AI Idea.

[ichijin]

With all the new AI Code being developed for monsters, would it be possible to make the monsters attack in "teams"? Imagine sitting in Freeport, and all of a sudden a "team/group" of goblins or something come crashing through the gates.. Would have to remove the insta kill for Town Guards. They would/could help you fight the advancing goblin horde, but it would be better to have a group of players working with the Town Guard kill them, rather than the guards finish them off within 30 seconds or so with insta kill. Would make things alot more interesting.

Instead of strolling through the monsters home bases, and not being messed with the monters would group and come after you/your party. Makes monsters more... realistic? Would spice things up a bit. Granted, it would make the game alot harder than it already is, but things could be tweaked to work with the new changes.

[Malevolent]

More orchestrated teamwork on behalf of the npc is my next big design goal. Maybe they'll put something in the emu for it, if not, the hunger code will do it.

See my recent post on the animal instincts thread for more info on how I hope to achieve this.

--MV

[Akira678]

You mean something kinda like Ultima Online where you pay??? Where stuff ranomely comes through cities attacking them?

[ichijin]

Never tried Ultima Online, so I couldnt compare if it was like that or not. Only Online game I have ever played so far has been Everquest, though Dark Age of Camelot looked interesting. Its just an idea I thought might be cool rather than 100's of people just sitting around in town doing nothing, they would be caught up in mini wars.

[DeletedUser]

The team has some ideas of different events that could happen, but we need to get certain things in first before we work on these special features.

[just_add_water]

its a good idea but i don't think it'll work. Towns are suppose to be safe places, so alot of people go afk inside/by gate. Also how would the mobs get inside threw the newbie garden? that'll be one hell of a lot of dead lvl 1s

[DeletedUser]

Well heres the main idea thats been run by (Mostly by Merkur):
Allow cities to be taken over by guilds.
When all guards in the city are killed (the leader must still be alive, for ex. freportw is Sir Lucan) you hail him and he will surrender the city to you. To keep the city you would pay x amt in platinum and the city would respawn on your guilds faction (which is another feature that will be added soon, allowing guilds to choose their faction with others, npcs and pcs) But the newbies would most likely be non-kos to the guilds, I doubt the guilds are out there to kill the newbies :)

Then to add to it, when you own a city you would get x amt of money per eq day that was generated by taxes.

[ichijin]

Sounds like an interesting feature Image. The only problem you may have with that, is if its on big servers. You would end up having "turf wars" between guilds, which would probably turn into big PvP fights. Maybe make the "guilds can make the town theirs" thing a toggleable option?

Just_add_water: The newbies could just run back into the town. They usually dont lose exp anyway at that level. Or not enough to make it a bad thing. Monsters would not attack the town frequently, just random occurances that would make things interesting. Towns would still be safe, just not 10% of the time or some other small percentage. This too, could be made a toggleable option for people who do not want this on their servers.

[DeletedUser]

It will definately be a toggle option. Personally I think this feature should be in live eq, adds to the realism. It would make PVP-Team servers a lot more interesting, thats for sure...

[ichijin]

Hmm.. Its not really that it makes it more "interesting". It gives you a point to PvP. A goal of sorts. Instead of just someone saying "Hey, we are having a guild war with guildx." Then everytime you see Guildx people they are trying to kill you, or vise versa.

[Malevolent]

I'm not sure I'm on the same page as you all, so let me describe what I'm working on.

I'm working off the theory that no NPC may have their actions controlled directly, but may be guided indirectly for all circumstances. This has the immediate consequence of a player not being able to control a group of NPCs directly. These I'm defining as half-pets.

Each NPC has needs. Presently, this need consists of hunger. Now, as of today, each NPC is capable of reporting to a personal master based on a certain set of criteria. Level, species, faction, and maybe class too will go in to determine who the master is. Right now, there can be only two options while I debug some things. These two options are (1) you obey yourself or (2) you obey the zone master. For the technical and more aspects of this, refer to the animal instincts thread.

I've also added in the ability to do donations for both food and money. So, when an NPC kills another player (soon) or other NPC, it takes the money that is on the corpse and routes it over to the zone master's bank account. For food, it updates the food status.

The point to donations is to promote the safety of an individual spawn through and like the implied social contract that comes about when ever three or more sapient creatures are near one another. For example, in crushbone I'll spawn five loyal commandos that obey only me. Next, I'll call on #zonefamine and starve the zone. As the orcs and slaves come charging in to beat them down (to eat), I will offer my protection to the commandos. That's for the client. Sometime this week, I'll be changing that to work with NPCs themselves.

Further, I'll be putting in special code that 'upgrades' an NPC's armor, weaponry, and the like once they have achieved so much money. This will, hopefully, cascade down to their group members.

Now combine some of what I've said. You have social contracts emerging dynamically (the way I have it set, it is very difficult to engineer a contract directly, but could be possible) that elevate masters and promote general group safety. Further, if a master is killed the NPCs of that now dead master will search out for a new one. Should the master meet the certain qualifications, they will join the indirect "group". Direct grouping where you have organized mobs moving about doing things based off their own needs is something I'd like to get to, but probably won't be able to touch it until next week.

Example:

In crush bone the elves select one of their own as their leader. They find the need to go strike down some orcs, do so, and they donate food and money. The elven master attains 1000 pp. This permits the elf to buy a new piece of equipment for all his members, including himself. Since the elven master is satisfied with his people, that is, he no longer is hungry (a master has no maximum hunger cap) he will protect them whenever they fall into danger.

Now let's say that not only money is introduce, but also experience (kinda like AC). Thereby allowing NPCs of a 'click' to level. What happens if you let the zone run by itself? It's a kind of interesting thought experiment. Remember, a NPC will only go after something to eat if it is within 5 levels, not of the same faction and same race. In a zone like freeport, there might be many masters. But, in a zone like crushbone, there might only be one. Moving another step down the lane, let's suggest that when an NPC on team A kills an NPC on team B, it takes the 'home location' of the NPC from team A. If the elves are lucky, they might actually take over the castle, and the master, the only person capable of likely fighting dvinn (but the group click could aggro on to him) would take dvinn or crush's spot.

A good question to ask is where the player is in all of this. My hope is that the player is not related whatsoever to any of the above unless they spawn their own army. Then, if they have their own army, the mobs will, until such time as commands like #sackthezone are introduced, slowly take over the zone and donate heavily to the bank account of the client. Since the client doesn't have the luxory of working directly to equip the mobs on a rolling basis, I plan at an even later point to introduce what I call the 'client scribe'. He'll be like a pet, only small and has wings (or maybe a levitating gnome of size 1), and will respond to basic commands such as "#accountbalance", "#sackzone", and the like. Also note that since mobs may replace the 'home location' of killed NPCs, it is then theoretically possible for a player to take control of a city, and have to contend with the issues of running it (just that you'll have to interface with another mob, which I find more interesting).

[edit: small details ]

--MV

[ichijin]

First off, I would just like to say, "Wow." You are doing some impressive work, Malevolent.

However, it seems to me that the player has been.. overlooked. To an extent. If the player does not spawn his/her own army, what happens to them then? These armies seem to be frequently gathering, building, and hunting for food. The player is off doing his/her own thing in the meantime. (Assuming they have managed to stay out of the other armies way up until now). I am not really sure how you could "fix" the problem, or even if you see a problem.

Possiblities could be add a check for the player to see if he/she has an army, or at least a few group members (other players?), before having more than a couple things try to hunt the player for food. If they do have a group, or army, then they are fair game.

However, another problem I forsee with this is the fact that this is becomming a strategy based war game, more or less. Your army vs every other army. Its leaning away from what EQ is "supposed" to be like. This would be great for people who are planning on having big servers, or at least 5+ people logging into them most times they will be playing. The player seems to have dropped to the very bottom of the food chain if they plan on trying to explore this world alone. :P

Malevolent, thoughts, questions, comments?

[Malevolent]

Good points one and all, and is why I don't want anything I'm working on in what is considered the 'pure' version. I make no claim to make anything near what might have been considered EQlive-like. I'd like to take what they have and do more with it, things I personally wanted to see and just to prove to myself that they could be done (all those days of /feedback weren't for nothing, darn it).

1) Thanks :) If it weren't for the really amazing and thorough work of the emu staff, this wouldn't be possible. They've done some really spectacular things in making this emu happen.

2) I'm making a fishbowl. The player has the ability to bring in their self (their rubber ducky) and participate (at some later point, join a side), and otherwise play eq 'normally'. There's no call for a player to get involved, nor will I do much to encourage this kind of thing! If they don't spawn an army, then the zone will have the illusion of self-sufficiency. They want the elves to win? They, being the players, help the elves by cutting down the orcs. If they don't want to be involved in the elven-orcan war, then they should likely leave. I hear the new world has opportunities. Be careful of the thieves though, they like to rob from the rich and give to themselves.

3)

However, another problem I forsee with this is the fact that this is becomming a strategy based war game, more or less. Your army vs every other army. Its leaning away from what EQ is "supposed" to be like. This would be great for people who are planning on having big servers, or at least 5+ people logging into them most times they will be playing. The player seems to have dropped to the very bottom of the food chain if they plan on trying to explore this world alone. :P


I disagree. I'm giving the potential to have RTS gaming (which any substantial raid is like), but one could still go about and do the normal eq things, only have to deal with more robust and dynamic things. If the player wants to, they can have an army and take over a zone, or even assist 'click' to take over the zone and become powerful (then to bring in their iksar or whatever and help the opposition).

Is this the natural direction for this kind of work? Or does it lead somewhere new? Ask me in a while when I have all the basics covered, and I'll revisit the points here. I had some really radical ideas I'd like to put in (e.g., mob elections and quasi-protocapitalst system), but I'm quite a ways from that.

--MV

[Baltar]

I'm looking forward to both the non-pure and pure versions myself. It's starting to look like they both are heading off
in there own directions anyway. The non-pure version would help on small servers because if there's only a few people on a huge planet, they may never even see one another. It keeps it interesting. It's like choosing between scuba diving and being lost in a desert. Keep up the good work Malevolent!

p.s. maybe if the code is portable enough, it can be integrated in a future emu version. That way, everybody w/o a compiler can use it.

[ichijin]

Very nice reply, Malevolent. If I wasnt interested before, I would have been sold on that. Since it will be seperate from the "main emu", that seems to be a great... alternative? For those looking fore "more" of an experience than the standard EQ.

Baltar makes a good point though. There are alot of people using this who do not have compilers (And no offense to anyone, but many not capable of setting up a compiler and compiling the code even if they had one. :P), so to save alot of future hassle for you, and others (questions of how to compile, how to setup their compiler, best compiler, etc..) will you be hosting a compiled version when the project gets to a more stable point? Or is it stable enough now to host a fully compiled version?

[Malevolent]

Baltar makes a good point though. There are alot of people using this who do not have compilers (And no offense to anyone, but many not capable of setting up a compiler and compiling the code even if they had one. :P), so to save alot of future hassle for you, and others (questions of how to compile, how to setup their compiler, best compiler, etc..) will you be hosting a compiled version when the project gets to a more stable point? Or is it stable enough now to host a fully compiled version?

Stable? Er. No. :)

I may do as Drawde does and start putting up downloads for these alts. I don't have the bandwidth per month to permit use of my own server. Since I'm only making changes to the zone server, it should be small enough to keep on the forums.

Thus, my plan is that when the next release happens, to make changes to the necessary files and release both the source and zone binary. I'll likely post it to the eq emu development forum.