Dynamic Adventure Camps

[CrabClaw]

I am posting this here so that people may comment and we'll have a place to discuss it.
'Dynamic Adventure Camps' (DAC)
This is the fun way they organized a lot of the overland spawns. It was a bit of a fun slot-machine type minigame and it made some of the grinding not so grindy to boot. (I used to camp them for fun waaay too much I had their shtick down to a near science).
-The camp is denoted by a ground spawn object like a tent (for Gnolls and humanoids), a catapult (for the orcs), a flag spike (for Undead), or a nest (for snakes and rats type critters).
-The DAC ground spawn would have typically 5 (or 3-6 based on the rabbleness of the monster) groups of creatures spawned around it in a radius on fixed preset nodes. So the points might be(with a little pseudo-code to help explain how we *might* set it up):

• Main DAC(state, heroicspawnID, namedspawnID, x,y,z)
  node_1(monstercount, monster ID, x,y,z)
  node_2(monstercount, monster ID, x,y,z)
  node_3(monstercount, monster ID, x,y,z)
  node_4(monstercount, monster ID, x,y,z)
  node_5(monstercount, monster ID, x,y,z)

-Once you wiped the node out the next set of creatures would spawn. If you only killed a couple of the spawns they would re-pop. So, you had to clear the wave for the main DAC node to advance the DAC state to the next state. (If you didn't clear them fast enough, they would re-pop while you were fighting, so you had to work fast to advance to the next set.)
- The DAC's had 4 states:

• Normal
  Normal
  Normal
  ...then the DAC object would de-pop....
  ...*drum roll*....
  a 25% chance of a ^^x2 creatures Heroic Spawn
  a 25% chance of ^x3 creatures Heroic Spawn
  a 25% chance of a ^^^ Named (@ +2 levels)
  or a 25% of nothing

-The spawn order might go like this for a typical Gnoll or humanoid camp:

• 5 spawns of a x5 Heroic Gnolls group each
  5 spawns of a x5 Heroic Gnolls group each
  5 spawns of a x5 Heroic Gnolls group each
  ... (Then the DAC spawn object goes bye bye, and you wait)....
  A single spawn of a ^^x2 Heroic Gnolls Group @ +1 level
  A single spawn of a ^x3 Heroic Gnolls Group @ +1 level
  1 ^^^ Named @ +2 levels
  ..or nothing...

- The variations of the base state 1 thru 3 normal groups were like this:

• 5x monsters
  2x ^ monsters
  A ^ caster with two normal adds
  A caster with four normal adds
  3 casters with three weaker (single down arrow) pets

- The variations of the heroic state 4 final groups were like this:

• 2x ^^ monsters
  3x ^ monsters
  1x ^^ caster with three normal adds
  1 ^^^ Named

- Note, all the monsters had their normal loot tables, so it was sweet to get both a named and a chest.
- The states were persistent if someone cleared it to the pre-final or final state it would stay till a server or zone reset.
-The reward for totally clearing the camp would one of three outcomes. You could pry go to town with custom stuff on this list. I think the buffs had like a 15 minute duration and were scaled to the zone level.

• A chest of any type
  An Urn with +mana regen buff
  An Chalice with a +health regen buff
  A Discount Merchant
  ...Nothing....

-The re-pop rate was ~5 minutes, The next wave of the re-pop was ~5 minutes, and the chest spawned ~5 minutes after the camp was cleared (yes, an annoying final wait, but sometimes worth it). It was pretty 'on the clock' with little variation.
I always though it was funny for the people who were in a hurry when they left a cleared out camp. We would usually take a seat for a bit and wait for the treasure or named to pop. Sure enough...the spoils..or a call for a Rez... was mine.
All the data is from when I last played soooo...Feel free to comment, discuss, or share your own experiences as well.

[alfa]

Great idea, things likes are on offi, like when you kill all mob for free a merchant and after he accept to talk to you

[CrabClaw]

Yes! The free merchant was one too. I updated my post to reflect this.

[palaxe]

Ok this is really cool! I'm glad your sharing this.
Heres a Question for ya,
So to custom our own servers could we add in like scripts to the server with differnt types of DAC? or is this more into the core?

[CrabClaw]

This is an outline of the system on live, implementation is another thing. If we had Lua scripting for zone spawns and events (kind of like on_zone_load_runscripts or maybe just an *.ini type script that sets up the zone), you could have fun tweaking this and embed your own custom events. Hard coded, you would have to set it all up as presets in the C code with the spawns stored in the database.

[palaxe]

Thanks,
That makes sence. I wouldn't mind seeing Lua scripting for zone spawns and events as you mentioned.
We could get into script sharing. In runuo there were coders that would love to make whole systems and share them... and that lead to others adding onto there idea's and pretty soon you had things that uo didn't even have in there live game.
This will be interesting how this will all turn out!

[CrabClaw]

Yes! Definitely, everything I do for this project will be shared for sure. I suppose you could have a scripted-like setup to have a zone that gets more dangerous as you hunt in it, or have the spawns and patrols get progressively more tougher even to global zone-events happening.
So I am hoping if we plan ahead carefully for the future, you could have a much better-than-live type experience, or at least a lot more flexible platform for our creativity. This is all good for discussion and planing.
But we'll get there sooner if we can get a nice amount of good volunteers, hard work and sharing. Good things come to those have patience and dedication. I am hoping to contribute whatever I can, because the end result is the most important.
I just got my Eclipse compiler working with Lua and am getting used to it (I use the LuaEclipse plug in). I did a lot of Perl, Ruby, and Java before so it's not going to be too hard (plus I need to learn it anyways). The thing for the Emu will be to decide what parts of the code needs to be open to Lua and go from there.
Right now it's very early in the game and we have a lot of work to do. If done well, and we all pitch in though, there will be many good times ahead.