Since I want to change an NPC from hostile to my custom faction called “Bystander” in a particular scene, I realized that I again need to use a faction pig. It was quite a while ago since I did this last and there’s a particular bit of information that I can’t find.
In the comment on Properties of the pig it says: “…set faction to a custom faction, and set tag to correspond to the name of the custom faction.” I have no memory of doing this before in this way but…does that mean that the tag of the pig should be “Bystander” and not something else like “myfactionpig” for instance? Is that important?
Also, in Katrinas NWN2 Toolset guide it says: “…As a word of caution, these Faction Pigscannotbe set as Plot, for that interferes with their ability to adjust reputation.” Yet, I saw somewhere that KevL_s said that you could set it to Plot (but I could have misintepreted that). My pig is script hidden so that should be enough, shouldn’t it? I mean, the player party can’t influence that pig in any way right? Like, if a fire ball explodes nearby it won’t be killed?
Ok, I now realize this was more than one question, but anyhow…
Thanks for your time!
EDIT: By the way, I didn’t do a new blueprint for this one, just put the standard blueprint of the faction pig into an area and changed the tag. That should be ok, right?
andgalf… I didn’t know what the faction pig was or did but now you mentioned it here I had a look. The way I understand it and how the ga_faction_join script describes itself is if you have someone else in the area with the bystander faction then you just change the hostile NPC to their faction using the bystander faction member tag and don’t need a pig at all. If the pig is just a reference then any npc is one too as the pig’s just a creature.
If this is how it works you could set any person to immortal, not worry about the plot thing and they don’t have to be hidden either.
I’ve never done this but that’s what it looks like.
Tsongo’s basically got it right, the pig is merely a convenience creature, in case you don’t already have a creature of Bystander to set the Hostile’s faction to.
Lance and i were talking about Plot pigs not long ago. I said plot, he said not plot. Apparently a plot pig’s attitude against another faction won’t change, but I don’t know if that means that other creatures of the pigs faction can’t change the faction’s attitude against other faction(s).
scripthidden should be enough to spare a pig many if perhaps not all misfortunes …
and the tag of a pig does not have to be the name of its faction. (unless there’s some script that relies on it…)
Thanks for the answers. Then my pig won’t have plot since it doesn’t seem necessary.
Why does the comment in the properties of the pig say this then: “…set tag to correspond to the name of the custom faction”. Seems a bit odd to me.
As I think I said: I have used faction pigs in both my second and my third module, but not often, that’s why I don’t quite remember how it’s done. In this case I don’t have another NPC with the Bystander faction in the area so the pig needs to be there (or of course another NPC with the Bystander faction).
Here is a post from this thread, which you may find helpful:
I keep all faction pig objects in an inaccessible area. This way they can never be “harmed” accidentally - and makes for easy ref of faction pigs in one place. Even so, I had made them “plot” at the time, only to discover a reputation adjustment issue. However, to be clear, we normally do NOT want faction pigs to change faction (as they are used for references). The problem is, in some situation where you do want faction of a non-pig creature to change, then un-plotting the non-pig creature is required (if plot) … however, see my post.
In my situation, something had somehow altered a faction pig faction by the looks of it (which should have been impossible) … but I think that had been due to a bug. The problem I had been struggling with, was putting it back to what it should be, which (iirc) required this brief un-plotting again.
BOTTOM LINE: Faction tables can break! I tracked my own factions breaking due to a corrupt conversation file that somehow broke a neutral faction when played. This broke gameplay about an hour down the line when another faction check (relying on the neutral faction) did not play as expected. To fix this unexpected faction change (due to a corruption), I had to put into place some checking code that monitors any such faction changes. This worked for me, and also fixed all save games that had become corrupted, allowing my wife to continue her game. i.e. To fix the immediate problem my wife had, I had to trace it back to gameplay corruption about an hour earlier! Always bear this point in mind any faction issues you may have.
Where does this Faction Pig thing come from? It is brilliant!
I had never thought about using such a WorkAround to solve the problem of custom faction switching.
Sean_Maxhell… I didn’t know what they were either but they’re in the creature blueprints under debug. From what I can see they’re just pigs with their scripts removed so you could have faction cats or chickens if you wanted.
@Tsongo You are probably right about that. I read about faction pigs for the first time a few years ago in this tutorial:
But I thought it was just a metaphor, and that they were joking at first, but no, it is a real pig you place in your area. Don’t know why they chose a pig. Couldn’t they have chosen a faction man or faction woman instead…or a faction zombie. That would have been way cooler.
andgalf… I agree… The big problem with pigs is that you then have to explain what one’s doing in a tavern or down a dungeon full of flesh eating creatures !
And while we’re on the subject of the debug creature blueprints, has anybody ever used the dungeon master and have you read his conversation ? What’s that all about, haven’t we got console commands ?
I might have to use him as a bad dwarf wizard for people to kill now, after the faction pig gets barbequed of course !
