Where did my new NPCs go?

I know this is a very elementary question (alright, call it newbie) as I am just cutting some teeth on the demo version of Coldstone. (Registration has arrived but CD has not.) I've followed the directions and am frustrated at the results.

I'm placing NPCs in a PoG map according to the tutorial and they appear in the NPCs folder of the plug-in, and the load call appears in the Defs folder inside the Events folder, but nobody shows up for the party when I play the plug-in.

My system is 9.2 so I'm using "My Coldstone" rather than Coldstone (OS X) but I noticed that some of the docs that were created had a (OS X) suffix. I know not why, and does it make a difference?

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Originally posted by Rubber Ducky:
I'm placing NPCs in a PoG map according to the tutorial and they appear in the NPCs folder of the plug-in, and the load call appears in the Defs folder inside the Events folder, but nobody shows up for the party when I play the plug-in.

Is there anything else in the plug-in load call that does work? (Dialogue, adding items, teleporting the player, whatever?) If not, you might consider adding such for debugging purposes to figure out whether the problem is with the load call or specifically with the NPC placing.

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My system is 9.2 so I'm using "My Coldstone" rather than Coldstone (OS X) but I noticed that some of the docs that were created had a (OS X) suffix. I know not why, and does it make a difference?

"My Coldstone"? On my system, the Classic app is just called "Coldstone".

The only files I've ever seen created by Coldstone with that sort of suffix are application builds - I have "My Game(X)" in a couple of places, but nothing anywhere else like that. Are you using Coldstone 1.0.1?

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Originally posted by Glenn:
Is there anything else in the plug-in load call that does work? (Dialogue,.....

There is dialogue, but I can't check it because I can't find the guy to talk to.

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Originally posted by Glenn:
"My Coldstone"? On my system, the Classic app is just called "Coldstone"...Are you using Coldstone 1.0.1?

As I said above, I'm using the demo version beause the CD has not arrived yet.

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My Doctor said I was having too much wine, women, and song - so I gave up singing because 2 out of 3 is not so bad.
The (url="http://"http://mywebpage.netscape.com/rduckfwj/pog/mapnotes.html")Kingdom of Garendall(/url) sectional map is easily printed from gif format pages.
Find those areas you missed the first time around. You'll want to explore those hidden areas now made accessible with Spells Expander.

Quote

Originally posted by Rubber Ducky:
I'm placing NPCs in a PoG map according to the tutorial and they appear in the NPCs folder of the plug-in, and the load call appears in the Defs folder inside the Events folder, but nobody shows up for the party when I play the plug-in.

Incidentally, which plug-in tutorial are you using?

Also, plug-in load calls do not appear in the Events->Defs folder, only events do. My guess is you have the following:

  • Created an NPC
  • Created an event to load the NPC

But, have you created the actual plug-in load call that calls the event to load the NPC when you enter the area that should set things in motion?

If not then this needs to be done. Go into the Project->Game Plugin->Plugin load calls menu selection. This will open up a small dialog box with 2 selections: Location and Event.

The drop down box under Location lists all of the areas in PoG plus any locations you have created yourself. You can add areas to this list by editing your "Plugin Data.txt" file in your plug-ins folder, but we can get to that later if necessary. Anyways, select the area that you want to have your event called from.

The drop down box under Event lists all of the events in your Events->Defs directory. In other words, every event that you have created. Select the event that you want to be launched when you enter the location that you selected in the other box.

When you have both the location and event that you want selected click on the "+" button and they will be added to the box below.

Compile the plug-in and make sure it is in your Plugins directory(I've many times compiled onto the desktop and launched PoG running an older version, heh).

Go to the area that you specified and the event should launch. If you can't find your NPC then you can use debuggers to see if the event is even being called. Just place a dialog into the event that loads the NPC that says something like, "Event xxx is being executed." Then when you enter that area if you see the box then you know your event is being run, and the problem is something else(no picture for the NPC, you gave him the wrong coordinates, etc).

Good luck.

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Originally posted by Stark Bledfast:
**Incidentally, which plug-in tutorial are you using?
.... My guess is you have the following:

  • Created an NPC
  • Created an event to load the NPC

~snip~**

The tutorial is "Coldstone Plugin Tutorial" created 1/10/02. As for the rest of your reply, I suspect that I do not have the actual load call because the tutorial neglected to mention that I needed to do this. It had me build the event and then said to "build release". Ok, back to the drawing board. Thanks, Stark, for the help. I'll now go read Mr. Bledfast's "Creating a Plug-in 101" 🙂 ~RD

Edit: Nope, that's not it. It shows up in the "load calls" box so I'm stumped again. I'll try some of your de-bugging suggestions.

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My Doctor said I was having too much wine, women, and song - so I gave up singing because 2 out of 3 is not so bad.
The (url="http://"http://mywebpage.netscape.com/rduckfwj/pog/mapnotes.html")Kingdom of Garendall(/url) sectional map is easily printed from gif format pages.
Find those areas you missed the first time around. You'll want to explore those hidden areas now made accessible with Spells Expander.

(This message has been edited by Rubber Ducky (edited 01-12-2003).)

Several things you may want to consider:
What map are you testing it on (Fantrima is World_P10, I believe)?
What coordinates are you placing the NPC at?

To try it in Fantrima, head over there and use scry to determine where you are placing the NPC.

Also, to see if the load call is working add a dialog to the beginning of the event. Then, when you enter Fantrima (or where ever you have the event load) that dialog should pop up. Then you know that the NPC was placed somewhere else, or he wondered away (depending on how far you let him wonder, determinded in the NPC panel. Give him a range of 2 or 3). Hope some of this is helpful.

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