Understanding error codes / custom bernie

[aikawayumi]

a bit of back story where/how error came out:

I was messing with creating a copy of bernie for a custom character. By my understanding, the zip files in the anim folders also contains the sprites so i cant just create my own sprites, but call the animations for the vanilla bernie. So with that, I copied the vanila bernie anims, extract the sprites to change it to mine, then rebuild it back.

so by default,  when I want to have my custom char spawn with the custom bernie item, it should have a starting item of <custombernie>_inactive . That said, I keep getting this error: [string "scripts/components/inventory.lua"]:864: attempt to index local 'inst' (a nil value)

the next line(s) are:
LUA ERROR stack traceback:
    scripts/components/inventory.lua:864 in (method) GiveItem (Lua) <863-1018>
    scripts/prefabs/player_common_extensions.lua:722 in (field) GivePlayerStartingItems (Lua) <716-743>
    scripts/prefabs/player_common.lua:1346 in (method) OnNewSpawn (Lua) <1345-1367>
    scripts/networking.lua:259 in () ? (Lua) <247-269>
    =[C]:-1 in (method) SendSpawnRequestToServer (C) <-1--1>
    scripts/mainfunctions.lua:1970 in (local) cb (Lua) <1938-1971>
    scripts/frontend.lua:665 in (method) DoFadingUpdate (Lua) <629-669>
    scripts/frontend.lua:733 in (method) Update (Lua) <687-889>
    scripts/update.lua:95 in () ? (Lua) <33-138>

With that said, main question is, since the error mentions a local 'inst' being a nil value, im pretty sure i might have a variable there that is named/renamed incorrectly tho im not sure where. (bernie lua has 3 files called bernie_active, bernie_inactive and bernie_big)

additional questions:

- my custom items' icons are working in the inventory but not in character selection screen. Do character selection screen items use a different icon?
- looking at the bernie anim files, i noticed 3 zip files (bernie.zip, bernie_big.zip and bernie_build.zip). With that, both bbernie.zip and bernie_big.zip only contains an anim file, while the build contains build. using the exported folder though, it automatically creates a build and anim. do I have to follow exactly how it shows in vanilla with 3 separate zip files? or just 2 is fine where both big and small bernies have the same builds?