Research pedestrian-style spline locomotion for world workers

[SimGamerJen]

Summary

Builds directly on the reconciled Alpha 5 / HelperProfiles 2.1.1.0 development baseline and starts the next world-worker movement investigation inspired by FS25's smooth native pedestrians.

Native pedestrian/runtime research

• adds HP_WorldPedestrianProbe.lua
• diagnostic-only runtime inspection of PedestrianSystem, likely mission/global instances, scenegraph pedestrian nodes, and available GIANTS spline APIs
• command: hpWorld pedprobe [summary|system|globals|mission|spline|scene|all]
• does not alter worker movement

Spline-guided movement prototype

• adds HP_WorldSplinePath.lua
• creates a temporary invisible GIANTS cubic spline at runtime using createSplineFromEditPoints
• shapes the route so its initial tangent follows the worker's current facing before converging on the destination
• continuously projects the worker onto the spline and feeds the validated curved locomotion controller a short (~1.05 m) look-ahead target
• the existing curved locomotion controller remains sole owner of speed, yaw, pose and HumanGraphicsComponentState
• temporary spline entities are deleted on completion/cancel/error/obstacle stop
• existing COME HERE and FOLLOW are unchanged

Experimental commands

• hpWorld smoothcome [slot] [standOffMetres]
• hpWorld smoothgoto [slot] <x> <z>
• hpWorld smoothstop [slot]

Why this approach

FS25 exposes runtime cubic spline creation plus world-space spline position/direction/distance queries. Native pedestrians are spline-driven. This prototype lets us test whether tangent-led spline execution gives HelperProfiles workers the same continuous-flow quality without replacing their identity/appearance/graphics stack.

First test focus

1. Confirm both Alpha 6 startup markers load without Lua errors.
2. Run hpWorld pedprobe and capture the log; then hpWorld pedprobe scene if the summary does not reveal the live PedestrianSystem instance.
3. In clear open ground, place A several metres away and deliberately face A 45–90 degrees away from the player.
4. Run hpWorld smoothcome A and visually compare its initial turn and route flow with ordinary hpWorld come A.
5. Confirm the worker maintains a continuous walking gait, follows a smooth arc and eases into the final stand-off without waypoint-like stop/turn behaviour.
6. Test hpWorld smoothstop A during movement.
7. Do not test obstacle navigation as a success criterion yet; the existing short-range obstacle layer remains a safety stop only.

Release-baseline safety

This branch is based on the current reconciled Alpha 5 head, which is itself 0 commits behind main and retains HelperProfiles 2.1.1.0 Integration API v7, scoped preferred hiring, release metadata and management UI fixes. Alpha 6 changes only the two new modules and their loader entries.

[SimGamerJen]

ModHub baseline reconciliation — 2026-09-08

Alpha 6 has been reconciled with the latest main ModHub-submission changes.

Verified release-side changes:

• modDesc.xml replaced with the exact current main blob (1247f84540a3375a02f659de97f1df47e35a2c60), including the expanded localized ModHub description and versioned changelog text required by TestRunner.
• icon_helperProfiles.dds replaced with the exact current main blob (7bdc835816a8fc315002a40c607568da5ece71cd).
• legacy helperprofiles.dds is absent on Alpha 6, matching the current ModHub-ready tree.

Reconciliation commit: 60f1f943596d7c25eb69160411773a2f3f8ac60e (Merge ModHub submission updates into Alpha 6). This is a merge-style commit with both the prior Alpha 6 head and current main (80043d12291e034fe8e0214da5064162e00b8920) as parents, so the ModHub updates are now part of Alpha 6 ancestry rather than copied without history.

Post-merge comparison: Alpha 6 is 64 commits ahead of main and 0 behind. The remaining diff contains only world-worker development changes; modDesc.xml and icon_helperProfiles.dds no longer differ from main.

[SimGamerJen]

First Alpha 6 live probe / spline test — 2026-09-12

The uploaded live log gives us two useful results.

Spline-path prototype

• smoothcome C completed successfully over ~18.3 m in ~13 s.
• The moving look-ahead remained ~1.05 m ahead and the path completed normally with no HelperProfiles Lua error.
• This specific run was almost straight because C's starting yaw (0.133) already matched the bearing to the final stand-off point, so it was not yet a strong visual test of tangent-led turning.
• The later normal come C required an almost 180-degree reversal and showed the existing bounded-yaw controller initially moving farther from the target while swinging round. That is a useful baseline for the next deliberately misaligned smoothcome comparison.
• smoothgoto C 4 7, 1 3, 1 1 correctly returned target-too-far; smoothgoto uses absolute world X/Z coordinates, not local offsets.

Native pedestrian probe

• A live g_currentMission.pedestrianSystem is confirmed on Witcombe.
• It owns 14 pedestrians and 14 pedestrianNodes and is enabled.
• The first probe incorrectly reported GIANTS spline globals as nil because it used rawget(_G, ...). The successful spline prototype proves those engine functions are resolvable/callable through the Lua environment.
• The top-level system table does not expose its methods directly, so we need to inspect metatable / __index class data and sample live pedestrian records.

Follow-up committed

Added HP_WorldPedestrianProbeDeep.lua and loader support.

New commands:

• hpWorld pedprobe deep
• hpWorld pedprobe splineenv
• hpWorld pedprobe pedestrians

The deep probe compares raw vs normal engine-global resolution, inspects metatable / class chains, and dumps a small sample of live pedestrian records/nodes.

Also reconciled Alpha 6 with the latest main ancestry and current ModHub metadata. modDesc.xml is now byte-identical to current main (descVersion=111, current French title capitalization). Final comparison: Alpha 6 is 68 commits ahead of main and 0 behind.