Personnel - Custom NPCs for Schedule I

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The NPC framework for Schedule I. NPC packs are plain folders - spawn points, daily schedules, customer/dealer economy, relationships, contacts - and Personnel spawns them as real S1API NPCs: networked, saved, walking their routines. Since 2.0, no mod code needed at all.

What it does

• NPC mods without code. A pack's manifest.json can carry everything: spawn point and region, a daily schedule (walk routes, buildings, seats, vending machines, slot machines, dialogue spots, car trips), customer or dealer economy, inventory, relationships and contact presentation. Set "autoRegister": true and Personnel spawns the NPCs as real world NPCs on its own.
• Real S1API NPCs, not props - prefab, networking, save/load and mugshot handled by S1API, the same machinery hand-coded NPC mods use.
• Physical or contact-only. Most roster NPCs can stay phone contacts (near-zero cost); only the ones that should walk the world are physical. Big packs stay fast, also on Steam Deck.
• Deep appearance: body, skin, hair, face, eyes, eyebrows, clothing, accessories and custom PNG layers (e.g. tattoos). Design packs live in-game with Personify.
• Coordinates from the console. The game shows none, so personnel pos 07:30 hands you a finished walkTo action for the spot you are standing on, personnel spawn a full spawn block, and personnel route collects a whole day's route. Everything lands on your clipboard.
• Stable, save-safe NPC ids with rename escape hatches (packId, saveId).

Requirements

• Schedule I (IL2CPP) with MelonLoader 0.7.3+.
• S1API (pulled in as a dependency).

Using it

Install Personnel plus any NPC pack or NPC mod that depends on it. Packs live in UserData/Personnel/Packs/<PackName>/; on startup the log lists each pack with its NPC ids and how many were auto-registered. In co-op, everyone needs the same packs installed - the same rule as for mods.

Want a template? Set LoadExamplePack to true (UserData/MelonPreferences.cfg under Personnel_01_Main) and restart - a small example pack is dropped into Packs/Examples, including an NPC with a spawn point and daily schedule to copy.

For pack authors and developers

Every manifest block (spawn, schedule, customer, dealer, inventory, relationships, contact) is documented on the Pack Format wiki page. Mods can still bring pack NPCs in with one tiny subclass:

public sealed class PaleNpc : Personnel.PersonnelNpc
{
    protected override string DefId => "examples_pale";
}
var npc = new PaleNpc();   // spawns a fully networked, saved S1API NPC from the pack definition

Full pack format, API reference and examples on GitHub.

Settings

• LoadExamplePack (default false) - drop the bundled example pack on disk as a template.
• EnableAutoRegister (default true) - kill switch for pack auto-registration.

Editable in UserData/MelonPreferences.cfg.

License

MIT. See the included LICENSE.md.

Changelog

All notable changes to Personnel are documented here. This project adheres to Semantic Versioning.

[2.1.1] - 2026-08-01

Changed

• Runs on Schedule I 0.4.6f11.
• Needs S1API 3.1.1, up from 3.0.5. Update it along with the mod.

[2.1.0] - 2026-07-30

Writing a schedule meant guessing coordinates, because the game shows none anywhere. Now the console hands them to you.

Added

• Dev-console commands for pack authors (console has to be enabled in Settings):
  • personnel pos [HH:MM] - the spot you are standing on, as [x, y, z] or as a finished walkTo action for that time.
  • personnel spawn - the same spot as a spawn block, with rotationY and region filled in.
  • personnel route HH:MM - collects a step per stop in UserData/Personnel/route.json; personnel route show prints the block ready to paste into "schedule": [ ... ], clear starts over.
  • personnel npcs [filter] - loaded definitions, and where the physical ones are right now.
  • personnel help - the list.
• Results are copied to the clipboard and written to the MelonLoader log, with an in-game notification confirming the command ran.

[2.0.0] - 2026-07-22

NPC mods without code: a pack manifest can now describe everything an NPC needs - where it spawns, what it does all day, its economy role - and Personnel spawns it as a real world NPC on its own.

Added

• autoRegister (pack level) / spawn.auto (per NPC): Personnel registers opted-in NPCs as real, networked, saved world NPCs with no consumer mod involved. A kill switch lives in the settings (EnableAutoRegister). Packs that already ship a consumer DLL are safe: a compiled NPC class for the same id always wins over the generated one.
• spawn grew rotationY (spawn yaw), region (now actually applied) and physical. Non-physical NPCs are phone contacts only - no world body, no pathing cost. Default: physical exactly when the NPC has a schedule.
• schedule: full daily schedules in the manifest - walkTo, stayInBuilding, sit, useVendingMachine, useAtm, useSlotMachine, locationDialogue, locationAction, driveToCarPark, dealSignal. Times are "HH:MM" strings.
• relationships: delta, unlocked, unlockType, connections (by NPC id).
• customer: the whole customer economy - spending, orders per week, preferred day/time, standards, direct approach, first sample, mutual relation requirement, call-police chance, dependence, affinities, preferred properties.
• dealer: type, cut, signing fee, home, completed-deals variable, quality tolerances. Definitions with a dealer block now get the proper dealer base prefab (previously manifest dealers were built on the civilian prefab).
• inventory: random cash range, startup items (with quantities), clear-each-night.
• contact: mapMarker: false removes the phone-map marker, visible: false (experimental) skips the contact unlock.
• behavior.aggression, maxHealth and scale are now actually applied to spawned NPCs.
• Id stability: an authored id in the manifest is respected (previously always derived from folder and name), packId pins the derivation prefix, and saveId lets a renamed NPC keep matching old saves. schemaVersion marks the manifest format (current: 2).
• Distant custom NPCs get a proper billboard impostor instead of a blank one (on S1API builds that support impostor configuration).

Changed

• Pack and NPC registration order is now deterministic across machines - co-op peers agree on it.
• Contact unlock and map marker are unchanged by default but can be opted out per NPC.

[1.1.0] - 2026-07-08

Fixed

• Custom NPCs now show their real name in the phone Contacts app (previously "???") and can be found on the map. Personnel unlocks each spawned NPC's contact and gives it a map marker.
• Clothing no longer carries over from one spawned NPC to the next. The game clears only six of its eight avatar layer slots, so an NPC with more layers than that leaves a garment bound to the material for whoever is applied after it.
• A definition asking for more than eight body layers no longer loses one at random. The surplus is dropped deliberately, clothing first, and named in the log.

Added

• Opt-in economy roles via a pack's behavior.conversation: "customer" or "dealer" makes the NPC a real customer or dealer, while the default "none" stays a plain, non-economy contact.
• API.AddMapMarker(GameObject) to add a map marker to any live custom NPC.

[1.0.0] - 2026-07-06

Initial release.

Added

• NPC pack loading from UserData/Personnel/Packs/<PackName>/ (manifest.json + optional PNGs), with per-pack log lines listing the loaded NPC ids.
• Deep appearance definitions mirroring the S1API avatar-settings surface: body, skin, hair, face, eyes, eyebrows, clothing layers, accessories, and custom PNG layers loaded from the pack folder.
• Duplicate-proof NPC ids, always derived as packname_npcname (normalized); manifest id fields are ignored.
• PersonnelNpc base class: one tiny subclass per NPC turns a pack definition into a full S1API NPC (prefab, networking, save/load handled by S1API).
• Public API: All, TryGet, Register, BuildAvatarSettings(def), ApplyAppearance(avatar, def), ConfigureFromDef(builder, def), OnReloaded, Reload.
• Bundled example pack (off by default, LoadExamplePack) with two NPCs as a copyable template.
• Mod Manager & Phone App settings integration.