Help moving/removing npc

[LazyAssassin445]

If you look at my code , I am trying to make it so npc1 sends me on a mission to find a tomato and when it gets back it says something else or it switches places with another identical npc that has a different dialogue tree!

However I can't find a way to hide/move/remove a npc from the canvas.
Can you please have a look at the loot.update function, you can see that I added some code to try and do this, but it doesn't seem to work.

Any help appreciated, thank you 👍

[benwyatt2]

You can simply remove an NPC entirely by replacing "N1" with ". " however I don't think this is what you're trying to do.

[xriss]

What you are doing is right, the problem is the NPC isnt much of an NPC it is just a sprite and a trigger shape for the physics system that are not connected in any way.

Here is the sort of change you need to make, so that the sprite and the collision are actually connected.

1. turn off the old sprite when building the level
2. set the active flag of the npc to false when you pick up the fruit
3. Actually create a real npc using an add_npc function
4. When creating the npc, build a sprite info as well since we turned of the old hacked sprite.

Here's a diff of the changes I made the 4 parts above are in the same order below

diff --git a/team/matt/platchat.fun.lua b/team/matt/platchat.fun.lua
index 2731bb0..33f0cca 100644
--- a/team/matt/platchat.fun.lua
+++ b/team/matt/platchat.fun.lua
@@ -384,8 +384,8 @@ local default_legend={
 
 -- items not tiles, so display tile 0 and we will add a sprite for display
        ["S "]={ name="char_empty",     start=1,        },
-       ["N1"]={ name="char_empty",     npc="npc1",                             sprite="npc1", },
-       ["N2"]={ name="char_empty",     npc="npc2", active=0,   sprite="npc2", },
+       ["N1"]={ name="char_empty",     npc="npc1",                       },
+       ["N2"]={ name="char_empty",     npc="npc2", active=0, },
 
     ["AA"]={ name="char_empty", loot=1},
 
@@ -760,8 +760,9 @@ function add_loot()
 
                                for i,npc in pairs(entities_items("npc")) do
                                        if npc.shape.npc == 'npc1' then
-                                               ls(npc)
+--                                             ls(npc)
                                                space:remove(npc.shape)
+                                               npc.active=false
                                        end
                                end
                        end
@@ -777,6 +778,24 @@ function add_loot()
        return loot
 end
 
+-- items, can be used for general things, EG physics shapes with no special actions
+function add_npc()
+       local npc=entities_add{caste="npc"}
+       npc.draw=function()
+               if npc.active then
+                       local px,py,rz=npc.px,npc.py,npc.rz
+                       if npc.body then -- from fizix
+                               px,py=npc.body:position()
+                               rz=npc.body:angle()
+                       end
+                       rz=npc.draw_rz or rz -- always face up?
+                       system.components.sprites.list_add({t=npc.sprite,h=npc.h,hx=npc.hx,hy=npc.hy,s=npc.s,sx=npc.sx,sy=npc.sy,px=px,py=py,rz=180*rz/math.pi,color=npc.color,pz=npc.pz})
+               end
+       end
+       return npc
+end
+
+
 function setup_score()
 
        local score=entities_set("score",entities_add{})
@@ -1430,8 +1449,15 @@ function setup_level(idx)
                                item.pz=-1
                        end
                        if tile.npc then
-                               --local item=add_item()
-                               local item=entities_add{caste="npc"}
+                               local item=add_npc()
+                               item.active=true
+                               item.px=tile.x*8+4
+                               item.py=tile.y*8+4
+                               item.sprite = names[tile.npc].idx
+                               item.h=24
+                               item.s=1
+                               item.draw_rz=0
+                               item.pz=-1
 
                                item.shape=space.static:shape("box", (x-1)*8,(y-1)*8, (x+2)*8,(y+2)*8,0)

[LazyAssassin445]

Thank you very much for all of your help, I'm going out now so I will try everything a bit later 👍