Brainstorming: Partial DB Standard

[Rhodan]

I think reserving IDs is the only sensible thing to do. Years ago I ran a UO emulator and thats exactly what they did. The standard world had reserved ID ranges - if you used those for custom things they would be overwritten during an update.

Some people even went so far as to agree between themselves which ranges individuals would use - this let certain people work on specific aspects of a world and combine their efforts when wanted.

ANd this is a timely discussion. I was just wanting to make a custom item and was coming here to ask if there were any kind of designated ID ranges

[Damilis]

Originally Posted by Rhodan

Some people even went so far as to agree between themselves which ranges individuals would use - this let certain people work on specific aspects of a world and combine their efforts when wanted.

I had several add-on thoughts that I didn't post, one of which being a system to allocate the non-reserved (aka 300k+) ID's for a person in 1k, 5k or 10k blocks. That way even the 'registered' db mods won't overlap.... but that would require a little more of the Devs copious amounts of free time so I opted out on posting it initally.

[John Adams]

Pretty sure there is already a generally accepted standard for NPC Ids, and Item IDs. 13th Floor items I believe use the same itemID you find in the live game - or it's an amazing coincidence that all my magelo gear IDs match items in EQEmu's Items table. And NPCs standard numbering is zoneID * 1000, with the first NPC ID for zone 123 being 123000. etc. Fairly sure people have tried to keep mob-specific IDs to this scheme too, though some mobs (like a rat) can spawn anywhere.

Bottom line is, your first statement was accurate indeed - open source, anyone can and will do what they want. But those who feed BACK to the official PEQ project need to follow their guidelines, or it won't become part of an official release. And very few offer their changes because many tweak for customization anyway, and again, the core project is "Live-like"...

Guess I am saying, I think we're fairly standard already. but always a good idea to remind the new folk.

[Damilis]

So CaveDudes and Angelox's DBs are based on PEQ?

[GeorgeS]

Originally Posted by Damilis

So CaveDudes and Angelox's DBs are based on PEQ?

That's correct

[Damilis]

Well thats certainly good news to hear. Is this 'standard' documented anywhere, or perhaps, rules for contributing to PEQ?

[bushman77]

you can always go checkout <link>http://www.projecteq.net/</link> as they are the ones working on this database.

[cavedude]

Originally Posted by GeorgeS

That's correct

No it isn't, not starting anything here but my database is my own. I started it from scratch.

As for a standard, that is something DRP is working on. I have already begun stripping my database apart and re-organizing all IDs to fit a standard. Duplicate mobs, loot, and faction entries will all be removed as well. The problem is there are essentionally 3 different databases out there (and yes, they are all quite different and have their own strengths/weaknesses) so the other two databases would need to go through the same perging mine is to fit a standard. Any database built from EQBuilder follow the zonenumberid*1000 standard but as Sesmar and I were discussing on our forum, after the zone is initially built, new entries either get tacked on to the end of the db, or somewhere in the middle causing a mess. Our db editing tools will need to be updated to follow the standard. Again, with 3 different databases and multiple people making cool editors how will that work? While I'll continue work on my own database, I am all for a standard and I'll work with whomever I need to to create and follow one.

[Damilis]

Well, my issue is with linking NPCs with zones is that many NPCs can exists in many different zones... so what then? I am thinking that simply blocking off the first two or three hundred thousand NPCID's and just having the NPCs there, in no particular order. If you attempt to order in any way, then you introduce ambiguity to your standardizing system. Just make it so that all non-custom NPCs are ID <300,000 and standardized from db variant to db variant.