OutwardLoading...SpawnKit

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CeruleanCutlass-SpawnKit-0.2.1

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SpawnKit — spawn any creature, anywhere

⚠️ Alpha. This is early software: the core spawn/despawn/AI loop is solid and well-tested, but you will hit rough edges (see Known issues below) — roughly a quarter of the creature roster doesn't spawn yet, co-op is single-player-only for now, and there's an occasional cosmetic terrain glitch. Back up saves you care about before experimenting.

Press F11, pick a creature, spawn it beside you.

SpawnKit gives you a real vanilla hostile — not a dummy or a stand-in. It wanders, it aggros, it fights, it drops its normal loot, and it dies like the wild version, because it is the wild version. Spawn a pack of hyenas to train on. Drop a Tuanosaur next to a bandit camp and watch them fight each other. Restock a region you've already cleared out.

Spawns are ephemeral: they never enter your save file, and they vanish when you leave the area.

Requires: BepInEx 5 (Outward's Mono branch — see Compatibility), plus CompanionKit and ForgeKit. If you install through a mod manager these come along automatically.

Installing

Install from Thunderstore and the dependencies come with it. Installing by hand: drop all three folders — ForgeKit/, CompanionKit/, SpawnKit/ — side by side into BepInEx/plugins/. If BepInEx logs a dependency error and refuses to load SpawnKit, one of the other two is missing.

Using it

Launch the game, load a save, and press F11 for a draggable window listing every creature you can spawn.

● means the creature is ready — it spawns instantly.
○ means it's cold: the first spawn pauses 1–6 seconds while SpawnKit fetches its body (see How it works). Click Prewarm to pay that cost up front instead.
Set a count, hit Spawn, and use Despawn All / Kill All to clean up.

The key is rebindable ([Menu] MenuKey; Backslash is the classic debug-menu choice), and the menu closes on Esc, on F11 again, or when you open a vanilla menu.

Settings

BepInEx/config/cobalt.spawnkit.cfg, created on first launch:

Setting	Default	What it does
`[Spawner] Enabled`	`true`	Master kill-switch. Off = no new spawns (cleanup still works).
`MaxActiveSpawns`	`8`	Cap on live spawns at once.
`SpawnDistance`	`5`	How far from you they appear, in meters.
`MaxCachedTemplates`	`12`	How many creature bodies stay in memory. Higher = more instant spawns, more RAM.
`DefaultCorpsePolicy`	`Vanilla`	`Vanilla` leaves the corpse and its loot. `NoBody` deletes the corpse (and its loot) after death.
`[Menu] EnableMenu`	`true`	The F11 menu.

Without the menu

Everything is also driven by writing a line into BepInEx/config/SpawnKit_cmd.txt — it runs on the next poll, even while the game is paused. Useful for scripting or if a keybind conflicts.

Verb	What it does
`spawn <species> [count]`	Spawn 1 or more beside you. Names may contain spaces: `spawn Armored Hyena 3`.
`despawnall [kill]`	Remove every spawn. `kill` gives them a real death (animation + loot) instead of deleting them.
`spawnex <species> [dist=N] [life=N] [faction=Name] [owner=tag] [body=vanilla\|none] [linger=N] [keepquest]`	One spawn with the full option surface.
`spawnlist` / `spawndump`	List spawnable creatures / show what's live right now.
`spawnprewarm <species>` / `spawnprep <scene>`	Pay the body-fetch cost now so later spawns are instant.
`spawnclearcache`	Drop cached bodies (frees memory; next spawn re-fetches).
`selftest`	Sanity-check the install; look for `[SELFTEST] … DONE` in the log.

⚠️ Known issues — read this bit

Some creatures don't work. Roughly a quarter of the rows in the list fail to spawn — their body can't be found in the scene the table expects. You'll get a clear message in the log rather than anything harmful. This is being chipped away at.

Single-player / host-only. In co-op, only the host can spawn. Clients are refused cleanly (you'll see why in the log), and creatures the host spawns are not synced to clients. Treat this as a single-player mod for now.

A rare visual glitch. Very occasionally, after a lot of spawning in one session, a patch of ground can go invisible (you can still walk on it) — changing zone and coming back repairs it.

How it works

Outward has no way to create a creature from nothing — every creature is baked into the scene it lives in. So SpawnKit borrows one: it quietly loads the scene a species lives in, copies a live creature out of it, gives the copy a fresh identity, drops it on solid ground near you, and unloads the scene again. That's the 1–6 second pause on a cold spawn, and it's why the result behaves perfectly — it's the same creature the game itself would have spawned, not an imitation.

The creature roster comes from CompanionKit, which owns the table mapping each species to the scenes it can be found in. spawnlist prints it. You can add or fix an entry without rebuilding anything by dropping a DonorScenes.txt into BepInEx/config/:

Hyena=Emercar_Dungeon5,ChersoneseDungeonsSmall
Alpha Tuanosaur=Hallowed_Dungeon3,HallowedMarshNewTerrain

Region-only creatures need an extra step. Open-world regions and towns are too big to load in the background — trying it crashes the game, so SpawnKit refuses to. Creatures that live only out in a region (Pearlbird, Torcrab, Coralhorn and friends) therefore can't be fetched the usual way; their rows are labelled (expedition-only) and a cold spawn fails with a clear message. To stock them, write expedition <species> into BepInEx/config/ck_cmd.txt: CompanionKit takes you through the loading screen and back, and from then on that creature spawns like any other.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	What it means	What to do
`No spawnable species matches '<x>'`	Not in the table	Check `spawnlist`; add a line to `BepInEx/config/DonorScenes.txt`
`has NO viable donor (all candidates oversized)`	A region-only creature, not stocked yet	Run `expedition <species>` (see above)
First spawn of a creature pauses, later ones don't	Normal — that's the body fetch	Use `spawnprewarm` to pay it early
No mods load at all, no crash log	Wrong Steam branch	See Compatibility

Compatibility

Outward must be on its Mono Steam beta branch, not the default IL2CPP build (Properties → Betas → select mono). If the game runs but no BepInEx mods load and there's no crash log, this is almost always why.

For modders

SpawnKit is also a library. Reference it and declare the dependency:

[BepInDependency(SpawnKit.Plugin.GUID)]

Then spawning is one line:

SpawnHandle h = Spawner.Spawn("Hyena");

Everything else is optional — per-spawn customization rides a SpawnOptions, and the returned SpawnHandle is your window onto the creature's lifecycle:

Spawner.Spawn("Alpha Tuanosaur",
    new SpawnOptions
    {
        Faction = Character.Factions.Tuanosaurs, // null = the donor's own faction
        Distance = 12f,                          // ring-probe radius (clamped 1–50m)
        // Position = somewhereExact,            // skip the ring probe entirely
        LifetimeSeconds = 120f,                  // auto-despawn clock (null = forever)
        Corpse = Core.CorpsePolicy.NoBody,       // destroy the corpse after death (null = the
                                                 //   [Spawner] DefaultCorpsePolicy config;
                                                 //   NoBody takes the LOOT with it — see traps)
        CorpseLingerSeconds = 8f,                // death-anim time before the NoBody destroy
        OwnerTag = "mymod",                      // namespace your spawns (see DespawnAll)
        // StripQuestEvents = false,             // default true — leave it unless you KNOW
    },
    onReady: handle =>
    {
        if (!handle.IsAlive) { /* handle.FailReason says why */ return; }
        handle.OnDied += _ => DropReward();
        handle.OnDespawned += _ => CleanupMarker();
    });

The full surface (SpawnKit.Spawner, all static):

Call	What it does
`Spawn(species, options?, onReady?)`	Spawn ONE creature; returns a `SpawnHandle` immediately (`Pending` → `Alive`/`Failed`; sync refusals return already-`Failed` with a `FailReason`). One call = one creature — loop for more; a cold-species loop still costs one fetch (in-flight acquires dedup).
`Despawn(handle, kill=false)`	Remove one spawn: `kill` = real damage pipeline (death anim + loot, → `Died`); silent = destroy (→ `Despawned`). Cancels a still-`Pending` handle.
`DespawnAll(ownerTag=null, kill=false)`	Sweep by owner tag. `null` = EVERYTHING — that's the operator verb; mods should pass their own tag.
`Prewarm(species, onDone?)` / `IsPrewarmed(species)`	Pay/check the body fetch off your hot path.
`IsExpeditionOnly(species)`	True when a species can only be stocked by an expedition (see How it works) — check before promising a boss fight.
`Active(ownerTag=null)`	Snapshot of tracked handles (Pending + Alive).
`SpeciesKeys()`	The spawnable species roster.

Trap table — read before shipping on this

Trap	Rule
`handle.Character` can go Unity-null under you (scene unload, despawn)	Check `handle.IsAlive` before every use; never cache the `Character` across scene loads.
Spawns are ephemeral by design	Scene unload = `OnDespawned`, and saves skip `SK_` UIDs both directions. Don't build persistence on top.
A cold species blocks ~1–6s before `onReady`	`Prewarm` on your init path if the spawn must feel instant.
`MaxActiveSpawns` is global across all consumers (pending spawns count too)	Tag your spawns (`OwnerTag`) and never call `DespawnAll(null)` from a mod — you'd sweep other mods' spawns.
Callbacks run on the main thread inside the watch tick	Keep them cheap. A throwing callback is isolated (swallowed + logged) — it won't break SpawnKit, but you won't get a second chance either.
Co-op clients always get `Failed/NotMaster`	Design your feature so only the host drives spawning.
`StripQuestEvents = false` on a quest-flagged creature fires real quest events on death	The default (true) exists because live donors really do carry `QuestEventOnDeath` — leaving it on is what keeps spawns from mutating quest state.
`CorpsePolicy.NoBody` destroys the loot bag with the body	The corpse GameObject IS the loot container — never combine NoBody with a drop-loot expectation.
Ring geometry (step angles, elevation band, navmesh snap) is not configurable	By design. If you need exact placement, pass `SpawnOptions.Position` and own the spot yourself.
The species roster and creature supply are CompanionKit's, not SpawnKit's	An expedition-only species fails cold spawns until an expedition stocks it.

License

Apache License 2.0 — see LICENSE. You may use, modify, and redistribute this kit (including in commercial mods) provided you keep the copyright/license notice; see the license text for the full terms.

Details

Categories

SpawnKit — spawn any creature, anywhere

Installing

Using it

Settings

Without the menu

⚠️ Known issues — read this bit

How it works

Troubleshooting

Compatibility

For modders

Trap table — read before shipping on this

License

SpawnKit — spawn any creature, anywhere

Installing

Using it

Settings

Without the menu

⚠️ Known issues — read this bit

How it works

Troubleshooting

Compatibility

For modders

Trap table — read before shipping on this

License