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rearth NPC's

This mod adds non-player characters to the game. They can walk around and attack nearby enemies, making space feel much more alive.
Update: The NPCs now also work in artificial gravity, now it's time to bring them to your space stations.
Multiplayer has not been tested and most likely won't work.



How To:
Use the NPC Control Station to hire engineers or soldiers and bring them into your world. In order to spawn engineers, you need a contract token, which can be purchased from any trade station. Once you have those in the inventory of the control block, you can spawn your first npcs. There are four control modes available:

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Patrol: The NPC's will patrol a list of points. Those can can be set by the player, and the npc's will keep patrolling those points, while avoiding any obstacles on the way.

Attack Point: The NPCs will move towards a selected point. The recorded point will be whereever the center of your screen points at.

Stand Guard: Orders your NPCs to guard a select point.

Follow Player: The NPCs will follow you in a grid formation while you move.

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Selecting a Point: Click the "Record Points" button in the terminal of the control station, then move to the point you want to record, and click SHIFT + U to record your current position. If you're recoding patrol points, repeat that step until you've selected all patrol points, and then click the "Stop Recording" button in the terminal.

In guard and attack mode, only one point can be selected, so it'll automatically stop recording. When selecting a point to attack, it'll select the point you are looking at.

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The NPCs will attack any enemies within their range and chase them until they're dead or out of range again. They are also able to avoid walls and find their way around obstacles with some very basic pathfinding. All the NPCs are also recolorable, with the initial color being based on the color of the controller used for them. When an NPC dies, he'll respawn from the control station after a short delay (much like the actual space engineer). The control blocks also work fine when using blueprints, meaning you can save a blueprints with stored patrol, and then paste the same station anywhere, and the pasted copy will still maintain it's configuration.

The NPC controller itself can also be controlled using the custom data in the terminal, making it possible to give commands using programmable blocks. The guide can be found here: https://gist.github.com/Rearth/5abd41d9028fd4355423391c38fad5a0



Huge thanks to everyone helping me put this mod together by answering all my questions on discord, and also thanks to legitbanana for creating the 3d model that the elite NPC is based on (https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/hazard-unit-free-model-daeecbd492f34f619944f5a3004cae11)

This mod is still in a very early state. If you encounter any errors or problems, please let me know. The animations and effect still need some work, but this is the best i could do with the very limited mod support in the game.

Future plans for this mod:
- Improve leg movement
- Make NPCs keep their distance properly while shooting at a target
- Update the shooting animation and sounds
- Improve the impact and weapons launch effects
- Create a seperate MES/rivalAI that uses stations and dropships with the NPCs

You can view the code for this mod on github ( github.com/Rearth/NPC_mod ). If you have feature you'd like to add or a bug to fix, feel free to submit a pull request.