Shadowhandspawner

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

Overview

Shadowhandspawner is a world-scoped component responsible for spawning shadowhand prefabs on behalf of players during nighttime. It operates only on the master simulation (server) and ensures hands spawn under controlled conditions: players must be mature enough (older than INITIAL_SPAWN_THRESHOLD), have low sanity (<= 0.75), and be near a valid fire or repairable boat (not in the puzzle2 vault room). It tracks spawned hands via player and entity references, and respects per-fire hand limits (MAX_HANDS_PER_FIRE). The component uses the world's day/night cycle to start/stop its scheduling loop for each player.

Usage example

-- Typically added automatically by the world prefabs (e.g., `dst_world`) on the master server:
-- inst:AddComponent("shadowhandspawner")

-- No manual interaction is needed during normal gameplay.
-- Custom wave logic would interact with its public methods:
-- inst.components.shadowhandspawner:reservewaveyjonestarget(boat)
-- inst.components.shadowhandspawner:removewaveyjonestarget(boat)

Dependencies & tags

Components used: age, burnable, entitytracker, fueled, hull, mast, anchor, vaultroom, vaultroommanager
Tags: Listens to ms_playerjoined and ms_playerleft; tracks "boat", "fire" tags; avoids "_equippable"; checks for "boat_repaired_patch", "mast", "anchor", and special fuel tags.

Properties

Property	Type	Default Value	Description
inst	Entity	—	Reference to the entity instance this component owns.

Private member tables: _players, _fires, _boats, _boattargets, _fueltags — internal state not exposed publicly.

Main functions

GetDebugString()

• Description: Returns a human-readable string indicating how many shadow hands are currently active across all tracked players.
• Parameters: None.
• Returns: String (e.g., "3 shadowhands", "1 shadowhand", or empty string if none).

spawnwaveyjones(boat)

• Description: Spawns a waveyjones_marker prefab at the boat’s position and registers the boat as a tracked target to prevent duplicate wavey jones spawns.
• Parameters: boat (Entity) — The boat entity near which to spawn the marker.
• Returns: waveyjones_marker prefab instance.
• Error states: Does not validate if boat is valid or exists; caller must ensure.

checkwaveyjonestarget(target)

• Description: Returns whether the given entity is currently reserved as a wavey jones target.
• Parameters: target (Entity) — Entity to check.
• Returns: true if reserved; nil otherwise.

reservewaveyjonestarget(target)

• Description: Marks the target entity as reserved to prevent re-use by another spawner iteration.
• Parameters: target (Entity).
• Returns: Nothing.

removewaveyjonestarget(target)

• Description: Clears the reservation for the given entity.
• Parameters: target (Entity).
• Returns: Nothing.

Events & listeners

• Listens to:

  • ms_playerjoined — Adds new player tracking and schedules hand spawning if currently night.
  • ms_playerleft — Stops scheduling and cleans up tracking for the departing player.
  • isnight — Global world state watcher; starts/stops all scheduled tasks when day/night transitions.
  • onremove — For each player, boat, or spawned hand; cleans up internal references.

• Pushes:

  • None.