ACR Spawn System

AcadiusLost · Post by **AcadiusLost** » Fri Sep 28, 2007 9:05 pm

Wynna, were you testing using a DM client or a player client? Try the former, and see if you get a "Spawn debug wand" added to your avatar's inventory. If so, use it once to toggle the spawn debugging messages on- they may be of some assistance.

If you don't have one of these, let me know and I'll throw together an erf for you this evening- it was meant to go into the ACR install, but may have been missed out.

Wynna · Post by **Wynna** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 12:39 am

I have it, AL. I just can't figure out what it does. I toggle it on and it shows I'm using item's special power, but nothing happens after that and there doesn't seem to be any way to interact with the spawns through the wand.

My basic DM chooser menu does list the example spawns under waypoints, but I can't seem to goto them, or, indeed, to any of the triggers or waypoints in the mod or the only other area in the mod, the Morgue. Goto doesn't seem to be working at all. I also tried to place an AT between the Morgue and my area, to start in the Morgue and enable the wand before ATing to my area to test the spawns, but I couldn't get the AT to work.

I begin to suspect there is something fundamentally wrong with how I've set something up.

AcadiusLost · Post by **AcadiusLost** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 1:42 am

Goto requires a doubleclick in the chooser - the DM creator may be pretty useless at current (believe it only shows ALFA creatures currently).

I'm guessing you have the spawn debug wand blueprint, but not the associated script. Do you have an abr_spawn_debug.nss or similarly named script in your module (not in the haks) - pretty sure I put it with the initial ACR prerelese, but forgot to package it with the Sourceforge "Full release". Should have a script name the same as the tag of the wand's blueprint.

I'll do up an erf for it tonight- can you PM your email to me to send it to?

Wynna · Post by **Wynna** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 12:44 am

Thanks for the script, AL. I haven't had any joy getting it to report anything at all or getting my spawns to work, unfortunately.

One thing I've been able to verify, though, is that even Indio's Silvy mod--which has spawns that I presume are working but forgot to actually ask (Indio?)--does not spawn anything on mine. Indio is kindly putting together a correctly set up interior area for me to test on. If it won't spawn, either, it'll put beyond a shadow of a doubt that something bigger than my module is wrong. Could this be a NWNx4 thing?

indio · Post by **indio** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 3:29 am

Ok...I'm not much use to anyone at the moment.

The 003 mod spawns mobs and placeables fine, but here's an odd thing.

In 2 areas of the 20 populated areas, spawns simply didn't work. They did for a while, but something broke their spawns. No idea why. I duplicated the area, deleted the original, and voila!

Give that a try Wynna. I haven't made your module yet, but I know AL has got a demo module for the spawner somewhere.

And to put your mind at ease Wynna, I'm certain it's not the way your doings things. You configuration in that screenshot indicated you'd done it right. My guess is that it's a glitch only people who've been stumbling around in the toolset for the last 12 months have come across. So don't doubt yourself. Watching you is one of the things helping me through my current malaise.

Wynna · Post by **Wynna** » Wed Oct 03, 2007 6:23 pm

All right, I'm at my wit's end. I tried duping and deleting the area. I tried creating a new module from scratch, following AL's excellent directions in his ACR readme. Nothing works. I cannot spawn a thing. Here are observations made along the way:

1. The example spawn waypoints call for a) Example--abr_cr_mb_corollax and b) Mixed--abr_cr_hu_orcbattlepriest, abr_cr_hu_orcbasher02, abr_cr_hu_orcbasher03.

I don't appear to have these creatures in my blueprints. I don't have a corollax at all and my orcs are resource named and resreffed with c_orc, c_orcchief and c_orccleric.

2. Changing the waypoint to call any other creature still doesn't work. I tried c_cat and c_ancombadger1 without success.

3. In DM mode, my spawn debug wand appears to do nothing when used. It tells me I'm using a special item and then no further messages come to my DM avatar. I do have the abr_spawn_debug script imported.

I wonder if somebody knowledgeable could meet with me in #alfa-builders at their leisure to go through the set up of my module and NWNx4 from the ground up to help? I would appreciate it very much. It seems to me there's no sense in building until my spawns are working.

Thanks!

AcadiusLost · Post by **AcadiusLost** » Wed Oct 03, 2007 7:20 pm

Wynna- apologies for the slow response on troubleshooting this, the loss of my hosting machine (which allowed me consistent IRC access from work) has hampered my ability to keep up with things.

The example spawn points call creature resources from the ABR creatures- it sounds like you're just working with the default creature pallete, so you've correctly identified one problem with them. Setting them to use the Resource Name (not resref) of existing blueprints should get you past that part at least.

Is your module on the DMFTP? I can open it up on my end and see if I can suss the problem, without the 2-3 day turnaround between each idea.

Also, are you on 1.10 yet? We're kind of in transition at this point so it doesn't matter too much one way or the other, but it'd be useful to know.

[edit: I will try to be on #alfa-builders for most of this evening after I get home from work- too much on my plate in lab to walk through it until then]

Wynna · Post by **Wynna** » Wed Oct 03, 2007 9:04 pm

Don't ever apologize for what you do for free and with such good grace.

I've uploaded my mod to the DMFTP at NWN2/03 Savage Frontier/Silverymoon University. You'll find it only has three areas: Morgue, Area 1 (for testing) and The Lady's College (a very messy place filled with placeholder towers that need to be tidied up and have their individual parts named for their schools). I've left my attempted waypoints in both Area 1 and The Lady's College. They are the only thing in Area 1 and the last entries under Waypoints in The Lady's College.

I will try to be around tonight in chat, but my hours there are usually limited to before 6pm and after 9pm PST. Thank you, AL, for your help.

edit: I'm not on 1.10 yet and Indio is with me in chat right now, trying to work it out with me. I'll post the results. Thanks, guys!

Wynna · Post by **Wynna** » Thu Oct 04, 2007 12:23 am

Between them, Indio, AL and Teric have managed to get creature spawns working in my test mod, or, rather, to get me connected to my test mod launched on NWNx4. That's a lot better than what I had before. Thank you! It still seems as if I have database connection problems and I don't think my placeable spawns are working yet, but at least I'm in a position to test the latter and keep building, too.

Wynna · Post by **Wynna** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 4:28 pm

My thanks to AL for helping me reinstall my database so that I finally have complete connectivity. Also, the placeables weren't spawning because I'd changed their tags to help identify them in some scripts. Note to all builders: don't change the spawn tags.

Looks like I'm finally running a fully functional test mod.

Rotku · Post by **Rotku** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 10:13 pm

Hmm... if we do have a fully working test mod, would it be possible to upload it onto the DM FTP to save others having to go through the same difficulty again, should they wish to build off a working-mod?

AcadiusLost · Post by **AcadiusLost** » Sun Oct 07, 2007 3:17 am

The difficulty isn't generally with the modules themselves, more with setting up NWNx4 and a local MySQL database to manage persistency and such- they are generally things only server hosts, or those who are doing a lot of scripting/spawn configuring need to do. It would be useful to have an "official" basemod, but it wouldn't be a panacea for the sorts of problems we've been working through here.

AcadiusLost · Post by **AcadiusLost** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 10:29 pm

Wynna spotted an oddity in how ACR_SetIsSpawnPointEnabled() was working today, I've traced it back to a mistake in the function code, should be an easy fix. I'm going to keep calling my alfa_acr.hak v1.2 for a while, so it doesn't get hopelessly ahead of the other haks in version number.

While I've got the hood up on acr_spawn_i, I'll look for some places to hook into it for the population system as well.

I think Wynna was also interested in having a way to control (activate/deactivate) a set of spawn points together without costly full-area refreshes being called for each member of the set (as would happen using ACR_SetIsSpawnPointEnabled() currently). I'll see if anything leaps to mind in that regard as well. Maybe an option to chain spawnpoints into a virtual linked list at initialization, so they can be toggled collectively, or something.

Wynna · Post by **Wynna** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 11:12 pm

Every day I get closer and closer to this thing doing what I want. While AL is looking for the bug in GetIsSpawnEnabled to squash it, I'm using ACR_SpawnPoint to test my scripts that spawn a complex group of placeables within a room only when the usually locked door to a dorm room is unlocked and opened. (This means that passersby in the halls won't be bothered by the popups of useable placeables showing through the placeable walls.)

Today I finally got the complex group of placeables to spawn as a single group within the room in their proper places...and they promptly faded out of existence about 60 seconds later, which I presume is because of the waypoint refreshing itself. Why did the placeables go away? The PC I was testing with in the player client was still there. Shouldn't the placeable children of the spawn have stayed put til the PC left the area? How do I fix those things in place until the PC leaves?

Edit: After a little more testing in DM Mode, I think I understand that only SetIsSpawnPointEnabled can enable the placeable spawn so that the placeables aren't removed at the next refresh because the system doesn't know why they're there. If I'm right, I'll cool my heels until SetIsSpawnPointEnabled is ready. No hurry! I'm not around for the next few days and know this probably has a low priority in the overall scheme of things.