[Question] NPCs vs Placeables

[A Future Pilot 161]

Given the fact that there are a limited number of placeables possible in the games, is there any problem with creating new placeables as NPCs and just setting them to not move in appearance.2da? Obviously this won't work for containers, but for anything else it should work, right?

Has anyone tried it, or know of any limitations doing it this way?

[LDR 234]

One issue that I could see already is the talking head icon that will appear if you hover the cursor over the 'placeable'.

[A Future Pilot 161]

3 minutes ago, LDR said:

One issue that I could see already is the talking head icon that will appear if you hover the cursor over the 'placeable'.

Ah, good point. I hadn't thought of that 😕

[djh269 264]

What about Placeables as Doors? 

[A Future Pilot 161]

15 minutes ago, djh269 said:

What about Placeables as Doors? 

That's a sweet idea too!

[ndix UR 218]

NPCs won't have a PWK file. The PWK file lets you specifically locate where the 'use' points are. Like, if you have a chest that opens from the 'front', the two 'use' points will be in the front. If you have something without a direction, like a barrel, the use points are usually in 'front' and 'back'.

There might be a way to combine an NPC 'placeable' with triggers to get a behavior that tracks closer to a normal placeable. I'm interested in this topic, but I haven't done any experiments yet.

[JCarter426 1,214]

4 hours ago, ndix UR said:

NPCs won't have a PWK file. The PWK file lets you specifically locate where the 'use' points are. Like, if you have a chest that opens from the 'front', the two 'use' points will be in the front. If you have something without a direction, like a barrel, the use points are usually in 'front' and 'back'.

Huh, I realized (only after ten years) that you could do that with doors, but I didn't realize you could do that with placebles as well. Is that ever used?

I also remember the animations being limited by the object type. There's a chance I just did it wrong, but when I tested it before I was unable to script placeables to use anything except the placeable animations. I forget what I was using, but say I was trying to script a dance animaton - I added the animation to the model and then scripted the dance animation, but nada. Creatures have tons of animations so it shouldn't be an issue, but I imagine doors would be limited to however many there are, I think 9 or so.