How to find when a creature is spawned using Near Infinity?

[Guest Guest]

In Near Infinity there is a folder called ARE that contains files for every area in a game. Each .ARE file lists different actors (mostly creatures) that may appear in the corresponding area. Some of these creatures only appear if you meet certain requirements (like have a quest or reach a certain level). Is there a simple way to check what these requirements are (and maybe even change them) for a given creature?

[jmerry]

There are several methods for making a creature appear at a certain point.

First, and simplest, you can put it in the ARE file. For example, AR2700.ARE in BGEE (the first area after the Candlekeep tutorial) has the NPC Kolssed. He gets an "actor" slot - actor 10, in this case, which describes his location (x=4253, y=3331), the creature file to use (DESSLO.CRE), which hours he should be active for (all of them), and some other bits.

Second, you can place a global creature in the global GAM file (BALDUR.GAM for the BG series), which will be incorporated into the save once you start playing. They get a "Non-party character" slot, which describes their location, the base creature file to use, and some other bits. For example, Imoen gets slot #24, using IMOEN1.CRE, and is placed in AR2700.ARE at (3140, 3681). Creatures placed in this way have a permanent presence in the game; even a DestroySelf() action will merely send them off to nowhere, theoretically available for retrieval by another script action. This method is generally used only for NPCs that can be recruited as companions.

Third, areas can have spawn points. These spawn one or more creatures of a single type when you get near them, or in some cases a token that unpacks into a group of creatures. For example, "Spawn Point 2" in AR2700 is at (4249, 321). It spawns Diseased Gibberlings (GIBBER2.CRE), wolves (WOLF.CRE), or Dread Wolves (WOLFDR.CRE) , with a cap of eight spawned creatures and an "encounter difficulty" of 1, active at all hours. The actual number of creatures spawned is based on the encounter difficulty, the party's levels, and the creature's "power level"; in this case, the extremely low difficulty means that you'll only see one creature even if you come back to the area with a full party at the campaign's experience cap. Spawn points also usually allow respawning after a certain amount of time. Leave the area and come back, and all of those wilderness spawn points will be repopulated.

Fourth, script actions can spawn or move creatures. These might be part of area scripts, trap scripts, creature scripts, cutscenes, dialogues ... there are a lot of possibilities. To round out the AR2700 examples, the cutscenes when you leave Candlekeep do this. CH1CUT01 moves the party and Gorion to AR2700. CH1CUT02 spawns in the Armored Figure, Tamoko, a pair of ogres, and a pair of human thugs. CH1CUT03 has them move toward each other, and CH1CUT03 has the fight in which Gorion dies but the protagonist escapes.

With all of these possibilities, there isn't any unified simple method. You just have to find what system the creature you're interested in is using and track down the details.

[Graion Dilach]

There's a fifth method even, the area INI method, where the creature is specified in an INI file which shares filenames with the area's WED file. This is mostly used in IWD and PST at this point though (but all the EEs have the functionality).

[Guest OP Guest]

Thank you for a detailed explanation, jmerry and Graion Dilach!

[CamDawg]

Given the near-infinite number of scripts that can spawn a creature, it may be easier to work backwards: if you know the creature's in-game name, find the actual file via NI's search function. Once you find it, you can go to the edit tab and use the 'find > references to this file' button at the bottom of the panel.

[Guest OP Guest]

Thank you, CamDawg! This does seem a lot more complicated than I had anticipated (thousands of scripts in the BCS folder ), so your advice is invaluable!