Online Suggestion.

[fault]

was reading the following post.
http://eqemulator.net/forums/showthread.php?t=17806


and got to thinking. if eqemu added a slight change, which would set a character status to 1/0 in sql wether they be onlin eor off, we can easily display online count just about anywhere by querying SQL.

after the core is edited we add the simple change to the sql characters table.

ALTER TABLE `character_` ADD `online` TINYINT( 2 ) NOT NULL AFTER `level` ;

[mamba666]

It would need additional info to plug when it is offline, otherwise after the first login you will be listed as always online.

I believe this is the real issue with ghosts is that on a non normal disconnect the server does not know that you have gone LD or logged out.

There needs to be soem kind of Polling to check if you are still online/not zoning/ and not in char select.

[trevius]

Personally I think that ghosts actually hang an open connection with people's PCs even if they exit EQ completely. I have definitely seen where people were logged off and I was still getting tons of traffic from their IP.

I probably need to do more testing with it. I am sure I will get back to investigating connections after I get free time from developing content on my server.

But, if you are concerned about ghosting, you should try my script in the quest section for zone resets on timers. You set how often you want the zone to be reset and the quest will give warnings and then reset the zone. It has made a huge difference on my server performance.

[fault]

yea just write a small perl plugin that verifies online characters and removes ghosts. I am to lazy to install VMware to try and source edit this (vmware to compile) I can;t get cygwin to install perl correctly or I woul dget down and dirty with this myself.

[corvanus]

and you would execute the perl how and why do you need cygwin to install perl? did you not follow the guide use activeperl

[fault]

um, it is called compiling the source? I am sure you know after you edit source files you HAVE to recompile, you just can't edit and be like *lawl ok server now has my changes* Doesn't work like that.

couldnt this code be used to help track down ghosters too>?

[trevius]

Ghosting and Player Ghosts are 2 different things. Ghosting is a hack with 3rd party software that allows players to hit NPCs that are too far away and the NPC can't hit back. At least that is my understanding of it. Player ghosts are characters that the user has exited EQ and the character stayed in the world. You can verify 100% is a player is a ghost by inspecting them. If the inspect window doesn't pop up when you right click them (and you have /toggleinspec on), then they are a player ghost. This commonly happens when a player /exits instead of camping out. It also happens almost every time EQ crashes to desktop while a player is logged in.

If Fault knows the code that needs to be written for this, I am sure someone would be willing to compile it and check it out. I have a VMware machine on my main PC that I could use to setup for compiling. I am glad you mentioned that, because I hadn't thought of using it for that purpose before lol.

I have messed with compiling in the past but could never get it to work 100%. I am sure that if I messed with it enough I could get it working NP. I am 99% sure that my problem was with using incorrect versions of mysql. I may have to start messing around with code development soon as it sounds like fun lol. Now just to learn how to understand it better :P