Visual/Proximity bugs

[John Adams]

Bear with me, I have a few things to whine about. I think Scatman and I finally figured out some stuff about why spawns appear to be "warping".
Scenario:
At the far end of Sunset Meadow, Sapswill Invaders spawn. Their purpose in life is to waddle up to Defender's Bristlebrow and Kuglup and be slaughtered for the honor of the Queen. Previously, and with all other spawn proximity testing, spawns appearing in your client has turned into a non-issue. For the most part, it works great.
Now we have movement. I have actually had NPCs moving on TessEQ2 for some time (Patrollers and Paula Marx), but they do not DIE. Normally.
Here's what the Invaders do. They spawn at their respective x,y,z. They wander via 1 LUA script to the same x,y,z between the two guards using the LUA command: MovementLoopAddLocation(NPC, 75, -4, 171, 3, 10). The Invaders are set to a 15 second respawn time for testing. So they spawn, they wander up, they get killed, 15s later, they do it all again.
This all works perfectly as far as the server is concerned. Where the Client is concerned is the problem - and this will be a huge problem for simple game play if spawns are in your face but you cannot see them.
If you stand at Defender Bristlebrow and /repop the zone, you will never see a spawn coming. All of a sudden though, the guards lunge forward and attack "something", usually then, the spawn that was wandering up appears. You can slowly move towards the spawn point until you get to around the first dead soldier on the right (between two trees). NOW, you can see the spawn point of the Invaders, and they do walk by you visually - otherwise, they "warp" (which is actually not what they are doing it appears).
If you time it just right, you can move towards the spawn point and actually catch an approaching Invader spawned, standing still, but not moving. Yet, to the server, it is still moving - just not on your screen.
I hope this is enough information to lead you to a solution, since this is kinda a new problem. It can be witnessed on TessEQ2 anytime, as I am leaving the spawns set to death-plunge into the guards indefinitely.
If you need anything else from me, let me know.

[Scatman]

I read a lot of the actual EverquestII lead devs blogs everyday because I love the programming part of EverqustII (and anything). I remember one dev talking about how objects will NOT spawn for the client unless they are in proximity (or to where their rendering distance is set).
What I thought was happening (this is a shoot in the dark but oh well) is, say your rendering distance is set to 500 meters. If you are standing at 501 meters away from where the goblins are supposed to spawn, you won't, and shouldn't see it, spawn because your rendering distance is set to 500 meters. But when the goblins moves close you should begin to see updates for the appearance. I *Believe* (probably wrong) that npcs won't render while moving unless you see them spawn at their initial spawn point.
I tested this by moving my rendering distance up to the max until I was able to see the goblins spawn and and only then was I able to watch the goblins walk all the way to the guards to be slayed instead of them warping there.

[LethalEncounter]

Bear with me, I have a few things to whine about. I think Scatman and I finally figured out some stuff about why spawns appear to be "warping".
Scenario:
At the far end of Sunset Meadow, Sapswill Invaders spawn. Their purpose in life is to waddle up to Defender's Bristlebrow and Kuglup and be slaughtered for the honor of the Queen. Previously, and with all other spawn proximity testing, spawns appearing in your client has turned into a non-issue. For the most part, it works great.
Now we have movement. I have actually had NPCs moving on TessEQ2 for some time (Patrollers and Paula Marx), but they do not DIE. Normally.
Here's what the Invaders do. They spawn at their respective x,y,z. They wander via 1 LUA script to the same x,y,z between the two guards using the LUA command: MovementLoopAddLocation(NPC, 75, -4, 171, 3, 10). The Invaders are set to a 15 second respawn time for testing. So they spawn, they wander up, they get killed, 15s later, they do it all again.
This all works perfectly as far as the server is concerned. Where the Client is concerned is the problem - and this will be a huge problem for simple game play if spawns are in your face but you cannot see them.
If you stand at Defender Bristlebrow and /repop the zone, you will never see a spawn coming. All of a sudden though, the guards lunge forward and attack "something", usually then, the spawn that was wandering up appears. You can slowly move towards the spawn point until you get to around the first dead soldier on the right (between two trees). NOW, you can see the spawn point of the Invaders, and they do walk by you visually - otherwise, they "warp" (which is actually not what they are doing it appears).
If you time it just right, you can move towards the spawn point and actually catch an approaching Invader spawned, standing still, but not moving. Yet, to the server, it is still moving - just not on your screen.
I hope this is enough information to lead you to a solution, since this is kinda a new problem. It can be witnessed on TessEQ2 anytime, as I am leaving the spawns set to death-plunge into the guards indefinitely.
If you need anything else from me, let me know.

Yah I know about this and it has been fixed. I am just trying to iron out a different issue with the updates atm.

[John Adams]

Ok, I'll stop trying to make sense then and wait.

[LethalEncounter]

OK, I am about to upload a new version that fixes several of the problems you mentioned. I'm not entirely satisfied with it, but it will work for now.

[John Adams]

Contrary to my non-stop bitching, I am not in a hurry for most fixes - so if you need to spend more time with it, please do.
Is there anything we should be aware of that you might not like in the code so we (I) do not complain about it if you already know?

[LethalEncounter]

Nah, the attacking should work great. NPCs just have a tendency to warp a few feet if they are moving when you attack them. Most of the time it wont cause a problem, but ideally I would like to get that fixed eventually. Right now the aggro distance is defined as 20 in zoneserver.h and can be changed if needed. I would like to changed it to use a database field so that you could fine tune the aggro radius, but I'll do that in a few days.

[John Adams]

Right now the aggro distance is defined as 20 in zoneserver.h and can be changed if needed. I would like to changed it to use a database field so that you could fine tune the aggro radius, but I'll do that in a few days.

You must have read my mind.

[LethalEncounter]

Oh, I forgot to change the proximity radius back to it's normal value (I always forget) so be sure to grab it again if you just grabbed the latest.

[LethalEncounter]

One other thing. To save on processing time, only the NPCs that move are checked for aggro. This means that even if something hates another spawn and they are right next to each other, until the spawn moves via the spawnscript movement commands it is not attacked.

[John Adams]

I am standing at the Defenders, watching Sapswill Invaders meet their demise (again), and (again) noticing some glitches in positioning. As the invaders walk in, sometimes you just see them pop in front of you, while the guard is 1/2 way across the zone attacking it - but he is nowhere around.
If you stand near the trees between Defender Krulup and the first Dead Soldier for a while, you can see what I mean. Still better than before, but maybe a little more tweaking is needed.
I'll be sure my Performance is set to Balanced or High Performance and measure, just in case it is genuine lag.
btw, I put some aggro text in their scripts so you can clearly see where the hell they are. It's actually kinda funny.

[John Adams]

As of yesterday, I was still seeing some warping of mobs, but mostly the silly defenders popping 1/2 way across the zone and having to run back to their spawn positions. Or, they take off in a random direction for some odd reason. If you have patience to stand and watch them a while, you'll catch it happening.
Just move around the meadow, attack a deer now and then, and I think you'll see it. You might also turn your entire zone respawn down to 60 seconds or less, so it's non-stop mayhem. That is a definite scenario.

[John Adams]

Here is an example of these defenders and their odd movement patterns, in case you have never witnessed it yourself.
Warp Behind
The defenders finish battle, and most of the time, warp to some point behind me and run back into frame.
Warp to path
Sometimes they also warp to a similar point out on the path and run inwards.
Running Amok
Note the defenders running all over the place, while still in combat, warping, and the NPCs seemingly chasing "ghosts" of defenders, who are no longer reacting.
Vanishing Frogloks
Last one you can see Froggie go a-hoppin back to her post around 15sec in, then vanish. Around 25s frog poofs gone. At around 40s you see me moving the cam to find her, and she just -pops- in. The stutter at 30s is me restarting my free Fraps capture But the rest is all actual.
There are other more dramatic instances I wasn't able to capture of guards or mobs taking off over the sheer cliff faces, and sprinting off in some random direction. Then their "corpse of" just appears on the ground where the game thinks they were actually killed.
Hope this helps show some anomalies that need to eventually be worked out.

[John Adams]

We still have these issues with moving spawns running around like fools. Aside from warping to or from the player, another hopefully simple one has appeared.

Seems to only really effect the big zone dooes that are just out of proximity. If the zone has no spawns at all, there are solid doors in place that are of course unclickable. But when you spawn the doors, now the in-place doors seem to vanish until you get close enough.

zonedoors.jpg

This is a fairly common occurrence on the current TessEQ2 database. If you don't see it on your server running this data, hop on mine and stroll through any of the newly spawned (and uncleansed) Freeport zones.

[alfa]

Right now the aggro distance is defined as 20 in zoneserver.h

That mean all mobs aggro at the same distance ? Because on live they don't, you need to stuck some mob for make it aggro and other aggro you from a very far distance. And I'm sure it not depend of radius only.

Example:
In Veeshan Peak, Raptor aggro you from about 10 m
In Veeshan Peak, Golem aggro you from about 1 m
And Golem are really bigger than Raptor

You have level to consider too, example:

Mob: lvl 80 / You: lvl 70 > More aggro you from 5 m
Mob: lvl 80 / You: lvl 75 > More aggro you from 4 m
Mob: lvl 80 / You: lvl 80 > More aggro you from 3 m