Hollowshade Moor

[Angelox]

I was just looking at the Hollowshade Moor zone, and trying to figure out how to make it work more like Live - currently, it's a nightmare.
Roughy here's what should happen; There are three tribes in HM - the Gremlins, the Owlbears, and the Wolves. There's always one tribe in charge of the zone, which ever is in charge, the zone will be populated with that race.
The three tribes have a 'base" on each corner of the zone - two are in caves one is a village. Let's say gremlins dominate the zone and they have the Wolf camp - the zone would be fully populated with gremlins, eventually they would attack the Owlbear camp and depending on the outcome, would have that camp also. If you wanted owlbears in the zone, then you help the owlbears and eventually they have they zone.
What happens is, a spawn of "special forces" pop in front of whichever tribe/camp they are from, then they walk over to the enemy camp , once they clean the enemy camp out - the zone repops with their race. If you are not there to help kill the "special forces" attack , then they will win, and the spawns rotate.
Currently all three tribes are spawned in there at the same time, and it's a mess - not to mention , each tribe has it's set of named mobs that spawn in the camps with drops.
So, the first thing is, how do you rotate three complete different spawns of mobs in the same zone? I thought of making three different SQL inserts, each with a different set of mobs and running them with a quest-trigger and a repop. But probably, the new mobs would not show up from the database. Or could you actually have a Perl quest that would actually depop 80-100 npcs, then spawn another 80-100?

[John Adams]

Have you looked into the spawn_conditions and spawn_events tables? I saw Kithicor "day shift" and "night shift" in there before, which was pretty cool - cuz I know what that means. :) Whether this functionality exists in the EMU now, I do not know (is that Wiki fixed yet? /tap /tap /tap).

I can try messing around with that to get a better understanding, see if it works or not. But I think that would be a good way to go - mixing it with signal events in quest scripts to kick things off? I think you're onto something though.

(edit: Cavedude's database has the Kithicor example)

[Angelox]

I have this giant "brainstorm" on how to work this out with perl , I just need the nerve to go out and start it all - It envolves a bit of work, with some pretty large scripts. I would have to remove most all spawns from the zone, and start again from scratch, as perl would be spawning them all. Then at the end, it may not even work. These cycles spawn bigger named in the zone with better drops, so they are just the start of what needs to be done.
Anyways, I would have started already, but I'm a bit frustrated with the harbingers/draniksscar map delema; I can't seem to come up with the zones' s3d files so I can generate the maps.

[WildcardX]

Something similiar to what you described for HM also is suppose to occur in Dawnshroud Peeks in that hopper cave.. Suppose to be the hoppers versus the tiggie. I remember that killing a specific named mob from each race will cause that cave to depop and repop, cycling between the two races...

[John Adams]

Ohhh, you're talking about the Ring events? Or something similar, where you spawn wave after wave until you get to the end prize? I thought you were just talking about swapping out day spawns for night spawns or simple like that.

I'd look for some "ring event" strats, might give an idea of what happens and help format your scripting. Ring of Slime in Accursed Temple of CT, and there's a ring in Acrylia too I believe. It became a real hip way for SOE to write intense content - which is oh so clear in PoP+ encounters. :)

[fathernitwit]

this is more or less exactly what the spawn condition system was designed to facilitate. You can mark each camp/race combo with its own spawn condition, and then use quests to handle the "special forces" stuff and determining victory (counting kills or something) and manipulating the spawn conditions based on the outcome.

Im pretty sure that there are already a bunch of invisible "controller" NPCs in that zone which would prolly be the best way to determine victory. When people spawn or die, they signal the controller NPCs which can keep track of the "global" view. (be careful during zone boot if you do this to make sure the controller exists before spawning anything else, or they may not get all your spawn signals)

[Angelox]

I have made a small update to my database and made this zone playable. The quests are not done yet, but it's very playable now.