Npc spawn points

[Avanar]

So, i can't leave the npc topic alone. It's too important for me :)

One thing that came to my mind about this is

1. Spawn points - in Minecraft mobs spawn everywhere nearby the player where is not enough light but can't destroy most buildings.
In 7d2d they spawn nearly everywhere in masses.
Both o don't fully like.

2. Aggro behavior

3. How to prevent them from spawning inside player buildings?

4. Should the npc be able to destroy player buildings?


1. Pirates only on islands and game generated boats, maybe nearby beaches

Cabin guys only in game generated cabins

Bandits random spawn but preferably nearby / inside caves, that's where in rl they could hide.

2. All 3 above should attack players on sight or even look for them.
However pirate islands you could settle on if you have a full pirate outfit and wear it.
Then they are neutral, as long as you don't attack them or destroy their buildings.
Similar for cabin guys.
Bandits are outlaws, no friendly interaction should be possible.

3. Difficult. Actually only bandits should be concerned, based on my idea.
I think they could spawn also inside buildings as from lore side they see traitors, thieves, etc.
But maybe only max xx bandits spawning nearby 1 player.
And certain blocks could be crafted that mark a territory as no-spawn area.
Though bandits and other hostile npc could get in through open doors, lock pick them (i.e. Steel doors more safe than wood doors)

4. Npc should be able to demolish certain door types, use ladders and set up traps on their own nearby buildings/entrances.
And damage soil on fields, etc
But blocks/walls may not be harmed

My ideas. What do you think?

[_Patrick Swayze]

Pirates? You make it seem NPC's exist? Did I miss something?

In case that is a proposal, you might see NPC's in a year or 2 or perhaps, never..
Nothing significant has been added really since the early access release on Steam, also taking the time it has taken for the things that are now in the game to appear..

I don't mean to rain on your parade or anyone else's, but you gotta be very patient.

[Avanar]

Man, Stop posting if you don't care enough to inform yourself.

Next update already has a preview with new customizable player models, new weapons, clothes, etc. Also a dummy npc as place holder.

Following update then brings hostile npc.
Pirates, bandits, traders, etc are officially announced.

[red51]

Originally posted by Avanar:

1. Spawn points - in Minecraft mobs spawn everywhere nearby the player where is not enough light but can't destroy most buildings.
In 7d2d they spawn nearly everywhere in masses.
Both o don't fully like.

Well, I guess there will be two types of spawn: on the one hand, npc which only spawn once and stay in the world permanently (until they die). That's how it currently works for animals. Probably this will also apply to future bandits/pirates/villagers etc who spawn at a special location (e.g. bandits in a bandit camp, cabin guy in a cabin etc).
On the other hand, there will be also random temporary spawns (most likely this only affects enemies), so these npc could spawn at any time near the player just to cause trouble. This may apply to certain hostile animals, but also to single bandits (trying to raid your home), for example. Once you leave the area (or quit the game), they will disappear.

But as suspected, most human npc will only spawn at certain locations, e.g. pirates may only spawn on a boat or at a small camp on the beach, knights/guards may spawn in a fortress, the lonely lumberjack spawns in his cabin in the woods etc. ;)

Originally posted by Avanar:

2. All 3 above should attack players on sight or even look for them.
However pirate islands you could settle on if you have a full pirate outfit and wear it.
Then they are neutral, as long as you don't attack them or destroy their buildings.
Similar for cabin guys.
Bandits are outlaws, no friendly interaction should be possible.

Wearing a pirate outfit to turn pirates into neutral npc sounds like an interesting idea! Probably this "neutrality" will only last until you steal something, attack them or get too close to one of them.

We also took something like "respect" into consideration some time ago. Probably this only works if there are various "factions" (e.g. pirates, bandits, knights/guards, villagers etc). By default, knights/guards and villagers would be friendly, while bandits and pirates are hostile. Once you attack knights or villagers, they may turn hostile, but in return, you may gain respect from bandits and/or pirates.

Still not fully sure about that, and of course it's still necessary to talk about the details. Probably this only happens after the regular enemies (hostile npc) are implemented ;)

But since the whole npc topic is quite important, I think that these things will be added sooner than expected. After the player models update (including the static npc), we will first focus on various survival elements (food spoilage, temperature, maybe diseases, enemies), then we will probably go into detail about the npc ^^

Originally posted by Avanar:

3. How to prevent them from spawning inside player buildings?

Probably our first attempt would be to prevent them from spawning in chunks which have been already modified (i.e. chunks which contain some player-made structures). I guess in most cases this approach would be sufficient.

Originally posted by Avanar:

4. Should the npc be able to destroy player buildings?

That's really a good (and complicated) question ^^ Basically I'd say no, since it might be quite annoying for some player if they have to repair or rebuild their house every night. On the other hand, it might add some challenge (and if enemies can't destroy your stuff, you're technically safe if you just place a block in front of your door).

What might be a cool thing would be something like certain rare "events", e.g. a bandit raid on your home. During such an event, they may use explosives or cannons to break through your walls.

However, if we really implement something like that, there will be definitely a way to disable it (or alternatively these events may only occur on "hard difficulty"), since it's definitely going to be frustrating if you spent hours or even days or weeks to build your house, and some stupid bandits break it down within a few seconds ^^

[Walter das Trevas]

I really liked your ideas! ;)

[HyphenTorpedo]

I like the idea of having raiding bandits be optional Red. It's not my cup of tea, I prefer to explore around and play at my own pace without having to worry about constant attacks, but I know some people will love the idea in a game like this.

[Minotorious]

Originally posted by _Patrick Swayze:

Pirates? You make it seem NPC's exist? Did I miss something?

In case that is a proposal, you might see NPC's in a year or 2 or perhaps, never..
Nothing significant has been added really since the early access release on Steam, also taking the time it has taken for the things that are now in the game to appear..

I don't mean to rain on your parade or anyone else's, but you gotta be very patient.

ehm NPCs already exist, they are only found in the form of animals atm XD (sorry had to make that joke)

but if you look at the official forum there has been a number of updates (some quite significant i.e. dungeons) in the past few years. But eitherway the biggest update so far will be the next one introducing playermodels which as red has said will be the basis for the survival and adventure modes of the game.

[Avanar]

Red, thanks for your answers. Glad to see you have a vision already In place.

About npc and building destruction. Yea, turn it on/off. But i think it would be neat to give npc ability to destroy weak structures like earth blocks, rubble, wood, etc.

However stone in any form should be indestructible, i think.
But maybe they could climb until certain height, use ladders, lockpick doors, search for open doors, etc.

About spawn in chuncks already changed... I don't know. Makes it extremely easy to avoid them. Especially in bigger cities.

And spawning only once... In single player ok, but multiplayer the pirates would be gone fast and then?

As for pirates i would like to see that their islands are like a special biome. Buildings with fixed spawn points and tough pirates. Also cannons, etc. Must be very difficult to get there and maybe a certain piece of pirate outfit can be gained only there.

The longer the pirates remain on the island undisturbed, the more boats spawn, then step by step more camps at the shore.


Factions... Red, if i ever meet you in real life, you earned a good beer of two.
It's very difficult to design this but if you manage you would raise rw on a next level

[zfoxfire]

This is really cool to get some insight of the "vision" that Red51 has. From past conversations, it sounded like he had a vsion before even writing the first line of code but that vision has been developing over the years. This is probably the most specifics he's mentioned on the NPC and this "respect" system, sounds like a karma system I've seen in other games. This is really great to hear :)

[red51]

Originally posted by HyphenTorpedo:

I like the idea of having raiding bandits be optional Red. It's not my cup of tea, I prefer to explore around and play at my own pace without having to worry about constant attacks

Oh yes, there will be definitely a way to disable certain npcs or influence/disable their hostility ;)

Originally posted by Avanar:

But maybe they could climb until certain height, use ladders, lockpick doors, search for open doors, etc.

It's anyway necessary to improve the AI for npcs ^^ It is our intention to have some sort of "pathfinding" in place for npc, so bandits would also use doors and ladders if necessary. It would be awesome if they'd even use stuff like grappling hooks to climb walls, but I'm afraid it's still a long way until the AI is capable of handling this properly =/

Originally posted by Avanar:

About spawn in chuncks already changed... I don't know. Makes it extremely easy to avoid them. Especially in bigger cities.

That's true. With this approach, you would be safe in a big city (at least as long as you're in the center of your city). On the other hand, this approach would be probably sufficient if you only have a single house or live on the periphery of a city.
But maybe we have to take other factors into account as well (e.g. spawn in the open). This may probably need a lot of fine-tuning ^^

Originally posted by Avanar:

And spawning only once... In single player ok, but multiplayer the pirates would be gone fast and then?

Well, these camps or fortresses will probably only spawn once. Once the pirates or bandits are wiped, they're gone. But of course this may be problematic in multiplayer (same issue with the current animal spawning)... I'm not sure if a "respawn" for these camps works properly, especially if a whole camp or fortress respawns in an explored area and comes out of nowhere (something like "wait, this fortress wasn't here 5 minutes ago")...

But of course a respawn would work and is also intended for single bandits (e.g. highwaymen), animals and maybe also pirate ships.

Originally posted by Avanar:

As for pirates i would like to see that their islands are like a special biome. Buildings with fixed spawn points and tough pirates. Also cannons, etc. Must be very difficult to get there and maybe a certain piece of pirate outfit can be gained only there.

Once the island world type is available this might be indeed a great thing! In general it would be nice to have certain areas which are under control of a particular faction. Structures which are well guarded and secured (and may contain special loot)

[HyphenTorpedo]

Sorry if that sounded like it was directed at you in a negeative way Red, I was just mentioning your name in my previous post. Reading back on it, it does read like that a bit.

[Walter das Trevas]

To prevent thieves from stealing the house or village, we could hire some NPC guards who would defend our treasures in exchange for silver, copper, or gold.

And when I say "defend", I do not mean an A.I. fighting, but a kind of "scarecrow" that would keep the bad guys out during the day.

During the night we would have to defend our houses against possible invasions.

I would like to see insect infestations inside houses, termites in the wood, spiders and scorpions under beds and behind closets.

If you do not discover the location of the nest, the infestation increases.

We would need to collect ingredients and make pesticides, even in the plantations.

[Avanar]

The npc scarecrow could really help to prevent hostile npc from spawning. Like this idea.

Though bugs eating my wood construction... Id go crazy ;)

Also if always at night it will be difficult for multiplayer servers

[ArcticuKitsu]

Originally posted by _Patrick Swayze:

Pirates? You make it seem NPC's exist? Did I miss something?

In case that is a proposal, you might see NPC's in a year or 2 or perhaps, never..
Nothing significant has been added really since the early access release on Steam, also taking the time it has taken for the things that are now in the game to appear..

I don't mean to rain on your parade or anyone else's, but you gotta be very patient.

What? What were you trying to achieve with this post by being a pessimist? If you followed what Red51 was saying in his recent postings you wouldn't be saying this. Granted, not everybody can followe everything so I'll cut some slack there. Yeah, we'll be gaining 'Dummy NPCs' first, then actual NPCs in stages as things are developed by Red51. It may be 'soon" (August, or even September) from what I'm judging by. Highly doubtful it'll July, yet we'll have to see what Red51 manages.

Quite a negative outlook on life that it made me facepalm. No need to be overly dramatic about how long each update takes.


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I love the loyalty & karma system mentioned. The whole alignment of being neutral to then go on one side, or the other that it be interesting to see how it'll play out on the field. I also approve of the stealth system for pirates & bandits when you wear their outfit. Would be a neat way to add a simplistic stealth & roleplay route in the game. Even with the kni9ghts that if you do good deeds they'd reward you with a recipie for their amour that you could wear it and help them out. They should even treat you with higher respect then heh. That is, if it's even possible.

There's a lot of new thoughts that I'd love to mention, yet shall hold off on.

Well, these camps or fortresses will probably only spawn once. Once the pirates or bandits are wiped, they're gone. But of course this may be problematic in multiplayer (same issue with the current animal spawning)... I'm not sure if a "respawn" for these camps works properly, especially if a whole camp or fortress respawns in an explored area and comes out of nowhere (something like "wait, this fortress wasn't here 5 minutes ago")...

But of course a respawn would work and is also intended for single bandits (e.g. highwaymen), animals and maybe also pirate ships.

I love how Red51 even noted how there should be alternative spawning points for bandits, pirates, and such because of how greedy & uncaring people are on public servers. People slaughtered all the animals without thinking twice about new players, or thinking ahead about breeding. Even stealing specific trees that they want to monopolies it that it's always best to have alternative spawning points for them. Multiple types so nothing is monopolised. Roaming merchants should go to wherever they please, and to anybody who can build a market stall. Talk to the merchant, buy some saplings, and that's a tree drought mended for the new guy. Similar with other things, such as maybe buying baby animals to start breeding them at some farm, and such.

Red51 should look into allowing portable spawn camps to spawn that would keep spawning bandits, pirates, & etc until the main trigger in that camp is neutralised. Something like a banner, or killing the leader, or something so the camp would die off and re-appear somewhere else nearby in the approriate terrain. Maybe even doubling back in old camp spots to then keep doing that until we travel further out, and etc. Once that camp (think tends & bedrolls) is gone you'd see the camp voided in that area, decaying until it's genuinely gone. Another camp should eventually pop around somewhere nearby so they can keep being interacted with for as long as that world lives in that repeatitive cycle.

We should also have an NPC village spawned billboards & computerized to hand out randomly generated quests to deal with certain tasks. Billboards dedicated to trading, scouting, killing bandits,and etc while giving you a random reward appropriate to that quest. Maybe clothing, or even food.Ores, or even wine. Anything appropriate. I suggest this to tie into also keep farming bandits & pirates so everybody gets a chance at them so it doesn't become as lifeless as it would on a greedy public server with ungrateful players on them. If there's a public server that saved animals for newbies then congrats to you folks, you're the intelligent few.

Also, sorry for the long wall of text but it also pissed me off on my Minecraft server that everything was just "one go". The first person to claim stuff had the monopoly on everything that it pissed me off when something was claimed in the Nether, or the dragon in "The End" that it made me ragequit. When you add something, you have to make sure other people can claim it because it sours the gameplay so much that I also hate being on public servers for that reason. Even having to ask hoster to reset a map to deal with it myself. I was once trolled with chickens spawned underneith my desert settlement in Minecraft for a portal to the End dragon I wanted to strangle the guy who taunted me for it. We later had a falling out because he went all dramatic that me and my server host had to just purge him, and his trolling cousins......That incident made me hate Minecraft's linear solo game implementations that Rising World needs to learn from this.

So, yeah.....If you're going to add something that spawns or is special in any sort of manner do take care in making sure it's easy to 'reset', or if you're either a 'newbie' or a 'veteran' on the server. This is something that I want to label as 'high importance' for how rage worthy & souring the gameplay experience can be.

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Sorry for the wall of text, but I do hope you understand what I wrote. If not, ask me to clarify that maybe the next day's mood will allow me to word things properly.

[Mardoin69]

Love the ideas and direction of RW Red51. Thanks for being an awesome developer.

[ArcticuKitsu]

Sorry for my wall of text, but just wanted to add one more thing that I approve of Red51 of doing.

If hostile NPCs shall attack/destory structures then I guess they should destroy the lower end stuff which can be replaced. The things like loam, wood, and such. Also being able to unlock doors, lockpick, and acces them would also be ideal with what was mentioned I approve of, yet being able to destroy buildings themselves should indeed be hardcore mode. Not sure if I'd change to that gameplay when we get there, Anything that can be easily replaced should be destroyable. It all depends on how we build & their behaviour because in Minecraft I was able to hold off hostile entities with ease that it could be the same here.

Once you learn how everything behaves the things like hardcore would turn into casual behaviour.

Sorry for my wall of text. I feel guilty about posting it yet I just wanted to send the point home that if there's something that everybody should get it, and Red51 has made note of it. I just wanted to express my thoughts on that. Nobody should hog resources on public servers also, but that's server based politics.