blushneybusiness-glitch/roblox-omniskills/rbx-anim-npc

rbx-anim-npc

Laws

1. Four states minimum. An NPC ships with idle, walk, attack (or interact), and one

flavor emote — anything less reads as a mannequin. Shop NPCs swap attack for a greet/wave; ambient NPCs swap it for a second idle variant.

1. Play on the server Animator. Server-owned NPCs load and play tracks on the server so

playback replicates to every client for free. Client-side NPC animation is only for purely-local actors (lobby dioramas, cutscene stand-ins).

1. Priority does the switching. Idle at Idle, walk at Movement, attacks and emotes

at Action — start the looped idle once at spawn and let priority bury it instead of stopping/starting tracks per state change.

1. Telegraphs are animation, damage is server math. The attack animation's windup IS the

dodge window (rbx-npc-combat owns the timing doctrine); the damage lands from server-side hit logic at the marker time — never from any client's report of what it saw.

1. Desynchronize the crowd. Identical NPCs start idles at random offsets

(track.TimePosition = math.random() * track.Length) and ±10% AdjustSpeed jitter. A row of guards breathing in unison is a top-three scene tell.

Passes

1. Rig intake — R15/R6 catalog rig or custom creature decided; inserted rigs and

animation packs pass the modelscan gate (Sourcing) before their scripts run; inspect_instance confirms Motor6Ds + Animator.

1. Set assembly — pick the four-plus tracks: Roblox catalog animation ids for humanoid

staples (verified this session, never from memory), custom tracks via rbx-anim-rigs where the catalog has nothing (creature attacks, bespoke emotes → 0 -- TODO + rbx-handoff-uploads).

1. Load & ladder — preload all tracks at NPC spawn on the server Animator, priorities

per law 3, walk track speed slaved to Humanoid.WalkSpeed / authored speed so feet never skate.

1. Hook the state machine — rbx-npc-statemachines states call one AnimSet:play(name)

API; the set module owns fades (0.2s in / 0.3s out) so states never touch tracks directly.

1. Markers & sound — footsteps, swing whooshes, and impact stings from

GetMarkerReachedSignal with ±10% PlaybackSpeed variation per fire; silence on a moving NPC is an AI-tell.

1. Verify — start_stop_play, walk the test character past the NPCs via

character_navigation, watch for skating feet, T-poses, and lockstep idles; read get_console_output for failed loads.

Sourcing

Tiers per asset-id-policy.md: asset-library.md first (pcall re-verified), then Roblox catalog animations for humanoid rigs verified in-session, then search_asset → insert_asset for Creator Store rigs and packs. Every Creator Store insert passes rbx-security-modelscan before any script runs. Custom tracks that need publishing queue through rbx-handoff-uploads while the set ships with 0 -- TODO ids.

Performance budget

One server Animator per NPC, tracks preloaded at spawn, destroyed at despawn. Past ~15 simultaneous animated NPCs, stagger non-visible updates and drop emote variety per rbx-npc-crowds — animation replication is cheap, but the AI driving it is not. Never run per-NPC RenderStepped work on clients for idles the Animator already handles.

Load with

rbx-npc-statemachines — the states this set animates; don't ask, include it on any NPC with behavior. rbx-anim-rigs for track mechanics and uploads, rbx-security-modelscan on every insert, rbx-audio-sfx for footsteps and swing sounds. Combat NPCs add rbx-npc-combat for telegraph timing doctrine.

AI-tells

• ☐ NPC slides across the ground with no walk track, or feet skate against WalkSpeed
• ☐ T-pose on spawn — set assembled but never preloaded or rig chain broken
• ☐ Identical NPCs idling in perfect lockstep, zero offset or speed jitter
• ☐ States stopping/starting every track manually instead of the priority ladder
• ☐ Attack damage applied from the animation's client-visible frame, unvalidated
• ☐ Animation ids recalled from memory instead of verified this session
• ☐ Fully silent NPCs — no footsteps, no vocal/effort sounds at markers

Memory

Read: asset-library.md for proven animation-set ids tagged by rig type and game style; the game's projects.md block for NPC folder conventions and existing AnimSet modules. Write: every verified id that ships into asset-library.md (tagged idle/walk/attack/emote + rig); the AnimSet module into module-library.md; pending custom-track uploads into the game's projects.md manual steps pending: list.