Porting SR3 NPC's to Saints Row 4

[reina3]

Say I was to abandon my current mod, and just settle for having Lin and Donnie as Homies in SRTT, how would I go about doing that without replacing existing Homies? Because there is a Johnny Gat Homie mod that doesn't replace an existing Homie.

Preferably, I'd want Donnie in his Cut Mechanic outfit, not his Matrix Neo outfit.

And if there's only room for one new Homie slot in the phone, would it be possible to have Lin and Donnie share a slot and arrive in a Quasar?

I'll assume you already have the mods that put Donnie & Lin in the game installed and working fine.
Assuming said mod has both versions of Donnie in it, you'll have to check the <Name> tag of the character he's defined under.

A "Shaundi & Viola" file is attached at the bottom, the rest of this post is explaining how the file works incase you want to add more entries yourself. Keep in mind the limit of homies.xtbl (it can only have a max of 28).

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For the first paragraph, I believe the mod spawns the Johnny Gat that appears in the first mission (that is, he's already in the game as a proper ally character). I studied this one for reference: https://www.saintsrowmods.com/forum/threads/the-return-of-gat.125/post-4686

For the third, yeah it's possible. Essentially copy another homie's data from <Homie> to </Homie>, change <Character> according to their <name> in character.xtbl, and change the <Vehicle> (in the case of Quasar, it's suv_4dr_luxury06 in files).

Example below:
*Since I don't have the Lin & Donnie mod I'll put Shaundi and Viola.

(If you modify eprunega's file, you can just skip #1 below.)
1.Open homies.xtbl and find a homie entry that we can duplicate.
The one closest to this example is saints_backup, it has multiple occupants and doesn't have mission restrictions.

The homie entry starts at line 109, ends at 144. Copy from <Homie> to </Homie> like so, then press Enter to make a new line at the end.
If you press Enter while highlighting something, it will erase the thing you highlighted.

(I pressed Enter after clicking at Line 144.)

2. Edit the tags:
These tags don't really accept text, rather they refer to other files (like editing character.xtbl).
<Name>: This is how the game identifies the homie entry. Just leave it unchanged.
<Display_Name>: What they will appear in-game as. Not sure what file this references. I used HOMIES_VIOLA to make it obvious.
<Human> and <Character> (under <Humans>: These two tags basically say "there is a character occupying a seat" and "which character this is". They have to be together exactly as you see;

<Human>
                <Character>npc_saint_male_soldier</Character>
                </Human>

> Refer to <Name> of character.xtbl for the correct things to put here. Since I want Shaundi and Viola together in this example, they would be npc_Shaundi and npc_Viola_saints within two entries (see "after" pic below).
>> If you have only one Homie spawn in-game, it's probably because you copied the <Humans> tag as well, like I did. LOL

<Vehicle> (under <Vehicles> and <Vehicle_Entry>): The ID of the vehicle. In Quasar's case, it's suv_4dr_luxury06 as mentioned.
Finding the ID is easiest done through Notepad++'s "Find in Files" function - typing the name of the vehicle and path of extracted misc_tables folder, but that's another tutorial.
<Vehicle_Variant>: Which variant of the car they spawn with. The default variant for all cars is average.
Quasar does not have a "saints" variant, so either put average or ultimate. (Basically, each vehicle variant has a different appearance.)
<Weight>: The "chance" the game will pick a car when called. This is only useful if you want a singular homie slot to spawn in a random selection of cars, so leave it be at 100.

I'm not familiar with these ones below, but you can copy from other homie entries:
<Image_name>: The image you see on the Homies menu. I just used the Vehicle Delivery icon: ui_homie_vehicle.
<Display_Desc>: The description in menu. Refers to hud_us.le_strings within misc_tables.vpp_pc, as ebene mentions. I used HOMIES_SAINT_BACKUP_DESC.
<Audio>: The phonecall audio. Feel free to test which one fits your vision the most. In my file I used PHONE_KINZIE to make it obvious it's modded.

Example, when finished:

I used eprunega's file as a base since I don't have SR3 installed, just the Remastered version - hence why it looks different.
All credits to them.

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Attached is the example homies.xtbl; take note of who Lin and Donnie replace in your installed mod's character.xtbl, then replace npc_Shaundi and npc_Viola_saints above.

It should appear as "Viola" after Saints Backup.

Hope this helps
If you have any questions about part of the process just message and I'll see if I can figure it out (but I still don't know how to work with .asm files).

 

[3rdStreetSaint 212]

I'll assume you already have the mods that put Donnie & Lin in the game installed and working fine.

You assumed wrong. How would I have that file, if I don't know what I'm doing?

I can't even get Lin to replace an NPC in SRTT, never mind Lin & Donnie as their own NPCs

The closest I have is the Lin v2 mod by someone else, but that entirely replaces both of Shaundi’s models. Which I don't want.

 

[reina3]

The closest I have is the Lin v2 mod by someone else, but that entirely replaces both of Shaundi’s models. Which I don't want.

Ah, okay. It was mostly answering your question of "how did someone make a Johnny Gat homie without replacing other characters?"
And the answer to that one is "Johnny Gat already exists in the game, since he is used in the first mission"

 

[3rdStreetSaint 212]

Ah, okay. It was mostly answering your question of "how did someone make a Johnny Gat homie without replacing other characters?"
And the answer to that one is "Johnny Gat already exists in the game, since he is used in the first mission"

Oh, my bad. I was at work when I answered that post. I forgot it was a hypothetical.