Civilians Pack for NPC Core 2.0.1.0

[khzmusik]

khzmusik submitted a new resource:

Civilians Pack for NPC Core - Adds "Civilian" human NPCs to the game.

Adds "Civilian" human NPCs to the game.

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[DrunkZombie]

This along with some of your other mods are essential for me when playing. I know you have many to work on and things take time, I was just wondering if you had an idea when you think you can get this updated for 2.0.

 

[wyldwitchykat]

Is this mod and the psychos mod in need of updates or are they mostly compatible with V2.4? I noticed when using them that sometimes one will sink halfway into the terrain or glitch against a block. When this happens the game starts spamming the log with
Animator.GotoState: State could not be found
Invalid Layer Index '-1'
Sometimes they will clear themselves of the situation and the warnings will stop. Other times it will continue spamming the log until I either kill the npc or, if it's a follower, pick them up and place them back down again. I need to do further testing to see if it's just the civilians or if the psychos are causing it too. I should likely test it without other npc packs I imagine but the issue does stop when I remove the civilians and psycho mods.

 

[wyldwitchykat]

I finally saw you'd already stated you are in the process of updating so my question is moot. Maybe you will find this info useful though. In testing, with just your Civilian pack, everything seems to work fine and the warning doesn't start spamming the console. If I add in Darks Cleaners and Soldiers, the birds pack, and the spider pack it is the same. Everything seems to work fine and the warning never triggers. As soon as I also add in Oaks Cowhands and Oaks Bandit Headhunters, the warning will eventually trigger and start spamming the console. Here is the strange part though. If the only npc packs in use are civilians and either or both of Oaks, the warning doesn't seem to trigger. It's only whan all the npc packs I mentioned are installed that it triggers. If I use all the packs mentioned but not Civilians, it doesn't trigger either. I did not try all the various combinations of the other packs plus Civilians and Oaks packs to see exactly which combination causes the warning to trigger.

 

[wyldwitchykat]

My ramblings are probably useless information for you but on a whim, I decided to do another test. I can run all the mentioned packs, minus Civilians and not get the warning. All the packs, plus Civilians, and minus the 2 Oaks packs and not get the warning. All the packs, plus Civilians but minus the Birds pack and not get the warning. If I use just Civilians, Birds, and both Oaks packs, no warning. It's an anomaly that has me puzzled as it's not exactly tied to one particular pack. While other combinations of packs may trigger the warning too, something about Birds, Oak's packs, and Civilians together definitely triggers it eventually. Remove any one of the 3 and the warnings don't seem to trigger. As I stated, this is probably all useless information for you as you have no control on how other mods interact with yours but I thought I'd share it with you just in case it might be of use. Thanks again for the quick fix with Bad Medicine and good luck with the update process for your NPC and any other mods. I hope the update process goes well for you.

 

[khzmusik]

So, a quick note about the NPC packs.

They are next on my TODO list, after zombies. Updating the zombies took quite a bit of time, because 2.x zombies use a different system for the emissive parts of their materials (the glowing green, blue, and orange parts of the radiated, charged, and infernal zombies, respectively). They also now use a "fade" property to fade in and out (you probably have noticed this with the Plague Spitter, especially in earlier 2.x versions). This required that I learn how to code Unity surface shaders which support those features, and I'm not as familiar with Unity as other modders. There are also updates to the zombie controller and animations (due to the 1-block crouch) and a few other changes on the XML side.

The situation is going to be similar with the NPCs. I can use the same shaders I developed for zombies, which should save a lot of work. But NPC Core also updated its controller, since it is based on the zombie controller, and I now need to update my own version of that controller (which adds the "on fire" animations). There are likewise a couple other Unity changes I will have to make to them, including a new physics material on the main colliders.

I think the "invalid layer index" issue is due to one of those things. I'm guessing that happens if the game tries to access an animation layer which doesn't exist in the controller, and there is a new NPC controller. I have also heard reports that 1.x NPCs tend to get stuck on things, and that might be due to the lack of a 2.x physics material on the main collider.

I should be done with my zombies soon (hopefully), and then I'll start updating the NPCs. I also have some personal stuff going on (family health issues, my own health issues, and of course my day job), so have patience.

 

[khzmusik]

khzmusik updated Civilians Pack for NPC Core with a new update entry:

Civilians updated for 2.x

I am pleased to announce that the Civilians NPC pack has been updated for 7D2D version 2.0 and up. (Tested with versions 2.0 and 2.5.)

The characters are mostly the same, there were only a few things that needed to be updated for 2.0:

* Unity changes needed for 2.x (updated and modified NPC controller; new material on collider; etc.).
* Icons for "picked up" characters now have transparent backgrounds (the icons are now offset in the backpack grid, and look odd without a transparent...

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[khzmusik]

BTW - if anyone is wondering why it took so long: in addition to life getting in the way, I was trying to write new shader code to make the characters compatible with vanilla 7D2D zombies, and to also make the textures look better. I did not succeed - and it turns out zombie shaders don't work on non-zombie characters anyway. So I ended up using the existing 1.0 shaders anyway.

The good news is that this should allow me to finish the other NPC packs quicker, now that I know what I don't have to do.

The bad news (for you all) is that I'm visiting my family this Monday, and won't be able to work on mods until the week after New Year's. So, please be patient for a little while longer.

 

[Jarigon74]

A big thank you for updating this wonderful NPC mod !!!!

 

[SgtLeather]

Excellent, it always felt like something was missing from 2.0+ without my NPC friends. Thanks for your work.

Please can you tell me how to reduce the spawn rate (I see your options in the xml's to increase spawn rate, but I don't want to mess things up by putting my own numbers in to try and reduce it). Thanks again.

 

[khzmusik]

Excellent, it always felt like something was missing from 2.0+ without my NPC friends. Thanks for your work.

Please can you tell me how to reduce the spawn rate (I see your options in the xml's to increase spawn rate, but I don't want to mess things up by putting my own numbers in to try and reduce it). Thanks again.

Glad you like them.

The commented-out XML in entitygroups.xml shows you an easy way to increase the spawns. It works by decreasing the probably of "none" to spawn into the entity groups. (As you probably guessed, that's the game's way of saying "instead of spawning an entity, spawn nothing.")

If you want to decrease the spawns, then you need to increase the probability of "none" to spawn into those groups.

For example, here's the XML to make half as many NPCs spawn (on average):

<csv xpath="/entitygroups/entitygroup[starts-with(@name,'civilianNPCFriendly')]/text()" delim="\n" op="remove">none, 97</csv>
<csv xpath="/entitygroups/entitygroup[starts-with(@name,'civilianNPCFriendly')]/text()" delim="\n" op="add">none, 197</csv>

(The total of all the NPC probabilities is 3, so that decreases the probability of NPCs spawning from 3 in 100 to 3 in 200, i.e. from 3% to 1.5%.)

Halving the probability is a pretty drastic decrease, so you could also try something like 147 (3 in 150, or 2%).

The general formula is: %chance of an NPC spawning = 300 / (x + 3), where x is the "none" value. EDIT: Or, if you want to figure out the "none" value from a percent chance to spawn, the formula is x = (300 / %chance) - 3.

I'm not sure what works for you. Honestly, I thought the existing probabilities were on the low side for most people, so I never thought to explain how to spawn fewer NPCs.

The XML above targets the civilian groups used in all biome spawns, but you could also decrease the spawning in specific biomes if you like - for example, make them rarer in the forest biome, and more plentiful in harder biomes like the snow or wasteland. It depends on what you want to do, and at what stage you want to start encountering NPCs.

Hope that helps!

EDIT: Also - if you're on 2.5, make sure you get a recent version of SCore. There was a bug that caused NPCs to sometimes get stuck, and it was recently fixed.