Spawn Npc's - Corrections made

[Void_]

Ever wanted to walk around your map and place npc's around the gameworld or forget to set an npc or 2 but don't feel like shutting down the server opening up the map editor and setting the npc's? Or what if you wanted to create last minute npc's? Or even dynamic npcs?

Well with this code you can set npc's on the map and they will respawn where ever you placed then in the event you ever have to restart the server.

This can be done with a modal window but we are just going to use a basic talkaction.
Save this as npc.lua in data/talkactions/scripts/

function onSay(player, words, param)
    if not player:getGroup():getAccess() then
        return true
    end
    if player:getAccountType() < ACCOUNT_TYPE_GOD then
        return false
    end
    _G["NPCN"] = param
    broadcastMessage("Npc Selected " .. param ..".", MESSAGE_STATUS_WARNING)
    return true
end

Then add this to talkactions.xml

<talkaction words="/npc" separator=" " script="npc.lua" />

The command for this would be

/npc npc_name

Save this as npcList.lua inside data/actions/scripts/tools

npcList = {
}

Next save this as npc.lua in data/actions/scripts/tools

local fileEx = 'data/actions/scripts/tools/npclist.lua'
dofile(fileEx)
function setNpcs(name, pos)
  -- open the file for reading only
  local file = io.open(fileEx, 'r')
  -- get the contents of the file and store them in str
  local str = file:read("*a")
  -- now close the file
  file:close()
  -- remove the last character ( } )
  str = str:sub(1, #str - 1)
  -- open the file but this time make it writeable
  file = io.open(fileEx, "w+")
  -- write the initial value to the file, which over writes any previous data
  file:write(str)
  -- write the new npc to the file
  file:write("\t[\""..name.."\"] = ".."{ x = "..pos.x..", y = "..pos.y..", z = "..pos.z.." },")
  -- write a bracket to close the table
  file:write('\n}')
  -- close the file
  file:close()
end
function onUse(player, item, fromPosition, target, toPosition, isHotkey)
    local name = _G["NPCN"]
    local p = target:getPosition()
    local npc = Game.createNpc(name, p)
    if npc ~= nil then
        npc:setMasterPos(p)
        setNpcs(name, p)
        p:sendMagicEffect(CONST_ME_MAGIC_RED)
    else
        player:sendCancelMessage("Cannot Create NPC "..name..".")
        p:sendMagicEffect(CONST_ME_POFF)
    end
    return true
end

Add this to actions.xml

    <!-- npc wand -->
    <action itemid="7735" script="tools/npc.lua" allowfaruse="1" />

Now open up startup.lua in data\globalevents\scripts and place this at the bottom before the closing end keyword.

    -- load npc's on the map at startup from a lua table
    local cfile = 'data/actions/scripts/tools/npclist.lua'
    local c_npc = 0
    dofile(cfile)
    if next(npcList) then
        for name, pos in pairs(npcList) do
            local npc = Game.createNpc(name, pos)
            if npc ~= nil then
                npc:setMasterPos(pos)
                c_npc = c_npc + 1
            end
        end
    end
    broadcastMessage("Npc's loaded: " .. c_npc ..".", MESSAGE_STATUS_WARNING)