Magic NPCs

[0.4.0] — reactive casting, telegraphs, contextual & pooled loadouts

Casters that read the moment and fit the pack: per-spell reactive conditions, a visible cast "tell" during the wind-up, and loadouts that can be gated by world context or pooled into per-NPC variants — on top of the cast-pacing/aimed-casting work below. Every addition is opt-in and backward compatible; existing datapacks and configs are unchanged, shipped loadouts regenerate byte-for-byte via runData, and the offline bootSanity GameTest still passes with neither Iron's nor Recruits installed.

Added

• Reactive cast conditions (per-spell condition block; master reactive.enabled). A loadout spell may gate itself on the situation: self_hp_below (panic shields/heals), target_hp_below (executes), enemies_within/enemies_radius (favour an AoE when swarmed), and when_recently_hurt/recent_damage_window (blink/retaliate when struck). For SUPPORT spells a condition replaces the default "cast when hurt" gate. A satisfied condition can also bias selection weight (reactive.matchedConditionWeightBonus, default 1.0 = off) so the right tool is favoured. All vanilla logic — no extra dependency.
• Cast telegraphs & school identity ([feedback]). When a caster begins its attack wind-up it now plays a brief "tell" — server-spawned vanilla particles tinted by the spell's Iron's school colour, plus a charge sound — scaled by a danger tier (rarity + AoE size). Toggles: feedback.telegraphs, feedback.schoolParticles, feedback.telegraphGlow, feedback.telegraphVolume, feedback.minDangerTier. Dedicated-server-safe (broadcast to tracking clients); no-op when castWindupTicks is 0.
• Contextual loadouts (loadout-level conditions block). Gate a loadout by world context — dimensions, biomes (ids or #tags), difficulties, time (day/night), min_y/max_y, require_raid, require_storm, moon_phases — evaluated when the mob spawns/loads. Lets e.g. nether mobs cast fire, surface mobs cast only at night, or a variant appear only during a raid. Vanilla-only predicates.
• Loadout pools / variety (loadout-level pool_weight). Several loadouts may now target the same entity type (and profession); each NPC sticky-picks one by weight (persisted, so it does not re-roll on reload) — a skeleton can roll a fire-mage or an ice-mage variant. Profession-specific loadouts still win over generic ones; within the winning bucket the matching, condition-passing variants form the pool.

Added (cast pacing & aimed casting)

• Casting wind-up + continuous aim (targeting.castWindupTicks, default 6; per-spell windup). Before an attack spell fires, the caster faces and tracks its target for the wind-up, re-checking line of sight/range each tick, and only casts if the target is still valid — fixing the old "look once, fire the same tick" behaviour that flung off-axis shots wide. 0 restores instant casting.
• Per-spell cast chance (balance.castChance, default 1.0; per-spell cast_chance): a [0..1] probability that a caster actually casts on each decision, so casters can "hesitate" instead of firing the instant a spell is eligible.
• Per-spell cooldown override (per-spell cooldown explicit ticks, or cooldown_multiplier; precedence: explicit > multiplier > global cooldownMultiplier) and a configurable floor balance.minCooldownTicks (default 20, formerly hard-coded).
• GameTest castChanceZeroNeverCasts: with castChance forced to 0 a skeleton never spends mana over a 100-tick window (skips offline like the other runtime tests). The existing skeletonCastsMagicMissile now also exercises the default wind-up path.

Changed

• NpcSpellAttackGoal now runs across a short wind-up window (adds tick()/stop() and a re-validating canContinueToUse()) instead of casting instantly on activation.
• The 20-tick cooldown floor moved from a hard-coded constant to balance.minCooldownTicks.
• Multiple loadouts for one entity type now form a pick-one pool instead of "last file wins". If a pack previously relied on a duplicate silently overriding another, give the losing file a context conditions block or accept that both are now pooled.

Fixed

• Added the missing config labels for castChance, minCooldownTicks, and castWindupTicks so every option now has an en_us.json translation key.
• onRegisterCommands no longer reads a config value before the server config is loaded (guarded with ForgeConfigSpec.isLoaded()) — a latent crash that surfaced once the dev runtime could load Iron's and reach command registration.

Dev tooling

• The -PdevRuntime gametest/client now actually runs Iron's + Recruits in the named ForgeGradle workspace (previously impossible): Mixin is given ForgeGradle's SRG→named mapping (mixin.env.refMapRemappingFile) so Iron's production refmap resolves. The runtime stack loads from local libs/ jars (Iron's 3.16.1 + irons_lib, GeckoLib, PlayerAnimator, Recruits). runGameTestServer -PdevRuntime runs the casting GameTests for real — the universal skeleton path passes (real onCast, mana spent). See docs/dev-runtime.md.

Notes

• Fully backward compatible: loadout JSON fields are optional and inherit the matching global config default when omitted; existing packs and shipped loadouts are unchanged.
• Reactive conditions and loadout conditions use vanilla world/entity APIs only, so they evaluate without Iron's; telegraph particle colours/sounds come from Iron's schools (read in the IronsBridge seam) and degrade to a neutral tell when a school has none.
• The telegraph look, school-coloured particles, and live reactive/contextual behaviour are not runtime-verified in the build environment (no Iron's runtime); verify them in an instance with Iron's installed. Builds green and offline bootSanity passes.
• Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks and Villager Recruits remain compile-only soft dependencies.