Fixed Charlestown: how come these three street merchants don't have quick-action-icons?

[Fluen]

Even in previous versions of build 14 the three street merchants, that occupy the street near the harbour are missing their identity icon, so one can't speak to them by using the quick action button, but have to enter the menu. It's not a problem with other street merchants in Charlestown. Sorry, if this seems to be nitpicking, but I like to contribute to ironing out all the snags, I can find.

 

[Grey Roger]

Only the one on the right is a street merchant. The other two are random wanderers. In fact, there is only one street merchant in Charlestown so I'm not sure what you mean by "other street merchants in Charlestown".

There is certainly something odd about that area and I can't figure out what it is. You'll also probably find that your own officers have lost their face icons too. They'll return after you've walked about some more; again, I've no idea why.

However, you don't need to go through the menu to talk to people when this happens. Stand in front of someone and press the spacebar. That should open a dialog, and it works even when the face icon is missing, which is why I never thought of this as a serious problem before - that's how I always talk to people anyway.

Also, if you go past the street merchant and face him from the side of his stall, you may find that his face icon appears there.

I thought it might be due to a couple of unusual locator types near the stalls, but the problem persisted when I changed them to something more normal. Besides, the street merchants in both towns on Eleuthera have the same unusual locators nearby and they don't have this problem.

 

[Fluen]

Grey Roger, you and I must have different definitions of what a street merchant is then. I define a street merchant as one with an icon, that says "street merchant" and stand in/beside a stall. While it's true, that the fellow one the right is the only constant one as he's the only one, who stays when Charlestown is poor, more of them appear at different stalls, when the town is wealthy - like the two on the left.
And the one across from the store.

And the one behind the building the loanshark resides in.

And as my first picture shows, one on top of the usual street merchant with the name of Pear. In fact, the thing where more people stand on top of each other in the same place in a stall could also be considered a bug.

 

[Grey Roger]

How did they get there?

My definition of a street merchant is a character who is defined in "PROGRAM\Characters\init\StreetMerchants.c", and the only one defined for Charlestown is Ed Pear. I've never seen any others in Charlestown - I've seen the empty stalls but never seen anyone in them.

@Pieter Boelen: do you know of a mechanism for adding more street merchants to a town if it becomes richer?

 

[DavyJack]

How did they get there?

My definition of a street merchant is a character who is defined in "PROGRAM\Characters\init\StreetMerchants.c", and the only one defined for Charlestown is Ed Pear. I've never seen any others in Charlestown - I've seen the empty stalls but never seen anyone in them.

@Pieter Boelen: do you know of a mechanism for adding more street merchants to a town if it becomes richer?

I was going to ask that because I too have only seen one merchant in Charlestown. A lot of stalls with merchandise but never the owner. Then at night time the stalls disappear but in other towns, I visited, sometimes the merchants don't appear as well, just their usual stall locations but without the merchants then sometimes they are there so I thought maybe I could catch the other merchants at Charlestown some other time.

 

[Fluen]

The everchanging number of street merchants has been my usual experience with every build. I wonder, if it's something from the stock game? When I install your builds, I follow your instructions and make a fresh installation of the stock game, after which I unpack the build and let it take care of things from there.

If you only experience a few coded street merchants, it might explain, why nobody ever bothered with the cases of two them in one spot. Because I frequently experience that. At my last visit to Guadaloupe all three stalls had a double street merchant, even if I can only talk to one of them. And the town was rich at the time: each of the street merchants had millions of gold pieces and plenty of gems to sell to my collection.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

@Pieter Boelen: do you know of a mechanism for adding more street merchants to a town if it becomes richer?

Don't think that mechanism exists...

 

[Fluen]

I can only say, that I'm used to an everchanging number of street merchants in many stalls in towns all over the Caribbean. I also suspect, that they use some kind of person-location. Because when "Strange things going on in the Caribbean" finishes, and the mothers outside the townhall go home to their children, street merchants take over their places. And in Grand Cayman, which uses the same town layout, street merchants occupy those places outside the townhall from my first arrival.
So, if it isn't finances, that dictate the number of generated street merchants (aside from defined street merchants like Greg Dawson in Port Royale), some randomizer must do so.

 

[Grey Roger]

I think I may have found a mechanism for generating random traders, though what puzzles me now is why it spawns them on top of permanent traders but doesn't spawn them on top of the women outside Kralendijk town hall for "Strange Things Going On in the Caribbean". And I don't see anything to link it to a town's wealth.

Just to confirm that I'm on the right track: @Fluen, are you in the habit of taking extra crewmembers with you?

 

[Fluen]

Yes. And also on Bonaire.

When I played the stock game (before accompanying crewmembers were invented), I usually met two other unnamed street merchants at the stalls next to Greg Dawson (who was then a woman) in Port Royale. Do people without additional crewmembers also meet a total of three street merchants there?

 

[Grey Roger]

Thought so. I did a bit of guesswork. Assuming that the random traders use the same dialog files as permanently defined traders, and also assuming that random traders, like other random spawn, are handled by a file called "LEnc_monsters.c", I had a look in that file for any reference to the dialog file, and sure enough, there's a function called 'Random_item_traders' which is called in the section which deals with the consequences of extra crewmembers. It populates any "merchant" locators in the area with random traders. But first it checks whether there's anyone already there. The question then became, why are random traders spawning on top of the existing traders in Charlestown and Guadeloupe, but not on top of the traders in Kralendijk port nor the women outside the town hall?

The reason is that the "merchant" locators in Charlestown and Guadeloupe are a long way underground. A character who is placed on a locator which is not at ground level is zapped automatically up or down to ground level. 'Random_item_traders' then finds nobody on the locator and spawns a random trader - who then zaps up to ground level, on top of the regular trader. Shifting all the "merchant" locators in both Charlestown and Guadeloupe up to ground level solved the problem.

Download this, unzip it, and copy it into place.

Now I know what to look for, fixing it is fairly easy. All I need to know now is where to look. That's your job. If you find any more double traders, let me know where they are, then I'll check the "merchant" locators there.

 

[pedrwyth]

The reason is that the "merchant" locators in Charlestown and Guadeloupe are a long way underground. A character who is placed on a locator which is not at ground level is zapped automatically up or down to ground level. 'Random_item_traders' then finds nobody on the locator and spawns a random trader - who then zaps up to ground level, on top of the regular trader. Shifting all the "merchant" locators in both Charlestown and Guadeloupe up to ground level solved the problem.

Good detective work all round to find where and why to clear this up!!

 

[Fluen]

The street merchants in Point a Pitre and Charlestown are now down to max. one per stall. Pear has his stall to himself now.

By the way, how do I make the pictures thumbnails?

 

[Grey Roger]

Click "Attach files", pick your file, and it should appear as a thumbnail with an "Insert..." button:


Click "Insert..." and you should have the choice of "Thumbnail" or "Full image".

 

[Fluen]

Thank you.