NPCs that can hear without being targeted.

[JrFaust]

I've read through a few quests that could use this, an example is the prayer shawl quest.
Also I'd like to make a few custom events that would work nicer and be easier to write up, and maybe I could have some GM bots on my server.

But what might that do to the server?
Would that take up a lot of CPU time for NPCs to be "listening".


Thanks for your time.
Robert

[RangerDown]

In EQLive, any NPC that is within hearing range of you is supposed to hear what you say and let its quest AI (if any) process your text. But for us, that would pose some complicated issues. Not the least of which would be CPU consumption as you pointed out.

If a range check instead of a simple target check is done every time somebody says something in /say (and keep in mind they don't always /say to trigger quests, they might just be chatting with nearby friends), every line of all that chatter would still be triggering range checks and perl quest processing by EACH npc that heard it. Perhaps doable on multi-super-computers that Sony has; probably not a good idea with the server equipment most of us have.

[John Adams]

In EQLive, any NPC that is within hearing range of you is supposed to hear what you say
Forgive my insolence, Ranger... but I do not believe this to be true. You can Hail, NPC_Name in /say and the NPC will not reply unless you have them targetted. No? Maybe it's been too long.

There is also the proximity features in our quest system for getting NPCs to "get your attention" or such. I imagine one could use proximity to have a specific NPC launch into a specific task... but i haven't gotten prox to work yet on my server.

[RangerDown]

In some of the later expansions, they might only respond if you target them while hailing. Or they might have made hail do a target check now; you used to be able to type "Hail, npcname" in a text box and if the npc was nearby, he would respond.

If you have an active account and want to try this, try going to the Ak`Anon bank and say the word "guild". Tell me how many responses you get :D

[Aerewen]

why not just use a timer?

hail the npc, if target check passes, they go "active" and start listening for x amount of time... then go inactive again and wait for a hail...

as long as they are active, each line you say to them will reset the timer to it's full value...

so you give a player say... a minute to respond to each line from the npc maybe?

only drawback really is if they get a tell or something while talking to the npc and wait too long... then they have to start all over :P

[JrFaust]

My main goal was to have a situation(s) that you might be interacting with an NPC and maybe a PC while the guards "listen" for key words. Then high jinks, warnings, and arrests would ensue. And I guess one might be able to use it as an automated GM for small tasks, but I see that getting used and abused.

But there are ways I think of simulating "listening" I just hope that they way I want to do that won't tax the server just as hard.