random loot, the easy way

[c0ncrete]

some people just like the idea of random loot. the initial snippet was to give those people something to play with. technically speaking, most servers don't actually employ randomization, they simply scramble the drops in the database. they're still static that way. the misnomer is a pet peeve of mine.

as for your concerns, i had them as well. i'm working on implementing ways to determine if the encounter was trivial and remove the extra item. i'm also looking into filtering out loot based on the required level of the item. so the npc won't get something outside of its level range.

my objective on my personal server is for there to only be a very small chance of the extra item, which scales up a tiny bit with npc difficulty (starting at level 11), so the extra item won't be something that is a common occurrence to begin with.

finally, i'm considering giving the npcs in these rare instances abnormal abilities, so as to make things more of a challenge, given the extra bounty.

the devil is in the details ...

[c0ncrete]

yow. the original won't work as posted because of the way quest::varlink() works. if you call it without a client as the initiator, the zone will crash. i was testing the functionality via EVENT_SAY, so it worked without issue.

compiling a minor source modification to see if it takes care of the crash without altering the functionality of quest::varlink() now. it'll just return an empty string if there is no client initiator, but only after it validates the itemid passed to it.

[c0ncrete]

applying the source change found here and changing

while $tested =~ /INVALID/

to

while $tested =~ /INVALID ITEM/

resolved the issue.

[jdoran]

I can see the attraction of an occasional random item (random rewards are more effective psychologically, think Pavlov did some work on this). I'd actually like to play on such a server to check it out.

If I were doing such a thing, I would create a singleton on the server that built a list of items by level. Then have it select something from a requested range through a new Perl call. (I know you weren't asking for suggestions, but I thought I'd throw that out there. It might inspire someone).

Edit: I just realized that this would be a good candidate for the shared memory region. No need to replicate the table across zones.

[c0ncrete]

no worries. suggestions are always appreciated. i've got plenty of ideas, just not enough skill to do anything other than hack them together with perl and my limited knowledge of c++.