Adding NPCs

Adding NPCs is pretty easy! In the Project panel, look for the NpcSpawner prefab, in Prefabs > Spawners. Drop it anywhere in your scene. Let's try grabbing the prefab and dropping it in the Scene viewport, on top of your plane.

Understanding the NpcSpawner

I'll review all the settings in the Npc Spawner. You can leave these all on their default values to get random enemies.

• Spawn At Start

  • If checked, the NPC will spawn as soon as the level loads

• Npc Type

  • Determines the NPC that will spawn

  • For now, all NPCs share most stats

• Override Skin

  • This can make an NPC spawn with a given skin

  • This is useful only to modders who have made skins for NPCs

• Override Stats

  • Let's you define some stats for this NPC that will override the default stats

  • You can do this in a similar way to the player equipement. Create > Game Stats > Doru Stats

  • Will only use appearance stats

• Ai Type

  • Wander

    • Will make this NPC walk around randomly

  • Guard

    • Will make this NPC stay still in its starting position

  • Waypoints

    • Will make this NPC walk following pre-defined waypoints

• Waypoints Behavior

  • Once Then Wander

    • Makes the NPC switch to Wander when completing its waypoints

    • Useful to make the NPC go to a pre-defined point when spawning

  • Once Then Guard

    • Makes the NPC switch to Guard when completing its waypoints

    • Useful to make the NPC go to a pre-defined point when spawning and guard it

  • Ping Pong

    • Makes the NPC go back in reverse order when completing its waypoints

    • Useful for a linear patrol route

  • Start Over

    • Makes the NPC start from its first waypoint when completing its waypoints

    • Useful for a circular patrol route

  • Random

    • Selects waypoints at random

• Always Walk To Waypoints

  • Whether this NPC will only walk when moving through its waypoints, or if it will run when the distance between them is long enough

    • Walking is good for NPCs that are patrolling

• Weapon

  • Determines the weapon the NPC will spawn with

  • Unarmed is currently not supported

• Override Weapon

  • This is an internal property that has no use for map makers

• Faction

  • Determines the allegiance of this NPC

  • Orchid Rain Corp

    • Enemy to the player

    • Enemy to Cruz Institute

  • Cruz Institute

    • Allied to the player

    • Enemy to Orchid Rain Corp

  • Monsters

    • Enemy to everyone else

• Personality

  • Determines what personality should the NPC spawn with

  • Personalities give unique animations and voice lines to NPCs

• Armor Spawn Info

  • Determines the chances of this NPC spawning with armor

  • Armor Sets

    • The type of armor

      • Right now the differences are only aesthetic

  • Armor Chance

    • The overall chance to get any armor at all

  • Chance for Head, Chest, Arms, Belly, Pelvis, Legs

    • The chance for each armor module

  • Armor spawning has two phases. First its determined if the armor will spawn at all, depending on the "Armor Chance" value. Secondly, each armor piece will check if it can spawn, depending on its Chance value

• Hair Overrides

  • Style

    • If a value other than None is selected, this NPC will spawn with the selected hair style always

  • Colors

    • Will make the hair have a specific color given

    • When more than one color is added, the hair color will be selected at random from the given color pool

    • No value given will make the hair spawn with its default semi-randomized color

• Hat Overrides

  • NPCs are planned to have a chance to spawn with a hat. Currently, only Officers have hats.

  • Hat Chance

    • This value affects the chance an NPC will spawn with its corresponding hat

• Skin Overrides

  • These values will affect the colors of the NPC

  • Skin Color

    • These are the pre-defined skin colors of the game

    • Each skin color has its own unique chance to appear on an NPC

    • You can force an NPC to have a pre-defined skin color regardless of its spawning chance

  • Colors

    • You can bypass the pre-defined values altogether by choosing colors here

  • Eye Colors

    • This will make the eyes of the NPC have the color of your choosing

Further customizing the NPC's weapon

You can add a component called Npc Spawner_Weapon Randomizer to the GameObject containing the Npc Spawner. This will let you define a list a random possible weapons for this character to spawn with.

Letting an NPC spawn with every possible weapon in the game can be a little too varied in some cases. Maybe you don't want the enemies in an area to spawn unarmed, or with another melee weapon, but you would still like to be some variation to their weaponry. This is why I created this new component. Just add as many items to the Possible Weapons list as would suit your needs.

Customizing NPCs is a lot of fun. Take your time playing around with all of those values at some point. For now, you can leave them all as they are for the moment. The only other thing we need to do is create a NavMesh, so that our NPCs can move around on their own.

Working a NavMesh

NavMesh, short for Navigation Mesh, is a Unity technology that gives pathfinding capabilities to AI agents. In practical terms, a NavMesh is a surface that NPCs will walk on. NPCs need a NavMesh to be present on a level in order to function properly. Luckily building one is pretty easy too.

Create an empty GameObject (Ctrl + Shift + N) and look for a component called "NavMeshSurface".

In Include Layers, select only "WorldColliders". This will tell the Nav Mesh Surface component to make our NavMesh using only the objects in that Layer. After that, press the Bake button in the bottom-right corner of this component.

When you do this, you should see a blue area on top of your WorldColliders objects. That's the NavMesh! If you can't see it, make sure you have the GameObject with the NavMeshSurface component selected. As soon as you deselect it, the NavMesh will be hidden. Remember that the GameObjects not marked as Static will not be taken into account when baking NavMeshes.

Test your map now and see if the NPC spawns and is able to move around (even if it is to attack you). Save it first, and then build it.

The lighting is still not good, but your NPC should be attacking you and moving around.