sorry to bumb this...
but can someone actualy explain to me HOW to make zone to be Static? =)

Thank you much =)

Lets say you wanted to make the starting cities static- and akanon was the first one you were going to add;
first you need to make a new entry in table "launcher", you could call it "Cities" and the entry would look like
next you need to go to "launcher_zones" and add aknon;
You can add all the zones you want and classify them under "Cities"

Finally, you make an entry in your start up script;
depending on how many cities you launch you should delay the script so they won't run into each other;
heres what mine looks like;
launcher_zones
launcher;
I don't use a lot of the entries in launcher yet, but have them there incase I ever want to

wow thats a lot of data...

Thank you Angelox I will sure put it into good use =)

Thanks, this was very helpful to me as well.

And me. I wanted to know, but was afraid to bump this =P Thanks for taking one for the team, Chaos!

Just wondering here....but I have never edited anything besides my entires for the zones in the DB. Just one entry in "zones" for my dynamics, and my statics in the other. Works just fine with only editing those, question is, is that maybe not recommended? Just trying to see if I have unfinished editing to do. :)

My opinion;
I used to like statics mainly because they had some concept of time, didn't like the idea of loading into a dynamic zone always at 8:00 am. This has been solved with the recent night and day scripts.

The main reason for statics is for heavy traffic servers (servers with many players), but if you just have a server for yourself or you and a few players, dynamic takes up less memory and CPU use.

Other than that the only other reason I can think of for a static is, the zone remains the same even when you die/leave and come back. Maybe you were camping a named NPC and finally got him to pop, but got yourself killed; when you came back, he'd still be there. Since most (if not all) servers have rare spawns/drops much more common than on live, this is not needed either.

I just verified that with Emu v 7 boss mobs seem to have a timer regardless of zone type.

Killed dynamic Cazic, zoned into dynamic PoK, zoned back into PoF and Cazic was still down. Looking at his spawn timer in the DB (timeleft) it gets updated during each zone, even when zoning into a non related zone.

All of my zones are dynamic at the moment.

I really appreciate this topic, I do plan to use static zones once my server is moved to it's dedicated machine. But I do have a few questions myself.

Do static zones lead to faster zone times?

To run that many zones Angelox, what are the system specs of your server?

Yes, I notice that all the mobs that I kill in a dynamic zone remain dead. However, I also notice that they remain dead if nobody enters the zone for like 5 days, then goes back and the mob is still there, including dropped loot as well. But all mobs that are alive on the dynamic zones start up fresh. I noticed this in crushbone since the oracles in the throne room are still buffing their fellow orcs and thus don't even have enough mana to heal themselves.

You mean the corpse wont rot unless the zone is live? I hadn't even considered that. That's not necessarily a bad thing tho as the spawn timer shouldn't be dependent on the corpse. And let's say for example your group happens to be in an encounter, takes down the named, but wipes on the adds. With the corpse still available there is time to run back for the loot.

I do plan on running statics before I go live with the server. I would like to run as many as possible. The server is a 2xP4 @ 3.40 GHz with 2x256 MB of DDR, Running Win2Kpro SP4.

I'll do some testing and report back with resource consumption.

Yeah, but if your group or raid wipes, then good luck getting back to the corpse in time before it rots. Because when you go back to the zone, it repops everything, and then the decay timer starts.

ok, zones and launcher db stuff... I find on my server that I can have 6 dynamics set in the database and be fine. If i go to 7 then nobody can log into my server. If I have 5 dynamics and 1 static (using launcher_zones) it works, but if I try for 5 dynamics and 2 statics, agian nobody can log in. For some reason the magic number on my server is 6.

What can I do to remedy this? I would like there to be enough dynamic zones for people to be able to zone concurrently plus have several hubs/cities running statically. My processor and memory is hardly being touched as I have plenty of bandwidth and power. Any ideas?

For my setup:

Baseline Server Up 10 Dynamics - CPU 1% MEM 340MB

Odus 8 Zones: 18 Total - CPU 2% - MEM 408MB

Faydwer 14 Zones: 32 Total - CPU 4% - MEM 512MB

Antonica 54 Zones: 86 Total - CPU 3% - MEM 912MB

The server is also running MySQL, PHP, Apache, PCAnywhere, No-IP Updater, and some other services. This was tested while remoting in with PCAnywhere.

Summary: Zone times seem to be considerably faster with statics. I need more RAM!

So I'm a littel confused. for your Antonica 54 Zones. Is that 54 static and the rest dynamic?

Also what database are you using?

Yeah starting with 10 dynamic I then booted 8 odus zones, then 14 Faydwer zones, then 54 Antonica zones.

So for Antonica it was 54 statics on top of the 22 from Odus and Faydwer plus the base 10 dynamics for a total of 86.