Mercenaries

[Armm]

Update-

Everyone on server that i could talk to had healer mercs chain buffing. i personally saw them(mercs) chain buffing bulwark of vie on themselves, and after i jumped my level up they started chain casting symbols on themselves. The point being is they only seem to chain cast buffs on self. Perhaps that helps. I have disabled them from buffing for now till it gets squared away.

Tank and melee mercs sitting is fairly important early on because people use the tank merc to duo with and since most arent healers, rest regen in between fights is important to them. Its quicker in the early levels to let a merc tank plow through stuff rather than try to tank something and have a merc healing you.


To add more detail on the multisave. I am not sure what triggers it for sure yet, seems to involve suspending/unsuspending. In database there are no DUPLICATE mercs that are exactly the same name. There are just multiple mercs with different names for ONE pc.

[Secrets]

Originally Posted by Armm

To add more detail on the multisave. I am not sure what triggers it for sure yet, seems to involve suspending/unsuspending. In database there are no DUPLICATE mercs that are exactly the same name. There are just multiple mercs with different names for ONE pc.

I have fixed this bug specifically, going to add it to my pull request. Basically we added the merc to the group too many times along with not creating the group correctly, there's also some issues with suspending the mercenary artificially through group merging and manually kicking the mercenary that I resolved.

As for the AI, I will take a look at that next.

edit: AI issue seems to be maybe related to having wrong merc spells data. The buffs they cast need to be set to type buff, or 8. Should work in its current form heh.

[bad_captain]

Secrets, is there any way you could split out the merc stuff into a separate pull request? I was looking through it last night and saw a bunch of other stuff I don't feel comfortable messing with. I'd like to be able to apply just those changes to my local machine and test them with some other changes I've made. If not, I can just apply each change manually, but I'd like to try out the pull requesy stuff. Still learning git and coming up with a more efficient process.

[Secrets]

Originally Posted by bad_captain

Secrets, is there any way you could split out the merc stuff into a separate pull request? I was looking through it last night and saw a bunch of other stuff I don't feel comfortable messing with. I'd like to be able to apply just those changes to my local machine and test them with some other changes I've made. If not, I can just apply each change manually, but I'd like to try out the pull requesy stuff. Still learning git and coming up with a more efficient process.

https://github.com/SecretsOTheP/Serv...4f223ee70db104 This commit has the two fixes that aren't related to mercs. You can revert them if it makes you feel more comfortable, but the rest are required to fix a few memory leaks that Derision reported.

I'm not exactly sure but I think you can just clone my repository and test the changes that way. Basically, the things I fixed are the following:
-Made emulator structure for two packets (OP_MercenaryData and OP_MercenaryMerchantResponse) static instead of creating it dynamically twice
-Fixed a memory leak in the AI code.
-Fixed a memory leak related to groups. In their current form, groups are leaking memory because they are never assigned a group ID in the unsuspend command.
-Fixed a few issues with merging groups with mercenaries in them.
-Fixed an issue where group IDs were not being handed out and leaking memory in OP_GroupDisband and OP_GroupFollow

The two changes that were not related to mercs are:
-Fixed a crash issue in the RoF encoder
-Fixed a crash issue related to calling NPC functions after the deconstructor for NPC was called.

[Armm]

Question-

Double checking merc_spell_list_entries

What does the slot number do exactly?

[Secrets]

Originally Posted by Armm

Question-

Double checking merc_spell_list_entries

What does the slot number do exactly?

Looks unused, glancing over code.

[bad_captain]

Also, I guess we can add a check for melee mercs to sit if there's no healer and/or below a certain level.

[bad_captain]

Slot is how the spells are ordered. So, when buffing, healers will loop through their spells, starting slot 1, and going up from there. I have plans to use it to help identify single and group spells. I.E. Virtue is slot 1- I want it cast first. I would also check for a buff in slot 1 that was a group spell, and assume it was Hand of Virtue. I would then cast it if a group spell was prefered. That code isn't in yet, but the spells should be ordered by slot so the mercs will cycle through their spells. CastercDPS mercs also use it to cycle through all of their nukes once they are all in. That way, specific nukes higher in the spell list will be cast more often.

I'll check it out more tonight, secrets. It was just hard to see the merc specific changes- there seemed to be a lot of unrelated changes in the pull request. Maybe I'm just looking at it wrong.

[Armm]

Thank you for the information, that is helpful

[Secrets]

Originally Posted by bad_captain

I'll check it out more tonight, secrets. It was just hard to see the merc specific changes- there seemed to be a lot of unrelated changes in the pull request. Maybe I'm just looking at it wrong.

Some of it was something I accidentally pushed out, was using visual leak detector to find some of these leaks and eliminate them. That accounted for maybe 2-4 commits which you can ignore.

[Armm]

Update on chain casting bug..

I happened to log my 66 necro, who did not have a pet out at the time. I noticed the merc did NOT chain cast buffs... strange i thought because every other character had so far. Then i summoned a pet with no buffs... J2 healer merc level 66 starts chain casting virtue on HIMSELF not the pet. Been doing it for 10 minutes now.

Once is get rid of the pet the merc healer stops trying to buff himself.

Even more interesting is i suspended the healer merc, and summoned pet to do some tests.. after i was done with the pet i dismissed the PET, and tried to unsuspend the merc, couldnt do it, nothing happened. After i zoned the merc was out and responsive, but when i picked dismiss, it dismissed him but said " an error created your mercenary" or something very close.

So it would seem it has something to do with pets. I never noticed before because my server is very pet centric(everyone gets one)

Well i made a new char, put him at level 66, hired a j2 healer merc, who castst hand of virt, aura of temp, then chain casts bulwark of vie. There was never a pet cast or present during this process.. im lost.

[Armm]

Figured out way to create another merc for same char.

Created level 66 j2 healer merc, suspended him while hes trying to chain cast, then try and unsuspend...., nothing happens, i pick dismiss it says it was dismissed even thou it wasnt unsuspended. You get "an error created your mercenary" when you dismiss it. I then bought a new j2 tank merc in same zone, which it gave me... boom, now it shows i have both mercs in database.

[bad_captain]

Well, I've figured out the chain casting issues. And it involves pets. I like your bug reports. They usually send me to the right place to look.

I have Secret's changes merged into mine, so it might take a little while to test everything. I'll try to get it comitted tonight, however.

[bad_captain]

Buffing should be fixed.

Secret's fixes are in, so hopefully they will take care of the other issues you are having. If not, please let us know. Thanks!

[Armm]

Thank you very much for putting all that in, compiling now, will test this morning.