[A20] khzmusik's Modlets

[khzmusik]

Hello @khzmusik

I would like to use your Rogues & Psychos and Whisperers-AddOn on my server.

First time handling those things, so bare with me.. ^^

If i want to use those 3 factions with the standard system and dont want any other custom NPCs to spawn (just psychos, rogues, whisperers) do i need to do any settings on SCore or NPCCore or your mods?

Or just install all those and go for it?
 

Just FYI, the psychos and rogues are actually part of the same faction ("bandits"). They won't attack each other, nor will they attack bandits from anyone else's packs (like the "Raiderz"). Whisperers on the other hand are their own faction, and will attack anything that isn't a zombie or whisperer (including bandits). I hope that's what you want, because changing it would require a lot of XML changes.

Also, NPC Core does come with its own characters (Baker, Nurse, and Harley). If you don't want them in the game, then look in the NPC Core "Config/Options" folder, for a file named "entitygroups_nocorespawn.xml". Rename that to "entitygroups.xml", and put that into the "Config" folder - overwriting the one that is there. Since this is an XML change, I'm pretty sure you only need to do this on the server.

But other than that, you don't need to do anything except install those mods/modlets. The usual caveats apply for all mods with custom assets and C# code: they must be installed on the server and all clients, EAC must be off, and you should start a new game.

Having said that - I'd hold off for just a little bit. I found some bugs with the Whisperers pack (they shouldn't drop bandages and are missing some sounds). I'm literally working on that as we speak, and so there should be a new version up in a couple of hours.

 

[khzmusik]

Quick note to everyone: Those changes are now done and merged into the main branch. The changes should be save game safe, but with any changes, it's always better to start a new game.

In both the Whisperers and Civilians pack, I needed to supply "pain" sounds (those are usually part of the NPC Core template but apparently were missed). In addition, the "attack" sound is now the power attack, rather than the stamina sound.

For Civilians, the "random" sounds are now just sighs, not the random stamina sounds they used to be. (This is what I did for the female Rogues, I basically ported that into the Civilians.)

The Whisperers had additional non-sound fixes. Whisperers no longer are given medical bandages when they enter the game, so they don't drop them when they die any more. (They still have a chance to drop loot bags of course.) There are also changes with how the Whisperer bosses spawn into prefab spawn groups, but they only affect whisperer POIs, and I don't think anyone has made any of those yet.

On the subject of POIs: That's what I've been spending my time on for the past couple months. I am pretty much done with a set of bandit POIs, and am finishing up a set of whisperer POIs. I am getting the helpful assistance of the Compo Pack folks, both for POI building and testing, and hopefully those will be available soon.

I would like to ask you all: Where should I post those POIs? Would it make more sense for me to post them as part of this thread, or in a new thread in the Prefabs section? I think a new thread in Prefabs would get more visibility, but since the POIs are dependent upon the NPC packs, I'm a bit torn.

 

[zztong]

Where should I post those POIs? Would it make more sense for me to post them as part of this thread, or in a new thread in the Prefabs section? I think a new thread in Prefabs would get more visibility, but since the POIs are dependent upon the NPC packs, I'm a bit torn.

If a POI belongs to a faction, maybe distribute the POI as part of the modlet that contains the faction?

 

[stallionsden]

As zztong mentioned I would keep em all together in a modlet fraction based. 

You can do in the prefabs and state your prefabs are dependent on this but then you would probably have more answering questions then needs to be. 

Here you can supply faction mod with prefabs included and have less issues when player/s use them.

 

[Juggernaut35]

Just FYI, the psychos and rogues are actually part of the same faction ("bandits"). They won't attack each other, nor will they attack bandits from anyone else's packs (like the "Raiderz"). Whisperers on the other hand are their own faction, and will attack anything that isn't a zombie or whisperer (including bandits). I hope that's what you want, because changing it would require a lot of XML changes.

Also, NPC Core does come with its own characters (Baker, Nurse, and Harley). If you don't want them in the game, then look in the NPC Core "Config/Options" folder, for a file named "entitygroups_nocorespawn.xml". Rename that to "entitygroups.xml", and put that into the "Config" folder - overwriting the one that is there. Since this is an XML change, I'm pretty sure you only need to do this on the server.

But other than that, you don't need to do anything except install those mods/modlets. The usual caveats apply for all mods with custom assets and C# code: they must be installed on the server and all clients, EAC must be off, and you should start a new game.

Having said that - I'd hold off for just a little bit. I found some bugs with the Whisperers pack (they shouldn't drop bandages and are missing some sounds). I'm literally working on that as we speak, and so there should be a new version up in a couple of hours.

First of all, thanks for answering that quickly!

Just to avoid confusion, there are animals mentioned in the "entitygroups_nocorespawn.xml", but if i do the steps you describe here, normal vanilla animals still will spawn, right?

 

[khzmusik]

First of all, thanks for answering that quickly!

Just to avoid confusion, there are animals mentioned in the "entitygroups_nocorespawn.xml", but if i do the steps you describe here, normal vanilla animals still will spawn, right?

The entity groups used in "entitygroups_nocorespawn.xml" are only used in POIs, and those entity groups aren't vanilla, they're defined by NPC Core itself. So normal animals will still spawn in the vanilla groups, that wouldn't change.

I want to make sure I was clear though, you should rename that and replace "entitygroups.xml" in the NPC Core mod, you should not replace the vanilla "entitygroups.xml" file.

 

[khzmusik]

As zztong mentioned I would keep em all together in a modlet fraction based. 

You can do in the prefabs and state your prefabs are dependent on this but then you would probably have more answering questions then needs to be. 

Here you can supply faction mod with prefabs included and have less issues when player/s use them.

I was mainly asking which thread I should use on these forums.

My intent is to distribute the POIs by themselves, but each faction would be a separate modlet. So, one modlet for Bandits POIs, one for Whisperers POIs, and in the future modlets for Vault POIs, Whiteriver POIs, Duke POIs, Military POIs, etc.

I do not want to distribute the POIs with the NPC Pack modlets, for a bunch of reasons. Let's use the Bandits POIs as an example:

• Not everyone who uses Bandits will want the POIs.
  
• I want other people to make Bandits POIs (and POIs for Whisperers, Whiteriver, Military...).
  
• I am not the only person who makes a Bandits NPC Pack, and if people want to use the other bandits (like the Radierz and RaiderGurlz) instead of mine, they should be able to do that.
  
• A big reason I want POIs for all factions is to support the POI quests in the "Human Faction Reputation and Quests" modlet, and distributing each faction's POIs separately means that users can enable (or not) quests involving the factions, without having to wait for all of them to be complete.
  
• I also am thinking about creating a separate modlet that would put zombies into the sleeper volumes. So, if people wanted to use them as "normal" POIs, then they'd install that modlet, and wouldn't need NPC Core, SCore, or any NPC Packs.
   
  

If I was going to distribute them together, I would have to distribute everything together, and at that point it's pretty much an overhaul. If I could get all the POIs finished before A21 dropped, I would make that overhaul, but at this point that's highly unlikely.

 

[Juggernaut35]

The entity groups used in "entitygroups_nocorespawn.xml" are only used in POIs, and those entity groups aren't vanilla, they're defined by NPC Core itself. So normal animals will still spawn in the vanilla groups, that wouldn't change.

I want to make sure I was clear though, you should rename that and replace "entitygroups.xml" in the NPC Core mod, you should not replace the vanilla "entitygroups.xml" file.

So what i did:

• Get into 0-XNPCCore\Config\Options
  
• Make a Backup of "entitygroups_nocorespawn"
  
• Rename "entitygroups_nocorespawn" to "entitygroups"
  
• Copy it and go to 0-XNPCCore\Config
  
• Paste it and overwrite the file with the same name thats there
  

Didnt change any basegame files.

 

[khzmusik]

So what i did:

• Get into 0-XNPCCore\Config\Options
  
• Make a Backup of "entitygroups_nocorespawn"
  
• Rename "entitygroups_nocorespawn" to "entitygroups"
  
• Copy it and go to 0-XNPCCore\Config
  
• Paste it and overwrite the file with the same name thats there
  

Didnt change any basegame files.

That should do the trick. Give it a shot and let me know if you have any issues.

 

[zztong]

I do not want to distribute the POIs with the NPC Pack modlets, for a bunch of reasons. Let's use the Bandits POIs as an example:

• Not everyone who uses Bandits will want the POIs.
  
• I want other people to make Bandits POIs (and POIs for Whisperers, Whiteriver, Military...).
  
• I am not the only person who makes a Bandits NPC Pack, and if people want to use the other bandits (like the Radierz and RaiderGurlz) instead of mine, they should be able to do that.
  
• A big reason I want POIs for all factions is to support the POI quests in the "Human Faction Reputation and Quests" modlet, and distributing each faction's POIs separately means that users can enable (or not) quests involving the factions, without having to wait for all of them to be complete.
  
• I also am thinking about creating a separate modlet that would put zombies into the sleeper volumes. So, if people wanted to use them as "normal" POIs, then they'd install that modlet, and wouldn't need NPC Core, SCore, or any NPC Packs.
  

As I'm not familiar with the details of the NPC Pack, I was assuming the POIs to support it would be using custom blocks that would be unavailable in vanilla, hence unusable in a vanilla game. If there were a way for a vanilla POI to be used by the NPC Pack, then that would change my recommendation.

For instance, what if the NPC Mod looked for a flag in POI's XML, such as:

<property name="NPCModFaction" value="WhiteRiver" />




... which would otherwise be ignored by a Vanilla game and the POI would act normally.

Or, instead of a custom XML tag, maybe reuse a tag abandoned by TFP, such as EditorGroups. 

Or, can you get to Prefab Properties - Groups that we can set using the Prefab Editor? I'm not sure where that gets stored. Come to think of it, I wonder if Stallionsden mentioned doing this to me and I'm channeling his idea. If so, credit to Stallion.

And, if found, commandeered "S_-Group_Generic_Zombie" to mean whatever value goes with your mod for the WhiteRiver faction? So...

<property name="SleeperVolumeGroup" value="S_-Group_Generic_Zombie,1,1,S_-Group_Generic_Zombie,2,3,S_-Group_Generic_Zombie,2,3,S_-Group_Generic_Zombie,2,2,S_-Group_Generic_Zombie,2,3,S_-Group_Generic_Zombie,5,6,S_-Group_Generic_Zombie,3,3" />




... would become something like...

<property name="SleeperVolumeGroup" value="S_-WhiteRiverDudes,1,1,S_-WhiteRiverDudes,2,3,S_-WhiteRiverDudes,2,3,S_-WhiteRiverDudes,2,2,S_-WhiteRiverDudes,2,3,S_-WhiteRiverDudes,5,6,S_-WhiteRiverDudes,3,3" />




... because your modlet's code would intercept the file at load time. Would that even be possible?

In this way, if feasible, folks like me could support your modlet without having to make a special version of POIs with a code dependency.

 

[khzmusik]

As I'm not familiar with the details of the NPC Pack, I was assuming the POIs to support it would be using custom blocks that would be unavailable in vanilla, hence unusable in a vanilla game. If there were a way for a vanilla POI to be used by the NPC Pack, then that would change my recommendation.

The only custom block that is used is the "PathingCube" block from SCore, but I think it should be possible to replace that with a block with the same name that does nothing. I'm hoping it can be replaced without needing custom code or models. Other than that, no special blocks.

For instance, what if the NPC Mod looked for a flag in POI's XML, such as:

<property name="NPCModFaction" value="WhiteRiver" />




... which would otherwise be ignored by a Vanilla game and the POI would act normally.

The NPC POIs have additional tags in the "Tags" property, and there's a class in SCore that I wrote that can filter POIs by tags when choosing one to go to. That's how the quests can target NPC POIs.

I suggested we do it that way because TFP natively supports custom tags. It's questionable whether they fully support custom property tag names. Things can sometimes get overwritten by the editor if you're not careful.

Or, can you get to Prefab Properties - Groups that we can set using the Prefab Editor?

Yep, that's what NPC Core does, it adds new sleeper volumes. That means new gamestage groups and spawners in gamestages.xml, and matching entity groups in entitygroups.xml. I put those together, it's basically the same thing I did in A19 except expanded to include more stuff like fantasy creatures and mechs.

That's the main thing my modlet would do. It would add the same gamestage groups, spawners, and entity groups that NPC Core does, except they would be populated with vanilla zombies. That's just XML as well, so I'm hoping that this could be a server side modlet.

EDIT:

In this way, if feasible, folks like me could support your modlet without having to make a special version of POIs with a code dependency.

I misunderstood what you were getting at. You still have to design the POI using the custom NPC groups, there's no way to take a vanilla or zombie POI and make it an NPC POI without having some kind of code dependency.

The purpose of my modlet was to do the opposite - to make NPC POIs available for people to use as zombie POIs. The POI designers themselves wouldn't have to get involved at all for that.

I'm mainly thinking of this, because I'm pretty sure I'm going to announce the POIs in the "Prefabs" section of the forum, the same place everyone else announces their prefabs. It would help people who wanted to try out the prefabs, but were expecting zombie prefabs in that section, and didn't want to install SCore, NPC Core, or the NPC Packs.

 

[Juggernaut35]

Can be deleted

 

[khzmusik]

For all of our curiosity and amusement, I have created a modlet that allows NPC POIs to be used for NPC Core POIs.

It is exclusively for users that want to include NPC POIs in their game, but do not want NPCs or the "baggage" that comes with installing NPC Core or SCore.

The modlet has no dependencies on either of those libraries, and is XML only, so it should be safe to install it only on servers.

EDIT: I forgot to provide a link, sorry. Here it is:

Repo: https://gitlab.com/karlgiesing/7d2d-a20-modlets/-/tree/main/0-XNPCCore_khzmusik_Prefabs_Spawn_Zombies

Download: https://gitlab.com/karlgiesing/7d2d-a20-modlets/-/archive/main/7d2d-a20-modlets-main.zip?path=0-XNPCCore_khzmusik_Prefabs_Spawn_Zombies 

 

[DoctorGreen]

Hi again,

I'm still testing out various combinations of your mods, with some success. 

Some new developments

-survivorz and zombiez standalone packs do not work, early error preventing blocks.xml from loading

Most of the other packs Ive tried at least load including robots, but I don't think mechas loads either.  No robots have shown up at now around day 20, not sure where they might be hiding. 

The improved hordes mod seems to work quite well with the bandits and survivors, now there are random events of extreme violence with multiple factions, like 15 zombies/bandits/survivors just going at each other, which is I think quite desirable. 

I just installed the 3 modlets including the psychopaths one and no news on these.  I am not going to try the quest levels per faction ones without starting a new world, but this is intriguing also npc POI of which so far there are none in this game. 

I'm considering helping out and volunteering these are so clearly the way the game should go and there's so much to be done, one thing i have yet to determine is what a dev rig for 7d2d might look like with full stack of software installed?   Any links that might be helpful? 

 

[DoctorGreen]

Also no behemoth sightings, really hoping to get surprised sometime soon.

Other mods installed, score, npc-core, fpsboost, spherell tutorial skip, better spikes, better spears, better cement, guppie zombies, all which i can recommend. 

In general I think the biggest simple improvements game could make are more zombies and models, more npc activities and more large POIs, which is fun stuff. 

 

[khzmusik]

Hi again,

I'm still testing out various combinations of your mods, with some success. 

Some new developments

-survivorz and zombiez standalone packs do not work, early error preventing blocks.xml from loading

Most of the other packs Ive tried at least load including robots, but I don't think mechas loads either.  No robots have shown up at now around day 20, not sure where they might be hiding. 

The improved hordes mod seems to work quite well with the bandits and survivors, now there are random events of extreme violence with multiple factions, like 15 zombies/bandits/survivors just going at each other, which is I think quite desirable. 

I just installed the 3 modlets including the psychopaths one and no news on these.  I am not going to try the quest levels per faction ones without starting a new world, but this is intriguing also npc POI of which so far there are none in this game. 

I'm considering helping out and volunteering these are so clearly the way the game should go and there's so much to be done, one thing i have yet to determine is what a dev rig for 7d2d might look like with full stack of software installed?   Any links that might be helpful? 

So, a lot of the NPC packs that you are talking about are not mine. Xyth did the Mechs; DarkStarDragon did the Robotz, Survivorz, and Zombiez packs. (I also have a zombie pack but it's not named with a "z" at the end). I'm assuming the Behemoth mod you are using is Khaine's.

For issues with those NPCs, you should probably report them in the NPCMod thread:
https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/26974-npcmod-a-community-project/ 

Having said that - I've been using these packs alongside mine, and I haven't had any issues.

You have both 0-SCore and 0-XNPCCore installed, right? I ask, because you said these packs are "standalone," but none of the NPC packs will work without those two mods installed.

If you do have those mods installed and are still getting the block loading issues, then you should upload your log file to something like pastebin, then give us a link to it on the forums. TFP also ask for this, and they have provided instructions here:
https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/3956-how-to-report-an-issue-please-read-before-creating-new-threads/

You probably haven't seen any psychos yet because they only spawn in the wasteland biome (and POIs, but as you said there aren't many of those around yet). I don't know for sure (since it's not my mod) but the Behemoth might also spawn only in the wasteland.

You can still install the "Reputation and Quests" modlet, but without NPC POIs, there are not many quests - mainly the low level ones for "enemy" factions. In particular there aren't any to gain reputation with neutral NPCs like Whiteriver or Duke. So if you kill one of those guys, the only way to "make up for it" is to kill lots of their enemies.

So, as you could probably guess, IMHO the thing you could do to help out the most is to make more NPC POIs, but I don't know if making POIs is your thing. (It's satisfying but incredibly time consuming and there are a lot of little details and gotchas.)

I don't know if there is going to be any more work on NPC Core at this point, partially because it's the holidays, but mostly because we all believe A21 is right around the corner, and that will probably change the NPC coding significantly (there will be more unfinished bandit code in the vanilla game that modders can use).

 

[crazywildfire]

So 2 questions if possible. I wanna drop backpacks. I feel in my multi-player game if another player kills me they should be able to loot me. So how can I fix it to drop the back pack. I got both dead and perma on. Would I need to change both mod files or just one? And what file and what would i need to change?....... the other question is would it be possible to turn off the backpack icon so you don't see it pop up on the map..... I'm not sure if either is possible but thought I would ask. If not it is what it is. I do like your mods though GG. 

 

[khzmusik]

So 2 questions if possible. I wanna drop backpacks. I feel in my multi-player game if another player kills me they should be able to loot me. So how can I fix it to drop the back pack. I got both dead and perma on. Would I need to change both mod files or just one? And what file and what would i need to change?....... the other question is would it be possible to turn off the backpack icon so you don't see it pop up on the map..... I'm not sure if either is possible but thought I would ask. If not it is what it is. I do like your mods though GG. 

I'm assuming this is about the "Mostly Dead"/"Permadeath" modlets.

In order to allow players to drop backpacks, you would need to comment out or remove the "ForceDeleteAllOnDeath" action in the  buffs.xml file in the Mostly Dead mod. Once that is removed, the game should obey the "Drop On Death" setting, as it would do without the mod installed. This is the line to remove:

<triggered_effect trigger="onSelfEnteredGame" action="ForceDeleteAllOnDeath, MostlyDead" />




I haven't tried this, but I believe removing the nav icon for the player backpack will prevent it from showing up on the HUD. The player backpack is the "Backpack" entity in the vanilla entityclasses.xml. Try removing this line:

<property name="NavObject" value="backpack" />




Now, the catch is that you are playing a multiplayer game. If you make those edits on the server, I'm not sure if they will be pushed to the clients or not - especially the modification of the vanilla XML file. If not, then you would have to turn those edits into a modlet. That's not difficult to do if you already know XPath and XML, but that's a big "if."

Try just editing those files on the server and see what happens. If it doesn't work, then I might be able to help make a modlet that does the changes. But I am visiting family right now, so it would not be for a few days at the earliest.

 

[khzmusik]

Since I have a little time now, I wanted to give everyone a heads up about something.

One of the users on the 7D2D Discord (Numinous, don't know if they're on these forums) found a pretty severe bug with the "Rogues and Psychos" characters. It turns out that zombies will not attack the "basic" versions. They will still attack zombies, but the zombies will neither target them initially nor attack them if they harm the zombies.

For now, the workaround is to use the "advanced" versions, but that is not a solution if you are spawning them into wandering hordes (since the "advanced" versions, like most other NPC Core characters, will cause console errors and won't spawn).

I'm working on a fix, but can't do much while I'm visiting family. It's going to be my first priority when I get back, but even so, I don't actually know if it can be fixed.

For anyone that is curious, the technical reason is that they descend from the vanilla C# "EntityEnemy" class. This is what allows them to be spawned into hordes. But it turns out that also prevents them from being used with vanilla EAI tasks or targets (such as "ApproachAndAttackTarget" or "SetAsTargetIfHurt"). If anyone out there can think of a solution then I'm all ears.

 

[crazywildfire]

@khzmusik yes, I was talking about those 2 mods. Thanks so much I will have a look into those files and see if works. 

I'm not going to pretend like I know what I'm talking about lol. But I do know like the small little basics. Like I have added simple recipes. I'm sure if I was to watch a video and do it a few times I could make them a little more advanced. Like one example would be instead of just adding the recipe to use (x resources) and make it (x work station) but add to it and put it in a magazine or in specific skill tree or even possibly do several creative menu items in one like the blocks when you hold E to change shape but hold E to have several items to craft instead of shapes or even add a description in the info box.... Just a few examples of what I mean for myself a little more advance then just craft this simple recipe lol.

Now for me the more complex stuff would be for an example ( something I would really like to figure out by the way one day that is lol) is to add a recipe say a bird nest. Put it into the farming skills. Make so bird nest have different stages like crops. Start off with basic bird nest. Next stage it has a different texture and then last stage it has like an egg and feathers inside to show when it is ready. Push E to harvest to get eggs and feathers. Now I know this would be more complex as you need images then gotta link the images. Then add this text in this file and that text in that file to link them all and such. 

Now the mods you do or the overhaul mods are more like development levels and way to advance for something I can learn over watching just a few videos lol. Maybe even the adding images like the bird nest example above falls in this category as well and might be out of reach for someone like me lol.

Anyway, back on topic lol. So yeah, I can change some stuff and know on a server some stuff I would need to make sure everyone has the same files as I do to match the changes including the server itself. Just some stuff need to by guided to show where and what to change lol.  Again, love the mods and think you did great on them. Just wanted to add that extra flavor for a multi-player game so other players fill rewarded after killing someone. As well as to add to not have that marker so it still kinda keeps to the same concept as you have as in you pretty much still lose your backpack. Might even lower the timer on the despawn so if a zombie kills you it will be gone by the time you would run back to it to keep that from happening. But also just enough time for a player to loot it if they killed you. 

No rush, it the holidays spend time with that family. Happy New Year. It really nice you thinking of taking the time to add that yourself. So thank you for the mods and the support. Have a good remaining Holiday. 

Edit- don't say yet where to find the backpack timmer. I wanna see if I can figure it out lol. If I can't I'll know where to ask for help lol.