Modding:NPC data

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This page provides an overview of what's needed to create a custom NPC. This is an advanced guide for mod developers.

Before reading this page, see Modding:Editing XNB files for the basic concepts.

Files to edit

To create a new NPC, you need to edit a number of different files. However, you don't need any programming experience and it can be done with Content Patcher (with some caveats).

Basic info

The Data\NPCDispositions asset contains basic information for your character, including their name, birthday, relations to other characters, personality, and whether they can be dated.

The file has one row per NPC like this:

   Abigail: "teen/rude/outgoing/neutral/female/datable/Sebastian/Town/fall 13/Caroline 'mom' Pierre 'dad'/SeedShop 1 9/Abigail"

The key (before the colon) is the internal name which uniquely identifies that NPC. This name isn't shown to the player, but will be used when referencing the NPC in other files. The value contains the following fields:

index	field	example	purpose
0	age	teen	Whether the NPC is a child, teen, or adult. TODO: what does this affect?
1	manners	rude	Whether the NPC is polite, rude, or neutral. This affects some generic dialogue lines.
2	social anxiety	outgoing	Whether the NPC is outgoing, shy, or neutral. This affects some generic dialogue lines.
3	optimism	neutral	Whether the NPC is positive, negative, or neutral. TODO: what does this affect?
4	gender	female	Whether the NPC is male or female. This affects dialogue, whether children in marriage are obtained through adoption or pregnancy, and the reserved frames' positions on the spritesheet.
5	datable	datable	Whether the NPC is datable or non-datable. This toggles the romance features (e.g. 'single' label in the social menu, bouquet gifting, and marriage).
6	love interest	Sebastian	unused
7	home region	Town	Whether the NPC lives in the Desert, Town, or Other. This is used when improving friendship points for all NPCs in a given region, which is currently only used for the Luau friendship boost (which only affects NPCs in the Town region).
8	birthday	fall 13	The season and day for the NPC's birthday.
9	relationships	Caroline 'mom' Pierre 'dad'	unused
10	default map & position	SeedShop 1 9	The location name and tile position where the NPC starts and ends each day.
11	display name	Abigail	The NPC name shown to the player.

Gift tastes

The Data\NPCGiftTastes asset contains their gift preferences (e.g. which gifts they love or hate), and their responses when they receive one. See Modding:Gift taste data for more info.

The file has one row per NPC like this:

   Abigail: "I seriously love this! You're the best, @!/66 128 220 226 276 611/Hey, how'd you know I was hungry? This looks delicious!//What am I supposed to do with this?/-5 -75 -79 16 245 246/What were you thinking? This is awful!/330/You brought me a present? Thanks.// " #!String

The line can be broken down into 5 pairs of dialogue + item IDs in this order: Love, Like, Neutral, Dislike, Hate. If a dialogue field is empty, the game will use a generic dialogue text. See Modding:Object data for the item IDs.

Overworld sprites

The overworld sprites are stored in Characters/NpcName, including movement and animation frames. Each frame is exactly 16x32 pixels, and some positions are reserved for certain actions:

• the first sixteen frames are generic movement (four frames per direction);
• frames 33 (female) and 35 (male) must be the kissing sprite if they're marriageable;
• frames 40–47 (female) and 44–47 (male) must be the Flower Dance dance, if they participate;
• frames 36–38 (female) 48–50 (male) are reserved for marriageable NPCs (TODO: for what?).

Portraits

The dialogue portraits are stored in Portraits/NpcName. Each frame is exactly 64x64 per portrait. The first six represent specific emotions (see Modding:Dialogue#Portrait commands), followed by any number of custom portraits. The first portrait is used when the dialogue doesn't specify one. Each NPC can have up to 12 portraits.

Schedule

Their schedule file tells the game where the NPC starts and moves based on on the time. You need to add strings to a separate schedules file found in the Strings folder to allow custom dialogue. See Modding:Schedule data for more info.

Dialogue and events

The NPC dialogue and events are stored in several files; see Modding:Dialogue and Modding:Event data for more info.

Festivals

TODO: fill in this section.

Adding your NPC

Here's how you'd create an example NPC we'll name Dobson:

1. Create an empty Content Patcher content pack. By convention, we'll name the folder [CP] Dobson.
2. Create the following files:
   • assets/dialogue.json containing the dialogue.
   • assets/marriageDialogue.json containing the marriage dialogue (if applicable).
   • assets/sprites.png containing their overworld sprites.
   • assets/portraits.png containing their portraits.
   • assets/dialogue.json containing their schedule data.
3. Edit the content.json to load the files:

   {
      "LogName": "Sprites", 
      "Action": "Load",
      "Target": "Characters/Dobson",
      "FromFile": "assets/sprites.png",
   },
   {
      "LogName": "Portraits",
      "Action": "Load",
      "Target": "Characters/Portraits/Dobson",
      "FromFile": "assets/portraits.png"
   },
   {
      "LogName": "Marriage Dialogue",
      "Action": "Load",
      "Target": "Characters/Dialogue/MarriageDialogueDobson",
      "FromFile": "assets/marriageDialogue.json",
   },
   {
      "LogName": "Schedule",
      "Action": "Load",
      "Target": "Characters/schedules/Dobson",
      "FromFile": "assets/schedule.json",
   },
   {
      "LogName": "NPC Dispositions",
      "Action": "EditData",
      "Target": "Data/NPCDispositions",
      "Entries": {
         "Dobson": "adult/rude/neutral/positive/male/datable//Town/summer 7//BusStop 19 4/Dobson"
   },
   {
      "LogName": "Gift tastes",
      "Action": "EditData",
      "Target": "Data/NPCGiftTastes",
      "Entries": {
         "Demetrius": "You're giving this to me? This is amazing!/207 232 233 400/Thank you! This is a very interesting specimen./-5 -79 422/...What is this?/80 330/This is disgusting./2/That was very thoughtful of you./-4/ ",
      },
   },
   

That's it! If you load your game, the NPC should appear. If you want to create events, don't forget to add that file too.