Hallucinations

Based on game build 714014 | Last updated: 2026-03-03

Overview

The hallucinations component controls the procedural spawning of three types of hallucination prefabs (creepyeyes, shadowwatcher, shadowskittish) on the player entity. It reacts to player sanity levels, whether it is currently night, and environmental lighting conditions. It operates as a passive sidekick to the player, monitoring sanity and time-of-day events, and spawning appropriate hallucinations only when conditions are conducive (e.g., low sanity and darkness). It tracks spawned entities and ensures only a limited number of each type exist concurrently.

Usage example

local inst = CreateEntity()
inst:AddComponent("hallucinations")
-- Automatically activates upon `playeractivated` events and is managed by the game.
-- Debug string is available for inspection:
print(inst.components.hallucinations:GetDebugString())

Dependencies & tags

Components used: None directly accessed via inst.components.X. Relies on TheSim, SpawnPrefab, FindEntity, and world state (isnight, isfullmoon) APIs. Uses _player.replica.sanity to read sanity values. Tags: Adds and removes fire and _equippable from candidate entities during shadowwatcher searching.

Properties

Property	Type	Default Value	Description
inst	Entity	inst (passed in constructor)	Reference to the entity that owns this component (typically the player entity).

No other public properties are exposed.

Main functions

GetDebugString()

• Description: Returns a human-readable debug string listing the current spawn count of each hallucination type.
• Parameters: None.
• Returns: string — e.g., "2 creepyeyes, 1 shadowwatcher, 4 shadowskittish", or nil if no hallucinations are active.
• Error states: None. Safe to call at any time.

Events & listeners

• Listens to:
  • playeractivated — triggers OnPlayerActivated when a new player becomes active, setting up world-state watches and starting hallucinations.
  • playerdeactivated — triggers OnPlayerDeactivated to shut down and cancel tasks when the player deactivates.
  • nightvision — triggers OnIsNight when the player’s night vision state changes (e.g., via lantern or helmet).
• Pushes: None.

Constants

The component defines HALLUCINATION_TYPES, a table with three entries:

Name	interval	variance	initial_variance	nightonly
creepyeyes	5	2.5	20	true
shadowwatcher	30	15	10	true
shadowskittish	10	5	20	false

Each type uses its interval, variance, and initial_variance to schedule spawning via DoTaskInTime. nightonly determines whether spawning only occurs at night.