Without Honor: NPCs, Update 0.9.7

Companions got their own animals - mounts and a guardian wolf - weapons in an NPC's hands finally behave honestly, and a heap of bugs got fixed, plus a few fresh ones (that part's a joke... probably).

Important: the network protocol version was bumped. Client and server must run the same mod version, otherwise the connection is refused - but nothing breaks silently anymore.

🐺 Pets

An NPC can summon an animal of its own and ride it while escorting you.

• A mount - horse, mule, donkey, camel or strider. It shows up when you get in the saddle yourself and leaves a couple of seconds after you dismount.
• Its own horse, not a clone - every summoned animal has its own coat and its own stats. You can take a snapshot of a real horse with the Memorion Feather and hand it over, or reroll the coat right in the editor.
• Mounted combat - archers and throwers work straight from the saddle. Everyone else dismounts, fights, and climbs back up.
• A guardian wolf - comes for the fight, fights beside its owner, and leaves when it's over. Toggled separately from the mount; pick its collar colour with the swatch in the editor.
• Second seat on a camel - the companion rides along with you if the seat is free. It won't elbow out a real player: it waits a second and a half in case someone wants to sit.

🐣 More settings for pets are coming down the line.

Weapons now carry weight

• Attack speed comes from the weapon. Sword, axe, bare hands - each has its own rhythm, just like a player. An axe hits hard and slow, bare hands fast and weak.
• Manual override - set a number instead of the automatic value if you want a specific rhythm.
• "From weapon" toggle - turn it off and damage and speed come strictly from the profile, as before.

On balance: this noticeably changes the combat rhythm of NPCs you have ALREADY placed. Unarmed ones will hit more often, axe fighters less often, swordsmen stay as they were. If that breaks the intent for a particular character, untick "from weapon" in its combat settings.

Dialogues

• "Go to dialogue" - an action that moves the conversation into another dialogue.
• "Break the button" - a reply can be locked behind a lock that's knocked off by hitting it. The player holds LMB, cracks spread across the button, and the sound and debris depend on the material. Durability is configurable and the result can be remembered for good.
  
  

Traits and looks

• Fear auras - the cat one scares creepers, the wolf one drives off skeletons, rabbits and foxes. They combine with any creature type.
• "Doesn't burn" - fire and lava neither ignite nor hurt.
• "Uses portals" - it will step into a portal on its own and travel with you to another world while escorting you. Companions used to be left behind at the portal - now they arrive next to you with a teleport effect.
• The Combat tab was rebuilt - everything fits without scrolling, buttons align to the grid, and "Creature type" moved in with the other submenus.
• The clone book shows presets under their own names (Cyrillic and CJK are finally visible) with the character's head in the row.
• The damage cap is raised to 2048.
  
  

Fixed

• The clone book and import "just stopped working". A single preset with a URL skin was enough to silently kill the whole list - along with import and the second-character picker. Traced to the root and closed, and no network failure disappears without a trace anymore.
• Equipment and accessories went missing. Export to PC didn't put items in the file, import from PC didn't apply them, the export command overwrote them, and importing a preset without accessories wiped them off a live NPC. Every path now goes through one proven route.
• Portraits and dialogue images didn't load for ordinary players on a server - only operators saw them.
• Dialogue music: after muting, a loud snippet burst through on the way out. And the mute itself was lost if the next node started a different track.
• A spawner NPC came back after death as a nameless dummy with no skin and no combat AI.
• One broken entry in a profile (a drop, a schedule row, a trade) no longer takes the whole profile down with it.
• A kick instead of a message: a large trigger or a long glossary article threw you off the server with no explanation. Now you get an honest refusal in chat.
• Renaming a dialogue no longer breaks the jumps pointing at it from other dialogues.
• Interface odds and ends: the "Show name" checkbox in the second-character picker couldn't be clicked, the "Clear model" button ignored part of its own area, and the model in the skin library covered a button. Clicking the label next to a checkbox now toggles it.
• The dialogue window got lighter on weak machines: term and avatar markup is computed once instead of every frame.