Task: spawn equipment, skills and spells

[John Adams]

Looking for someone to take on the repetitive (but very crucial) task of setting up all our spawns Equipment, Skills and Spells lists used to give spawns some offensive/defensive options.

Table: spawn_npc_equipment - this table holds items that the NPC can use against you in combat. Right now, none of our spawns have gear. This is not gear that is visible on the NPC, nor loot they drop, but items they may carry to boost their stats similarly to how gear benefits players.

Table: spawn_npc_spells - this table holds all the spells a particular spawn might be able to use. Hopefully, many spawns use the same tables and we do not need thousands of configurations

Table: spawn_npc_skills - this table grants the spawn the ability to use a particular item or spell much in the way a player must have a Skill before they can use items or spells.

I'd like to first set up "generic class lists"; that is, classes 1-40 each have their own lists of spells and skills that will be applied to them. If anyone thinks there is a need for a "generic equipment list", let's talk about what that might entail.

How we will set these up is, in the spawn_npc_skills table, we'll set up 40 (well, 24?) separate skill_list_id's, and each skill_list_id will have all the skills associated with a particular class (paladin, assassin, templar, wizard, etc). Once those lists are set up, we can start building more intricate lists as needed. Initially, generic will be good enough.

Same thing with spawn_npc_spells. Separate spell_list_id's for all the NPC classes, with their appropriate spell_id's assigned.

We will then assign these *_list_id's to spawns based on their "class" and that can be automated once the lists are built.


Getting Detailed:
Each spawn_npcs record has 5 fields for setting up these configs -

• spell_list_id
  secondary_spell_list_id
  skill_list_id
  secondary_skill_list_id
  equipment_list_id

As you can see, any spawn can have up to 2 spell and skill lists assigned, and 1 equipment list. Once the generics are done, any spawn needing special skills or spells will get a 2nd spell_list_id/skill_list_id created and assigned - giving that spawn those added abilities.

For our first run through this setup however, we'll just keep things generic.

Anyone who is up to this task, reply here or shoot me a PM. Be serious about your offer to help, and stick with it til it is complete. Too many people come and go from these smaller tasks and we now have no idea what shape our detail tables are in without careful review. So please, don't offer to help if you cannot see it through to completion.

Thanks

[Arremis]

Just a thought here, but would it be easier to base these lists on the class of the spawn? Say you have a generic list for a shaman...this list contains all the armor, weapons, skills, spells, and perhaps AI info for what a shaman does. Then when you spawn a group and there's a shaman present, you just plug in the shaman info and the server automatically knows this spawn can use this armor, weapons, skills, spells, and how to act in combat, perhaps armor and weapons can be randomly spawned and equipped.

Hope that makes sense

[John Adams]

Isn't that what I just suggested?

each skill_list_id will have all the skills associated with a particular class (paladin, assassin, templar, wizard, etc)
.
.
Same thing with spawn_npc_spells. Separate spell_list_id's for all the NPC classes, with their appropriate spell_id's assigned.

[Arremis]

Was it? I swear I'm brain farting this week. You're so clever John

[John Adams]

Finally we agree on something

[l333]

2 spawn_npc_skills questions left for me:
- Magic Affinity (added for rogues and predators because of poisons skill but not sure about all other classes. I've found out on wiki that there are some weapons that require this skill to use them, I just doubt npcs will ever have these - obtained from quests & etc. also don't know about potions..)
- Skin (can't find anything about this skill yet)

Anybody has any ideas?

[thefoof]

Feature request inc , if it wouldn't slow server performance down much, would be nice to be able to assign more than one piece of npc_equipment per slot, and have the server randomize for the slots with multiple. Cool feature for custom servers if those ever exist, and for emulating live it could make things cleaner/look more liveish.

[Lokked]

Is there an "Equipment Set" entity in the DB? It would be neat to have randomly generated armor, but only if it's matching (somewhat).

[John Adams]

Feature request inc , if it wouldn't slow server performance down much, would be nice to be able to assign more than one piece of npc_equipment per slot, and have the server randomize for the slots with multiple. Cool feature for custom servers if those ever exist, and for emulating live it could make things cleaner/look more liveish.

It's kind of a clusterf**k to "guess" what armor belongs to what NPC as it is, so in the short term I'll say this is probably low priority.

That said, do not confuse the spawn_npc_equipment table with appearances. They have nothing to do with each other at all. I just had this convo with Jab about loot. The topic of this task is merely to give a spawn that +200 STR that a battleaxe of badassery would give a player... and not that the spawn will be wielding said battleaxe in game. Does that make sense?

npc_appearance_equip is the table that holds the spawns "appearance equipment", by pointing to the `appearance_id` value, and customizing it with RGB+highlights. Look into the NPC::Randomize(...) function, which is where our current /randomize values are processed. You'll see what a nightmare it is.

[thefoof]

Bah I knew that "npc_appearance_equip" is the equipment appearance I just jumped the gun with my post without thinking about it