Npc level ranges

[Culex]

Hi there,

I suddenly had a thought today while tinkering away at making Steamfont the perfect zone it is. It first came to me while I was tweaking the Kobold camps and setting up different level spawns for the players to mess with.

The feature in mind being, the ability to set a minimum and maximum level for a given npc, more specifically a couple of new columns in the npc_types table.

min_level : for the minimum level the npc will spawn at.
max_level : for the maximum level the npc will spawn at.

I also voiced my opinion in the #eqemu channel and wind gave me some insight into the exp system and how it works in relation to npcs today.

His contribution was then two more columns to the npc_types table to decide this.

min_exp : the exp gained at the min_level
max_exp : the exp gained at the max level

Now the values for exp in between would be interpolated by some algorithm to scale smoothly from min_exp to max_exp.

My own thoughts on the same matter were that as an alternative to wind's idea one could also use the following fields:

base_exp : the base experience at the min_level.

exp_factor : a factor used in the algorithm to calculate exp per level above the min_level. This way, one could use different exp scaling for different npcs.

Any thoughts on this suggestion?


Culex

[KLS]

I like the idea of individual exp mods per npctype.. that has a lot of practical uses for content design.

Not sure on level ranges though, mobs don't just range from level x to level y.. it's more like level x to level y hitting for x to y, having x hp to y hp. Would need a lot of ranges in practice to just save some time from making multipul versons of the same mob.

[RangerDown]

If you're making multiple camps that spawn the same level range of kobolds, you should be making all those camps point to the same few npc_type records that you made for each level of kobold. If you're making new npc_type records for each camp, you're putting unnecessary database work on yourself.

While an exp mod would be useful for some custom server creators, I don't see any mechanic in the Live game where the amount of exp you get for a certain mob is any more or less than you get for another mob of the same level within the same zone.

[Culex]

KLS: Yeah, it came to me later on that there would need to be ranges on pretty much all the other stats as well. Which would be a whole lot of work to put in.

RangerDown: Hehe, don't worry about me making multitudes of npcs for each zone. I recycle as effectively as I can think of in regard to npcs. The idea was just that I could have one npc entry instead of 10 for an npc that can spawn 10 different level versions of itself. The intention was not to have same npcs of the same level giving different amounts of exp, it was to have same npcs of different levels giving scalable amounts of exp...and reducing npc_types clutter.


But like KLS pointed out, yeah there would need to be a whole lot more columns than what I originally thought for ranges on stats of all kinds to scale along with the level and exp.


Unless of course, one has categories of stats each referring to a certain defined factor for that category...


Culex

[bushman77]

i've looked at the ethernalquest project, which dont seem to be updated no more. all the data for the game was stored in a text file instaed of a mysql DB and each zone had a file for the corresponding mobs and quests aswell as a couple fo other thing.
ie halasmob.txt
this file contained all the spawn points and loots and stats for each mob
it even contained a level range for each mob too.