Georges,
We were discussing creating the new Adventure zones for LDoN and others that would have multiple versions of each zone, and it made me think that you might be able to incorporate something for it into your NPC Loot Editor. Here is the thread where I brought the idea up at:
http://www.eqemulator.net/forums/sho...t=28512&page=2
I haven't made any adventure zones yet, so I don't really know all of the details needed to make them, but here are some ideas about what I think the tool would need to take into consideration for making copies of Adventure zones:
1. Use the NPC Loot Editor to select a zone.
2. Add a new button on the Editor to create a new Version Copy of the zone.
3. Pressing that button would pop up a new window that gives options for creating the version copy. The options I think would be most important off of the top of my head are:
A. Field for setting the Zone Version number that the new copy should use.
B. Toggle button to give the option to remove loot table IDs from the new copy or to carry over the existing ones.
C. Field for setting the level difference for the new zone from the one being copied. This field could either have positive (add levels) or negative (subtract levels) values put into it. When the new copy is created, this is a flat number that all NPCs in the zone will have added or subtracted from their level setting in the original copy. So, if all of the NPCs in the zone are level 20 and you set this field to 10, all of the NPCs in the copied Version of the zone will be level 30 when the copy is created.
D. Field for setting a percentage increase/decrease for Min/Max hit if the current value of the NPC is > 0. I think the default for this field should be 100, meaning that the Min/Max hit would be the same for the copy. If this field was set to 50, all NPCs in the copy would have 50% of the Min/Max hit of the NPCs they are being copied from. If this field was set to 200, all of the NPCs in the new copy would have double the Min/Max hit of the original NPCs, and so on.
E. Field for setting HP/Mana to a percentage of the original NPCs being copied. This would work the same as the field for Min/Max hit and default would also be 100 for this field.
F. Field for setting all remaining stats (STR, STA, Etc, Resists, Attack Rating, Accuracy, Etc) to a percentage of the original NPCs being copied. This too would work like the Min/Max Hit field, and Default would also be 100. Of course, if any of these fields are set to 0, they remain 0 after the change.
G. Toggle button for copying all of the NPC pathing Grids for the new spawn groups so they use the same pathing as the originals. Default would be to have it set to use the same grids, but there could be an option to stop it from carrying over the grids. This field is optional, as in almost all cases, I think the grids would be wanted for every copy, so this field is not a priority to have in the tool. Just trying to think of extra possible features for it.
H. This one isn't too important to have in the tool, but if possible, it might be nice to have a field for automatically creating new loot table IDs for each Unique loot table ID in the original zone and assign them to the NPCs in the new zone. Basically, if you have 20 NPCs all using the same loot table, the new copy would be using a new loot table ID for all of those same NPCs. Then, the main point of this field is to be able to set coin drop min and max to a percentage of the original loot tables. So, if you are copying NPCs that are level 20 and you want to make the new Version for level 40s, you could have it generate all of the new Loot tables and add double the coin to their loot tables. This way, all of the new loot tables would be there and ready to go and all you would need to do is add in the actual loot. Just trying to cut down time on making the new version copies as much as possible. But, this field is definitely not something that would be required to make the tool extremely helpful.
I am sure you are probably pretty busy as always, so if you don't have time to add a feature like this, it is perfectly understandable. I just wanted to make the suggestion in case you get the time and were looking for some new features to make your tools even more feature packed than they already are
Seems like most of these features would just be writing up some fairly simple queries and then putting them in so the tool can use them as needed.
Also, if possible, Cavedude requested that the tool generate an SQL file of the changes that it is making (or trying to make) with the tool, since he doesn't have GUI access on PEQ. Maybe that could be one of the options in the Version Copy window to have a Toggle that is default set to automatically update the database, but also has the option of only generating the SQL to do the edit and not actually editing anything directly.
Thanks in advance either way, GeorgeS!