advanced_npc/README.md

advanced_npc

Introduction

Advanced NPC is a mod for Minetest, based on mobs_redo. The goal of this mod is to be able to have live villages in Minetest. These NPCs are highly inspired by the typical NPCs of Harvest Moon games. The general idea is that on almost all buildings of a village there are NPCs that are kind of intelligent: they have daily tasks they perform, can speak to players, can trade with the player, can use their own items (chests and furnaces for example), know where to go around their house and village, can be lumbers, miners or any other Minetest-suitable profession and can ultimately engage into relationships with the player. And while basically only players are mentioned here, the ultimate goal is that they can do all of this also among themselves, so that villages are alive and evolving by themselves, without player intervention.

License

advanced_npc is Copyright (C) 2016-2017 Hector Franqui (zorman2000), licensed under the GPLv3 license. See license.txt for details.

The Jumper library is Copyright (c) 2012-2013 Roland Yonaba, licensed under MIT license. See Jumper/LICENSE.txt for details.

Current progress and roadmap

Version 1.0

NPCs has the following abilities:

• Inventory: a 16 slot custom inventory, with methods to add, check and remove items.
• Flags: a simple table that can hold different variables. They can be used to drive events.
• Actions: a queue that can contain a set of specific actions that execute at fixed timer interval.

Phase 1: Gifts and relationships: In progress

• NPCs should be able to receive items
• NPCs will have favorite and disliked items
• Giving an NPC their favorite or disliked item will affect positively/negatively their relationship with that player.
• Eventually, an NPC can fall in love with that player and marry him/her
• Relationships among NPCs should be possible too

Phase 2: Dialogues: In progress

• NPCs should be able to perform complex dialogues:
  • Use yes/no or multiple option dialogue boxes to interact with player
  • Answers and responses by player
• Specific dialogues on certain flags (so that events can change what an NPC says) (in progress)

Phase 3: Trading: In progress

• NPCs should be able to trade, either buy or sell items to/from player and other NPCs
  • There are two types of traders: casual and dedicated.
    • Casual traders are normal NPC which occasionaly make buy or sell offers to the player
    • Dedicated traders are traders that, when talked to, always make buy and sell offers. They have a greater variety too.
• NPCs will also be able to offer "services", for example, repairing tools, by receiving an item and a payment, and then returning a specific item.

Phase 4: Actions: Complete

• NPCs should be able to use chests, furnaces, doors, beds and sit on "sittable" nodes
• NPCs should be able to walk to specific places. Should also be able to open doors, fence gates and any other type of openable node while going to a place.
• NPCs should have the ability to identify nodes that belong to him/her, and recall them

Phase 5: Schedules and fundamental jobs

• NPCs should be able to perform different activities on depending on the time of the day. For instance, a NPC could be farming during the morning, selling its product on the afternoon, and comfortable sitting at home during the night.
• Add the fundamental jobs, which are:
  • Mining
  • Wood cutting
  • Farming
  • Cooking

Phase 6: Advanced spawners for villages

• Support for mg_villages mod by Sokomine
  • Identify, on medieval villages, houses that NPC can live on.
  • Identify the amount of NPC that the house can support
  • Spawn NPCs and assign them a bed. Detect sharable objects (chest, furnace, benches)
  • Assign them random schedules based on the type of building they spawn.

Version 2.0

Phase 7: Make NPCs scriptable

Phase 8: Improve NPCs pathfinding, allow them to go upstairs.

Phase 9: Improve NPCs so that they can tame and own farm animals

Phase 10: Improve NPCs so that they can run on carts, boats and (maybe) horses

Version 3.0

Phase 11: Integrate with commerce mod

Phase 12: Improve relationships for obtaining more benefits from a married NPC

Phase 13: Improve AI to include support for house families

Phase 14: Improve AI to create village communities