Changing Omnicellular to spawn NPCs instead of monsters?

[harison86]

This is probably a bit out there, but what if Omnicellular spawned player allied mutated NPCs (similar to Apis) instead of the slimespring monsters? Slimespring NPCs would be able to (unlike slimespring monsters) ride in vehicles with you, equip armor and weapons, gain skills, receive commands, and generally act like the copies of the player they appear to be. Being able to spawn friendly NPCs on demand probably sounds incredibly overpowered, however they would start with many of both the positive and negative traits of the Slime mutation tree. And Slime has quite a few high-impact negative mutations, so you could make an army of them, but it would be very high maintenance (once NPC needs can be handled better) and likely not as potent as normal NPCs without exotic martial arts and/or liberal application of more mutagen.

It’s possible to define a new “slimespring” NPC class and NPC that is mutated, allied, and following the player by default. Then the behavior of Omnicellular when activated would need to be changed in mutation.cpp to spawn that NPC instead of a slimespring. I don’t know what else would need to be done code-wise to get this new behavior working because I’m still trying to make heads and tails of the code. Presumably you would re-use the code from the debug menu’s “Spawn NPC” option, and have it spawn the slimespring NPC next to the player instead of a random one some distance away. They would probably also need an NPC-exclusive mutation that prevents them from also gaining Omnicellular.

[harison86]

Well, I did some source code editing and managed to get Omnicellular to spawn custom NPCs instead of monsters.

I still don’t know A. if this fits the image the devs have for slimesprings and B. how to use GitHub to put in a PR.
I also don’t know how to give them the same gender as the player or at least an ambiguous gender, and the Slimesprings still get their own ending once you die. They probably also need the Fragile mutation to make them less powerful as NPCs.

[_k1]

That looks adorable.

[kevin.granade]

As far as fit with the game, I don’t see any issues, though I would suggest that you keep the existing slimesprigs and just add the npc, posdibly as a later mutation.

The thing that jumps out at me about this change is balance, a NPC is an incredibly powerful game entity, and the ability to spawn them is going to be pretty broken. Since you’re creating the NPC, you should be able to adress this in your code, so it should be fixable.
The top issues with NPC op-ness are HP, weapons, armor, inventory, and mutations.
Probably the most straightforward way to adjust down Nov power in these areas is to give them un-removable traits when they’re generated that apply various needs to them.

[Coolthulhu]

It sounds incredibly tedious to gear up a horde of clones. Even the current NPCs are a problem.
Having them be unable to wear armor and just have some base armor due to slimy body could fix that.

[Adragis029]

Is this what the ‘familiar-looking’ meant?

I always thought it just meant it was a little blob that came from you, not that it was a slime clone. This makes it all so much cooler.

[harison86]

Thanks for the feedback Kevin and Coolthulhu. It’s greatly appreciated. I’ll make sure to bring their HP more in-line, and might make an NPC-exclusive mutation to give them natural armor and prevent them from wearing other armor, as Coolthoulhu suggested. Additionally or alternatively, 0 base strength minimizes their carry weight and HP. Maximum carry weight with 0 strength and Hollow Bones is 17.2 lbs; maximum HP with 0 strength and Fragile is 20 on every body part.

[quote=“Adragis029, post:6, topic:14333”]Is this what the ‘familiar-looking’ meant?

I always thought it just meant it was a little blob that came from you, not that it was a slime clone. This makes it all so much cooler.[/quote]
That was the conclusion I drew. They’re apparently sentient and capable of speech, when you spawn them they sometimes immediately comment on how you look like them, and you get a morale penalty for killing them. Either they’re humanoid mini versions of you, or by the time you’re capable of spawning them you’ve mutated into an amorphous blob. You can still wear pants normally with the Slime-threshold mutations, so you’re still humanoid and not a blob, so the slimesprings that look like just like you must also be humanoid.

[Adragis029]

D’awww.