When creating knowledge for custom NPCs, If it relates to their species would I write %SPECIES% or whatever actual species I have set for them? (ie lamia, centaur, etc)
Good question. Not sure if you need to use %SPECIES% or not, but It probably works for both. I think you should not use %SPECIES%, though. In an instance where you make such knowledge public, I am unsure if other NPCs seeing %SPECIES% will pull from their own NPC species field or from your custom NPC species field, so it seems safest to just type it out as normal to prevent confusion.
I personally presume, that 'public' means, all NPCs have access to that knowledge if you ask them about it. Regardless if the custom NPC who brought the knowledge into the pool is present in the conversation or not. But they obviously must be enabled into the session.
So, for your blueberry scone incident example, I'd Aldric would probably make something up from his perspective. Every NPC will probably make something up and even conflict with each other, since you specified everyone recalls it differently.
Huh, a 'Lorebook' character specifically with lore is an interesting idea to introduce things into the world that are not about a specific NPC and centralize it all somewhere for managing. I might use this idea, only make the NPC would be a "god of knowledge" so they have an in game reason for being, which is to inject lore into everyone's brains.
Your best bet is to just fill your custom NPC's knowledge set with anything related to them, and mark the parts you want publicly known to other NPCs. As long as it's at least tangentially related to your custom NPC, set it with them. Otherwise, put it into your 'lorebook' NPC. If you want certain knowledge to be intentionally misunderstood, then you'd probably want both perspectives on the same knowledge, making one public and misunderstood, while the other private and only that the NPC knows.
You, the player, don't. It's up to the NPC to decide and they're very imperfect. Though you can suggest or hint at it to encourage them to, it's not guaranteed. Try stretching out the RP of you going to... wherever, so the AI has more chances of just taking you there. Make up an excuse that you forgot something and have to go back to pull the scene back to your actual location to start the attempt over. That's what I'd do. If it doesn't work after the second try, I'd wrap up the conversation there, since they aren't playing along, why bother to continue. Try again another day.
You can simply correct it in an explicit manner while out of character for the AI to do such, format is like this; '(OOC: Player should've been moved to X location based on the conversation, please move us there for the sake of consistency)' And the AI will usually comply without breaking character.
I'm working on improving this for Gemma 4 specifically using its currently unused thinking mode. Models with low active parameter count struggle with this task the way it's currently set up. Qwen 3.5 seems to do fine. I have not extensively tested it with the dense Gemma 4 or DeepSeek, but if it's a problem with those too, please let me know.
It's quite easy to set up, just launch a game with the coordinate sampling tool on (which is in the editor), use that tool by going into your menu in game to find positions of where you want them to go, write all the positions you want for them to hang at down in a notepad, then return to their NPC edit menu and set a possible routine in the NPC editing tool; give NPC A a target position somewhere in town like chairs in the tavern or some place in town, make them face eachother, say that that the activity of NPC A is 'Is hanging around with NPC B', and NPC B 'Is hanging around with NPC A' with their Visible activity being 'Sitting at the table with their friend' or 'loitering with their friend', after you've done that, check either 'random walk' or 'patrol' in the options under that and the AI will do the rest. Honestly you don't need the AI to set that up, you could simply add it to their Lua script as such;
function GetTargetRoutineID(hour)
if hour == (insert hour you want it to happen here) then
return "Is hanging with NPC B"
elseif hour >= (insert hour here) or hour <= (insert hour it happens +1) then
return "silverpine_leisure"
end
You can even make exceptions if you want it to be more immersive, like them not hanging out during a snowstorm by adding something like
else
if World.GetCurrentWeather() ~= "Snowstorm"
return "Hang at home" (or any activity you would create that'd be named like this for when you want them to hang at coordinates at home for example).
You can fine tune it with a bunch of functions that look up the day, weather, season etc, you can see those in the lua script tab of the NPC editor when you press 'copy documentation' which gives you all of them in your clipboard.
If you mean you'd like them to organically meet with eachother without instructions at random times, then you could just put a routine like 'Hangs around with NPC A/B' as a description, give them both a general meet up point at certain coordinates, then check the dynamic routine writer on and hope the AI generates something for them at random.
Either way what this will do is have them just be near enough eachother to trigger a group conversation, and the activity and NPC lookup will probably make the AI improvise them talking with eachother and acknowledge that they were in the middle of a discussion or activity when you talk to one or both of them at their meeting spot.
If however you meant to say that you'd like the two NPCs to hold conversations, share information and such, I'm sorry to say but none of Silverpine's NPC can do that, the only real 'conversation' or rather NPC to NPC interaction possible that isn't directly controlled by the player is if during one of your conversations one NPC commit to loose memory a 'I will talk to X about that thing that I want to talk to them about after the player initiated conversation with me', and it's usually just a one sentence phrase they'll eventually repeat to another NPC without much context whenever they see them (If possible they usually just decide to rush the other NPC and tell them that sentence immediately).
Well, that or you threatening them or loitering in their house without their authorization, which has them calling for the guard, which breaks the conversation and has them run for Darian who will then chase you around town to get an explanation from you.
And also that other exception with that one NPC that always ends in your demise... but anyways I digress.
Point is they never actually hold actual elaborate conversations that generate memories for them passively, it's always reliant on you as the player conversing with them.
All the functions available are listed in the editor when you copy them into your clipboard from the Lua script part of NPC editing.
At first glance there is no such thing; there's a bunch of fetching functions for weather, time of day, day of the week and season meant to be used in conjunction with logic gates and conditions.
There's a check for 'sunlight' which I'm unsure is actual sunlight or the amount of light in an area within a float ranging from 0 to 1.
There's oddly a function that dictates the cost of the shed plot, one that states if either the shed is locked or unlocked and finally one that displays text when the conditions for it are met, likely used by Gareth when you try to buy the shed from him, which means you could very easily create a NPC that gives you the shed for free when interacted with using their Lua script editor, not that Gareth's AI needs much convincing to do so as well to begin with.
Everything else is just a garbage collector, math operators, tables.
There's however a list of defined 'default' routines that exist innately within the game which are the following;
read_in_bed, sleep, cook_breakfast, eat_breakfast, work, frollic_on_frozen_river (which is one of the example conditions on the default test character, under the condition that the weather is snowy) and finally silverpine_leisure which is the default activity for 'do whatever' that you should default to when you're done with whatever activity you've set for them if you don't want them to be immobile starring at a wall until the next activity comes up.
That's pretty much all there is.
To sum up the situation, the activity script in Lua isn't meant to interact with NPC knowledge, it's merely a list of activities for the NPC to do under different conditions during their day, it isn't dynamic but completely static, and the NPC will just follow it blindly until interrupted by the player in some way.
Basically a schedule to follow that's more or less complex based on what you tell the NPC to do, like staying at home if the weather is cold or rainy, or going every now and then to visit a certain NPC by walking to their house every tuesday, things like that.
The gossip system is part of a dynamic set of instructions that trigger after the player is done interacting directly with a NPC, and it isn't elaborate in the slightest as far as I know, the NPC just stores a gossip as a loose memory in the NPCMemories nmem file, and acts upon it whenever it is convenient, it's completely unrelated to routines, in fact you can open that nmem file and erase the line that says 'X Npc told me that Player did X' and the rumor vanishes permanently from their memory as if it never happened once you reimport it.
If you were hoping for this game's NPCs to be more flexible than that, and for what you say or do to change their habits, I'm sad to say, and can confirm as I've tried to do so myself even before the NPC editing tools were put in game;
There is no way, and I mean absolutely none, to modify the habits of a NPC from their usual scheduling using dialogue alone, they'll just keep doing what they do whatever you tell them or convince them to do, with the only exception being; following you, gossiping, their 'Address player tendency' ratio triggering when they see you, building something for you, calling for Darian, Darian trying to arrest or Accacia trying to murder you, Gareth unlocking the shed and finally inviting Mirel to live with you. And even that has its limits; for instance if you were to try and convince Mirel to follow you while her activity dictates that she must return to Thalassar, some invisible voice will force her AI to comply and cut off the conversation before returning to her usual programming. It isn't as elaborate as what you might expect.
There simply isn't enough context window/intelligence/performance for these kind of elaborate systems with the local models that can run on the average person's machine. I have some ideas for an alternative to dynamic mode which queries the custom NPC's AI every in-game hour to let it choose from the list of possible routines in real time, taking into account everything that it has access to in dialog, but I have doubts about Gemma-4-Sparse, aka 26B-A4B, being able to handle this in a coherent way.
NPCs can change their daily routine in a very limited way if you plan a meeting at X location in Y hours/days, and them not being able to follow you outside the town perimeter has been solved with version 1.6.0.
Yeah, I was mainly concerned if a custom NPC could even interact with the rumor system. I had no idea if it was relationship based or routine based and have to script it in as a routine. Turns out, a few hours after I post that, I happened on the answer. It looks like only NPCs who are Friends or higher gossip with other NPCs can/will gossip with each other. So, yeah, I don't have to worry about making a routine for it. But thanks for the comprehensive amount of info.
I also found out while playing with the routines that after playing a session with dynamic mode on, it gives you the lua script from last session. So, I took it and spent last night learning some basic Lua and hammered out a shabby first script and told an AI look at it and tear into my mistakes while calling me a moron, while I fixed it manually. I'm going to test it out today and hope I don't get any errors.
I believe you can just name a custom player character you made in the "Custom Player Character Definition Name" field. It pulls the models used in creation process. It doesn't appear that the preset player characters can be used, since their names don't turn green. I suppose you'd have to remake them if you wanted to use them as custom NPCs.
I also noticed you can't play as a custom player character if it's being used as a NPC, which makes sense.
The AI generally decides that the outside is dangerous because that's how its described, and it's true to some extend, I've noticed it stops bothering you about it once they add a few adjectives in their memory about your character that indicate that you can defend yourself, in a few cases just having a dangerous weapon is sufficient for them to stop, because they know you're well armed.
Combat is quite simple, the key you need to press is actually the direction of the monster that you're attacking, it's contact based, if the monster is to your left, press left, if it's up compared to you, press up, and it's the same button for parrying.
You can turn off parrying completely in the options to have it autowin if it bothers you so much, I personally find it rather easy and simple, unless you get stuck between 3 bats affecting you in turn by confusion, which combined with the fact you need to face the enemy to hit it can cause some issues, but personally I rarely ever die in that game even against the fireball chucking zealots of the swamp temple.
The slow debuff is annoying, but all it does is make you waste time, and that's what's really dangerous, bring sticks with you at all time so you can make a firepit and a torch, explore the Flooded dungeon as soon as you can to find equipment and make money, preferably try to get your hands on a scroll of weightlessness and enchant your ring with it, inventory can be a pain and being overweight is your greatest enemy.
Walking after midnight without light and sleeping in the forest is the actual danger, because then shadowy figures spawn seemingly at random and make you go insane unless you have some equipment with devouring on it, and even then you'll be chugging potions, so bring a tent and lantern with you.
Always keep a few healing and cure potions on you, either make them using an alchemy table or buy them from Rosalyn.
Once you've done that, try to get two pieces of a key and go to the Fortress dungeon, and all you need there is to find a bomb.
Once you got that bomb, you can then go to the swamp dungeon and use it to enter, and by then, any equipment you find in chests can have ups of 10 defense, making the whole combat system a joke.
I can kit out a character in less than 2 in game days because I know exactly what to do and where to go, the combat system is fine.
I agree about the branches though, I find it quite annoying, and sometimes ironic our character gets stuck by something that shouldn't be any bigger than an inch and having to collect then throw them constantly.
The reason you were walking slow was probably exactly because of the overweight mechanic I was talking about;
If your character has exceeded their weight limit (number in inventory) you get a debuff (bag icon upper left of the screen) that doubles the time it takes for you to take a step compared to other NPCs, and quarters it compared to a deer/ rabbit. If you exceed it by twice that number you become immobile, don't do that.
"I want to know Oriana’s true identity because there is NO WAY she’s a mortal."
One time I made Oriana _really_ mad and she started just punching through walls like an anime character.
"she told me she goes praying in the snowy mountains"
I could show you exactly where she goes if you don't mind spoilers.
Thanks.
Alright then everyone, here's a channel where we can share custom content: https://discord.gg/RJeV2qu28J
Welcome aboard and let's all get along.
Feel free to share the invite link with other people who have bought the game.
That subject was brought up before a few times in the past.
I might be mistaken but I recall it was said to be impossible to do because of the initial lookups the LLM needs to make to set itself up for further inputs.
So initiating conversation as the player might be impossible to achieve if it hasn't changed in any ways since then.
If I could Right-click and "Initiate Conversation" To hog the context post of a dialogue I would love that, or even hit the U while within range of an NPC to Initiate Dialogue, that would be a game changer when I've just barely missed talking to Orson while he's on his way out of town.
I've learned the parry system pretty well, so it's not the end of the world if it doesn't change for me... although that window of time to answer thing really doesn't teach you much except that over time, it mostly only works when you respond between like 15% of the bar left to go and 40%. But it moves at different speeds and is a pain to track, so I might be off the mark there.
Stats wise, I would trade my bars for numbers any day 100/100, 80/80 etc. Everything ticking down as it gets worse but also letting me math how desperately I need to crawl back to the bath house before I lose my damn mind, without opening the whole stat page.
Loving the Discord. Good people all around.
Okay, so no, the bug is back.
But I have a feeling it's because Koboldcpp isn't up to date. Because when I changed the version of Koboldcpp to install in the settings.json file, to the new one, it fixed it. Incidentally, because the AI was still glitching and saying weird things.
They were talking to each other in the first and third person... in short, it was strange.
I highly recommend joining the Discord: https://discord.gg/RJeV2qu28J
There are modders who have made all sorts of characters.
Just drag and drop your favorite 8 in a folder and they're in your game with no real fuss.
In particular, I'd recommend CrimsonIcarus' characters if you want low-key villagers who feel like a natural addition to the existing population.
So you just want the custom characters in the base game to include a much longer list of options?
Hmm.. that's on ThreeES then if you don't want someone else handing you the files. There's a decent manual being written (in the discord) if you ever want to spend the wait time in just poking around at making your own thing. But, worst case, if you want to do no making, and trust no one in sharing a premade file with you except ThreeES.. I guess, I hope it works out. More is good.
The characters/npcs thing sounds like you want Silverpine to be expanded. NPC's would mean homes, buildings, businesses, and canon. Unless the developer has a similar feeling as you about the town needing to grow, and an interest in your species ideas... That sounds like it would be a much longer way away from implementation.
Or, having ThreeES absorb certain DLC/modded content and publish it directly on these itch.io pages? Maybe that's the single fastest option, but a big IF to ask the game's developer to switch to content publishing.. Although I really do love the game as it is right now.
