and therefore left that state). That's a guess though. If you haven't tried that yet, try it and see if it works.

Well, because I'm basically a PITA, I have another question. I'm trying to do a "dead is mostly dead" playthrough. I've got all of it working as far as the base game is concerned - you can't craft or pick up bedrolls, and your skill points are reset upon dying (technically, upon respawning). But, because I also like these NPCs, I would also like the ability to "unhire" them. Specifically on dying, but just the general ability to trigger this would be helpful. Is there any way to do this? EDIT: Well, I just looked in SphereII's C# code, and the answer is currently "no." It wouldn't be too difficult to make a method that would dismiss all entities associated with the player, but I have no idea how you could make it so that it is an event you could trigger through XML (as an "action" property in a triggered_effect tag). This is probably a question for the SphereIICore thread.

So, when I gave you folks leeway with spawning sleepers, I may have been a bit premature. It turns out that you can't spawn sleepers in POIs unless they are associated with sleeper spawns, in which case they need to be able to have their sleeper volumes be "woke" as a default. AFAIK this is not the default behavior, so sleeper volumes won't spawn NPC spawners correctly. Meaning, you can't currently spawn NPCs in POIs such that they are in a state that they would be active (wandering, whatever). Therefore, I would love it if you solved the issue where NPCs spawn without AI in sleeper volumes. Still not saying I expect anything, just saying this feature would make a bunch of things possible. Thanks for listening to a rambling lunatic.

I'm hoping that wasn't sarcastic... if it is, I'll keep my yap shut.

I've nothing to do with the development of the mod launcher. But, based on the first screenshot, it seems like the mod launcher needs to have SVN installed, and it isn't. I don't know why - neither why the mod launcher would need it (most repos use Git), nor why it wouldn't be installed. It should be included if the mod launcher was compiled using the appropriate package from Nuget. I could be wrong though, and you might need to download some version of the .NET runtime or something. This is the library that is associated with that .dll: https://sharpsvn.open.collab.net/

...Well, it turns out this doesn't work as I expected. As long as the modlet's folder is in the Mods folder, it will be active. I don't know why I expected otherwise though, since I'm pretty sure scanning that folder is done by 7D2D, not by the mod launcher. Oh, well. It's easy enough to temporarily move it somewhere else during development.

One thing I also noticed: The "Pest" NPC attacks all the other NPCs (but not the player, unless attacked). Is this intentional?

Actually, during test play, I did spawn in the first few NPCs using F6 (I hadn't seen Pest or Ghost before and wanted to get a feel for which zombies they should spawn with). I thought more had spawned in from sleeper hordes, but I could easily have been wrong about that. That probably explains why they de-spawned. Don't knock yourself out trying to support NPC sleepers. I'd be very happy if you did, but I'm not expecting it, especially since I have no idea if anyone else wants them. Also, if you need some help let me know, I'm not a game developer but do work with C# professionally.

I wouldn't be upset if you left it as is. It would be nice if this were documented somewhere more "official" - but this is 7D2D we're talking about, there's not much official documentation of anything, so no big deal. EDIT: This also solved a kind of unusual "bug" that I saw originally. If the folder doesn't match the name, then the Mod Launcher's Manage Mods screen showed it as "uninstalled" even though it's in the Mods folder, and there's no way to "install" it. When the names match it shows up as installed, without issue. I mention this because that screen is really useful for disabling modlets that aren't ready to play yet (as mine are).

1. That's good, it means turning off tracking should be easily done via a modlet. Point taken about the code needed to only track hired NPCs. 2. Well, I tried this, with mixed results. First, it seems that NPCs de-spawn when you leave the chunk. That's actually not a big deal to me personally, and it actually might make NPC-heavy worlds not consume a huge amount of resources. Second, I tested this by adding them to many of the vanilla spawn groups. This worked somewhat, but not quite as intended. Part of my plan was to have NPCs spawn inside POIs along with the zombies. The idea was that you would go to loot a POI, only to find one or more survivors who are already fighting for their lives, and you could help them or not. They did spawn in these cases, but the NPCs didn't do anything. They just stood there, and didn't fight any woken zombies, or wander around, or anything like that. (They did work if you hire them after they spawn.) I'm pretty sure this is because POI spawns are sleeper volumes, and the NPCs (zombies in vanilla) spawn in a sleeping state. In this state all AI is shut off. Waking zombies probably involves calling some kind of method that your NPCs simply aren't programmed to respond to. Zombies would also not wake in their presence, I'm guessing because 7D2D codes them to only wake up to players. That could be OK if the NPCs did spawn in a woken state, because then they could target the sleepers, which I'm guessing would wake them. So, I think they will only work if they are spawned into groups that aren't initially sleeping. Friendly/hostile animals are in this category, which is why your modlet works as is. (I'm not expecting you to add the "wake up" code, just letting you know what I found.) 3. That is a pity, but it was a long shot anyway. C'est la vie.

Some questions about modifying this modlet... Is there any way to turn off tracking the NPCs on the map? Or, better yet, only track those NPCs that you hired? How much of a resource drain are the NPCs? I'd like to make a private mod that dramatically increases the number of NPCs in the world (like, hundreds) and I'm wondering if that's practical with my older gaming PC. Finally - and this is a pie-in-the-sky question - but way back in A16 you could create NPCs purely in XML, using UMA with the 7D2D native player animations: https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?73594-How-to-make-and-use-your-own-uma-npcs-in-7dtd(wip) From what I understand, this still halfway functions, but the resulting NPCs don't move - I guess because they can no longer hook into the native 7D2D AI. Would it even be possible to port this over to A18+ and use the SphereII Core NPC AI hooks instead? I'm asking merely because I would like vastly more varieties of NPCs in the game, without having to create models, animations, etc. in Unity.

...OK, ignore the last post, I figured it out. In the mod.xml and ModInfo.xml files, the values for the "name"/"Name" tags werewrong. It turns out the value must exactly match the name of the modlet's folder in the "Mods" directory. I had assumed, wrongly, that they were human-readable names for the modlet. (Human-readable text can be put in the description instead.) Once I entered the folder name in those values, everything seemed to work fine. Sorry for wasting your time with the long post.

Apologies, you must get sick of these requests for help, but I've got another one. I'm creating a modlet for another modlet (Xyth's NPCs). It simply removes Harley Quinn from the spawn lists, and it should be dead simple. However, when I try it out, I get an error in the Mod Launcher logs: "The given path's format is not supported." Link to the logs in Pastebin: https://pastebin.com/14UjBhGH Here is as much information, that I can think of, that might be relevant: I created an entirely new MyMods mod ("My_NPCs") using the Mod Launcher, and copied the contents of the game (so not modifying the original) The game was copied from A18.2b2 The modlet is named the same as Xyth's but with "_Remove_Harley_Quinn" after it, so it should load after Xyth's My modlet is not in any repo, I created it by hand in the "My_NPCs/Mods" folder Here are the contents of the relevant files... Config/entitygroups.xml: <configs> <!-- Remove from Friendly Animals group - this is the only group in which Harly spawns --> <remove xpath="/entitygroups/entitygroup[starts-with(@name, 'FriendlyAnimals')]/entity[name='NPCHarleyQuinn']" /> </configs> mod.xml (copied and modified from Xyth's): <mod> <info> <author>khzmusik</author> <name>Xyth NPCs: Remove Harley</name> <description>Removes Harley Quinn from the Xyth NPC Mod</description> <mod_version>1.0.0</mod_version> <game_version>18.0</game_version> </info> <dependencies> <dependency>Xyth NPCs</dependency> </dependencies> </mod> ModInfo.xml (also copied and modified from Xyth's): <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <xml> <ModInfo> <Name value="Xyth NPCs: Remove Harley" /> <Description value="Removes Harley Quinn from the Xyth NPC Mod" /> <Author value="khzmusik" /> <Version value="1.0.0" /> <Website value="" /> </ModInfo> </xml>

Using the Mod Launcher, I just tried updating this mod to the latest version, and I'm getting an "svn checkout error": "'C:\7D2D\Alpha18\My_Mods\Xyth NPCs' is already a working copy for a different URL" Deleting and re-downloading the mods in the Mod Launcher fixed the issue (unsurprisingly) so it's not a breaking bug. But, I thought you should know about it. Also - remember a while ago, when I said the Mod Launcher (and DMT) didn't catch that the mod was dependent upon SphereIICore and SphereII NPC Dialog Windows? I might have found the cause. In the mod.xml file, there are spaces around the names of the dependencies: <dependencies> <dependency> 0-SphereIICore </dependency> <dependency> SphereII NPC Dialog Windows </dependency> </dependencies> It's just a hunch though.

I agree that their AI is way too aggressive. I was looting a POI recently, one with a concrete wall separating two major areas of the POI, and my NPC companion sensed a zombie on the other side and immediately tried to knock down the wall to get to it. It would have taken probably fifteen minutes in real time for the NPC to break through, so rather than stealth like I prefer to do, I just went around the wall (the long way) and the NPC just popped up beside me and started attacking everything. When it did, it pushed me into a zombie, where I couldn't move out of the way, so I ended up dying. Fortunately I did not encounter any issue with losing the NPC - it just spawned next to me when I spawned near my bedroll. I know that neither SphereII nor Xyth actually created the AI that they use, so I don't know if it's possible to turn off aggro if the zombies aren't in line of sight. But if it is possible, it would be a good idea to do so. Until then, it's probably best to have them wait at your base, or outside the POI to defend against wandering Zs. (I also don't know what is meant by "maslow," FWIW)

Well, I'll give it a shot, but I'm using the same settings as the vanilla game, and the zombie textures in the vanilla game don't look this bad. Also the textures on the NPCs look fine. Are they not affected by the settings? In any case I'll try it out and let you know how it goes. EDIT: In my video options, there were two settings: "Texture Filter" and "UMA Texture Quality". Both were set to "Low", though I don't remember ever setting them at all. I set them both to "High" and it seems like the issue is solved. It's very strange that this doesn't happen in the vanilla game - maybe the settings didn't carry over properly? (I copied to a different game folder when I created the MyMod in the Mod Launcher.) Whatever the cause, I think it's OK now.

Well, after my initial troubles, everything now seems to be working as intended. I started a new game, so haven't gotten very deep into the NPCs, but so far so good. There is one thing I noticed though. With the NPC mods installed, the normal zombie textures look terrible. They're incredibly low resolution, much worse than the vanilla game. Is there any way to solve this? I vaguely remember talk about lowering the NPC texture resolution due to memory concerns, but I might be mis-remembering that.

Yeah, I'm a dummy. I thought of that this morning on my way to work. I'm not sure why it didn't download that modlet automatically, it is listed as a dependency. I installed the other dependency by hand , so maybe once it saw that dependency was installed, it quit checking the others? Also, when I went to download the dialogue modlet, I kept getting an application error (some kind of index out of range error). I'm going to just delete the whole thing and start over, hopefully that will work. Addendum: The error persisted even after deleting the entire game directory, but it went away after I restarted my computer. I saved the stack trace if you need it, but it seems like it would be fairly specific to my installation, so I don't know if that would help.

So, there is good news and bad news. SphereII has a new version of the Mod Launcher. Once I downloaded and installed it, all of the modlets in the Mods folder showed up. So far, so good. To be safe, I then deleted all of those mods through the Mod Launcher's Mod Downloader screen. I double-checked that they were deleted by looking in the Mods folder (they were). I then re-downloaded all of the NPC modlets (NPCs, wandering traders, bandits). They all downloaded and showed up as active in the Mod Downloader screen. I started the mod, and everything compiled and linked fine. I played the game, and after a while, a couple of NPCs spawned. But now the bad news. If I interacted with the NPCs, no dialogue options came up. There was "screen real estate" for the dialogue options, but absolutely nothing was in them. (This is different from the last bug, where the screen showed the trader options - this shows nothing.) I'm attaching screenshots and the Mod Launcher log file. Hopefully they will help. https://pastebin.com/93WkeBmZ

I did install all of those, it's just that after I updated them, they disappeared from the Mod Downloader screen. But, they're still in the Mods folders. From the launch log in the Mod Launcher UI, it does look like the Mod Launcher is at least attempting to compile and link them. Having said that, when I started a new game, there was not a single NPC to be found, and I played for a couple hours. I just played again for a few minutes - and pre-synced the mods first. Still no NPCs, but that might just be the luck of the draw. I uploaded the logs and they look OK to me, but maybe you'll see something I don't. https://pastebin.com/9GPzQsSN EDIT: Also, despite being in the folder and showing up in the logs, the only two modlets showing up in the Mod Downloader window are the Core and NPC Dialog Windows modlets (Bandits, NPCs, and Wandering Traders are all missing, exactly like the last screenshot I posted).

I didn't get a chance to play yesterday. I'm going to start again tonight, I'll let you know. In the meantime - I took a screenshot of the mod launcher, and the folder where the mods are actually installed. You should be able to see the discrepancy. Let me know if this should go in the mod launcher thread instead. EDIT: The board does not seem to like large image attachments... I tried uploading again, I think this is the best I can do.

Whatever the Mod Launcher loaded. I opened the "Manage Modlets" window, and clicked the "Installed Modlets" radio button. It says the version of Xyth NPCs is version 1.21. How should I get the mod launcher to use the latest version? EDIT: I right-clicked on the modlet and selected "Update". But now the modlet isn't even showing up in the list of installed modlets. Downloading it again does not seem to help. I guess this is some kind of bug with the mod launcher? Should I say something in its forum thread instead? EDIT 2: Well, going directly to the mod folder, it does seem like it's installed. From the mod.xml file the version is 1.55. So I guess it did update, even if it says otherwise in the mod manager window. I'll try again and let you know how it goes.