Proposals

[geordie0511]

Now, after working at the Quests/Spawn Scripts/Spawns for some days I have some proposals:

I don't want to sound negative or something but at that rate of development it will get very difficult to advance this project. So instead of doing it exactly like on live we could make compromises.

1) Quests: Development of live-like spawnscripts is VERY time consuming (even with the available tools). Instead of recreating the complete dialogue we could make it so that at least the quests are offered and can can be advanced/completed. Quest development is very straight forward as you can copy/paste a lot of information.

Random chat (when getting in range) could still be activated of course so the world would appear alive.

I bet most people wouldn't even notice the difference as they just click through the dialogues.

2) Movement of NPCs: Had no time to look at the source code yet but could the movement of non-stationary NPCs be randomized (circe area, i.e.) ?

3) Loot: Loot lists could be created by considering a level range. 1-10, 11-20 and so on. Exception would be quest items of course as they only had to be found on zone mobs.

tldr;) make compromises to achieve faster developement and attract more people.

[Gangrenous]

2) Movement of NPCs: Had no time to look at the source code yet but could the movement of non-stationary NPCs be randomized (circe area, i.e.) ?

That has been in place for a very long time. There should already be scripts for small, medium and large random patrol areas. For the most part they work great. IMHO the system on a static patrol route was flawed from the beginning. You cannot expect a designer to walk a path hitting /loc the entire time, then take that info from their client, paste it in another program, convert it and put it in a script. You do that many thousands of times and the team will get done in 10 years past this date. That needs to either be done collection wise if it can. If it cannot then the client needs a way to put that straight into the database by targeting the NPC he is trying to path.

[geordie0511]

^^good to know

[Gangrenous]

That is just my opinion.

[Jabantiz]

1) If we don't do it like live now then the odds are we will never come back and do it correctly. Yes this is time consuming and our biggest hurdle currently. I am making a tool to use parse chat logs from live and allow us to generate the scripts, I hope it will help but still waiting for feedback from the two I sent the tool to test with.

2) As already said there are some scripts in the generic folder for random movement, several in fact for various sizes and other features. To make a path then it will have to be done with /loc's Cynnar did make a tool to parse a chat log and pull the locations out and make a script to help. It is not possible to get the paths with the packet collector.

3) It is possible to assign loot by level range or by zone or by the race type.

[geordie0511]

I also thought about coding a tool that makes it easier and faster.

I've already coded a tool that cleans your automatically generated spawn scripts but if you have something difeerent (better) in the works I'll wait.

[tyrbo]

Newer fancier log parser?
The other one wasn't too shabby.