Instanced Zones

sotonin · #1 08-13-2004, 04:42 AM

Wondering if anybody has thought of making an instanced zone system?

IE: hedgemaze quest in plane of nightmare, etc. Same zone but multiple instances of it. created via a quest. A player would say certain text, then the quest would need to somehow send a "zone-bootup" request and open a new zone process for that player (group) who would then be tped to that specific instance.

Just curious )

killspree · #2 08-13-2004, 04:49 AM

Actually, the PoN hedgemaze quest isn't really instancing. They just created multiple mazes above the zone area which look exactly the same. There was a limit of I believe 2 or 3 max raids that could do the hedge quest at once.

However, actual zone instancing on the otherhand is something I plan on working on eventually.

hypershadow66 · #3 08-13-2004, 06:42 AM

I think to do zone instancing would be, not sure at all if this would work, is to add the zone into the DB on the zones list, like pofire, but name it pofire01 then do a zone called pofire02 and so on for as many instancing possibilities as you want, then make a quest for whoever NPC that will start that zone, and boot up zone pofire01, and in the quest make it so, if pofire01 has any people in it, then it will boot up pofire02 and check if anyones in it already, if so, it will move on to the next one. Im not sure if any of this would work, but it might be worth a shot?

sotonin · #4 08-13-2004, 06:44 AM

nope wont work.

all you have to do essentially is boot up the same zone. "pofire" as a dynamic. And in order to have a normal un-instanced pofire zone as well, have it loaded as a static. The instanced ones would be dynamics, using the next available ports.

There of course has to be some checks added in the source to disallow regular people from #zoneing into instanced enabled zones.

IE: Static zone: "pofire" is on port 1111
player 1 does quest. "pofire" opens into a dynamic on port 1112, player (and his group) is teleported inside.
player 2 does quest. "pofire" opens into a dynamic on port 1113. player (and his group) is teleported inside.

2 groups are now inside "pofire" in 2 seperate unconnected zones.

player3 uses #zone command to get into pofire. but is sent to 1111 which is the normal un-instanced zone. (lowest port # of all instances of zone that have pofire booted)

hypershadow66 · #5 08-13-2004, 06:45 AM

why wouldnt it work?

sotonin · #6 08-13-2004, 06:49 AM

because i'm pretty sure it loads zone files and graphics and such based on the zone short name. can't change that. and can't "create zones" which would be essentially what you are doing.

hypershadow66 · #7 08-13-2004, 06:58 AM

oh... hmm well i guess you could get it to work though if you copied, Pofire zone and named 1 pofire zone pofire01 and pofire02 and so on, but i guess that'd just be a waste.

sotonin · #8 08-13-2004, 07:02 AM

you still couldnt. it's coded in which zones are allowed. thats why in order to use custom zones created with openzone you have to name them the same as an already existing zone

Draupner · #9 08-13-2004, 07:26 AM

I sometimes get a bug where I have 2 chars in the same zone but they've booted up on seperate zone servers.

sotonin · #10 08-13-2004, 07:30 AM

ya.. i've had that but lately too. 2 zone servers of same zone are booted. and nobody is able to zone in they just hang ><

hypershadow66 · #11 08-13-2004, 07:31 AM

its coded in the source for the servers though right? cuz it doesnt seem like it'd be too hard to add a zone to the source.

sotonin · #12 08-13-2004, 07:36 AM

You can't "create" a zone with a unique name without using zoneproxy. take my word for it.

hypershadow66 · #13 08-13-2004, 08:25 AM

ok, so i guess instancing zones cant be done my way, i wonder what killspree is thinking of