Old Mob Workings

[jenco420]

Pretty cool thread going on about how old spawns worked in EQ. With dev answers from Prathun! Figured you DB nuts would be interested.

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/po...opic_id=143508

[WillowyLady]

Thanks, that a pretty interesting read!

[cavedude]

ENCOUNTER_DESCRIPTION SROHusamAncientNightfall
MONSTER_1_NAME a_desert_madman
MONSTER_1_NIGHT_NAME an_ancient_cyclops
MONSTER_1_PERCENT 10
MONSTER_2_NAME a_sand_giant
MONSTER_2_NIGHT_NAME a_mummy
MONSTER_2_PERCENT 20
MONSTER_3_NAME a_sand_giant
MONSTER_3_PERCENT 10
MONSTER_4_NAME a_dervish_cutthroat
MONSTER_4_PERCENT 30
MONSTER_5_NAME a_desert_madman
MONSTER_5_PERCENT 30

Pretty much exactly what we are doing Though, the thing that interests me is the night spawns are built right into the spawn table. I wonder if we could do away with the spawn_conditions system for that purpose and do something similar.

Something like, each NPC in the spawngroup can be paired with a night time NPC. When that group is spawned, the server checks the time, and if the NPC is paired, spawns the appropriate NPC. Obviously non-paired NPCs would spawn all the time. Of course, this system would require NPCs to despawn and spawn by themselves without being killed, and as much as I would love that functionality, I would assume it would drain system resources like crazy.

[nilbog]

Dude.. thanks. I've wondered about those for a decade.

[janusd]

Reading that thread explains so freaking much about how the game works... and then there's the section about how Vaniki was originally coded... think we might be able to add some functionality to our mobs and the way that they function so we can specify a spawnrotation similar to that mob? Mob's up for a time, depops, and that time later repops. Could create some rather interesting encounters on the custom servers and would likely come in handy on PEQ as well.

[janusd]

And that gets me thinking further... those spawns that were 7 days +/- 2 days... what if it worked just slightly differently... what if it was a base 5 days plus a random 4 days... seeing how they coded now... makes me wonder.

Mob's base spawn timer 462000
+ random 345900
equals what looks like 7 days +/- 2 days...

And seems when Derision was getting Tasks working, he came up with a system for our DB that's almost identical to SoE's!

The single most rewarding thing from that thread, though, is know that even current devs and people working there have no clue what's going on with some of the older and more broken content. Gives me faith that we're not idiots and just couldn't figure it out. Helps me realize that humans did code this game and they did screw up.

But truthfully, for proof of that, all I have to do is look to his post about "bugs" that are spinning pieces of the landscape.