ANP, MNP, and DNP aren't working!?

This is continuing a discussion about my mod that ended up branching away from just org adding, so I thought I should quickly scoot over to a new thread to avoid getting warned for going offtopic. Title explains all, I can't animate or delete entities, only make them face different directions (through the "spawn in alternate direction" flag). No idea what's going on here. All I'm trying to do is animate Quote and Curly.

Here's the few events where the important shit actually goes on (as in, it's part of the same cutscene that carries on from the intro room (introCut):

#0112
//set music to Chasm, hide Quote, freeze game, animate Curly to turn her back, then animate Quote to turn his back.
<CMUCHASM.ORG
<HMC<KEY<ANP0117:0020:0000<ANP0150:0080:0000
//fade in from right and wait 400 ticks.
<FAI0000
<WAI0400
//fac 0025 = squint-ish facesprite for Curly
//fac 0019 = happy sprite for Curly
<MSG<FAC0025Well, it looks like all
the birds have gone away
for now.<NOD
<CLR
<FAC0019That was fun though,
right Quote?<YNJ0114
<CLO
<MSG<FAC0000<TUR(You nod yes.)<NOD<CLO
<MSG<FAC0019I agree...<WAI0010
"birdwatching", huh...?<NOD<EVE0113

#0113
<MSG<FAC0019Well, I'm heading back
inside.<WAI0010
Feel free to come with,
of course!<NOD<CLO<MNP0117:0016:0016:0002
<DNP0117<DNP0150<FL+0001<SMC
<END

#0114
<MSG<FAC0000<TUR(You stay neutral...)<NOD<CLO
<MSG<FAC0020Ah, I see...<NOD
Well, everyone has their
own interests. No offense
taken.<NOD<EVE0113

<FL+0001 is supposed to be my way of ridding of the NPCs permanently, so when the player re-enters the map, the Quote and Curly dummies don't re-appear. You can't actually... exit the map yet, since this is just the intro cutscene and transitioning to being able to play the game, but like, I can't continue till I figure out what's going wrong with the NPs.

As to why this isn't working is beyond me. Quote is 150 and Curly is 117, and I literally followed the ANP.txt to get the right numbers. So... am I missing something? Is it BL 0.5.1.1? Or did the mus data patch actually mess something up this time?

(Also, why there are separate MSGs for Quote's responses is because I wanted specifically that text to display instantly, and I fear not starting new MSGs will cause the rest of the text to display instantly, which I don't want.)

 

You need to assign the Quote and Curly entities event #'s, so the commands can work. Also just in case you ask, the player and NPC150 are two separate things, so you'll need to use <HMC and place a Quote entity in the player's place. Also this is a good thread to ask future questions in if there's any further help you need.

 

When you select an entity in Booster's Lab, there are 3 integers (number boxes) in the top left, right above the full entity list.

The first number is the flag number. This is used for "Appear on flag"/"Disappear on flag", and also something that trips up every single modder is that when you kill or delete an entity, the flag it is assigned is automatically set! You seem to have already figured this out but this only affects reloading the map (you need <DNP to remove and <CNP/<SNP to create instantaneously).

The second number is the Event number. You may think of this as the ID of the entity to refer to it in almost every instance in scripting. "Run event on death/contact" and "Interactive" will run this event number and it's what <CNP, <DNP, <ANP, <MNP use to reference an entity. This is specialized/specific and seperate from the entity type. For example if you have 5 Jenka dogs in a room you can give them separate numbers and ANP them separately etc.

The third number is draw order. It's the ordering of entities where lower numbers are drawn first (in the back) with interact priority and higher/later numbers are drawn on top. Interact priority means that when you press the "down" key when in the collision of multiple things, you interact with the first entity (lowest draw order) found. You can ignore this for the most part. It's only real use is say you have issues with an entity clipping behind doors you can shift+click all the doors and set their draw orders to zero.

What you got confused on was the entity type ID, where yeah Quote_cutscene is hardcoded to 150. This number is used for generalized commands such as <DNA and <SNP (and <CNP to change the type) where you're handling a general type of entity, not a specific instance that you've placed on the map and are specifically referring to.

 

Ohhh... yeah, I have no clue how to animate the player itself (that's probably not even possible), but it makes sense if I have to tie the event number to the entities... god, I feel dumb.
I'll try this... and yes, I do ignore draw number.
I can't believe I'm so rusty to the point where I forgot basic modding. This is so embarrassing.

Update: Uhhh.. they're still not animating even with entities created with <SNP.. still the only functional thing is changing directions...
Update 2: I really don't get it...

 

Entities created with <SNP do not have event numbers or flags, so you can't <ANP or <DNP them. Judging by the script, it seems like you're still confused on how exactly event numbers work, so let me try giving an example:

Imagine the Quote NPC has an event number of 500. There is not an actual event with #0500, that would only be necessary if you have the "Run event on death/contact" or "Interactable" ticks set for that entity.

To make the Quote NPC, say, collapse to the ground, you would do the following command:

<ANP0500:0010:0000

The "0500" would be the event number of the NPC you want to change. You can do something similar with Curly, but make sure she has a different event number than Quote.

Hope this helps, and happy modding!

(Also, for future reference, this thread has a whole host of helpful resources, and Booster's Lab itself has a "help" folder with tons of useful information!)

 

[frustrated sigh] it works now.
Thank you for clearing that up. The way it says "NPC Number" led me to believe it was looking for the entity ID. It should say entity event number or something...