Knowing nothing about tasks, here's some quick thoughts after a cursory look. ;)

1. Why have activity types? Why not push complexity out to scripts?

2. Are tasks accessed so frequently that they need to be in memory? Why not just query the database? Especially if number of tasks increases, this will leave resources to the server (e.g., for disk caching). In any case, please don't put it into shared memory as suggested -- there's too much there as it is.

3. Could the step info be removed and replaced by prerequisites? A single lookup table should suffice:

Most tasks will only have one entry in this table (e.g., task 3 requires task 2), but also allows for requiring disparate tasks to be completed before beginning another.

4. Why not create a one-to-many relation for task rewards? Either an aggregate reward table as follows or a reward table for each type (e.g., task_exp_rewards, task_coin_rewards). This can allow for

On a semi-unrelated note, I've seen very little eqemu code that uses JOINs when it comes to SQL, and I don't know that I've ever seen any foreign keys. Is this a MyISAM effect? :D

Holy cow Derision! Tonight was the first time I got to really check out the new system and try actually creating a task. It is very complex, but also very versatile! I can't believe you did all of the work on this alone lol. Even the wiki pages by themselves must have taken forever! I think this system has alot of potential and I will definitely try to push the limits with making some interesting tasks on my server :D

Huge thanks for putting this whole thing together. I still can't believe how much work this must have been lol. Jeez! You do some amazing work, but damn man, nice job!

Makes me glad the new SVN is setup so I can finally test all of this without having to mess with code updates.

Wrote my first task today... wow that can get involved!

I have a couple ideas/requests/observations:
1. Under the rewards, if there is a cash reward can you display the amount or at least have it say Cash?
2. The reward text does not show on the task screen unless it is an item.
3. Under description, can you set up a description for the initial task window? For example: [0, This is my general description.][1, This is my description for step 1][2,3, This is my description for shared steps 2 and 3.]. Currently it is blank if step 1 and 2 are shared but if there is only 1 step, the main task window shows the entire text from the first step.
4. In activities, even though activitytype is over-ridden if text3 is populated, setting it to 0 will produce erroneous results in the task window. Currently you have default set to 0.
5. You have done an OUTSTANDING job on this!

I think that's it for now. Learning a lot and noticing that we now have many more possibilities with this system. Thanks!

CRAP, please move this to the discussion thread!!!

I have a question on task system.

When goal is set to loot say 50 Wolf Pelts.
When players loots the pelts- where do they go? To players inventory?
Cuase if system grants you credit when you loot the petl, once you looted it, you can turn around and sell it, but you allready got the credit for looting it.

OR does the system automaticly destroyes all goal looted items after giving player the credit to prevent cheating?

Most of the time, but not all, the things you are required to loot either have to be turned in to the quest giver, or they are no drop. Depends on the task. It's sort of up to the task creator.

I just wanted to stop in and mention that this task system is hot like fire. Excellent work.

well how do you turn in 50 quest items to an npc AT ONCE? =)
Or can task system handles this 1 item at a time? and count the turn ins?

The task system counts the turn ins, so you can turn in 25 one day, and then 25 the next day to complete the activity, or whatever, until you have turned in a total of 50.

Yeah, it really needs a GUI to assist in writing the tasks.

The activitytype is not overridden if text3 is populated (i.e. the task system will still handle it if the activity is not under Perl quest control), it is just not displayed as 'Deliver To', 'Kill', etc. You're right though, the default activitytype of 0 is invalid. I've just comitted a change to the SVN to send activities that have an activitytype of 0 as a type 9 to the client, which should fix that problem. I'll look into the other issues you raised.

There is a flag in the packet struct which makes the client display 'You gain experience!' if it is set. I am not aware of a flag that will make it display details of a cash reward, however:

In Rev24, I fixed it so the Reward text field will be displayed even if RewardID==0, so if you want a task to have a cash-only reward, set RewardID to 0 and put the details of the cash reward in the Reward field. If you want to give an item and cash and want the player to know they will get both, then the only way currently is to put the ItemID in the RewardID field, and then put eg. 'Item x and 20 plat' in the Reward text field.

LOL, I would love to see what GeorgeS could do as a tool for this. But it sounds like a tool would be as hard to make as the system itself was. :P

Next suggestion:

Alter the task table to have minlevel and maxlevel fields
Create a bool function for CheckTaskLevel()
Create perl quest function quest::istaskappropriate(taskid)

With those, we could let the system do the level checks for us. Not really a big deal, but just might be handy.

Display messages
 

Odd text display. Here is what I am talking about. Please look at this task with your previous and new revisions. You'll notice the text gets cut short also.

SQL Code:
butcher\Gibi_Bilgum.pl:
poknowledge\#Tarerd_Gahar.pl:

The way it works is that the entire description is sent to the client and it is the client which decides which portion to display based on which activity you are on. Are you saying it is not working like live ?

I think it maybe be possible to have an extra field in the task table for a description which is only displayed in the task selector window. If this new field was null, then it could just behave as at present.

This would be simple to do. Could let them default to 0 meaning no level restriction. Anyone else have any input on this feature (and the extra field for a description specific to the task selector window) ?

I just ran through this task and can't see what you are referring to. Which text gets cut short ?

Old method (before you stated rev24 was made):
http://i409.photobucket.com/albums/p...q/EQ000011.jpghttp://i409.photobucket.com/albums/p...q/EQ000012.jpg
http://i409.photobucket.com/albums/p...q/EQ000013.jpghttp://i409.photobucket.com/albums/p...q/EQ000014.jpg

As you can see, the reward "Money and Experience" does not show up under rewards or on the main task screen. The entire 1st step is shown instead.

New code (using cavedude's PEQ after you said rev24 was made):
http://i409.photobucket.com/albums/p...q/EQ000007.jpghttp://i409.photobucket.com/albums/p...q/EQ000008.jpg
http://i409.photobucket.com/albums/p...q/EQ000009.jpghttp://i409.photobucket.com/albums/p...q/EQ000010.jpg

The entire first step is shown again, however it is truncated. The following steps have no text any more. Money and Experience now shows up as a reward but not on the main task window.

Putting the non-display of the reward on the task selection window aside for now, I don't see the other problems you are seeing:

http://www.rama.demon.co.uk/abs-task1.jpg

http://www.rama.demon.co.uk/abs-task2.jpg

http://www.rama.demon.co.uk/abs-task3.jpg

I think I am running Rev29, but I have made no changes to the task code since Rev24. This is on Linux. I'll try a Windows build on the off chance there is some incompatibilty that has crept in. Guess I should also test with your task as the only active one, as that is a difference between your test and mine.

Adding the level check would be a big help as there were some Live quests that had level requirements before the quest giver would hand out those quests. You can see in the quest list for PoK in Alla http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/q....html?zone=158 that soem quests have a level minimum before the giver would hand it out. Or like this quest http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/q...tml?quest=3157 I remember from Live. I know when I was piddling around years ago after they added these armor quests, I started a noob and ran through Gloomingdeep. Once I left, I went to the armor guys. They only give quests in order, but I had to level to the appropriate level before later quests would be given.

What client are you using? By the look of it, it is the 6.2 client, however the order of the fields in the Quest Journal (Objective/Status/Zone) is different to how my 6.2 client displays it (Zone/Objective/Status).

Yes, I see that... I am using Titanium.

But that isn't the Titanium UI. Is it a custom one, or did you copy the 6.2 UI into your Titanium directory ?

Edit: I did a /loadskin default_old and still can't reproduce this :(

I installed Titanium and did loadskin default old. Other than that I haven't changed it...

This is on TGC ? I don't have a character high enough level to get the task there, unless Cavedude wants to level up character Derisiondwarf, account Derision to level 12 so I can go and test it on there :) . Assuming it's not a client issue, I can put some additional debug commands in to try and isolate the cause.

Cavedude put it to me that the 'Stepped' column in the Tasks table is redundant. The reason it is there is to allow a sequential task to be created (where one activity must be completed before the next is unlocked) without the need to fill in the step field in the activity table.

I am proposing a change to do away with the 'Stepped' column:

Required SQL:

The way this will work is if the step column for each activity is zero, then the task will be sequential (one activity must be completed before the next is unlocked), i.e. it will behave as if the stepped column in the task table was set to 0.

If there is a non-zero step number for any activity belonging to this task, then it will behave as if the stepped column was set to 1 (i.e. multiple activities can be being worked on at once).

I've tested this, just didn't want to commit it without posting about it first.

I say commit it, the task system is your baby, nobody knows it better than you!

I have tried this on TGC now (thanks Cavedude) and am seeing the same thing Joligario is seeing with truncated text, so it is definitely not client related. I'll do some more investigation.

I've committed this, along with a couple of changes to help try to diagnose the problem reported by Joligario (I changed #task show to output the Task Description, and also lowererd the required status to use the #task command (down to 150 from 250), since I currently couldn't use it on TGC :) )

I've just committed this. There are new minlevel and maxlevel columns in the task table. If either is zero, it is ignored, so you can have no level restriction, only a minimum level, or only a maximum level, or both.

The level restrictions are enforced in the TaskSelector (a Task won't be sent if it doesn't meet the restrictions).

To augment this, I have slightly altered the way Task Sets work. Previously you had to enable/disable tasks in a set on a per player basis.

Now, if you put a TaskID of zero in a Task Set (which is an invalid TaskID), all the tasks in that set will automatically be available for a player, subject to a level restrictions.

This means you can create a task set for an NPC with a bunch of tasks with different level ranges and just call quest::tasksetselector(set number), and let the task system decide which tasks to offer the client based on the level restrictions.

I have also added quest::istaskappropriate(taskid) if you want to have an NPC tailor what it says to a player based on that.

Table Alter?
 

Just checking what new table is going to look like. Am I correct in assuming the following alter?

I made them unsigned TINYINT on the assumption that level will never go past 255.

Required SQL:
ALTER TABLE `tasks` ADD `minlevel` TINYINT UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
ADD `maxlevel` TINYINT UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT '0';

I should have also mentioned that the Task Selector now checks to see if the player has any of the tasks it is being asked to offer already active and won't display them. If none of the tasks the Selector is asked to offer meet the required level range, or the client already has all those that do as active tasks, then the Selector window won't display.

This means that you don't need to check for tasks the client already has in your Perl quest, unless you want the NPC to say something in those circumstances.

question: does reward has to be a specific item/items OR can system be set up to choose and give a random item from a list?

also: can system handle an ongoing bounty? Like Gnoll Fang quest - which tecnicly NEVEr ends - you keep bringing in gnol fangs- you keep geting reward- there is no set/max number of fang to bring

I imagine you could set that part up with a hash in a quest for when the task is completed. I wouldn't mind if there was a way to set rewards based on class, but I am pretty sure that can all be done with quests as well. I am going to make one really soon and will report if there are any issues. But, the system is already pretty complicated as it is lol. No reason to complicate it any further if the rest can be done with quests.

well I am not complaning- I am simply poundering if it worth the effort for me to move from standart perl quests to tasks =)

At the end the only thing you are getting are:
-progress tracking window
-ability to track mobs killed count
-ability to automaticly turn in LARGE number of quest items over any give time frame (otherwise you can only give NPC 4 items at a time OT set up a global variable to count your turn ins)

prety much everything else I am allready doing with standart quests.

Yeah the friendly user interface is nice, specialy for players - but CODING IT into DB going to be a pain for ME =)

It'll prolly be considerably faster to make a task than a quest after people develop decent tools to help it along. It's a little imposing when you have to do all the SQL yourself I noticed. I started to work on a tool incidentally, but who knows if I'll ever get around to finishing it.

Ya, I do think a tool would make a HUGE difference. But I also think that practice would make tasks go quicker as well. I know I didn't write quests as quickly and easily when I first started as I do now.

And yes, everything that can be done with the task system can be done with quests. But, having the option for variety is great! And being able to easily track progress of multi-stepped quests is awesome! I already made a task for my starter zone for new players. For people not used to the EQ Quest system, I think tasks could help them get used to it quicker.

Does the task system currently allow you to choose between multiple rewards? On Live, I've encountered a task that had as many as 3 choices. Each showed as their own tab in the reward window, and each tab listed a combination of these: Faction, Experience, Quest Item Reward, and plat. You then were able to pick which option suited you at the moment.

No. Do you remember the name of a task with multiple rewards ? I've not seen a way of doing that. I suppose it's possibly an enhancement that was made to the Client after Titanium, or just part of the packet structure I didn't figure out.

Hmm, good point. Didn't think about that. I just started playing EQ again a month ago, so I missed out on the initial implementation of the task system. I'm not sure if other tasks had multiple reward choices before SoF launched.

The tasks I was referring to are the 'farm tasks' in Dragonscale Hills.
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/q...tml?quest=4393
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/q...tml?quest=4394
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/q...tml?quest=4395

does anyone have a mirror for these links ?

I keep getting errors when trying to download.
Thanks

I think that one was added to LIVE after Titanium edition. The T client may not have that part coded in where special window opens up and you select the reward

Yeah, I'm guessing you're correct. I don't see the EQUI_RewardSelectionWnd.xml file in the Titanium directory, which is the window for the task system.