Drakkin Features

[trevius]

Still trying to figure out exactly how I want to start implementing these. Maybe I will try to use the extended profile after-all, just to get away from using the player profile blob. Maybe some day we can do an overhaul on the PP storage or replace it with something better and easier to manage.

Seems like it is going to be quite a pain to get these new fields added. Going to need to update the npc_types table with the new fields, and update the extended profile with the new fields. Then, going to have to update all of the related structures and encodes/decodes where appropriate. I think that will include the char select, char create, spawn, player profile and facechange structures at the very least. The hardest part is probably going to be making sure that the way these structures get that data are all setup properly. I haven't added new fields like this before, so this should definitely be a learning experience. Hoping not to mess anything up in the process, but I will try to test as much as I can to be sure before updating the SVN with anything.

Before doing anything with the new features, I need to make sure that Titanium facial features are all working properly without the previous hacks. I already removed the hacks and SoF is working perfectly as far as I can tell, but now I need to get Titanium working 100%. Once that is all done, I will try to get started with adding the new drakkin features. It's gonna be cool to have this stuff finalized

[realityincarnate]

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it looks like at least some of the Titanium features are wrong now. I haven't looked into it in depth, but one of my test characters is now bald (no idea what he used to look like, I hadn't looked at him for a while, but I know he had hair), and Arias in gloomingdeep has a beard and combination ponytail/baldness. I know he's never looked right, but he never looked like this either. Those are the only two issues I've seen so far, but I haven't looked much either.

[trevius]

Yeah, I am aware that Titanium isn't working perfectly yet. I think it is a structure issue with the spawn struct and maybe the player profile as well. SoF seems to be working perfectly from the limited testing I did so far. The only reason I updated the SVN with this change before it was complete is because there is quite a bit of updating that had to be done to clean some stuff up. The actual change that is affecting Titanium would be easy to back out of if needed, but I am pretty sure I can get it working perfectly and properly as well.

Also, even after the changes go in to correct how this stuff works, people will almost certainly have to do a facechange in game to get their character looking the way that it used to again. I am sure that would be the case if it is actually a structure issue. Though, if it is some other non-structure related issue, then they may not need to. I think as long as NPCs look correct after the change, then the change should be a good fix. I know most NPC settings were pulled directly from EQLive, so for those, they should mimic live appearance exactly. If they don't, then we have something wrong with a structure (which is my best guess to the problem atm).

I think one of the things that might make this change more complex is that it is hard to know which NPCs in the database are exact copies from Live and which were added manually by EQEmu people. Also, the hack that was previously in place may cause some unwanted effects after this code is corrected. Basically, with players, any features that were set to 0 were being converted to 99 and saved and then when they were loaded again, it converted them back from 99 to 0 again. So, since after my change, it no longer converts 99 back to 0 (or the other way around either), anyone who had a feature that should have been set to 0 would now load 99 instead, which is always bald or broken features. This may be the same case for NPCs as well, because it seems like those were all being converted to 255 (0xFF) and saved and then converted from 255 back to 0 when loading them again. There may be a simple solution for NPCs to correct this though. We could probably just run a simple query for each of the feature fields in the npc_types table and convert anything that is set to 255 down to being set to 0 as it should. I haven't really looked too closely at the table to see what is going on with that yet, but I will.

I am pretty confident that we should be able to get this working 100% perfectly for any client without having to use the previous hacks. The only thing that we may need to do special is that we might need to put certain conditions for some of the player races so that they automatically block certain fields from being set. I haven't fully tested that just yet, but I will try to tonight if I have time.

***EDIT***
After looking over my own DB (1.5 year old PEQ included), it seems like most of the feature fields look normal and none of them are set to 255 with the exception of the face field. For some reason, it seems that about have of them have face set to 255. It is possible that this is due to an issue with the code that was previously doing those conversions, but I am not quite sure.

[Shendare]

I can confirm that player characters in both SoF and Titanium are showing bald (and probably incorrect beards, colors, etc.) since the in-game fix to SoF. This appears to be because of the old code that used to change zero values for appearance fields into 99. The characters still have 99 recorded in the fields in the database.

Uncommenting this block of code in worlddb.cpp fixes the problem:

worlddb.cpp - Line 90

  //*
  if (pp->face == 99)       {cs->face[char_num] = 0;}
  if (pp->eyecolor1 == 99)  {cs->eyecolor1[char_num] = 0;}
  if (pp->eyecolor2 == 99)  {cs->eyecolor2[char_num] = 0;}
  if (pp->hairstyle == 99)  {cs->hairstyle[char_num] = 0;}
  if (pp->haircolor == 99)  {cs->haircolor[char_num] = 0;}
  if (pp->beard == 99)      {cs->beard[char_num] = 0;}
  if (pp->beardcolor == 99) {cs->beardcolor[char_num] = 0;}
  //*/

That will reverse the old 0 -> 99 code. Note that cs->hair[char_num] in the fourth line must be fixed to cs->hairstyle[char_num] for it to compile.

Alternatively, logging the bald character in and using the Face change feature to reset the affected appearance fields permanently fixes the problem.

I couldn't get beard colors to work in Titanium, but beard styles were fine. It's probably a matter of figuring out the correct field location for Titanium beard color in Spawn_Struct and CharSelect.

Also, I didn't see a problem with Arias in Gloomingdeep with Titanium. On my screen, he's a normal brown-haired male human with a moustache, wearing leather armor. He looks the same to me with the SoF client.

[Shendare]

EDIT: After further testing, I have confirmed that beard and beardcolor are reversed in the Titanium Spawn_Struct.

Also, face-based beards (High Elves, Dark Elves, and Half Elves) are not changing color no matter which field you change. I believe this is a limitation with the Titanium client, because even while inside the Face changing window, the beard color won't change, and that doesn't involve the server at all, it's 100% client.

[trevius]

Nice find, Shendare! That is exactly what I was suspecting was the issue!

I still have to look into the face-based stuff you are talking about. I am sure we could put in a little piece of code to fix that stuff if it is possible. Can someone else confirm if beard color can be changed with a Titanium client for elves (in any revision of server code)?

[trevius]

Ok, I got the new Titanium fixes for beard in on the SVN now. Seems like features are finally working as they should without any hacks. Players will need to adjust their features if they were using features that should have previously been set to 0. This isn't a big deal at all IMO. Takes about 2 seconds to fix.

Guess I will start messing around to see if I can get the new Drakkin Features added. Since they have to be added for both players and NPCs, I guess I will try to do NPCs first and see how that goes, then worry about players next.