idea for flagging quests?

[jimbox114]

I got a general idea to make a "flagging" type quest to grant access to zones. Just wondering if you think this will work? My plan would be to spawn a npc that will flag a players account stats by X amount. For instance you would defeat boss_mob and spawn a planar projection. When you hail the planar projection it will give you a emote saying you got a flag, then it could do a quest script to flag your account from 0 to 5. Then make certain zones require your access to be 5 to enter them.

I noticed some quest commands that involved various types of flagging and it seems like one of them is supposed to change your account access isn't it?

Of course to do this you will need to set all the commands you don't want users to have to a higher number, but otherwise wouldn't this work?

[sotonin]

you would have to have all zones require same access, which would be lame. a single flagging quest that opens access to every zone.

Because there would be no other way by just using 1 field.

The proper solution would be to make a new table "Flags" and have the following fields.

userid
crypt of decay
bertox lair
etc
etc

the various zones would be a enum of 'true', 'false'

The source code would have to be modified in a way that a quest function is added that updates the users record in this table when a flag quest is completed. and The zoning source will need to be modified to check against the flags table before allowing the players to zone into these zones.

It seems pretty simplistic from my standpoint (dont know about the coding portion) I don't really get why nobody has added one yet. I'm sure there is a reason though.

[killspree]

You'd have to do additional coding other than just adding a perl function. I had flagging coded for Evertorn before I lost the source when I had to reformat. I'll rewrite it eventually and share it with you if you're interested in it.

[sotonin]

very interested.

yes i know you'd need additional coding. You'd need to modify the functions that occur when a player attempts to zone in to a zone. =)

[fathernitwit]

a slightly hackish way you might be able to do it is to remove the zone points into that zone..
and stick an NPC there... you have to hail them, and they teleport you across the zone line if you meet the criteria...

I dont actually know if you can easily remove the zone point... but you can sure put a big wall in the way (:

I think you could then accomplish the rest with the npc quest variables that are allready in there..

[Draupner]

writing code to check if you have a flag when you zone into a certain zone wouldn't be to hard. If i decide to put them in for LOTR i'll post it for you guys

[sotonin]

I'd love to see this merged into the cvs. )

[fathernitwit]

If i decide to put them in for LOTR i'll post it for you guys

Lol, thats the second person around here in 24 hours working on Lord Of the Rings stuff :)

I hope this dosent affect any work being done on LDoN :)

[Cisyouc]

I have already partially implemented this on Prexus II Development.

Kill Boss1 -> Planar Projection Spawns (He has a despawn timer of 60 seconds OR max 6 hails)

On Hail of Planar Projection-> setglobal & yellow emote "You have recieved a character flag!"

On say "Zones" to seer -> say "zone1", "zone2"

On say "Zone3" to seer -> say "You must prove your dedication before I can discuss such matters with you."

On say "Unlock Memories" to seer -> yellow emote "You feel a bind with Zone3"

On New say "Zones" to seer -> "Zone1","Zone2","Zone3"

On New say "Zone3" to seer -> Zone into Zone3

Of course, zone points are removed but the system does work.

If you made it so the server would have to check a quest global value before carring on, then that would eliminate the need for the teleporter and would be very cool. If anyone would like to see this on my locked server send me a pm.

[sotonin]

hmm... for an official live like system there'd have to be some changes.

Kill Boss1 -> Planar Projection Spawns (He has a timer of 60 seconds OR max 6 hails)

very few projections had such a short timer. and NONE had a hail limit that i can recall. Maybe it was 60 seconds but i seem to recall rezzing people in for flags, etc which usually takes more than 60 seconds.

*edit: i remembered a bertox event having like a 30 hail limit... but i still say 6 hail limit = crazy

On say "Zones" to seer -> say "zone1", "zone2"

On say "Zone3" to seer -> say "You must prove your dedication before I can discuss such matters with you."

On say "Unlock Memories" to seer -> yellow emote "You feel a bind with Zone3"

On New say "Zones" to seer -> "Zone1","Zone2","Zone3"

On New say "Zone3" to seer -> Zone into Zone3


not quite sure what all this is. You have a npc that teleports players into specific zones? If so that's a nice workaround for now. but i'd hope somebody could modify the "zoning" source to allow something more permanent )

[jimbox114]

I know the gnome for the mb raid has a hail limit of like 72, I never did get my mb flag cause of idiots overhailing.
Id give more then 60 seconds on the spawn time though. Id give at least 5 minutes. Normally they would depop on live in about 10 minutes I think. I never did get my grummus flag cause the raid leaders refused to let people hail till all rezzes was done. Then we had 2 corpses that fell under the world and the pp depoped and nobody got a flag.

[Cisyouc]

hmm... for an official live like system there'd have to be some changes.

Kill Boss1 -> Planar Projection Spawns (He has a timer of 60 seconds OR max 6 hails)

very few projections had such a short timer. and NONE had a hail limit that i can recall. Maybe it was 60 seconds but i seem to recall rezzing people in for flags, etc which usually takes more than 60 seconds.

*edit: i remembered a bertox event having like a 30 hail limit... but i still say 6 hail limit = crazy Bertoxxulous has a 72 flag limit, and like a 10? minute despawn timer that starts after the first hail. The event I was using is a one-group named mob (which most of my server's progression is). And I have the 60 second despawn to discourage other people from coming from across the world to get the flag if the group had someone who was already flagged.

You are think of Carprin Dethorn Event which had a series of like 8 named mobs and at the end there was a 36 flag limit and it was from a named level 1 mob, not a planar projection (as if there was much difference =) )

On say "Zones" to seer -> say "zone1", "zone2"

On say "Zone3" to seer -> say "You must prove your dedication before I can discuss such matters with you."

On say "Unlock Memories" to seer -> yellow emote "You feel a bind with Zone3"

On New say "Zones" to seer -> "Zone1","Zone2","Zone3"

On New say "Zone3" to seer -> Zone into Zone3


not quite sure what all this is. You have a npc that teleports players into specific zones? If so that's a nice workaround for now. but i'd hope somebody could modify the "zoning" source to allow something more permanent )"On Say" Represents BEFORE you "unlocked your memories" with the seer. On NEW Say Represents AFTER. So basically the NPC wont teleport you unless you have the flag.

[jimbox114]

Is there no way to change the clients user status within a quest through a NPC then?

[sotonin]

there could be if somebody creates it.... but there's no point in that

i know what you are thinking but it wont work. example.

user status:
1=plane of disease
2=plane of fire
3=plane of torment

etc. i know these arent real flag required zones, just wrote names for examples sake.

you are thinking ok... ill flag that character as 1 and theyll be able to enter plane of disease.

ok.. sure... that could work.

but now. they do the plane of fire quest and they are now status 2. cool. that works too..

but wait.. what if they skip plane of disease, go straight to pofire quest. get that flag.... oops... guess what they can enter disease now too!

so in essence all they gotta do is get the flag for the highest up zone in the list and opens access to all. thats why this system is flawed

[fathernitwit]

you can use the bits of an integer to represent the flags....

OR (| not ||) their status with 0x01, 0x02, 0x04, or 0x08 etc to set flags,
AND (& not &&) their status with them to check them...

thats how a lot of things work in the emu and everywhere else in programming, it works very well.

[hypershadow66]

there could be if somebody creates it.... but there's no point in that

i know what you are thinking but it wont work. example.

user status:
1=plane of disease
2=plane of fire
3=plane of torment

etc. i know these arent real flag required zones, just wrote names for examples sake.

you are thinking ok... ill flag that character as 1 and theyll be able to enter plane of disease.

ok.. sure... that could work.

but now. they do the plane of fire quest and they are now status 2. cool. that works too..

but wait.. what if they skip plane of disease, go straight to pofire quest. get that flag.... oops... guess what they can enter disease now too!

so in essence all they gotta do is get the flag for the highest up zone in the list and opens access to all. thats why this system is flawed

This could also work though, you could have the NPC at pofire check that he has 1 status before letting him do the quest for getting flagged for pofire, then they will not be able to get Pofire withought getting podisease, but then you cannot have seperate flags so you can get into po fire and not podisease or something like that. so it would work but you will have to complete the first quest and get podisease before you can move on.

[sotonin]

true true. it could work if you were fine with it being a set progression

[KhaN]

If i decide to put them in for LOTR i'll post it for you guys

Lol, thats the second person around here in 24 hours working on Lord Of the Rings stuff :)

I hope this dosent affect any work being done on LDoN :)

Here i agree with you, Richardo Hi-jacked too many eqemu devs ... Richardo, if you read this, free them !

[Draupner]

Yes please free me from my evil captor Richardo :p

[jimbox114]

there could be if somebody creates it.... but there's no point in that

i know what you are thinking but it wont work. example.

user status:
1=plane of disease
2=plane of fire
3=plane of torment

etc. i know these arent real flag required zones, just wrote names for examples sake.

you are thinking ok... ill flag that character as 1 and theyll be able to enter plane of disease.

ok.. sure... that could work.

but now. they do the plane of fire quest and they are now status 2. cool. that works too..

but wait.. what if they skip plane of disease, go straight to pofire quest. get that flag.... oops... guess what they can enter disease now too!

so in essence all they gotta do is get the flag for the highest up zone in the list and opens access to all. thats why this system is flawed

That is basically what I am thinking. However the way I had it planned would be something like:

Flag 1 = lets you zone into zone1, zone2, zone3.
Flag 2 = lets you zone into zone4.
Flag 3 = lets you zone into zone5.

With a 0 flag you can't enter zone1 through zone5. However when you get flag 1 you can enter zone 1-3 which will have the quests to get you flag 2 so you can enter zone4, then zone4 gets flagged for zone5. If the person doesn't get flag 1, they can't go to zone4 to get flag 3. It would basically be a progressive quest leading to the final zone.

Of course if there is no current way to get a npc to change your user status, then it won't work anyways.

[sotonin]

thats a nice little system for a custom server. but not for the official cvs... flags dont work that way in eqlive

[jimbox114]

So I guess to sum things up, unless your a coder you can forget any type of flagging quest as of right now? I assume it would require heavy codeing to add a perl function that allows a npc to modify your userstatus?

[killspree]

Here's how I had it set up, brief example to give you an idea:

Firstly I had a new table that stored flags for various zones. If a zone required special flags for entry, it was in this table. It had the following: charid, zoneid, flag. They should be obvious, charid is the ID of the character attempting to enter the zone, zoneid is the ID of the zone they're attempting to enter. Flag was 1 for yes, 0 for no. If it was 0, the player got a message "You do not meet the requirements to enter this zone." much like when there aren't enough zone servers.

I then added a function which checked this table, and put it within the zoning function itself. That's basically it. I also added quest functions to add a specific zone which required the flag.

[sotonin]

pretty much exactly as i described...

except instead of 1 record per user in the flag table, 1 record per flag. either way it works.

[killspree]

Yeah, I have other ideas of ways to implement it that would be better for me...but that's because I have set zones I plan to limit access to based on flags. This way is probably better for your everyday legit EQLive clone type server.