Zone Instance & Zone Version questions

[vkrr]

Could someone give me a quick rundown on the differences between Zone Instance & Zone Version?

My understanding is as follows: (please correct me if I'm wrong)
You have the base zone - blackburrow - version 0. [ as it appears in stock PEQ]

You can send players to instance "a", "b", "guild", "test" etc and each of those instances is a copy of that zone with all mobs spawned fresh, but otherwise the spawngroups, doors, and zone points are the same. When the instance expires, the zone is 'wiped' from memory.

Zone version contain completely separate spawn groups. You could have blackburrow version 1 in which you spawned nothing but snakes, and blackburrow version 2 which contained dwarves.
Can zone versions contain unique doors and zone points specific to that version?

It's my understanding that you can have a zone instance of a specific version of a zone using quest::CreateInstance(zone_name, version, expiration_time) -- is this correct?



Finally, how do you send a player client to a zone version or instance? Is it ONLY through LUA/Pearl scripts or can you change a zone point or door to point to a specific instance or version of a zone?

In zone_points it looks like you can send a player to an instance, but not a version, and in doors it looks like the version is the zone version in which the door spawns - but no way to direct a player to a target version or instance. Is this accurate? Is quest::CreateInstance(zone_name, version, expiration_time) & quest::AssignToInstance(instance_id) the only way to do this? (it looks like quest::movepc(zone_id, x, y, z, heading) doesn't have an option for instance or version?)
$Client->MovePCInstance(zoneID, instanceID, x, y, z, heading) again has instance ID but no version.


Edit: Could I just make a copy of the zone, assign it a new ID, change the name, and then call it a different zone while retaining the same zone map?

I've read the wiki and information posted on the forums, but I'm still a little foggy. Thanks in advance!

[Akkadius]

Originally Posted by vkrr

Could someone give me a quick rundown on the differences between Zone Instance & Zone Version?

My understanding is as follows: (please correct me if I'm wrong)
You have the base zone - blackburrow - version 0. [ as it appears in stock PEQ]

You can send players to instance "a", "b", "guild", "test" etc and each of those instances is a copy of that zone with all mobs spawned fresh, but otherwise the spawngroups, doors, and zone points are the same. When the instance expires, the zone is 'wiped' from memory.

Zone version contain completely separate spawn groups. You could have blackburrow version 1 in which you spawned nothing but snakes, and blackburrow version 2 which contained dwarves.
Can zone versions contain unique doors and zone points specific to that version?

It's my understanding that you can have a zone instance of a specific version of a zone using quest::CreateInstance(zone_name, version, expiration_time) -- is this correct?



Finally, how do you send a player client to a zone version or instance? Is it ONLY through LUA/Pearl scripts or can you change a zone point or door to point to a specific instance or version of a zone?

In zone_points it looks like you can send a player to an instance, but not a version, and in doors it looks like the version is the zone version in which the door spawns - but no way to direct a player to a target version or instance. Is this accurate? Is quest::CreateInstance(zone_name, version, expiration_time) & quest::AssignToInstance(instance_id) the only way to do this? (it looks like quest::movepc(zone_id, x, y, z, heading) doesn't have an option for instance or version?)
$Client->MovePCInstance(zoneID, instanceID, x, y, z, heading) again has instance ID but no version.


Edit: Could I just make a copy of the zone, assign it a new ID, change the name, and then call it a different zone while retaining the same zone map?

I've read the wiki and information posted on the forums, but I'm still a little foggy. Thanks in advance!

vkrr,

The difference between instance version and instance ID is that the instance version, is more simply put a "version" or "partition" of a zone.

You can have entirely different zones using the same zone, but have different spawn layouts, doors, objects etc by using the 'version' column in corresponding tables 'spawn2' 'doors' 'objects' etc. 0 is the normal default, 1 would be a custom one that you would either have to copy 0 into as a base slate or start from scratch on 1.

The Instance ID is simply the ID that represents an instance, whether or not you make an instance of version 0,1,2,3 or whatever, it is what represents the "instance" of that zone.

For ease of instance manipulation, I created a plugin probably like 6 years ago that makes it easier to handle sending players via script:

http://wiki.eqemulator.org/p?Perl_Pl...in-secondsquot

Hopefully that helps

[CSwild760]

EOC Zone Copier does not create the new zone table , it copies all the mobs and everything else , just doesn't add the new zone and it's version to the zone table