How are static creatures spawned?

[idbeholdME 436]

By static, I mean those not present in spawn.txt.

Specifically, I've been trying to increase the amount of the wandering Seraphim in the Seraphim Hunting Grounds. Through experimentation, I've found that they're the creature ID 1839. I've made them hostile with the monsters encountered in the area, gave them some more Seraphim CAs to use and wanted to make the game spawn a bit more of them to make the area truly feel like the Seraphim hunt there regularly.

However, I noticed that the default spawn behavior of these is very weird. They seem to be set to static locations, but they don't spawn upon your first visit of the location they should spawn in, but only after you go a certain distance from the area they should spawn in and then go back. Example:

The arrows roughly mark a position where a Seraphim Guard spawns. But they are never there on your first visit. Steps:

1) Start the game at the monolith and walk to the outpost. The Seraphim that is supposed to be guarding the gate will not be there.

2) Teleport somewhere far (the start of this Seraphim Region is enough).

3) Teleport to the monolith and walk to the outpost again. Now the Seraphim Guard will be there.

4) Same for the other two arrow position.

 

Any explanation for this behavior? Creature 1839 is not present in spawn.txt and in quests.txt, only the ones that use the same creature ID but only serve as quest givers are listed (I assume). Couldn't find any other place where creature 1839 would be used or how the random Seraphim you can stumble upon occasionally are spawned.

Does anybody know how the spawning of the 2 example 1839s I marked on the map is handled? I'd like to populate the area slightly more with them but I'm starting to feel like it's not going to be possible.

Edited August 24, 2023 by idbeholdME

[Flix 5,215]

They're added directly to the sector files. Same with most merchants, and many other times when hand-placing is required as opposed to the random nature of spawn.txt.  Sometimes it's also done this way because there is code in place that prevents spawn.txt spawns in most town areas. This is why I could add snakes and birds as random wilderness spawns in PFP but I had to hand place each dog and cat in the towns. 

It also seems to give more control with pathing if you want to NPC to roam around or follow a certain routine, though I haven't done much with that.

 

 

If I were going to tackle your project, I think I would add them as random spawns in spawn.txt. That's what I've done in D2F: adding more friendly/neutral mobs of NPC's that can be found randomly in given areas, fighting monsters.

[idbeholdME 436]

On 8/25/2023 at 12:12 AM, Flix said:

If I were going to tackle your project, I think I would add them as random spawns in spawn.txt. That's what I've done in D2F: adding more friendly/neutral mobs of NPC's that can be found randomly in given areas, fighting monsters.

Thanks.

True, adding them as a spawn with low probability to spawn.txt to the relevant sectors could probably work.

One question about the sector spawns though - you say that NPCs in towns and such are also spawned this way (in the sector files). But those never fail to spawn. Any explanation why these Seraphim specifically only spawn on a re-visit to the given area and not the first time?

[Flix 5,215]

10 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

One question about the sector spawns though - you say that NPCs in towns and such are also spawned this way (in the sector files). But those never fail to spawn. Any explanation why these Seraphim specifically only spawn on a re-visit to the given area and not the first time?

Believe or not this can happen with merchants and other NPC's as well - but only in the Crystal Plane (that I have noticed). I have had some of the hot air balloon captains fail to spawn for sure.

Another example is the Forest Guardian - he was the only boss to have been added in the sector files instead of through quest.txt, and sure enough I got occasional reports that he would fail to spawn, which is why I ended up adding him through scripts instead like other bosses.