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A19 NPCs DMT Mod


xyth

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29 minutes ago, sphereii said:

The game has an Alternative Text option, which is the alternative for the "Hide", but I don't think it's hooked up too much. I think changing the Start opening dialog would be a bit tricky. When you complete a quest, I think they'll say what the quest tells then. Then when you talk to them again, it displays Start. 

 

Try to focus away from changing the Start opening dialog. Instead, customize your Responses (hiding the ones that aren't relevant), and working through it that way.

 

I think the dialog system will see some love in the base game, and its impossible to predict what it will be like. 

Yeah, I thought so. Well, that's unfortunate because the way it works right now limits you in many ways. You can't really go wild with your quests with the current system. I mean, even such a simple concept like NPC jumps into the quest lines directly as you talk to him for the first time like "Hello survivor, I could use your help with this and that...", no instead you have to use "Hello survivor..." and then you have to magically let the player know what's on the NPCs mind like "Oh hey, I see you could use some help with this...", I mean, come on.. Where's immersion with this?

 

Of course I know it's not your fault. I just thought maybe you could do some magic to make things better in this part, if it's not too hard and time consuming, that is.

Edited by mr.devolver (see edit history)
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6 minutes ago, mr.devolver said:

Yeah, I thought so. Well, that's unfortunate because the way it works right now limits you in many ways. You can't really go wild with your quests with the current system. I mean, even such a simple concept like NPC jumps in the quest lines directly as you talk to him for the first time like "Hello survivor, I could use your help with this and that...", no instead you have to use "Hello survivor..." and then you have to magically let the player know what's on the NPCs mind like "Oh hey, I see you could use some help with this...", I mean, come on.. Where's immersion with this?

 

Of course I know it's not your fault. I just thought maybe you could do some magic to make things better in this part, if it's not too hard and time consuming, that is.

I understand, and sympathize. It is somewhat limited, and I've expanded areas where I could. There's more I can do, of course, but I also don't like to deviate too much on how these things are intended to be laid out. I do like your ideas, no question. Making a more vibrant world is a goal for us, and this includes the chatter with NPC.

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Is it possible to let the NPC despawn once he gets far from the player's vision? I could use that instead of letting the poor guy die.

 

EDIT:
By the way, random changes of the NPC voice lines are hilarious:

Baker with a bow was shooting a zombie and tried to say "Ahh, fresh air..." and then as he shot the zombie: "Son of a b*tch!", he mixed them together and it was like "Ahh, fresh.. b*tch!" 🤣

Edited by mr.devolver (see edit history)
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7 hours ago, mr.devolver said:

Honestly, I don't know if changing NPCID is exactly what I would need. The actual effect I wanted to achieve was this:

I wanted an NPC which would give you certain quest when you talk to him for the first time. Obviously I needed to craft the whole dialog around this quest to do so including the "start" statement itself. BUT I would like to somehow change that "start" statement once the quest is completed, so that I could force a "change of topic" of the whole dialog including the player's answer options. I wouldn't mind if it was all in one single dialogs.xml as long as it's possible, but I couldn't think of any way how to do this in the current state of things. I thought it would be possible to change the initial "start" statement directly in 7 Days to Dialog, but I couldn't find any option for that, so I kinda had to change my plans, I changed the start statement text to be more generic one, to be less quest related, but now it's just weird one as soon as you complete the quest and it's unfortunate, because it ultimately led me to a conclusion that I should let the NPC die once you finish the quest to make it less obvious that the player is "stuck" with this heavily quest oriented NPC with no further progress which is kinda sad and what's worse, for the players it kinda defeats the purpose of doing that quest too... :classic_unsure:

I still think this is possible with the current system, but you'd have to get your hands dirty with XML.

 

The general process would be something like this:

  1. Create the quest that you want to show initially, but have it only show if the cvar is LTE zero.
  2. Once the quest is completed, set the cvar to 1.
  3. Instead of changing the "start" text, have the new text be part of an entirely new statement. If you want to have more statements available after the quest is complete, make those individual statements too.
  4. For each new statement, have a requirement that the cvar be GT zero.
  5. If there are also new quests that become available, have the same requirement on the quests.

All of these should be in dialogs.xml or quests.xml (as appropriate).

 

I think that would do it, but I might still be misunderstanding what exactly you want to do.

 

Also I haven't actually used the 7 Days to Dialogue tool, so I don't know what it generates or what it "looks like" to the user. Worst case though, just create everything as if the player could view everything at any time, and afterwards add the requirement tags by hand to the XML.

 

This will get complicated if there are a ton of statements that can be picked (like there are in the Samara dialogues) - but it should be possible.

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36 minutes ago, khzmusik said:

I still think this is possible with the current system, but you'd have to get your hands dirty with XML.

 

The general process would be something like this:

  1. Create the quest that you want to show initially, but have it only show if the cvar is LTE zero.
  2. Once the quest is completed, set the cvar to 1.
  3. Instead of changing the "start" text, have the new text be part of an entirely new statement. If you want to have more statements available after the quest is complete, make those individual statements too.
  4. For each new statement, have a requirement that the cvar be GT zero.
  5. If there are also new quests that become available, have the same requirement on the quests.

All of these should be in dialogs.xml or quests.xml (as appropriate).

 

I think that would do it, but I might still be misunderstanding what exactly you want to do.

 

Also I haven't actually used the 7 Days to Dialogue tool, so I don't know what it generates or what it "looks like" to the user. Worst case though, just create everything as if the player could view everything at any time, and afterwards add the requirement tags by hand to the XML.

 

This will get complicated if there are a ton of statements that can be picked (like there are in the Samara dialogues) - but it should be possible.

I think you do understand what I would like to achieve, but I don't think requirements can be used in dialogs.xml like that. I will probably try to throw some in quickly though. If it fails, it fails, at least we will know if we can improve the tool without making drastic changes. Also quests.xml is just a helper here, I could most likely do the quest without using quests.xml completely, but I wanted to learn how to actually use quests.xml, plus it gives you that "vanilla" feeling of doing quests, so that you as a player won't be confused (well not as much, because some improvisations that I'm currently using will probably still confuse some players if I can't figure out better solutions until release).

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@sphereii, I think I have found what's causing the problem with NPCs suddenly dying during teleport. Did you ever take an NPC with you into that underground cave with water, a zombie, some loot chest, two sleeping bags, some yuccas and mushrooms? Let your NPC follow you into that cave and once you're ready to get out, jump on the ladder, go up a little bit as if you wanted to get out, but wait on the ladder just under the hatch and look down. My NPCBaker kept trying to teleport to me several times and then he simply fell down and died. So I guess they die if they fall from heights or maybe if they try to teleport but have no solid ground to teleport on? I don't know, but the other clear example is when they die trying to teleport to you when you're flying in Gyro. :plane:

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10 hours ago, mr.devolver said:

@sphereii, I think I have found what's causing the problem with NPCs suddenly dying during teleport. Did you ever take an NPC with you into that underground cave with water, a zombie, some loot chest, two sleeping bags, some yuccas and mushrooms? Let your NPC follow you into that cave and once you're ready to get out, jump on the ladder, go up a little bit as if you wanted to get out, but wait on the ladder just under the hatch and look down. My NPCBaker kept trying to teleport to me several times and then he simply fell down and died. So I guess they die if they fall from heights or maybe if they try to teleport but have no solid ground to teleport on? I don't know, but the other clear example is when they die trying to teleport to you when you're flying in Gyro. :plane:

That's a good tip. Might have to check to make sure they can fit in their area they want to teleport too.

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4 hours ago, sphereii said:

That's a good tip. Might have to check to make sure they can fit in their area they want to teleport too.

Also, remember when you said that you fixed the problem for me - the problem with your NPCs not teleporting to you when you die? It's still there. :phone:

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5 hours ago, mr.devolver said:

Also, remember when you said that you fixed the problem for me - the problem with your NPCs not teleporting to you when you die? It's still there. :phone:

Noticed it too.

@sphereii

Do all NPCs your hired who are far from you(after you die IE) get cached? I want to simply "cheat" my NPCs in,its how i play,having a limited number following me at any game,but i respawn them when they,or in the case of them not teleporting then,when i die.I would hate to be spawning in multiple entities throughout a campaign and it causing save bloat or dips in performance

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16 hours ago, xyth said:

I'm not sure the Maslow xode is even working in A18.  You would at least need to add the maslow Aitask to the xml to get it working.

If it's supposed to be disabled, it's disabled - I believe. Maybe people are simply expecting that this feature is enabled while it really isn't. I guess having some feature tracker would help people to see what's already implemented, what isn't, what is enabled and what is not enabled yet.

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Sorry if this has been answered, but I have spent 20 in game days looking for NPCs to hire and have only found 2.  I even put on flight and just zoomed around the map searching.  Is there something I am doing wrong?  Where do they spawn and how frequent?  I built a fortress and wanted a bunch of NPCs to guard it with me against massive hordes but they are so rare in my game! Is there a console command I can use to just spawn them in?  Any help would be much appreciated! 

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You can spawn them in during the game if you have admin privileges and type DM in the console.  Then press F6 then find the NPC you want and spawn him in.  U suggest using the environmental spawner setting rather than the synamic spawner though.  You can also edit the spawning.xml to increase the chance of an NPC spawning.  

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The thing is that if you go too fast ie you just keep teleporting, the chance of finding them is very low. The game must first actually spawn them into the world for you to be able to find them and spawning takes some time after loading the chunk of the world, so if you are switching places quickly, the game won't be able to let them spawn around you, so it will look like if there are no NPCs at all. I've figured this out the hard way wasting several real world hours fast exploring / flying / teleporting all over the map only to realize I'm doing it wrong and I should go much slower so that the game has actually enough time to spawn some NPCs around me. Try it, you will see it will work.

Edited by mr.devolver (see edit history)
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Thanks so much guys! BTW I tried spawning them in and it worked great until all of a sudden they hated one another.  Farmers attacked army men and cow boys started shooting at baker and none of them could die because they were all on the same team so I had to get creative and spawn a giant horde over and over until they all were wiped out.  Not sure what happened there! 

 

I see that the "patrol this route" and also "guard this spot" feature from A17 are not in this version.  Are they missing because of a glitch or are you planning to re add them later or am I just missing something?  Because right now I tell my NPCs to stay or wander around and eventually they all wander far off and never come back to the base.  Having a set point they return to when out of combat or a patrol route would be so great.  

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Your seeing factions at work.  if they are in different factions that hate each other they will attack on sight.  By same team do you mean you hired them all?  That may be a bug, as they should not attack other followers

 

Patrol changed to using pathing blocks to define a route.  Maybe Mr. Devolver can explain that process.  They should stay using the stay here, which replace the guard here command.  

 

Anyway, the entire AI is getting overhauled for A19, as "we expect" the drone code to be the new basis for NPCs.  Just enjoy whats there for now and it should be amazing in a19.

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Thanks guys! 

Yeah by same team I mean I hired them all and they worked together for about 30 min and then just randomly decided to get into a brawl for no reason.  

 

Stay here just makes them stay there until they are attacked. Then they wander off or chase a zombie and never return to the place I told them to stay in. 

 

Pathing Blocks? Do I craft those or how does that work?  

 

Lastly, are Harley Quinn, sniper NPCs, and Heavy Machine Gun NPCs not available to be hired? 

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Some characters in the characterpackHumans were never added to the NPCPack, just cause I am disorganized and somewhat lazy about completeness.  Ive never gotten around to testing the pathing blocks for the same reasons.  This mod is bigger than the few working on it, and right now the A18.4 version is featurelocked.

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On 5/17/2020 at 7:14 AM, xyth said:

Your seeing factions at work.  if they are in different factions that hate each other they will attack on sight.  By same team do you mean you hired them all?  That may be a bug, as they should not attack other followers

 

Patrol changed to using pathing blocks to define a route.  Maybe Mr. Devolver can explain that process.  They should stay using the stay here, which replace the guard here command.  

 

Anyway, the entire AI is getting overhauled for A19, as "we expect" the drone code to be the new basis for NPCs.  Just enjoy whats there for now and it should be amazing in a19.

Sounds fantastic.Looking forward to Alpha 19 and the future of the mod.The Fun pimps had said they are never going to impliment NPCs for the players party,this mod is what brought me to 7 days to die and what will keep me here.The only time i ever played a SP game without NPCs was with Solid/Naked and venom snake,the way it had to be.

Edited by Redarmy45 (see edit history)
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  • 1 month later...

This looks promising. i remember fighting with the darkness falls NPC code so they wouldn't always starve to death prob like a year ago. NPC's is kind of the only thing missing in this game or single player starts to feel lonely and pointless. Glad this all got picked back up. I guess the only question is should i wait for A19 or just jump in now?

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No harm playing with it now as the initial A19 version will be almost the same but will incorporate the A19 vanilla entity changes.  I think there will be some additional fixes like guard and ranged characters should keep distance better.

Edited by xyth (see edit history)
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