So I think I am going to end up doing this anyways, but I have been thinking of an idea that I think is definitely worth my time for the help of the community so hear me out on this.
Universal Content Exporter/Importer
What?- The idea of this would be that you can log into your database with EoC as you normally would and be able to export content in such a form that it can be universally imported into someone else's database flexibly so that it molds right into their environment.
- The EoC already has Zone Tools, which I have never really explained to the community what its capabilities are, which is to be able to connect to a 2nd database and import content from a zone from one version to another and I've worked all of the bugs out of it and it works entirely. Import the zones NPC's/spawns/doors/objects/grids etc.
Although this idea would extend much further than the concept. The idea that you need to connect to a 2nd database and do the transfer as not as friendly as it could be.
Breaking Down Content Sharing Barriers
One of the biggest things in my mind that creates a barrier to helping each other out in this community is the ability to share each others work. The Wiki will help us break down those barriers over time here immensely. But there is another big component and that is the time, blood and sweat put into these servers for content.
Sometimes the server isn't able to stay up, someone has more commitments in life and they have the shelf their work. Even if someone released their database and binaries it is one thing to get it up to speed and get it going but it is another thing to keep it going, host it and maintain it from a content perspective.
Sometimes, a server developer would be open to help if they could trust a random person. How about being able to stage content for a zone locally and export it to another server?
Exporting to Flatfiles
The idea is that you would be able to take in a variety of components and export them into a flat file that is agnostic of ID's, they would be 'Pseudo_ID's' that when the importer comes to parse the data, it would then use the pseudo ID's to match up with free ID's that are available in the target database and all of the ID's would match up.
The other idea of this is that you have zone script files that reference old ID's and the ability to upload a zip file with the folders quest and have the exporter parse out all of the NPCID oriented commands that reference an ID, to then also be replaced with 'Pseudo ID's' so that when it comes time to import, everything is re-linked and migration of this content should be perfectly in tact.
We could extend this out with our new Wiki and have complete archives of server content that people can openly share, post pictures of content and its layout and people can choose to include that in their server. (This same concept applies to sharing knowledge and tools on the Wiki).
Your export options would include (But not limited to)- Tasks
- NPC's and their spawn points
- NPC Grids
- Doors
- Objects
- Source Zone Version
- Loot Tables and the item data associated with it
- NPC Factions
- NPC Spells
- Merchant Lists
- NPC Armor Tints
- Quests NPC ID/Item ID/Door ID References
You could then take this (large) generated flatfile that only the importer can interpret on the target database and it would break out the information necessary and you can select your target version for this zones data.
This would give you the flexibility to be able to make an instance out of this content and leverage my 'expeditions' system that I will be releasing in the next few weeks.
Either way I am just shooting this proposition out as an idea and to see how many people would be interested in it. My guess is that most people would more than want to see something like this around. But I am posting this to hear your thoughts.
GO!