Tutorial: Edit a custom NPC schedule for personal use

So you're enjoying playing the game, you walk into the library, and you notice 2 of your favorite NPCs standing on the same spot. What can you do?!

If you're feeling confident about making a small personal edit to your copies of the mod files, moving one NPC over a tile (or a few tiles) is simple enough to do. I want to emphasize that this is for personal compatibility only, and I don't condone distributing these changes without the permission of the relevant mod authors. Additionally, if you have any issues with an edit you made, don't expect the mod authors to offer support, since by doing this you are going rogue and editing mod files for your own use. You may also want to back up the files discussed, in case you make a mistake and need to revert back.

Quick Summary

In brief, the steps are: determine the name of the map and the X Y coordinates of the overlap (using Debug Mode), then find the schedules information in the custom NPC mod files and change one or both of the coordinates so there isn't overlap.

Detailed Steps

1. To start, get Debug Mode. This is essential because it will let you see the name of the map and the coordinates that the NPCs are occupying.
2. After installing Debug Mode, load up your game, and go to the spot where NPCs overlap. Make sure you have the same season, date, weather and time as when you saw the overlap, since schedules can vary based on those.
3. Toggle Debug Mode, hover your pointer over the overlapping NPCs, and note down the name of the map and the tile coordinates of the overlap. See if one of the NPCs can easily be moved left, right, up, or down to achieve compatibility (no overlap with another NPC). You can then close the game.
4. Next, you have to find which of your chosen custom NPC mod files contains schedule information. I personally search the entire custom NPC mod folder in VS Code, searching for the map file name and coordinates, formatted like so: ArchaeologyHouse 7 10. Using VS Code, you'll be able to directly open the file that contains that information. To ensure what you're looking at is schedule information and not an event, look at the schedule modding wiki page for examples of what schedules look like. Again, I remind you to make a copy of the file in case you make a mistake and need to revert back.
5. From there, you can change the applicable coordinate. For example, if you determined in step 4 that you needed to move the NPC to the left 1 tile, decrease the X coordinate, 7 in the example above, to be 6. If you needed to move the NPC to the right 1 tile, increase the X coordinate to be 8. If you needed to move the NPC down 1 tile, increase the Y coordinate, 10 in the example above, to be 11. If you needed to move the NPC up 1 tile, decrease the Y coordinate to 9.
   • The safest route to take is to replace all instances of the map file name and coordinates in case that spot is used multiple times. For example, if you needed to move an NPC both to the right 1 tile and up 1 tile, you would replace all instances of ArchaeologyHouse 7 10 with ArchaelogyHouse 8 9 in the file with schedule information.
6. Then, save the file, load up the game and go to the spot where the NPCs were overlapping per step 2. Check that your edit worked, and that it looks ok. If it does, congratulations, you have edited a schedule for personal use! If there's still an issue with overlap, you can use Debug Mode to find another viable spot for the NPC. If there is a formatting issue with your file or it doesn't load, the easiest fix is to delete the file you changed and start again from the copy you made. For additional information, see the schedule modding wiki page.

If you're also interested in how to edit a festival location for personal use, see the tutorial here.