Favorite prefabs in 1 folder (Mods) need help with

[Petite]

I want to create a folder with my favorite prefabs made by wonderful players/Modders here. But Whatever I,m trying its not working, not spawning. I,m testing on my local machine. I put the prefabs I want in my AppData\Roaming\7DaysToDie LocalPrefabs
It doesnt spawn but NO error.
I tried to create a folder to put in my steamapps\common\7 Days To Die\Mods With rwgmixer, prefabs folder and Modsinfo.xml
It still not spawning but NO error and it said Mods is loaded.

So how would you do it? To force spawn? Even chatgpt cant have it right lol.

 

[zztong]

You're going to have to learn more about POIs. If a POI is not being used by RWG then there are a variety of possible reasons. Among those reasons are XML values that have to match up with what RWG is expecting. For instance, tags are used to control where a POI might appear, but the size of the POI and the availability of POI markers on Tiles chosen for the world can make a difference. I can't give you one answer that will work for all POIs. They have to be tackled one by one.

I'll also mention that if you're pulling POIs out of somebody's modlet, you may need more than the 6 files that go with that POI. For instance, I like to use Parts in my POIs. If you don't also capture my custom Parts, you'll eat errors about unknown Parts. There's no place in the LocalPrefabs folder for Parts, so to do advanced stuff with POIs you'll need a modlet, instead.

I'd be surprised if ChatGPT would give an accurate answer. For one thing, those LLMs have trouble sorting out what is old, out-of-date information and what is a new standard. To make matters worse, humans who congregate on places like Reddit and Steam like to pass along old information too.

Short of having a conversation with somebody who has made POI modlets, I suggest taking one apart.

I'd love to help you get started, but I'm swamped with real-life work right now so the best I can offer is answering questions here when I have time. I usually read the boards about once or twice a day. Start with one POI and in working through that you'll learn the patterns. The devil is in the details.

 

[Petite]

Thanks for your answer. Prefabs are very complicated. It is easier with the Mods.

Do you have a link where I can learn properly about Prefabs?
Also, there was a launcher (tried 7d2d launcher and its not that) or something (cant remember the name) that allow you to create your own map. Or now map are generated in the game (rwg advance). I dont know if you get what im talking about. Long ago, we could just upload the file and prefabs with and start the game.

 

[Riamus]

They aren't too complicated. You just need to learn how they work. Open the XML of a POI and look through it. You can open it in Notepad or something similar. You may not know what everything means immediately, but it's pretty straightforward. You'll have a property name like "Size" and the value like "40,10,40" for it. So the size of the POI is 40x40 with a vertical size of 10. Nice and easy. And most things in there aren't too important if all you're doing is trying to spawn the POI.

Your main thing is to look at the Tags property. Values for that can contain the districts the POI can spawn in or can say wilderness if they spawn in the wilderness. They can also include specific values that limit spawn locations. You would need to get the list of tags and the size of the POI and then look to see what tiles are available for that to spawn on. For example, if a POI is 100x100 and can spawn only in industrial (tags = industrial), then there is only one industrial tile in vanilla that has a 100x100 spot... the industrial cap tile. And that tile doesn't spawn often and has multiple POI that are trying to spawn on that 100x100 location, so the chances of a specific POI spawning there or anywhere on the map is relatively low.

In addition, if you start grabbing POI from somewhere like Compopack, which has a lot of POI set to use custom districts and you aren't including those tiles, you'll never see the POI on a map. For example, if a POI's tags from Compopack has a value of zombietown, there aren't any zombietown districts in vanilla, so if you don't have zombietown tiles also installed, you won't have any chance of seeing the POI.

Beyond that, it's just RNG. Sometimes a POI will appear and sometimes it won't, just depending on what POI get placed in each location.

As far as where to place prefabs, if you are placing individual prefabs and not mods, then they should be placed in the LocalPrefabs folder without any files that aren't prefabs. No rwgmixer, no modinfo, no config files, etc. And be sure you are including all 4 files for each prefab. The last thing to be sure of is what location you have the game set to use for mods and stuff (the UserDataFolder location). By default, it's in your AppData folder, but if you've ever used a mod launcher, that may have changed the location without asking. Read through a log file and you'll see a section near the top where it is loading the mods. It will tell you the path where it's loading from. Be sure you're using a LocalPrefabs folder in that same location.

 

[Petite]

Thank you Sir. I will look into that.

 

[zztong]

Do you have a link where I can learn properly about Prefabs?

I would attach PDFs here, but one is too big. Here's a link to where you can find what I wanted to share:

POI Modlets HOWTO - Google Drive

drive.google.com

I assume the forums are going to want to check out that link first.

They aren't too complicated.

Riamus is right, no single thing is overly complicated. What can get complicated is the various combinations and what people who have made those POIs you like might have done to arrange for placement that TFP POIs don't do. For instance, if you have a 25x25 Residential POI, it won't place on any TFP Tiles because they don't have residential markers that size. But you can find residential POIs of that size among the POIs of modders because we also provide Tiles that create space for them.

 

[Riamus]

One other thing is that some custom POI don't use vanilla sizes. For wilderness POI, that doesn't matter. But for town POI, they have to use valid sizes that match the sizes available on tiles. So if someone made a town POI with a size of 36x67, that will never spawn unless you also have a custom tile that has a spot for that size. So it's important to make sure that you add any required tiles if using POI that aren't using vanilla sizes or districts.

Heh. ZZTong beat me to that.

 

[zztong]

If you want example modlet, I'd suggesting looking at either the CompoPack, MPLogue's, or mine. Each has their own "fun." CP has a massive number of POIs to organize and they use every trick in the book, MPL is into custom blocks, and I'm into Tiles and Parts.

 

[Petite]

I would attach PDFs here, but one is too big. Here's a link to where you can find what I wanted to share:

POI Modlets HOWTO - Google Drive

drive.google.com

I assume the forums are going to want to check out that link first.



Riamus is right, no single thing is overly complicated. What can get complicated is the various combinations and what people who have made those POIs you like might have done to arrange for placement that TFP POIs don't do. For instance, if you have a 25x25 Residential POI, it won't place on any TFP Tiles because they don't have residential markers that size. But you can find residential POIs of that size among the POIs of modders because we also provide Tiles that create space for them.

Fantastic, thank you. I downloaded the files and will read that tomorrow morning with a few coffee.

 

[zztong]

If you're trying to put POIs into the Downtown or Commercial districts, you can be blocked by "Density" issues. That might affect the Industrial district too, but I'm not used to seeing that district have problems.