Modlet (A21-A20-A19) Oak's Pet Animals and Guards

[arramus]

Here is a quality of life 'server side only' mod called 'Oak's Pet Animals and Guards by oak  @oakraven with kind assistance from Dayhawk Mod.

Thank you also to @Dre for giving it a good run through to check for functionality and potential issues.

 

1. Download: https://github.com/arramus/ServerSideOnly-Oaks-Pets-and-Guards

This download contains A21 A20 and A19 versions.

 

2. Wild West Mod Version for A20: It provides just the NPC humans and 'rabbit' guards. They can be found in Air Balloon drops and the Traders.

https://github.com/arramus/Oaks-Wild-West-Mod-Guards

 

(These Pet Animals and Guards will not be hurt by Electric Turrets. However, just as the Junk Turret will attack regular animals, it will also attack your Pet Animals. Please do not place a Junk Turret within attack range of your Pet Animals unless you purposely want to eliminate them)

A21 NPC Mod Compatibility

For anyone wanting to use the NPC Mod and Oak's Pet Animals and Guards for A21, it is necessary to make a small change to match the NPC Mod since it overwrites base files.
NPC Mod uses its own ai package. Go to A21-ServerSideOnly-Oaks-Pets-and-Guards/Config/utilityai.xml and change from:

<insertBefore xpath="/utility_ai/ai_packages/ai_package[@name='Zombie_Dumb']" >

to

<insertBefore xpath="/utility_ai/ai_packages/ai_package[@name='NPCModCore']" >

 

This will allow compatibility.

 

Human Guard Update for A21:

The Human Guards do not have a collision on their mesh. It means they are basically immortal. This is a TFP asset and things changed for A21. If this is a problem for your server, they can be removed from the loot.xml airdrops and removed from game. We will explore this issue for another way around once the experimental and stable loop cycle 'stabilises'.

'killall all' console command to remove Human Guards

If you have added the Human Guards and they are being a problem, it is possible to eliminate them. This may be something Admin would like to do where it is becoming a problem for your server. Login to the 'dm' debugmenu in the F1 console, and go to the area where the problem Human Guards are located. Type 'killall all' and enter in the console and the Human Guards and a few other things in the surrounding area will be eliminated. A post showing some images of this being activated is here.

Vehicle Update for A20 and A21:
The Farm Jeep is no longer viable because it is a scaled down version of a jeep, and when a player enters the vehicle they are permanently scaled down by the same amount (40% of original). This is cumulative for each and every time the player enters the vehicle. Again, the developer will reintroduce the Farm Jeep at the first opportunity. It still functions just fine for A19 version.

 

This mod provides:

 

1) 9 Pet Animals - These include Boar, Rabbit, Stag, Chicken, Pig, mini Bear, Wolf, Coyote, and Doe.

(These animals show no fear when approached and will stay within their confines. It is strongly recommended to always have 3 blocks above the highest perimeter point because the animals can climb up onto objects and each other and will be over the wall before you can notice.)

 

7 are purchasable from the Trader's with a starting base price of 800 or found in plane supply drop crates and use the Quest system to switch to a place-able animal. These include Boar, Stag, Pig, mini Bear, Wolf, Coyote, and Doe. 2 are only found by using a Coop for the chickens or a Trap for the rabbits. The rabbit trap will also provide a small amount of seeds on the principle that they will be trapped in rabbit paws and fur.

 

2) 5 Animal Guards - Guard Hell Bear, Guard Hell Boar, Guard Hell Wolf, Guard Hell Lion, and Guard Rabbit. All 5 are purchasable from the Traders with a starting base price of 800. They can also be found in Air Supply Drops.

 

3) 12 Human Guards. All 8 can be found in Air Supply Drops.

 

4) Mushroom Planter that requires Mushroom Mycelium to begin the fruiting process.

 

Here are some pictures to show you how things work:

 

PET ANIMALS

Purchasing and Supply Drops

Visit the trader and check the traps and tools section. On this occasion the trader was very generous with offerings and the animal icons have a description of what animal is being offered. The pet animals have been integrated into a default group and on some occasions you will get a lot of choice and on other occasions nothing. The base price of 800 has been lowered to reflect skill and buffs.

 

Here is how I place a Pet Boar I purchased at a later time using the Quest feature. First, perform a 'Read'.

 

Accept to Release the Pet Boar for Placement.

 

A Quest Started prompt will appear and it will automatically be completed.

 

Check you inventory for a 'dog house' icon and the name of the animal available.

 

Place the animal on ground just as you would a vehicle and stand back.

 

Incorporating a feature found in the Dayhawk Mod (thank you), a tile will appear on the ground which in turn will spawn the animal placed.

 

 

If the animal drops onto the tile, the tile will break and a cobweb will appear to finalise the process. If the animal doesn't drop onto the tile, you can always walk on it and it will break. There are occasions where you may get lucky and a second animal will spawn. You may also get unlucky and nothing spawns; however this is incredibly rare and based on what we have experienced so far, blanks are less than 1 in 50, whereas doubles, and even triples on one occasion occur 1 in 10. I expect this depends on netcoding, latency, or any other factor relating to server processes.

 

You can either harvest the animal for meat and other resources, or simply allow it to have a sedate life of roaming.

 

Pet animals have been integrated into default supply drop settings and will be chosen from a select list of supply drop groups.

Upon finding a Supply Drop Crate, you may get lucky and find a pet animal.

 

Or more.

 

 

There are also 2 Pet Animals that cannot be purchased or found. These include the Pet Chicken and the Pet Rabbit. oakraven introduces a method using default features in a novel way as follows:

 

a) Construct a Rabbit Cage Trap or Chicken Coop and place them. The Chicken Coops can be placed next to each other but the Rabbit Traps need some spacing.

 

b) Make some Chicken Feed and Rabbit Feed in your campfire and take them to your Chicken Coop and Rabbit Trap respectively.

In this case, right mouse click and it will change the Chicken Coop status.

 

Once receiving Chicken Feed the Chicken Coop moves to its Nesting Stage.

 

And finally it is time to harvest. We can always receive feathers and eggs and regularly receive Pet Chickens.

 

Pet Chickens are placed exactly the same as other Pet Animals.

 

The chickens are prone to resting on ledges above the ground and your imagination can take that wherever you want it to.

 

Pet Rabbits follow the same system beyond the reward and housing.

Make some Rabbit Feed.

 

Take it to your Rabbit Trap and right click.

 

The Rabbit Cage Trap is Baited and Set.

 

Here's one we trapped earlier.

 

 

Activate and Release as with other animals.

 

And should you ever lose your pets and have the skill in place, crouch.

 

GUARD ANIMALS

Purchasing

Just as with the Pet Animals, the Traders will stock Guard Animals. The Guard Animals can be purchased for the same price and placed exactly the same as Pet Animals using the quest system. The Guard Animals will remain passive in the spot you place them until a Zombie gets to close. The guard animals can be used to protect your Pet Animals, general base protection, or even during a Blood Moon event.

 

An unwelcome guest.

 

2 Animals Guards; Guard Hell Wolf and Guard Rabbit are released using the tile placement system and very quickly recognise the threat.

 

After opening the shutter, the zombies attempt to enter the farm compound and are met by the Guard Animals.

I got lucky on this occasion and 2 Hell Wolves spawned from a single tile.

 

The skirmish ensues.

 

One of the Hell Wolves was overcome and is ready to be harvested. The Guard Animals that survived will see their health restored.

 

The Guard Animals also fare well during a Blood Moon event.

 

Four Guard Animals remained until first light. Players will receive no XP for Guard Animal kills.

 

There are 4 additional human Guards that are currently being tweaked for a future build. There was an issue with the Trader compound causing NRE for certain classes and that needs to be tweaked to ensure they function well with the few classes that are compatible.

 

VEHICLE - CURRENT UNAVAILABLE

Farm Jeep

The farm jeep is your tractor. It is pretty slow but will get you from A to B without running down your stamina. It fits the concept and can be constructed on the Workbench with less resource demand than a regular vehicle due to its limited functionality. It's just a bit of fun.

 

And is scaled to match pathways. Carries 2 players...

 

There will undoubtedly be updates in time, but this is a fully functional 'farming' mod and may serve you well as a break from looting, questing, and skirmishing.

 

Installation

If you've never installed a mod before it is necessary to create a mod folder in the main directory or in an area suggested by your server host if they have modified the installation. Simply make a new folder called Mods (with a capital M to reflect standard nomenclature). If you drag the mod folder directly out of the zipped file it can be placed directly into the Mods folder and the game will look in there as you launch your World. If you allow your unzip function to extract the folder, it may make another unnecessary folder and place the mod inside it. This will not be recognised by the game/server if you place it in the Mods folder like this. Please take it out of the extra folder level. The top layer will be a single folder and in the second layer you will see a ModInfo.xml file with or without additional folders depending on the mod. This will become elementary once you've launched a few mods.

 

Does this Mod need to be installed in the server/client host? = YES

Do players also need to install this Mod? = NO

 

The magic of this mod is that is only needs to be installed in the server/person who has launched the main environment that others join. It is a technical work of art. Enjoy. 👍

 

Hog Riding! but that's another mod.

 

Edited October 16, 2023 by arramus
Removing rotation exploit (see edit history)

[SandyBeaches]

This looks amazing!

[arramus]

7 minutes ago, SandyBeaches said:

This looks amazing!

It was a real pleasure to watch it go through the creation and tweaking process and now we can enjoy it.

[Dre]

@arramus and @oakraven put a TON of work hrs into this. Have it on my new game (client side server) with a few other server side mods, sorcery mod and  war3zuk alpha 19 AIO without issues. Super cool. 

[Catman]

My action when arramus hinted me about this mod probably tells something about these guys and the mods they create....

Sooooooooo.... Just downloaded the thing, barely tested it... did a backup of my server and threw it in there 😛 NOW I'm gonna test it... haha. Great work as usual, already love it, though I've barely scratched the surface  

 

Also, at the same time I thank you for all people that are involved in the Snufkin stuff + more. Love ya!

 

Edited December 19, 2020 by Catman (see edit history)

[arramus]

Here is a small update that ensures the Automatic Turrets are not attacking the Guard Animals due to their hostile class settings.

 

Download: https://github.com/arramus/Pet_Animals_and_Guards_A19_2020Dec21

 

(If your server has trouble with Github due to it creating an additional shell folder, here is a single layer version - Pet_Animals_and_Guards_A19_2020Dec21.zip)

 

 

Not part of the update, and just a vision of the calm before the storm.

[Blight]

You forgot this:

<append xpath="/items/item[@name='meleeToolRepairT0StoneAxe']/property[@class='Action1']/property[@name='Allowed_upgrade_items']/@value">,ChickenFeed,RabbitFeed</append>
<append xpath="/items/item[@name='meleeToolRepairT3Nailgun']/property[@class='Action1']/property[@name='Allowed_upgrade_items']/@value">,ChickenFeed,RabbitFeed</append>
<append xpath="/items/item[@name='meleeToolRepairT1ClawHammer']/property[@class='Action1']/property[@name='Allowed_upgrade_items']/@value">,ChickenFeed,RabbitFeed</append>


and thanks for sharing 😃

[oakraven]

I done it so you need to have the seed in your hand to upgrade  

@Slawa

Just like feeding them and not hitting them with a axe

[Blight]

Oh ok, my mistake :).

[arramus]

Here is an update for the Guards to add 4 types of pet dog.

 

Download here: https://github.com/arramus/Pet-Animals-and-Guards-A19-2020Dec23

 

Guard Shale Dog, Guard Coal Dog, Guard Nitrate Dog, and Guard Lead Dog.

 

They have a penchant for attacking in a pack and for 2 legged enemy entities this can mean little progress and reduced attack capacity. They were the Juggernaut's Achilles tendon; quite literally.

 

Whereas 4 legged enemy entities tend to get through much better. Paindeer passed through the pack within a few seconds.

 

As with other Guards, these dogs can be purchased from the trader.

 

[arramus]

Here is a Guard update for the Mod which allows players to place guards as non moveable Turrets.

 

Download: https://github.com/arramus/Pet-Animals-and-Guards-A19-2021Jan01

 

There are 8 new guards as follows, in no particular order: Sim, Lizzy, Dre, Fox, Bandit, Bandit Foxy, Leader, and Bow Man

 

As each guard remains static, they can be placed strategically when collected. They cannot be purchased from a Trader but can be found in Air Drop Supply Crates. Placement is exactly the same as for any other entity through the quest and reward process.

 

The guards HP is relatively low at only about 150. However, it is possible to heal the guards using bandages or first aid kits by placing the healing tool in your hand and using right click as the images below present.

 

 

 

 

As the HP is relatively low and they will quickly be wiped out if a horde can reach them, they have unlimited ammo. However, they shoot in a conservative and controlled manner and fire a shot every few seconds. They do not replace the power of default turrets at all but will complement your defences.

 

 

 

These have been fully tested for stability on dedicated servers but will benefit from feedback to see if the HP or shot damage requires tweaking.

 

This image shows a Supply Crate which contained both Turret Guards and Pet Animals.

 

Thank you to Darjusz and the community at mjota.net who are running a variety of Snufkin Mods as well as this Pet and Guard mod. Their server has seen a new World added and is well worth a visit.

[Dre]

Been running these on a server for 60 game days now. Work great. Zero issues. Guards seem to work best to guard a "crafting" base vs. horde base, although after you have enough of them maybe horde also.

 

The junk turrets will target them so place any junk turrets in front of the guards. 

[MissyHeavenly]

Hello! Need help here.  My bf and I are starting up a server and would love to use your mod, I find it adorable and a fun add in to the game. we were testing everything out with the mod and we have an issue. We placed down Guard Animals to test them all out, check em out/see what they look like and they are awesome. Downside is, when we spawn a zombie for them to attack our F1 menus end up popping up on us and get spammed with a messaged about object interference. Is this a common issue? and If so how can i fix this so it doesn't pop up and has no issues? 

Thank you in advance for any help I get :D!

-Missy

[arramus]

6 hours ago, MissyHeavenly said:

Hello! Need help here.  My bf and I are starting up a server and would love to use your mod, I find it adorable and a fun add in to the game. we were testing everything out with the mod and we have an issue. We placed down Guard Animals to test them all out, check em out/see what they look like and they are awesome. Downside is, when we spawn a zombie for them to attack our F1 menus end up popping up on us and get spammed with a messaged about object interference. Is this a common issue? and If so how can i fix this so it doesn't pop up and has no issues? 

Thank you in advance for any help I get :D!

-Missy

Ouch! Sorry to hear that because one of the tests we do is to spawn in a batch of 25 identical zombies to check load. If that's OK, we increase it to 50, 75, 100, and so on. We've had 500+ at one point and seen a huge FPS hit but it didn't cause any NullReference or Interference errors. I wonder if you are using any other mods at the same time or tried to spawn in some non default zombies.

[MissyHeavenly]

5 hours ago, arramus said:

Ouch! Sorry to hear that because one of the tests we do is to spawn in a batch of 25 identical zombies to check load. If that's OK, we increase it to 50, 75, 100, and so on. We've had 500+ at one point and seen a huge FPS hit but it didn't cause any NullReference or Interference errors. I wonder if you are using any other mods at the same time or tried to spawn in some non default zombies.

I tried spawning the regular zombies, like a feral nurse and a solider zombie and the F1 menu would spam until the Animal Guards were done attacking. We ARE using other modlets with our server, so that could be why we are having an issue

[Gouki]

Thank you very much Arramus and Okraven for this fantastic mod.

Edited January 27, 2021 by Gouki (see edit history)

[arramus]

7 hours ago, MissyHeavenly said:

I tried spawning the regular zombies, like a feral nurse and a solider zombie and the F1 menu would spam until the Animal Guards were done attacking. We ARE using other modlets with our server, so that could be why we are having an issue

It's a possibility. For previous issues where we've encountered console warnings, it was a case of starting with this mod and adding in others one by one to see when warnings would occur.

[xxx73]

Great mod, thanks for sharing.

I was placing 3 guards today but had to shoot them due to bad placement. Then short time after I started getting this red error when entering are where those guards was. This is a test game so I was just placing them, not by spawn menu but from what you get after reading the book. Now I cant get into the game without getting this errors continuously:
 

IndexOutOfRangeException: Index was outside the bounds of the array.
  at UMACharacterBodyAnimator.assignLayerWeights () [0x000cb] in <8966b1f384fe4ecab81b938f521bef70>:0
  at BodyAnimator.Update () [0x00000] in <8966b1f384fe4ecab81b938f521bef70>:0
  at UMACharacterBodyAnimator.Update () [0x00000] in <8966b1f384fe4ecab81b938f521bef70>:0
  at AvatarMultiBodyController.Update () [0x0013d] in <8966b1f384fe4ecab81b938f521bef70>:0
 
(Filename: <8966b1f384fe4ecab81b938f521bef70> Line: 0)

 

So is this mod safe to use, and is there something I can do to avoid this error?

Can it cause issues just placing them without reading the book first?

Edited February 11, 2021 by xxx73 (see edit history)

[arramus]

1 hour ago, xxx73 said:

Great mod, thanks for sharing.

I was placing 3 guards today but had to shoot them due to bad placement. Then short time after I started getting this red error when entering are where those guards was. This is a test game so I was just placing them, not by spawn menu but from what you get after reading the book. Now I cant get into the game without getting this errors continuously:
 

IndexOutOfRangeException: Index was outside the bounds of the array.
  at UMACharacterBodyAnimator.assignLayerWeights () [0x000cb] in <8966b1f384fe4ecab81b938f521bef70>:0
  at BodyAnimator.Update () [0x00000] in <8966b1f384fe4ecab81b938f521bef70>:0
  at UMACharacterBodyAnimator.Update () [0x00000] in <8966b1f384fe4ecab81b938f521bef70>:0
  at AvatarMultiBodyController.Update () [0x0013d] in <8966b1f384fe4ecab81b938f521bef70>:0
 
(Filename: <8966b1f384fe4ecab81b938f521bef70> Line: 0)

 

So is this mod safe to use, and is there something I can do to avoid this error?

Can it cause issues just placing them without reading the book first?

I'm currently playing in a World that has just hit Day 703. This mod has been running from Day 1 and the guards haven't given any errors of this nature so far. In fact, this is the first I've seen continuous errors like this. Guards have cleaner spawns on flat surfaces where they can break the 'spawn tile' and render it inactive. Can you confirm that your guard was placed on a flat surface and the tile isn't hiding underneath the ground surface. They have been placed both manually and through reading the quest without issue as well.

[xxx73]

Hi and thanks for your reply.
Ok thats great to know, Im just worried if it will cause any issues in my real game.
I placed them on top of the trader wall, trader Rekt, then I killed them and put new on the grass around the trader.

Im playing with more than 90 mods but I I have never seen this error before so, I guess it was caused by something I did with content of your mod. I have used guards before without issues so maybe it was some weird occurrence of something.
From what little I know of spawning, they way it work in your mod is what I understand the proper way to do it, and the way other mods like darkness falls do it with animals.
About removing the, is the best way just to shoot them, or is there a better way?

Anyway I love the mod, keep up the great work

Edited February 11, 2021 by xxx73 (see edit history)

[oakraven]

@xxx73

They will not work in traders ( you must of use CM to get them)

 in the Traders POI you will get nulref  if try to put them there.

That's why we use the quest to get them, if you try to put the guard down in trader it wont work 

 

[xxx73]

1 minute ago, oakraven said:

@xxx73

They will not work in traders ( you must of use CM to get them)

 in the Traders POI you will get nulref  if try to put them there.

That's why we use the quest to get them, if you try to put the guard down in trader it wont work 

 

aha thanks, I did not know that, I guess that's why I got those error messages.
No more guards in trader then
Thanks a lot.

[kanealpha]

Any planned updates for more non static (walking, interactable) human or Zombie guards/followers??

[arramus]

1 hour ago, kanealpha said:

Any planned updates for more non static (walking, interactable) human or Zombie guards/followers??

There have been some interesting discussions about updates for this mod and all of the other mods Oakraven and others have supported. There are a lot of ideas being thrown around for sure. The hold up has been current AI capability and how A20 will change things. This will also greatly benefit The Wasteland Mod, Community Creatures, and other mods of that nature. TFP were hiring some new devs recently and it looks like some of that skill and experience has already made it into the A19.5 experimental build with soooo many fundamental optimizations for POIs, terrain, and general draw distance/level of detail/culling. Once potential A20 changes are in place, modders will be able to update their mods and also introduce many new concepts with what new features are provided. It really is a 'time will tell' on this at the moment as investing too much time now, and then more to amend with what may be fundamental changes, is possibly a bit too taxing.

[Sugarfree]

So I have a question regarding mostly Humanoid Guards.

When I place the tiles down - sometimes they poop instantly and sometimes they don't pop at all and if I run over the tile it breaks and a few feathers fall. So my question is when I place the tile and nothing happens - does that mean they will pop when something comes within threat range or does that mean they are broken and will never pop?