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A19 NPCs DMT Mod


xyth

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Last update - my observations so far (uploading reference video, takes forever (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻):

 

Shown in the video:

- Sometimes your hired NPCs get lost fighting zombies.

- NPCs now follow all the time, no way to give them any different command. The only difference seems to be their movement animation:

Follow me - walk animation (video 1:35)

Stay here - run animation (video 1:53)

Guard here - run animation (video 2:25)

Wander around here - run animation (video 2:37)

Follow me for your patrol route - walk animation (video 2:51)

Patrol your route - run animation (video 3:18)

 

The follow all the time has been fixed. Will push out to the production repos shortly.

 

 

- NPCs are now traders - they don't have their own empty inventory like before, but instead they are selling stuff. (video 3:56)

 

Fixed this too. Another thing that got broken when shifting things around for Harmony.

 

- When you ask your NPC about jobs, you get console spam of "NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object" (video 4:27). I believe this was fixed in one of the older versions.

- Dialogue option "Nevermind" is gone

 

This is due to a bad quest. I've removed the quest option of the dialog system for the base NPCs.

 

In addition, I made some new requirements where certain joins and options will only appear if relevant. For example, if an NPC is missing a Patrol AI task, it will not show the Patrol Your Route / Follow For your Patrol route.

 

Likewise, if there's no quest, the option won't display.

 

- There is a rare glitch with vehicles - when you drive in a vehicle and then get out, sometimes your hands seem misplaced and blurry when you move (video 7:55). I added this here because so far I was unable to reproduce this glitch before hiring an NPC. The only way to fix this is to close the game and load it again.

EDIT: Actually it's pretty easy to reproduce: spawn both 4x4 and NPCAmmo near you. Get in vehicle and get out.

- NPCs seem to like getting hurt by the traps (video 10:50)

- Bringing NPCs to trader base may cause your NPC to disappear and since they ignore all the commands like "stay here", "guard here", etc. this is likely to happen often (video 12:12). EDIT: I just checked through console command "le", NPCAmmo was really gone. I suspect trader Joel is a cannibal, how can we protect our NPCs from him?

 

Will investigate this. I haven't visited a trader with them, nor spawned in a vehicle.

 

Not shown in the video:

- If you hire two NPCs, they can fight each other to death in case that one hits the other by accident - Not in the video, but when you place hired NPCAmmo, next to a bunch of zombies and a hired NPCFarmer between them, NPCAmmo is likely to shoot NPCFarmer when actually trying to shoot the zombies behind him. Once that happens, NPCFarmer and NPCAmmo don't like each other anymore...

- In one case NPC was losing health for no apparent reason and he wasn't healing like he should. Unfortunately, I was unable to reproduce this yet.

 

The in-fighting is likely due to the Party code I had tossed in quickly. I'll revisit it.

 

I had an NPC bleeding last night too, and he had the bleeding buff ( I didn't have the Entity_Patch ).

 

I'll review your video once I get into the office. Thank you for it.

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This is due to a bad quest. I've removed the quest option of the dialog system for the base NPCs.

 

In addition, I made some new requirements where certain joins and options will only appear if relevant. For example, if an NPC is missing a Patrol AI task, it will not show the Patrol Your Route / Follow For your Patrol route.

 

Likewise, if there's no quest, the option won't display.

 

Does this mean that there will be different types of NPCs, each one for different purpose? I think it would be nice if modders could have NPCs that are involved in certain hard-coded quests in which case they might want the NPCs to act strictly according to the quest, without a chance for players to control them. However, there should also be NPCs that you can freely control through various commands in dialogue, basically what we have now, for more flexibility for both mod creators and players.

 

Will investigate this. I haven't visited a trader with them, nor spawned in a vehicle.

 

For clarification: It's really easy to reproduce the bug with vehicles: Spawn 4x4 truck and spawn NPCAmmo next to it. Get in the vehicle and get out, you don't even need to drive just get in and out and you don't really need to hire the NPC before doing this. I figured this out later, but didn't clarify in the edit part of the post, sorry.

As for the NPCs disappearing in trader's base, it's even easier to reproduce. Just go to the trader area, stand close to trader and spawn NPCAmmo in front of the trader. As soon as I did that, NPC showed up for like half a second and instantly disappeared.

 

I had an NPC bleeding last night too, and he had the bleeding buff ( I didn't have the Entity_Patch ).

 

The problem I talked about there was with Patch_Entity enabled though. Either way, if you want to investigate the health issue, it really helps to have that Unlock Health Bar mod enabled so that you can watch their health in real time. I wasn't lucky to reproduce it yet.

 

I'll review your video once I get into the office. Thank you for it.

 

You're welcome.

 

Do you plan to have that "Help me loot this place" option back? It was disabled before release, I was really looking forward to that option when I watched the teaser. Also, it would be awesome if we could use shift + left click to transfer stuff into the inventory of our NPCs.

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Does this mean that there will be different types of NPCs, each one for different purpose? I think it would be nice if modders could have NPCs that are involved in certain hard-coded quests in which case they might want the NPCs to act strictly according to the quest, without a chance for players to control them. However, there should also be NPCs that you can freely control through various commands in dialogue, basically what we have now, for more flexibility for both mod creators and players.

 

Specialization was always an end goal. The initial NPCs are more jack-of-all-trades to help with testing. There will be randomized elements to the NPCs as well, where you may meet a Baker and he'll be able to do different things, with different levels of benefits.

 

 

For clarification: It's really easy to reproduce the bug with vehicles: Spawn 4x4 truck and spawn NPCAmmo next to it. Get in the vehicle and get out, you don't even need to drive just get in and out and you don't really need to hire the NPC before doing this. I figured this out later, but didn't clarify in the edit part of the post, sorry.

As for the NPCs disappearing in trader's base, it's even easier to reproduce. Just go to the trader area, stand close to trader and spawn NPCAmmo in front of the trader. As soon as I did that, NPC showed up for like half a second and instantly disappeared.

 

Great. Hopefully it'll be an easy fix

 

The problem I talked about there was with Patch_Entity enabled though. Either way, if you want to investigate the health issue, it really helps to have that Unlock Health Bar mod enabled so that you can watch their health in real time. I wasn't lucky to reproduce it yet.

 

The original maslow stuff was written for cows, so I'm not too surprised that it's wonky for the NPCs. We'll probably splinter it out to its own buff system and make it simpler. We'll also be adding the maslow buff after they are hired, for NPCs, when we review that. They won't need food or water until you hire them.

 

You're welcome.

 

Do you plan to have that "Help me loot this place" option back? It was disabled before release, I was really looking forward to that option when I watched the teaser. Also, it would be awesome if we could use shift + left click to transfer stuff into the inventory of our NPCs.

 

Yes, I do want to bring that back. It had issues where the NPCs had super long arms. It's one of the example tasks that I think specialization will happen.

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The follow all the time has been fixed. Will push out to the production repos shortly.

Fixed this too. Another thing that got broken when shifting things around for Harmony.

 

Inventory seems to work normally, but they still ignore commands. Also, I explored very large area of Navezgane on foot as well as motorcycle and I haven't seen a single NPC in the world. When I wanted to test it, I had to spawn one manually. Did something happen to automatic spawning?

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Inventory seems to work normally, but they still ignore commands. Also, I explored very large area of Navezgane on foot as well as motorcycle and I haven't seen a single NPC in the world. When I wanted to test it, I had to spawn one manually. Did something happen to automatic spawning?

 

Four mods were updated: SDX_Dialog, SDX_EntityAlive, SDX_EAITasks and aXUI-Dialog. Were all updated?

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Four mods were updated: SDX_Dialog, SDX_EntityAlive, SDX_EAITasks and aXUI-Dialog. Were all updated?

 

Um, I'm not sure. Perhaps you could take a look at the version numbers on the screenshot and see which ones need to be updated? I think only 2 mods were updated, but not sure which ones.

bCRQwak.png

 

EDIT:

I manually updated all the mods you mentioned and tried again. It looks like it works now. Weird, because the version numbers didn't even change lol

 

Ok, so the basic functionality of working with the NPCs seems to be working correctly in this version. Only thing I'm not quite sure about is the command "Wander around here". When I click this command, he stays on his place and doesn't move at all. Am I doing something wrong?

Edited by mr.devolver (see edit history)
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Houston, we have a problem! :p

 

[video=youtube_share;8N_Hon2LCSs]

 

Now we know for sure that you could play 7 days to die with NPC, but you can't play hide and seek with them! :D

 

How about a dialogue option: "Move back a little bit, or I'll take you to cannib.. trader Joel" :p

Edited by mr.devolver (see edit history)
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Houston, we have a problem! :p

 

[video=youtube_share;8N_Hon2LCSs]

 

Now we know for sure that you could play 7 days to die with NPC, but you can't play hide and seek with them! :D

 

How about a dialogue option: "Move back a little bit, or I'll take you to cannib.. trader Joel" :p

 

haha that was a theoretical problem... glad you were able to resolve it without the NPC dying. I'll take a look to see what we can do about that.

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haha that was a theoretical problem... glad you were able to resolve it without the NPC dying. I'll take a look to see what we can do about that.

 

Um, sure Mickey didn't die, but I did! This is mutiny! You should tell them to be nicer to their leaders! No friendly fire, no killing their leader, because trader Joel is still pretty hungry! ;)

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Um, sure Mickey didn't die, but I did! This is mutiny! You should tell them to be nicer to their leaders! No friendly fire, no killing their leader, because trader Joel is still pretty hungry! ;)

 

Mickey isn't dumb. You can't take him to trader Joel if you are dead... :)

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maybe we can make them be pushable so you can get out of the situation. I think I know what is causing him to get so close, so it's just fine tuning. But even with that extra space, you'd be stuck.

 

I remember modders had to fix companions in Skyrim for the same reason. One mod added a dialogue option to tell the companions to move. Some other mod solved this in such way that NPC stepped away from you automatically when you pushed against him for a while.

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I remember modders had to fix companions in Skyrim for the same reason. One mod added a dialogue option to tell the companions to move. Some other mod solved this in such way that NPC stepped away from you automatically when you pushed against him for a while.

 

I like those ideas. I'll take a look.

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Is this intended?

K5P5JVv.png

 

Yes. In the latest release, I tied the dialog to only display relevant responses based on their AI Task. So the NPC Baker and the like, do not have the Guard AI task, which also gives the Stay option.

 

The options always display previously, but they wouldn't do anything when you selected them to Stay, because they were missing that task.

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Yes. In the latest release, I tied the dialog to only display relevant responses based on their AI Task. So the NPC Baker and the like, do not have the Guard AI task, which also gives the Stay option.

 

The options always display previously, but they wouldn't do anything when you selected them to Stay, because they were missing that task.

 

I understand that guard command may not be appropriate for all types of NPCs, but stay? No stay means they will always follow you. You can't prevent them from being eaten by cannibal Joel, you can't leave them at the base while you drive to pick up some loot and let's be honest, this is annoying because they can't keep up with a vehicle and they get lost fighting zombies very often, so they won't really follow you that far and you always have to go back and try to find them if you don't want to lose them. Right now, it's not convenient to take them on missions that are far away. I would love to, but they can't get into a vehicle with us and they can't keep up with the vehicle either. That means you are very likely to lose some NPCs and the tokens you invested into them, one way or another, simply because you can't babysit them all the time.

 

Couple of suggestions:

 

1. Right now, NPCs have no collision with vehicles. What if they just kept teleporting to their leader when he drives and would strictly follow him without trying to attack enemies until the leader gets out of vehicle? That way at least they wouldn't get lost.

 

2. NPCs always seem to put their own priorities higher than the priorities of the leader. This is perfectly visible when you run through the city thinking that your NPC is right behind you, but then you stop at the end of the city and look behind and your NPC is gone. When you check your map, he's far away, trying to break into one of the houses in the city, because there's a zombie he wants to kill and he takes no prisoners and cuts everything and everyone with his sickle. Not that it would be a bad thing, especially in crowded situations, but I think that he shouldn't run that far away from his leader just to test his awesome sickle on a poor zombie behind barricades.

 

I think that if they attacked only enemies that get close, that would be another way to prevent them from getting lost.

 

Basically when they are following their leader, they would only attack enemies that get close and when they guard or stay, they would be allowed to run as far as needed to kill the enemies, so that they could cover bigger area.

 

Right now it's kinda funny, because while they often run far away to kill a zombie somewhere in the barricaded house, they aren't smart enough to react early when a zombie slowly creeps upon them directly from behind and hits them. I mean, they should be able to hear the creepy sounds of a zombie behind them and smell him, even before he gets close, so they could react early enough, turn around and bam.

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I understand that guard command may not be appropriate for all types of NPCs, but stay? No stay means they will always follow you. You can't prevent them from being eaten by cannibal Joel, you can't leave them at the base while you drive to pick up some loot and let's be honest, this is annoying because they can't keep up with a vehicle and they get lost fighting zombies very often, so they won't really follow you that far and you always have to go back and try to find them if you don't want to lose them. Right now, it's not convenient to take them on missions that are far away. I would love to, but they can't get into a vehicle with us and they can't keep up with the vehicle either. That means you are very likely to lose some NPCs and the tokens you invested into them, one way or another, simply because you can't babysit them all the time.

 

Couple of suggestions:

 

1. Right now, NPCs have no collision with vehicles. What if they just kept teleporting to their leader when he drives and would strictly follow him without trying to attack enemies until the leader gets out of vehicle? That way at least they wouldn't get lost.

 

2. NPCs always seem to put their own priorities higher than the priorities of the leader. This is perfectly visible when you run through the city thinking that your NPC is right behind you, but then you stop at the end of the city and look behind and your NPC is gone. When you check your map, he's far away, trying to break into one of the houses in the city, because there's a zombie he wants to kill and he takes no prisoners and cuts everything and everyone with his sickle. Not that it would be a bad thing, especially in crowded situations, but I think that he shouldn't run that far away from his leader just to test his awesome sickle on a poor zombie behind barricades.

 

I think that if they attacked only enemies that get close, that would be another way to prevent them from getting lost.

 

Basically when they are following their leader, they would only attack enemies that get close and when they guard or stay, they would be allowed to run as far as needed to kill the enemies, so that they could cover bigger area.

 

Right now it's kinda funny, because while they often run far away to kill a zombie somewhere in the barricaded house, they aren't smart enough to react early when a zombie slowly creeps upon them directly from behind and hits them. I mean, they should be able to hear the creepy sounds of a zombie behind them and smell him, even before he gets close, so they could react early enough, turn around and bam.

 

Stay and Guard are the same AI Task, other than a slight adjustment in position. Stay will force them to stand still. I can try to remove that from the AI task, and see if Stay keeps them in position without the guard AI task. It may make them vulnerable to being attacked.

 

I played around with a few things with the vehicle and nothing has worked yet. I'll keep playing with it.

 

The sight and detection range is too generous now. If they follow you, their aggro range should be a lot smaller. Maybe have some kind of escape if your leader gets too far away, that it'll ignore its attack target and just run.

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Stay and Guard are the same AI Task, other than a slight adjustment in position. Stay will force them to stand still. I can try to remove that from the AI task, and see if Stay keeps them in position without the guard AI task. It may make them vulnerable to being attacked.

 

I played around with a few things with the vehicle and nothing has worked yet. I'll keep playing with it.

 

The sight and detection range is too generous now. If they follow you, their aggro range should be a lot smaller. Maybe have some kind of escape if your leader gets too far away, that it'll ignore its attack target and just run.

 

Ok, maybe I'm jumping to conclusions too quickly here, so what's the plan with the NPCs that don't have guard or stay options? Because right now, once hired, the only way to get rid of them is to let them die and I imagine that's not really the goal lol

 

Also, I would love to know something. I installed UMA zombies mod (Khelldon - Bad Company UMA Zombies) which I believe creates a set of zombies using the game character system and that's very cool, but naturally as a fan of your NPC mod, it made me wonder - would it be possible to throw in some of these UMA characters to the sets of wandering traders / bandits and NPCs?

Edited by mr.devolver (see edit history)
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Ok, maybe I'm jumping to conclusions too quickly here, so what's the plan with the NPCs that don't have guard or stay options? Because right now, once hired, the only way to get rid of them is to let them die and I imagine that's not really the goal lol

 

Also, I would love to know something. I installed UMA zombies mod (Khelldon - Bad Company UMA Zombies) which I believe creates a set of zombies using the game character system and that's very cool, but naturally as a fan of your NPC mod, it made me wonder - would it be possible to throw in some of these UMA characters to the sets of wandering traders / bandits and NPCs?

 

There should be wander. But I'll see if I can add Stay as a non-AI task. It's hard to make the NPCs stand still. And kinda of boring looking.

 

The AI task needs EntityAliveSDX as its class, but may work on the UMAs. Be interesting to test.

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There should be wander. But I'll see if I can add Stay as a non-AI task. It's hard to make the NPCs stand still. And kinda of boring looking.

 

The AI task needs EntityAliveSDX as its class, but may work on the UMAs. Be interesting to test.

 

Well, I would like to test, but I'm not really good at modding. Perhaps a more experienced person could take a look at what can be done in that part. The more NPCs, the better.

 

I have lots of ideas for cool mods and quests, but unfortunately I have no idea how I could create them.

 

I was thinking about Xyth's bandits and traders using UMA set of characters and various quests which could be random encounters that would perfectly fit to different overhauls because they are generic.

 

For example, you find random airdrop supply crates that contain better loot, but they are guarded by bandits who attack you as soon as you come close. You may encounter injured NPCs running away from zombies or bandits where you can decide who you want to help - will you help the NPC by killing bandits / zombies, will you help the bandits by killing the NPC? Or will you just ignore the event and leave them to their fate or perhaps kill them all? Each decision could have different consequences. Helping NPCs may unlock better stuff in trader's inventory, grant better prices or bonus of extra first aid kits you would receive for free in form of a supply crate, helping bandits may unlock special supply crates with powerful drugs and potions, you could receive casino tokens as reward for helping them and maybe bandits could offer help during the horde nights, because they have better gear, can take more damage and given their courage boosted by drugs, they just like some extra action anyway and don't care that much who they help and you wouldn't feel bad for losing them at horde nights either. :p

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Well, I would like to test, but I'm not really good at modding. Perhaps a more experienced person could take a look at what can be done in that part. The more NPCs, the better.

 

I have lots of ideas for cool mods and quests, but unfortunately I have no idea how I could create them.

 

I was thinking about Xyth's bandits and traders using UMA set of characters and various quests which could be random encounters that would perfectly fit to different overhauls because they are generic.

 

For example, you find random airdrop supply crates that contain better loot, but they are guarded by bandits who attack you as soon as you come close. You may encounter injured NPCs running away from zombies or bandits where you can decide who you want to help - will you help the NPC by killing bandits / zombies, will you help the bandits by killing the NPC? Or will you just ignore the event and leave them to their fate or perhaps kill them all? Each decision could have different consequences. Helping NPCs may unlock better stuff in trader's inventory, grant better prices or bonus of extra first aid kits you would receive for free in form of a supply crate, helping bandits may unlock special supply crates with powerful drugs and potions, you could receive casino tokens as reward for helping them and maybe bandits could offer help during the horde nights, because they have better gear, can take more damage and given their courage boosted by drugs, they just like some extra action anyway and don't care that much who they help and you wouldn't feel bad for losing them at horde nights either. :p

 

The best time to start learning how to mod is yesterday.

 

The next best time is to start learning today.

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The best time to start learning how to mod is yesterday.

 

The next best time is to start learning today.

 

Yes, that sounds very nice, but we both know that reality is harder than that.

 

I mean, how many of those things I mentioned earlier could be done with just xml modding alone? I bet that most of what I described would have to be done by using scripts and while there's very limited information about xml modding, there is even less for scripts and there's a quite obvious reason behind that, because those who created SDX, they worked on it in their free time and we all appreciate that, but no one can really expect them to make some kind of exhaustive documentation presenting and describing each and every little function that is available for modders to do this or that and learn how things work behind the scenes and you know well that one thing is to learn how to code, another is to understand how to apply that knowledge here in order to code some scripts for a mod, because even when you learn how to code in C#, you're still missing the knowledge on how to communicate with the game through scripts to make the game do exactly what you want it to do. Without documentation, you're missing exactly that one piece of knowledge you really need to make this or that happen in this game and therefore it becomes out of reach for regular people.

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All true, but both Sphereii and I started at near zero almost 2 years ago, with no understanding of the game design or modding. yet here we are. I taught myself xml, then Unity, with no background in programming or either of those. Sphereii knows how to code in C#, but had no knowledge of how the game worked. Thousands of modding hours later, we have some clue now how to mod. So pick a day and start experimenting!

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