Impliment more AA's

[typenamehere1]

I once played on a server that had AA's up through SoDish. The server itself was not great but the fact of all the new AA's made the server so fun. I know a lot of people agree with me if we can get more AA's into a base build, or make an easy way for server to add live AA's there would be more population on emu. If you agree and would like to see more AA's implemented reply here and maybe if it gets large enough we can convince dev's to get it going

[Serryon123]

I agree that would be badass. I played a server like that too, if emu had more AA id never touch live again. /vote!

[boweq]

it was
crystatis ( spelling)

that had the server with the AA's So maybe if he knows a way of implenting them


Even if it only works for SoD+ , which 95% use now.

[liquest]

It is to much work for the EMU team to implement them ive been asking for quite awhile but each individual server can implement more aa's or custom ones themselves.

[boweq]

why not just work on the server side AAS then?

then use it as a public one?

that way AA's can be across the eqmeu

[BooPlumb]

IDK much about AA's but does any kind of packet sniffing help create AA's as in when EQ goes free to play would it help progress what is missing from AA's or?

[sorvani]

it is more a matter of coding the server what to do when the user presses the button.

[Warking]

I was just about to post an issue with my build in that I was missing AA's. So we only get AA's up to GoD when using underfoot?

[trevius]

The AAs don't come with the client, they have to be set server-side. There is a Database portion that is used for sending the AA information to the clients. We could put all of the AAs in the database, but most of the newer ones wouldn't function at all. That is because most also require special stuff on the server side in the source code to handle the effect that the AA is supposed to provide. AAs that just cast a normal spell would probably work fine, but most of them don't just cast a spell, they have special effects.

There are a few complications with adding further AAs for the newer clients. One of them is that they have to be coded manually in the source and each one has to be done in different parts of the source where it is needed depending on what effect it is supposed to have. Another issue is that Live changed how AAs work a bit in the newer expansions so they can go to higher limits like having 30 Combat Stability AAs or something. AAs are handled in a fairly complicated way in the database and the client is very specific about what it expects from the server to properly display them. Most of the AAs we currently have only have a max of 5 or 10 ranks. To exceed those limits, we have to figure out exactly how the client wants to receive those AAs to allow them to properly "stack" with the existing ones. I messed with the code for it a couple years ago, but couldn't ever get it properly working the way it does on Live now to allow those limits to be exceeded. Much of the AA sending code probably needs to be rewritten, but it isn't the easiest logic to follow.

I think I still have the work I did on them a couple of years ago, but I don't know how much use it would be since it didn't work at that time either. Though, I was writing it to work based on what I was seeing on Live at the time, which I think may have been around the time of our current UF client so it might actually work now with the UF client. Unfortunately, I don't really have the time these days to start working on that again. It would probably take me a while to even get caught up on what I was trying to do at that time anyway.

[Warking]

Thanks for the information and all the work you did. I wouldn't mind taking a look at them. A little *cough - easy reading before bed... It will take me 3 times as long to start grasping concepts as my experience is low but I'd give it a shot.

[BooPlumb]

I wish there was something I could do to help with AA's I don't have really any programming skills but would definitely help if there was something I could do. Being off and on from eqemu for years I think one of the biggest things that always turns me away is the AA's, so would definitely help if I can with something.

[Caryatis]

Trevius is kind of right, though there is no issue sending AAs with ranks exceeding 100(though it isnt supported in the stock code). The real issue with AAs is as I posted in the other AA thread...

The problem with new AAs is the dbstr_us.txt file and that SoF changed the way alot of basic AAs work.

First off, with SoF and above, Sony condensed alot of AA lines into a single AA(eg all of the combat agility AAs(lightning reflexes, etc) were all put into a single Combat Agility AA with 33+ ranks). Due to how the current AA DB works(specifically the aa_efffects table), AAs are only counted sequentially. So if you take an AA, lets say this one has skill_id 600 and the next has skill_id 605, then the first AA can only have a max rank of 5(600, 601, 602, 603 & 604).

That is a problem because if you wanted to convert the current AA system into the SoF style system, you need to renumber every single AA. This possibly could be solved by converting the entire aa_effects structure to use ranks like the aa_actions table but talk about a massive project.

The next problem is the db_str file. Because of the SoF change, Sony also changed the db_str file. For those who are unaware, the client pulls all the information about various AA's from this file, without it all you will see are the DB_UNKNOWN_STR or whatever. Sony got rid of all the entries that werent needed anymore due to the AA condensation, so that makes a SoF+ db_str file incompatible with a titanium db_str file.

I had approached Trevius awhile ago about creating seperate db_str files for titanium and SoF+ and putting them on the download page. Because of the current client masking system for AAs, I figured the best solution would be to make all AA that got condensed and their base AAs as Titanium only, then recreate all the missing AA for SoF+ as they are for that client and have them only show to SoF+ clients. However, without the ability to also include a common db_str file it would be impossible to find a configuration of AAs for SoF, SoD and Underfoot clients(as they are all slightly different). We never really went anywhere with this though.

You also run into issues with client spell ID caps, so you couldn't have a titanium client using Glyphs or higher level activated AA, but it would also apply to some SoD spells for a SoF client, etc, however, the innate AA would function for any client.

The source changes for adding higher rank AAs and all that are in the source I posted for one of my older servers.

[typenamehere1]

Also let me know if there is anything i can do to help. It seems there are a lot of people interested in the AAs and bunch that would be willing to help if we knew what to do