Hollowshade War

[Shendare]

Actually, the # at the beginning of NPC names is not like Perl # comments.

The # is actually part of the NPC name in the npc_types table, and allows script writers the ability to use multiple versions of an NPC in a zone that display the same name to players in the client, but have slightly different internal names to differentiate their Perl script files. The EQ client strips out any leading or trailing # or _ characters from an NPC's name while displaying them.

There might be three different versions of an NPC named 'Boss Guy' in a particular zone, changing out as part of a scripted raid event.

Each version would have its own npc_types entry in the database, and would have its own Perl file to handle the scripted event for that version.

So in the npc_types table there might be entries for "Boss_Guy", "#Boss_Guy", and "##Boss_Guy", and there would then be three associated .pl files in the zone's quests directory... Boss_Guy.pl, #Boss_Guy.pl, and ##Boss_Guy.pl.

Got your head around it? Or did I totally confuse you. Heh heh.