Adding NPCs and NPC text

talkative npc

Sometimes you want to add a random person or character to your game that isn’t an enemy. Perhaps this person just wants to talk to you. This engine aims to make that really easy! There is a default character built into the rom, and we can change what it says, or make more.

The basics, adding NPCs

Our NPCs are really just regular sprites with a little extra logic to control them. We will walk through adding a new sprite, and customizing what it has to say. Sprites are defined in source/c/sprites/sprite_definitions.c - there is one NPC already in this array. The main thing is the type being set to SPRITE_TYPE_NPC. Here is the example npc:

// The rest of the sprites are above this...
SPRITE_TYPE_NPC, 0x00, SPRITE_SIZE_16PX_16PX | SPRITE_PALETTE_1, SPRITE_ANIMATION_NONE, SPRITE_MOVEMENT_NONE, 0x00, 14, 0x00

To note, there is nothing else special about this sprite right now - you can set the animation to anything, and you can also enable full movement with SPRITE_ANIMATION_FULL. This just depends on your sprites! There is more detail about how to customize sprites Adding new Enemies chapter. It is suggested you add a new enemy type first to get more familiar with this.

Let’s add a new sprite below this one with a different appearance. Let’s make a friendly slime! You can find the tile ID from looking at graphics/sprites.chr in NES Screen Tool. (Also load graphics/palettes/main_sprites.pal to fix the colors too, as needed.) The top slime sprite has an id of 0x40, so we’ll use that. We’ll also use SPRITE_PALETTE_1 to use the blue palette other sprites use. Finally, we will keep it still by using SPRITE_MOVEMENT_NONE but let it animate between two tiles with SPRITE_ANIMATION_SWAP.

Finally, and most importantly, we also change the 6th byte, which we label as miscellaneous in the documentation, to 0x01 - this will help us tell the difference between this sprite and the one above later on. Don’t miss it! Also be sure to add a comma to the end of the first SPRITE_TYPE_NPC row.

Here’s the end result:

// The rest of the sprites are above this...
SPRITE_TYPE_NPC, 0x00, SPRITE_SIZE_16PX_16PX | SPRITE_PALETTE_1, SPRITE_ANIMATION_NONE, SPRITE_MOVEMENT_NONE, 0x00, 14, 0x00,
SPRITE_TYPE_NPC, 0x40, SPRITE_SIZE_16PX_16PX | SPRITE_PALETTE_1, SPRITE_ANIMATION_SWAP, SPRITE_MOVEMENT_NONE, 0x01, 14, 0x00

Save this, and then either build your game. Now you should see your new sprite available in Tiled. (Go to File -> Reload if not; it doesn’t always pick this up!) Add it to the first tile with the other NPC, and be sure to add it to the Sprites layer. Once this is done, save and rebuild your game. When you open it, you should see this sprite, and he’ll say the same thing as the default one! (Note: The sprite’s text changes if put on a tile other than the top-left one.)

Another NPC

Making NPCs say unique things

So, this is cool, but you probably wanted your NPC to say something unique, huh? For this part we’ll have to write a little actual code. It’s not too scary, though. First, we have to define what text we actually want to show. For the simple demo, we just did this in source/c/sprites/player.c. Towards the top of the file, you will see some strings defined:

 const unsigned char* introductionText = 
                                "Welcome to nes-starter-kit! I " 
                                "am an NPC.                    "
                                "                              "

                                "Hope you're having fun!       "
                                "                              "
                                "- The developer";
const unsigned char* movedText = 
                                "Hey, you put me on another    "
                                "screen! Cool!";

You may recognize these as what the NPCs built into the engine say. The engine knows how to take a string like this and show it on-screen. It can be of any length, and will be broken up automatically. You may note that the string formatting is a little bit weird. Strings in C can comprise of multiple "quoted" "pieces" and the compiler will merge those strings into one.

Our engine shows 30 characters per-line, and is not smart enough to break up words, so we have to do this ourselves. In the engine, we format the text to be 30 characters per line so we can know exactly what it will show up like in-game. We also show 3 lines on screen at a time.

Let’s add some new text for our new sprite to always show. I suggest adding something like this below movedText:

const unsigned char* newNpcText =
                                "I can add my own NPC text!    "
                                "This is so awesome. I will    "
                                "tell you all about my pet     "

                                "bunny. He is soft and fluffy  "
                                "and imaginary.                "
                                "                              "

                                "I wish I had a pet bunny.";

Next, we need to make that text actually show up somewhere. For the demo, we put some logic further down in source/c/sprites/player.c that shows this text when you press A to talk to a sprite. Find the handle_player_sprite_collision() method, and look for the case SPRITE_TYPE_NPC section. It will look something like this:

case SPRITE_TYPE_NPC:
    // Okay, we collided with this NPC before we calculated the player's movement. After being moved, does the 
    // new player position also collide? If so, stop it. Else, let it go.

    // Calculate position...
    // (Actual collision code left out; it's not important for this bit)

    if (controllerState & PAD_A && !(lastControllerState & PAD_A)) {
        // Show the text for the player on the first screen
        if (playerOverworldPosition == 0) {
            trigger_game_text(introductionText);
        } else {
            // If it's on another screen, show some different text :)
            trigger_game_text(movedText);
        }
    }
    break;

That little if statement (looking at playerOverworldPosition, the screen the player is on) at the bottom is all there is to it right now! We want to change how it works a little bit for our new string. The easiest way is to put another if statement around this that looks at the value we set earlier. We have to do a little work to find that information, but once we do we can call trigger_game_text(nameOfString) to start showing the text.

Here’s the updated if statements with our new string:

    if (controllerState & PAD_A && !(lastControllerState & PAD_A)) {
        
        if (currentMapSpriteData[(currentMapSpriteIndex) + MAP_SPRITE_DATA_POS_NPC_ID] == 1) {
            trigger_game_text(newNpcText);
        } else {
            // Show the text for the player on the first screen
            if (playerOverworldPosition == 0) {
                trigger_game_text(introductionText);
            } else {
                // If it's on another screen, show some different text :)
                trigger_game_text(movedText);
            }
        }
    }

Sprite data is copied here from sprite_definitions, and ends up in a different place. That said, we have a constant called MAP_SPRITE_DATA_POS_NPC_ID that points us to this spot, so we can just use this. (All sprite data for the current map is stored in the currentMapSpriteData array, with 16 bytes per sprite.)

If you launch the game again after making this change, your new sprite should tell you about its imaginary bunny. Good news!

bunny?

Advanced techniques for having many NPCs

This technique works, but it will fall apart if you have a lot of sprites. It’s ugly to have them all in one file, and in addition you might find yourself filling most of a bank with text. There are a few things we could do to make this situation a bit better.

The first thing you can do is move this logic to a separate function in a new file. You would want to name this file clearly, something like source/c/sprites/npc_text.c with a source/c/sprites/npc_text.h file to go with. You also will want to put this into a separate code bank, using CODE_BANK(). You then would have to use banked_call() to call this code. Here’s an example of what it might look like:

source/c/sprites/npc_text.h:

#define PRG_BANK_NPC_TEXT 6

void trigger_npc_text(void);

source/sprites/npc_text.c:

#include "source/c/map/map.h"
#include "source/c/graphics/game_text.h"
#include "source/c/sprites/map_sprites.h"

CODE_BANK(PRG_BANK_NPC_TEXT);

const unsigned char* firstText = "First text!";
const unsigned char* secondText = "Second Text!";
const unsigned char* thirdText = "Third Text!";
const unsigned char* missingText = "Text for NPC not set!";

void trigger_npc_text(void) {
    switch (playerOverworldPosition) {
        case 0: 
            trigger_game_text(firstText);
            break;
        case 1:
            if (currentMapSpriteData[(currentMapSpriteIndex) + MAP_SPRITE_DATA_POS_NPC_ID] == 0) {
                trigger_game_text(secondText);
            } else {
                trigger_game_Text(thirdText);
            }
            break;
        default: 
            trigger_game_text(missingText);
            break;
    }
}

source/c/sprites/player.c:

    // Add the #include for "source/c/sprites/npc_text.h" to the top; don't forget!
    if (controllerState & PAD_A && !(lastControllerState & PAD_A)) {
        banked_call(PRG_BANK_NPC_TEXT, trigger_npc_text);
    }

This will let you put all of your text in a separate prg bank, so you don’t have to worry as much about how much space your text takes up. (You’ll be surprised how much it uses!)

There are ways we could enhance this further using compression, but they are beyond the scope of this chapter.

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Part 1: Getting started

Part 2: Making it your Own

Part 3: Adding new features

Part 4: Polish and more

Part 5: Advanced Topics

Adding NPCs and NPC text

The basics, adding NPCs

Making NPCs say unique things

Advanced techniques for having many NPCs